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.

One must always be careful not to throw the baby out with the bath. "Science" isn't "bad", bad scientists produce bad "science". (Bad "science" isn't really science, it is mostly just voodoo.) We are producing bad scientists - biostitutes - at an alarming rate. I could rant on all the causes and sources but that's for another forum. I would like to encourage people to NOT find a "favorite" scientists because the scientist either says what the person WANTS to hear, or because the scientist "makes a good argument". We are TRAINED to make "good arguments" with NOTHING. Let me repeat that: We are TRAINED to "WIN AN ARGUMENT" when NO data supports the argument. We are trained in obfuscation. In fact, "winning" an argument when the side one took was patently WRONG, is highly praised! How many times have you heard some scientist say when faced with a logical rebuttal to their pet theory: "Well, NOTHING is impossible." Or these days; "Well, MOST of the scientific community ACCEPTS this." I wish I had a "technique" for "you" to use to sort the wheat from the chaff, but I don't. Personally, after 40+ years practicing science as a professional, I START OUT with the perspective that the data reported is at some level FALSIFIED. That perspective is borne of a lifetime of finding out that EVERYwhere I went data was being falsified and that even my "friends" were "fudging things" here and there. We are left to our 'own devices'. We must use our common sense. If it walks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, and it has feathers and lays duck eggs; it's a duck. We also have to NOT MARRY some "favored" scientist. As soon as we do that, we are lost. Furthermore, we MUST learn to ADMIT WE'RE WRONG when we get off track or are mislead by an "expert" that we had faith in. There are two quotes I use to guide my steps these days. One is very old, and one is fairly new. The old one is "You will know them by their fruit." I learned through training how "talk" is more often than not, deceiving, but ACTION shows the truth. The new one is just the other side of the same coin: "What are you going to believe, me, or your lying eyes?" Paul

Dilly, this is where you want to be careful to separate what is possible from what is being done. I googled the phrase: the gene from a fish that lives in very cold seas has been inserted into a strawberry, allowing the fruit to be frost-tolerant. I found more than a page of sites that quotes that phrase, all from the anti-groups, and stated as fact. Then, I clicked on a link that wasn't an anti-group, and I pulled up what I believe is the correct version of the strawberry fish story: Genetic engineering involves the disarranging and recombining of gene fragments, often of unrelated species. By cutting a fragment of a genetic sequence and pasting it into cells of an unrelated species, scientists can insert a gene of one organism into an unrelated one. As a result, a plant may be fooled into accepting messages that turn its leaves a different colour, or promoters may be introduced into fish genes so they will respond in a desired manner when transferred into the cell of a strawberry eg producing a hormone for cold tolerance. While it has become well established in agriculture, genetic engineering is largely at the experimental stage in aquaculture. Most commonly, aquaculturists improve stocks or species by using the sperm of one strain or variety to fertilize the eggs of another. For example, a salmon farmer who wants to produce fish with high oil content may cross-breed a colder water salmon stock with another stock that is adapted to the warmer environment where the offspring are intended to be grown. Genetic engineering offers a speedier road to the same destination. And this from a PBS link: Moving genes across species to produce so-called transgenic life forms seems to many a radical step. One experiment, proposed but never carried out, to splice a flounder gene into a strawberry to protect it from frost, has caught the public imagination. It's the stuff of fear and myth. What have we created, fish or strawberry? I'm not trying to change anyone's minds about this, but I don't like the fear mongering. I want to let scientists experiment in all directions. It doesn't mean that we are going to have a world full of strawberry fish or pork potatoes.

Hi Islander, I understand how hard it can be to let things go, and I'm sorry. When I got married, I wanted to have both parents walk me down the aisle, but didn't because I didn't want my SM to feel uncomfortable. I picked out my mother's dress, which did match the wedding colors, but told my SM what the wedding colors/shades were so that she could match too. My BM and SM sat together in the first row. And no, they do not get along! My SM was included for pictures, and although I would have liked to have pictures of just me and my parents I decided it wouldn't be worth the hassle. I agree with a poster above in that the wedding is about taking your vows. Everything else is just fluff. I tell my girlfriends getting married to expect things to go wrong, do not expect perfection, because all that matters at the end of the day is that you accomplished what you set out to do, marry your love. If uncle so and so gets drunk, if your bridesmaid forgets her dress,etc, none of that really matters in the long run. And you'll have a funny story to tell from it. Why not tell it to yourself that way? Here, let me tell it, I can imagine it from sitting in the back 40! Remember when silly BM made that spectacle and took DH's hand? the look on his face was priceless! I couldn't tell if he would deck her or run like the wind! Thank goodness he keeps his cool so well! My wedding had a lot of drama, and I wish people could have stayed as calm as you did. It can be so hard, but the good thing is that while it only lasts a day the impression you make can last a lifetime.