pond maintenance

For as long as liquid water has supported life on our planet, a range of factors have played dynamic roles in sustaining balanced, untreated, wholly natural lakes and ponds, observes inventor and researcher Bruce Kania. By breaking things down and understanding the relationships between microbes and nutrients in water, he adds, watershapers are better able to mimic nature and create watershapes that will stay clean and clear without artificial treatment.

Microbes Rule!

For a long time, I've studied a small lake that formed long ago in a natural bowl in Northern Wisconsin. It has about 20 acres of surface area and is now surrounded by a cow pasture and a cornfield. Holsteins graze right up to the water's edge and at times step into the lake to drink. Sometimes, cows being cows, their waste ends up in the water as well. On the opposite shore, the cornfield has an unusual configuration, with its furrows running straight down the slope and into the lake. When it rains or the fields are irrigated, some fertilizer inevitably washes into the lake. The stage is set for aquatic misery: Viscous, pea-soup mats of green algae and foul odors are the common results of this sort of nutrient loading. Indeed, few life forms other than algae survive in