Permaculture Blog

From jm

The pond is just unbelievably clear, Bob; I don’t EVER recall seeing it so clear. THANK YOU

So one of my clients sent me an email yesterday with the above quote. I just wanted to share my observations with you reading this. It took me 3 years to get it this clear. And I have to give them credit as a client, they didn’t try to second-guess me, prove that they were smarter than I was, and insist on putting rocks “for habitat” in :-) It would clear up for awhile but then turn green again partly because it is in a dip in their property and all the surrounding water flows into it.

So every rain it would get fertilizer and nutrients from their yard and even as far away as the street washed in and fooomp it would turn green. So I talked him into installing one of my swimming pool systems on it. It is a big pond but not quite the size of a swimming pool.

But because of all the nutrient influx I thought that my pool filters would work well. And they have. It has been through two rains already and didn’t turn green and then I got the email quoted above yesterday.

Those Fish are about 5 feet deep. In another post I talk about optical density and how I measure it. So I have concrete numbers and think that I can even get it a little better so we shall see :-). I do love a challenge :-)

Bob

www.PuraVidaAquatic.com

Most of the time when people talk about optical density they are talking about laboratory results using a spectrophotometer and glass cuvettes, and measuring the light passing through a one-centimeter lightpath. But it certainly also applies in the real world to larger systems. A month ago at this pool I could put in a swimming pool net with a yellow rim and watch it disappear within the first four inches. It was green!

But, just a reminder, if the water is not toxic to the point where algae will grow, it is likely to be far less toxic to us. Today I went “prepared” because the client had sent me a surprised email that it was clearing up! The net in the first picture is about 8 feet down.

The next picture is 4 feet down in the shallow end. You can clearly see the bottom.

The last picture is showing that the pool still looks somewhat green but it is definitely clearing up.

Every two fold difference that I can see through the water is equal to 50% of the current biomass being removed. So when the pool went from 4 to 8 inches that was the first 50% of the algae biomass removed. 16 inches another 50% of the 50% that is still remaining (or three-quarters of the original amount – 75% total) of the biomass removed. 32 inches=50%+25%+12.5% (87.5%) 64inches=94% removed in two weeks! With absolutely no toxins.

Bob

www.PuraVidaAquatic.com

Not mine! But I wish :-)

Source: Ducklings!

They are at Diane Kennedy’s. For the full details see the “source” above.

Diane has worked incredibly hard to have a wonderful permaculture demonstration garden. She runs tours regularly and if you would like to visit there are links from her pages or on San Diego Meetup. Please make sure you look at the right date. The link I have given may not be the best one by the time you look at this. She does a fabulous tour and if you hurry this year you may get to see the ducklings :-)

I regularly have Ducks show up on the swimming pools I have converted and down the road I am sure some of my clients will also have ducklings :-)

Best to all.

Legendary punk rocker Alice Bag has been carrying the torch for sharp feminist outspokenness since she helped pioneer the L.A. punk scene in the 1970s, so it’s hard to believe she’s just now releasing her first solo album. As an author, educator, lifelong badass and the leader of The Bags, among many other bands, she’s been a prolific and guiding light for Chicana punks, and on Alice Bag, out June 24 on Don Giovanni Records, she continues that force-of-nature output with fierce songs of protest and massive shredding.

Source: Alice Bag Protests GMOs and Monsanto in New Punk Song ‘Poisoned Seed’

Cool :-) I don’t know that I’ve ever listened to punk rock but I still think it’s cool :-)

A lot of 60s political music was about the Vietnam war that we all pretty much agree now was not our best idea.

Out looking at _my_ pond0 this time and was observing all the diving beetles, water boatman, and diving beetle larvae. Tons of predators for mosquito larvae. Did you know that some frog tadpoles eat mosquito _larvae_?

It made me think about people who add gambusia mosquito fish to their ponds and also water features. They are also released by the state into wetlands. Gambusia mosquito fish that eat tadpoles preferentially to mosquito larvae. And I wonder how many other natural predators of mosquitoes do the “mosquito fish” eat preferentially to mosquito larvae? Most insect predators such as the ones above and dragonfly larvae and damselfly larvae lay eggs that hatch out into tiny larvae that would almost certainly be eaten by mosquito fish.

It also made me think about aerial spraying as well. Spraying insecticides kills the insect predators too. Predator-prey relationships always, always, rely on the prey coming back first before the predators can reestablish themselves, so spraying insecticides, especially over large areas, is guaranteed to increase our mosquito problem and guarantee a market for the insecticide manufacturers in the future.

Insecticide manufacturers make money on their product. They have salesman to sell their product to large-scale users such as cities, counties, and states. These toxin sales people do not decide to take a day off. They are constantly promoting their product in order to make a sale. If we want to combat their aggressive and methodical sales tactics we need to be constantly promoting a variety of counterpoints and alternatives. We don’t get to go out and play a round of golf with the city council, but they do. We don’t get to go to cocktail parties with the city council, but they do. We don’t have an expense account in order to take city council members to expensive restaurants, but they do. We are starting at a huge disadvantage but we can make a difference.

Bob
www.PuraVidaAquatic.com

If the fish don’t get you the diving beetles will.

https://youtu.be/XGWY35IRGn4
https://youtu.be/-S_2jE7CHsM

Here are two beetle larvae fighting over the same mosquito larvae. Owwww

Bob

www.PuraVidaAquatic.com

Diving beetle larva from my pond0. I went and got them some mosquito larvae.

https://youtu.be/M4FdxcqY8Jw

I actually have to grow mosquito larvae for testing and in some cases food. One way to do this is to take a bucket, add pond water, put a few kernels of dog food in it, and set it outside.

This works well because you can monitor it easily and dump it out if the larva turn into the rounded pupa form. It takes several weeks for them to do this when it’s cool so it is quite easy to do and all the mosquitoes that lay eggs in it do so for naught. So it actually removes mosquitoes from the environment.

Bob

So I’ve been poking around investigating various additives that can be put into a swimming pool and I came across “chlorine stabilizer” and I start thinking “chemically what the heck would stabilize chlorine?”

Well it turns out that they use a close relative of melamine called cyanuric acid.

Remember melamine and poisoning our pets with contaminated pet food? Well cyanuric acid was a component of that poisoning. Turns out that melamine isn’t all that toxic by itself but when present with cyanuric acid causes fatal kidney damage.

OMG! Flip that around in your head. Say Cyanuric acid is not toxic except when combined with melamine. What the …. What other chemicals might cyanuric acid combine with to produce toxic results. And that’s just chemically.

Absorbing energy from sunlight could make it even more reactive/toxic. It took me a half hour of sniffing, but I finally found an absorption spectra for cyanuric acid. It absorbs in the UV wavelengths, binds to chlorine, and probably chemically shades the chlorine somewhat from ultraviolet radiation.

We have no clue as to what cyanuric acid might be doing with the ultraviolet light energy that it absorbs. The work I did getting my doctorate degree was investigating UV phototoxins and DNA damage.

A Phototoxin absorbs light energy, and then transmits that energy to the cell. Copper is a known phototoxin but even so it is often used in swimming pools. I have wondered in other links snake oil and copper-based-algaecides who in their right mind would promote adding a phototoxin to to an area where we regularly congregate _mostly on bright sunny days_???

The copper, and potentially the cyanuric acid pool stabilizer, dry on our skin after swimming. This increases the concentration and enhances the phototoxicity. Excellent idea don’t you all think.

Okay we don’t know all there is to know about a natural pond either but we evolved for hundreds of thousands of years around it as opposed to chlorine with stabilizer added to it. Just sayin’

:-) the best to everyone, and just a suggestion to all the smart ones out there, try to avoid all the toxic chemicals in your own living space as well.

Bob

The goldfish have been laying eggs non-stop for 2 months now :-)

https://youtu.be/wdDETu-DJUo

https://youtu.be/_jLR-s8TI-o

I wish they’d stop. I’m wasting too much time watching them :-)

Bob www.PuraVidaAquatic.com

Wonderful group of people on Facebook concerned about their kids, the environment, and the good things in the world.

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10209505493372900&id=1193404768