"Derek Broughton" wrote in message
...
Reel McKoi wrote:


"Derek Broughton" wrote in message
...
Mike C wrote:

Silly me. I think what I scooped up was actually Koi semen. 30
minutes after I put it in the container, it was dissolved. It looked
like foam when I first scooped i tup.

Exactly right! Spawning is one of the primary causes of foam in a garden
pond. It _is_ a good idea to scoop out the foam.

Because my ponds are netted that would be a real pain in the keester. It
disappears in 24 hours on it's own. The first time they spawned several
years ago I checked for an ammonia spike - there was none.

It's not a hard rule - and the bigger your pond the less likely it is to
cause trouble. If ammonia never appeared, it's not a problem at all. But
foam of any kind indicates a high organic load in the pond, and scooping it
as it develops is the simplest form of control. If it was a real problem,
then you'd want to consider a protein skimmer - which wouldn't be a problem
with a netted pond.
--
derek


Hmmm. I have a reef tank, and everything I've ever read about protein skimmers
(I have two different ones) says that they don't work with fresh water. I
haven't actually attempted to use one this way so I am just going by what I have
read. Something about the surface tension being to low in freshwater. Now, if
the water was really fouled up, it might work for a while.