Em_Pond

If you recall from below, I was trying to clean up a certain murkiness in the pond which does not seem to be sediment related. Neither, now though, do I think it is a stagnation or algea problem.

The Bokashi Balls didn’t seem to do the trick. Either I did not add enough, or added too many or the problem is not of the sort for which they are effective. To find out what the case might be I decided to perform a much smaller experiment.

As you can see from the photo, I took three samples of the pond water. They were all taken from the surface of the middle of the pond at the same time.

To one of the jars I added 5ml of Activated EM solution–the immediate result of that was the water actually got darker due to the molasses in the solution. To another jar I added 50 Type K EM Ceramic beads. And finally I left one jar alone as a control.

After one day there was very little change, other than the control jar had attracted a few bugs, even though covered loosly with some cling film–I didn’t want to seal the jars up as to replicate pond conditions as much as possible, and the pond doesn’t have a lid.

Over time, however, the most noticeable change came from jar #3 with the Ceramics in. The water became clearer, had no bugs, no sediment settled out of the water and had no odor. Quite frankly, if I had to I would drink from jar #3. Jar#2 with the AEM remained brown, but relatively odorless, but didn’t seem to be clearing up. Just before the lower photo was taken I added 50 EM Type-K Ceramic beads to it to see what would happen, and indeed the murkiness cleared, but the water is still tinged brown, probably from the molasses.

What isn’t too clear from the photo is that the control jar–#1–deteriorated quite a bit. The water inside became cloudy, more greenish brown, slightly viscous, and had more bugs in it. Again, no sediment settled out, everything remained in suspension.

My immediate conclusion is that whatever properties the Type-K Ceramic beads have on the water condition of this pond could possibly help clear it up. I will be devising a filtration device to add to the ponds pumping system to cycle the water through a chamber of these beads. What I am not clear on is how many beads will be needed to affect approximately 8000 gallons of water and for how long it would last. Certainly with lab facilities behind this project the organic matter in the water could be identified and the reduction thereof could be tested, but with only a simple microscope and some highschool biology there isn’t much more science we can do other than observational. However, if we can affect a change in this pond without spending much money, and involving no lab work I think it could be a model for helping other people in similar situations with similar budgets.

Results of the filtration device will follow.

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