Where has April gone? Anybody else feeling this way? So much to do and so little time to do it. Our ponds are coming to life and doing their usual thing...growing algae. Why you ask? In my opinion, it is Nature’s way of using up the nutrient in the water in order to protect the fish. Your bacteria colony is at a low point due to the cold weather, your fish have just now started being active after the Winter and the waste level is increas-ing, not many plants are growing to much yet and this combination of events causes the algae to proliferate. Once your plants really take off and your bacteria colony flourishes from the nutrient and warmer water the algae will struggle and eventually disappear. (That’s our hope anyway). Now is the time to clean out your filters, you can use chlorinated water on your mechanical filters (media pads, baskets, nets but not on your biological filter media, whatever that is, the chlo-rine will kill any remaining bacteria that made it through the cold weather. As for algaecide use right now, I advocate against it. I think you’re just adding to the problem by creating dying organic matter that eventually results in more algae growing due to the nutrient rich water. Much better to do a partial water change of 50% now; another 10-20% next week which will decrease the amount of those un-seen bad things existing in your water column. Adding bacteria regularly is the best option now.

Our fish won’t be out of quarantine until May 18th but plants will be ready this next weekend, May 4th. We have some outstanding lilies and lots of marginal plants for you to choose from.

Always be humble and kind

~~~Mike