well...I went out to the pond today as most of the ice has melted. Unfortunately, every critter that was unaccounted for is dead except 2 frogs I havent found yet. I'm sure they are dead somewhere. I am def investing in a net this year. So much crap found its way into the pond..turns out the white stuff was a piece of newspaper, a piece of burger wrapper, and what looked like a wet napkin. I'm pretty ticked..none of it was from me..was all stuff from litterbugs. There is also a plastic bag stuck way up in a tree where I cant reach it. The house next door has been vacant, and I suppose some of the crap came from over there. So much litter is in that yard, plus their garbage cans blew over awhile back into the backyard..guess they didnt take that last haul out b4 they moved. I hope there arent any bags in my pond!!! God, people really p!ss me off. Someone threw an empty vodka bottle in my driveway the other day..what is wrong with people??? I need to move out into the middle of nowhere so I dont have to deal with this anymore. Sorry about the rambling..guess I needed to vent. BUT white stuff mystery solved. No fish living. I have decided to empty & clean the whole thing come warmer weather, and start all over again. Maybe I will take some algae mixed with wet leaves from the pond, make balls out of it and whip it at people as they litter by my house..right at their heads..that could be fun. I could wear camo and hide in the bushes, lmao. Sorry to hear about the fires..kinda odd it happened twice. But I'm not gonna get involved in all that lol.

I absolutely believe plants can clear green ponds...have posted that many times. The myth is that this is done buy higher plants. One of the simpler things to show as a myth. A green pond has what level of ammonia and nitrate? Certainly that's easy to test, anyone can. Or a person can read lots of research on this for fish farms and other farm type ponds done by the ag department adn many Universities. A green pond almost always test to 0 ammonia and nitrate. Why? Because it's green. Algae is a plant (for our discussion anyways). Plants use ammonia and nitrate to produce new cells. Millions of green cells appear in a pond guess where they got the ammonia and nitrate? Now you have million of green cells floating around waiting for one thing in order to divide...more ammonia or nitrate. You have a water column filled with these cells just waiting to bump into an ammonia or nitrate molecule. When it does it can split (oversimplification sure). The myth says if you add higher plants to a green pond they will clear the water by out competing the algae for these nutrients. This myth only seems believable to people who do not test for ammonia/nitrate. If a green pond is already at 0 ammonia/nitrate...so how does it starve these millions of algae cells? For some unexplained reason the myth purveyors ignore the elephant in the room...algae is a plant. So why doesn't the algae starve itself to death. If you believe the myth and don't want it disproved the only possibility must be the higher plant must out compete the algae. Mine you I've never read any promoter of this to ever offer any data from any study about this. Their proof is purely deductive reasoning, which is fine if the deductions are true. But they aren't. Say we place a potted plant in the pond. Ammonia comes out of a fishes gills. That ammonia molecule has to float by thousands, maybe millions, of algae cells who are just begging to suck it up. For the myth to be true these algae cells would have to be very polite little creatures.Now our little ammonia molecule has to get into the pot's media...so easy task. But say it does...now the higher plant can suck it up and millions of the poor algae cells starve and die. Killed by politeness. When the algae all die those nutrients are released. But for some mysterious no algae decide to use these new nutrients...only the higher plants. For this deductive reasoning to be valid a green pond would have to be rich in nutrients and a clear pond void of some key nutrient. And I think many people believe this to be true and so self evident they do not need to test the water or even do some reading. And of course many people today believe science and data is all a big hoax. But anyone who has ever measured the nutrients in green and clear ponds will very quickly find out is the opposite is true. A green pond is extremely low in key nutrients and a clear pond very or extremely high. More evidence we can deduce. Many people report adding plants and within a short time the pond suddenly clears. Sometimes overnight. Wow, the added higher plants sucked up all the nutrients and killed all the algae in hours. For this deduction to be true at least 2 things must be true. First a key nutrient level must be zero. If the water is tested it probably will be zero ammonia.nitrate, because it was the day before too. Oops. One problem with that, it isn't how plants work. Many people seem to think these key nutrients like ammonia/nitrate are like air. If we don't get air we die in a short time. Algae died in a short time so nitrate must be like air. Or maybe people think nitrate is like food is to us. Closer, but we can live for a long time without food, algae can't. Well, nitrate isn't exactly like our food, it's a nutrient, not a calorie. Nutrients are needed to build cells. For us that means new skin cells, bone, etc. Algae use it to make new cells, to reproduce. They, like us, can live for a really long time lacking nutrients because their structure, like ours, has already been built. A tiny amount is needed to run processes, but mostly for cell construction. You can take as many multivitamins as you like, but if you don't consume calories you'll die in around 3 weeks. Algae get their calories from photosynthesis so they can live for a very long time without nutrients. So the higher plant starving algae theory has some massive holes that promoters never explain. They don't really have to because pond forums are full of people who believe the same. Fact is proven by popular vote which is becoming more accepted as fact these days....thank you internet. But there is one deduction that is true...adding plants to a pond does sometime clear a pond. Many people have posted this and I've seen it myself more than a few times. It's obvious to anyone doing basic water testings that it sure as heck can't be the higher plants starving the algae because the tests prove the opposite. What could it be? A long time ago a dude name Norm Meck made a really ground breaking discovery and published his findings. He found that water from a clear pond can be toxic to green water algae. He described how he did the experiment so others could repeat the experiment to see if they got the same results. I've never read about anyone else ever bothering, most people are much too busy repeating myths in forums, but I did. And I found the same thing. Something in the water killed the green water algae. Where did this toxin come from? Norm's theory was a bacteria produced it so the dead algae cells could be eaten. Not a bad theory, not great. Killing a pond full of algae so this bacteria could eat for a day or two doesn't seem like something nature would do. But a reasonable theory for it's time (thousands of years ago in internet years). Norm's experiments inspired me to do more experiments. This was before UV filters were common and cheap so green water was an actual problem. I set up a bunch of small tanks on the roof of my San Jose house and started growing green water algae. Full sun and I'm adding lots of fertilizer to water. I'm getting water that looks like green paint. I'm experiment away and getting nowhere. I found a filter that would clear green water...it was amazing...but then it completely failed other times (had to do with algae lifecycle, another story). It was a roller coaster ride. I was kind of giving up. Well I had some Pennywort I was wanting to reproduce and I had a bunch rooting in styrofoam cups...where to put them. I put a bunch into one of the test ponds. Green water wouldn't hurt them. A week or so later I went up to the roof to top off the tanks and the tank with the Pennywort was clear. I do the Meck test and sure enough the water was toxic to green water algae. At that time my best (only) theory was Norm's, it was bacteria. Well there was a lot of string algae in the tank from the Pennywort, darn stuff gets into everything. So I pull a bunch out threw it down into one of my ponds. It was a good handful. I tossed into a pond that at the time had a deep gravel bed maybe 6-10" of water above the grave which was 16-18" deep and the water was green. I just threw the string algae in there because I didn't want it on the patio, lawn flower beds, and it would be easy to fish out later. The next morning the pond I'd tossed the string algae into was clear. That pond was about 900 gals and at the time had no pump or filter and had been green the entire time I had it, more than a year. This is the time when you stare at something and run through every possible related thing from your past that might explain this. I couldn't come up with a theory. Testing nutrient levels came up with the same results and the Meck test showed the water was now toxic to green water algae. The bacteria theory seemed unlikely to me now. The string algae was the one common factor I saw in my limited experiments. So I started experimenting with both green water algae and string algae. I had terrible results. Sometimes the string algae cleared the green water but many times the string algae died. It was tough going because string algae takes a long time to appear dead. And I was having a difficult time growing both string algae and green water algae. And I kind of lost interest because by now my filter had cleared my pond and that was good enough for me. Years later I started reading about research about allelochemicals, stuff plants create to fight other plants. Growing up I knew some plants did that, like Black Walnut trees killing grass beneath it, but never made the connection to algae. The research was finding more and more plants doing it and many people were starting to think this was very common in the plant world. I made the connection then and researched algae. Unfortunately the only research I could find was done on marine algae and they did find they were producing chemicals toxic to other plants. Not directly related to freshwater algae but a pretty darn good theory. Then I started reading old pond forum posts, archived stuff. And I saw the string algae pattern over and over. People adding plants, seeing their ponds clear and then awhile later asking about how to get rid of string algae. They never made the connection between adding plants and the string algae because of course there's no visible string algae on the plants because the seller always pulls it off. But little bits and spores are certainly present. I also read about Trickle Towers which were popular at the time. TT are used to remove ammonia but many people were reporting their ponds cleared. There were lots of theories but nothing that made much sense. But people were also talking about string algae growing on their TT, saying they'd never had string algae before. And even further back people who added streams were seeing their ponds suddenly clear followed by reports of string algae in the stream. I started asking people in forums complaining of green water if they had string algae. In most cases people had one or the other, sometimes both but never full blown string algae. While it hasn't been proven I certainly believe string algae is the source of the toxin and responsible for ponds suddenly clearing. At least I haven't been able to think of any holes. And every year there's more and more research into allelochemicals that keeps pointing to the same conclusion. My theory is green water algae use both resource competition (blocking sunlight) and allelochemicals to fight against at least some species of string algae and maybe other macro algae. The string algae is probably mainly just using allelochemicals against the green water algae. In order to win the string algae has to get a foot hold near the surface of the pond so green water algae couldn't block as much light and weakening the string algae. Tops of marginal plant pots, streams, TTs, my shallow ponds (the test ponds were about 6-10" deep). I believe that string algae is the plant causing green ponds to clear and it has nothing to do with higher plants or them starving algae to death. It fits way better anyways at least until someone shows there are holes in the theory. The real answer may come from aquarists. In the past few years some aquarists have been adding separate tanks of string algae and have seen clearer water. These guys are pretty serious and do a lot of testing. Most believe the nutrient starving theory although their tests show otherwise. I think they're assuming its a micro nutrient, but they have all the same holes as the high plant theory. There is at least one aquarist pursuing the allelochemical theory. And he has been testing other underwater plants that may also produce allelochemicals. It fits that any underwater plant might need such a weapon. I know must everyone stopped reading long ago, and I too don't really care any more about why ponds clear. We have cheap UV filter now and that's that. The one thing I still do find fascinating is why people still push the higher plant myth. It is just so easy to disprove. Why not repeat some other theory that's at least harder to disprove? To me that's interesting. My wife is on to me wasting time in pond forums again so I bid you a good day. Sorry, but I didn't have the time or desire to proof read this and make corrections.

Ok, that makes sense. I forgot that every time it turns back on it would continue pumping. duh. The bottom drain is an Aqua Art retro fit bottom drain with 3" opening. It is connected to a black flexible tubing that is really hard (almost w/ a metal coil in it?). It is reduced from 3" to 2" and then runs back to the pump. I had a Sequence pump but that thing sucked (not literally, unfortunately). I had to have it repaired 2x and it was NOT cheap to begin with! It lasted 2 yrs. BOOOO. When it last gave up the ghost, it was 1.5 months ago. I found a hayward 1.5 HP super pump on craiglist for $150. The pond was w/o a functioning BD for about a month. Here is where it all goes downhill. lol So the previous pump was connected to the hose in from the BD and hose out to the bead filter by the black hoses that were connected with a black screw-on style of fitting. They simply did NOT come off, no matter what. The new pump had smaller openings and so the old fittings wouldn't work. We had to cut off the "screw" ends and use compression fittings instead (the black squishy sleeves w/ two metal bands that you screw to tighten). The first day that we turned the pump on and were messing w/ it, the same top fitting popped off b/c it wasn't seated properly (the hose hit me in the head, almost knocked me out from the pressure...lol...bruise on my forehead for 2 wks!). Because of that, I was paranoid and was actually shutting it off at night...just in case something went wrong. (I know, this is a long story lol) Saturday during the day, we saw that the pump was emptying faster than the water could come into the basket and we realized the BD was partially clogged and decided to get in the pond and get it freed up. DH jumped in and pulled it up...cleared it out and then set it up on two large pieces of flagstone so it wasn't directly on the bottom of the pond. (Note: had he not done this, when the disaster happened, it would've drained the ENTIRE pond. Truly a lifesaving decision for the fish that lived in the remaining 6" of water b/c of that flagstone!) Anyhoo, everything was riproaring along at 100mph again and I was checking the basket frequently...not much there. That night was the ONE night I didn't unplug it overnight...I forgot. Small debris plugged up the basket, increasing the pull of the pump, which started moving around the hose on the top of the pump. It was moving enough to pull the compression fitting off and it popped the hose off. The water simply geysered out of the top of the pump until the pond was almost completely empty. SOOOOO...way more than you asked but I have known you long enough to know that you like a clear picture, MIke! LOL I"m hoping that makes the error of my ways clear enough! At this time I am only running the BD during the day and am trying to find screw-on fittings to replace the existing compression fittings. Additionally, I have bungee'd the BD to a crate so it is a foot off the floor of the pond. I have also been partaking of some retail therapy and have a little mass of baby koi in the pond right now. They just came up and started eating food this morning and I literally screamed with delight LOL! I'm not sure how these water bobbermcthingie's work but I *think* the external pump is close enough that if it truly does have a 20' cord, I can put it in the body of the pond and run the cord back to where the pump is. Need to get to the store today and get one to rig it!

I think it would be an awesome idea.... Keep the holes as they are though don't fill them in. Seems to me if you are going to have ducks fouling up the water you would want to have as much water as possible to offset the duck poo. Maybe try and connect the two holes with a shallower pond area where you could plant plants and have a waterfall. If ducks are really as filthy as they seem, the bigger your pond the better as far as water quality issues are concerned, and connecting the two holes would give you double the volume of water.Once you get the holes connected with a shallower maybee 2 foot deep area Then get a REALLY big liner drape it over the entire pond area, and fill it up with water. The shallow part connecting the ponds you can use to plant plants like lilies that wont survive in the deeper parts of your pond. With a well planted shallow section combined with the two deep sections, you could have a sustainable food chain/ ecosystem. get some small fast breeding fish like mosquito fish, minnows, or (if it doesn't get too cold in your area) guppies. These fish will reproduce like no body's business in the shallow planted area, as well as in the deep zone provided there are plenty of hiding places (rocks and things) for them to take shelter from more predatory fish. After establishing a population of small fish you will be able to add a few (not very many, maybe 3-5) more interesting, ornamental fish like koi, or Goldfish that will eat the smaller fish. This would leave you with a huge pond the size of 2 outdoor home swimming pools + the shallow area connecting them, that is very lightly stocked with only a few ornamental fish, and LOTS of little fish. IMO you could easily add a duck or two to this scenario (as long as they don't invite a big flock of ducks). Maybe think about putting a big mesh canopy over it and create something of a duck aviary over your pond so that other wild ducks can't join your ducks, and yours can't escape. In any case you will need one or more VERY LARGE pumps for your pond so that the 10 foot deep parts of it get good water circulation. Maybe put in a waterfall that spills into the shallow end, AND get 2 fountains, one for each deep end. This is just what I would do with your two holes in the ground. HAVE FUN and post pictures!