Fishless cycling/ammonia and a high 5 for Waterbug!

[Waterbug]

Thanks for the Skeptical Aquarist link. I feel like it's Christmas morning. Best discussion of this stuff for freshwater I've ever read. And lots of links to new studies I don't think I've never read. And a great discussion on barley straw to boot. First reasonable theories on how barley straw could work. And the line:

You would have to sit by the pond and add a drop of dilute hydrogen peroxide every hour or so to get the same effects.

I think I've said almost exactly the same thing a few dozen times over the years. Except I say a cap full a day or something.

I normally think I'm the only person on the planet that thinks like that. Nice to hear it elsewhere. Aquarists are such a good source of info for ponds.

The ecosystems created in a person's backyard pond is not natural, but this does not prevent Nature from attempting to manage it.

I always grin when people say this. A beaver builds a pond and it's natural. A human builds a pond and it isn't natural. I wonder how beavers view the world. I guess after all that work they say "nature didn't build that, I did, dam it!" (a little beaver word play there on the end).

 

[Waterbug]

Thanks also for the other forum link. It is the standard confusion between nutrients being used to reproduce vs a complete absence of algae.

But the post by SharonFL was gold:

With all due respect to your expertise in ponding, as a microbiologist I have to point out that you have a faulty definition of heterotrophic and autotrophic bacteria. Heterotrophs -- including all animals, fungi, protozoa, and many bacteria and archaea -- require organic chemicals as fuel to produce energy. Autotrophs (non-heterotrphs) can get energy from light (photoautotrophs) or inorganic chemicals (chemoautotrophs). Among the bacteria in our ponds, photoautotrophs include the blue-green bacteria, and chemoautotrophs include the nitrifying bacteria, which obtain energy oxidizing ammonia and nitrite.

The experiments in the article are very interesting and people should try to reproduce them. I can say that my goldfish ponds -- in spite of being shallow and thus very warm in the summer, and exposed to subtropical sun for much of the day -- do not grow green water algae. But they do have a nice carpet of algae over the liner and any other underwater surface. If I remove water from a pond and leave it sitting in a bucket, the water turns green after several days. This suggests that if there is an inhibitor of algal growth in the pond water, it breaks down fairly quickly.

Putting water from a clear pond into another container and seeing micro algae bloom is new to me, and even easier than Norm's experiments. And Sharon's shows how fast the toxin breaks down which Norm never touched. Opens up some possibilities for other experiments maybe.

Her post also unfortunately shows the downside of many forums. Here's a microbiologist interested in ponds and 3 posts and she's gone. Forums just don't seem to be a place for serious discussion for the most part.

 

[crsublette]

Yeah, it was a good thread. I find good threads occasionally. They're fun and entertaining to read.

I always grin when people say this. A beaver builds a pond and it's natural. A human builds a pond and it isn't natural. I wonder how beavers view the world. I guess after all that work they say "nature didn't build that, I did, dam it!" (a little beaver word play there on the end).

I would suspect a beaver pond, which is the result of the beaver partitioning a river or lake etc, ecosystem has tremendously more biological activity than any tub in a dirt hole I can build in my backyard. After a few years of maturing, then sure you could say the biological activity in my "tub in dirt hole" is a bit closer to that of a beaver pond. Then, I will intentionally sustain a big volume of fish in my little watergarden, which would be naturally considered to be polluted water and fish culled without my intervention; yet, I am to believe some how it is natural for all the proper entities to exist, by simply me building something, except nature's reaction would still be to cull if my bio-filters fail due to me not ever vacuuming my pond floor.

Her post also unfortunately shows the downside of many forums. Here's a microbiologist interested in ponds and 3 posts and she's gone. Forums just don't seem to be a place for serious discussion for the most part.

Unfortunately, it appears she was not looking for a local "watering hole" to shoot the breeze or simply misjudged the scene and needs a more sophisticate, higher class "watering hole". If it is a later, then no thanks since I enjoy the humor of "common" folk.

Forums just don't seem to be a place for serious discussion for the most part.

One bad thing about amatuer forums, there are the silly posters and also the very silly moderating rules that almost defeats the point of a "watering hole" type of forum.

If folk want that type of serious discussion, then monthly premiums need to be involved including folk actually providing credentials, allow the professionals to provide, and the peons only allowed to ask questions and read. Then, references would actually be shared along with a well written executive summary in the forum post instead of simply posting saying, "read this ' hyperlink ' ". This is what I would expect from a type of "Lexus Nexus", serious professional, avid hobby enthusiast type forum that is looking to teach and make progress in a hobby like ponding that can become quite intricate, nothing like stamp collecting.

In hope of finding contemptment or something, I do enjoy reading testimonials, that are simply anecdotal, and enjoy reading the DIYs and learning something from the trial and errors and further researching subjects brought up here.

For example, from reading ya'lls replies lead me to find that forum thread and, from there, I learned there is a AKCA.org establishment where I might learn more. It would have been nice to cut out the middle man so I did not have to wait this long to find out about an organization like the AKCA. I eventually get there through a middle man, one way or another, but it would be nice to frog leap that middle man just on occasion.

 

[crsublette]

Haha, reading my post history to see if I made any screw ups and I DID !!

In hope of finding conentment or something, I do enjoy reading testimonials, that are simply anecdotal, and enjoy reading the DIYs and learning something from the trial and errors and further researching subjects brought up here.

Not contempment. Heh, i don't hold any testimonial in contempt. Silly boy. Sheesh, get my words screwed up now and then; almost as bad as sending a text message where the word auto-correct function screwed you by substituting the wrong word, ha!!

I feel better now. Continue on ... :goldfish: