The Natural Pond Myth

I don't have enough fingers to count how many times I have read in books, on the internet, in magazine articles and heard from pond experts that water gardens do not need filtration. I've even made the comment myself that a water garden (without any fish) doesn't need a filter. Well - I was wrong and I'm ashamed of it!

There's nothing uglier than a neglected, unfiltered water garden.

Okay, there's uglier things -- but not many.

I've spent more than a decade of my life arguing with so-called pond experts about the filtration needs of a pond. The old way of thinking was that ponds were natural and mother nature gave ponds everything they needed to run naturally. Their way of thinking was all you had to do was build a natural environment with plants and fish and rocks and mother nature would take care of the rest. Manmade filters were nowhere in the equation.

I ask you -- What's natural about a hole in the ground that is covered with a thick rubber liner, lined with rocks quarried several hundred miles away, filled with water from the faucet, decorated with plastic pots filled with plants that are not native to the area and about 20 goldfish thrown in for "color"?

The whole setup is the furthest from natural you can get. It's a fake environment engineered to look natural but it has nothing in common with the bodies of water mother nature provides for us naturally. The hole is dug by man. The rubber liner actually prevents natural exchanges from occurring between water and earth. When have you ever seen a lake totally lined with rocks? Mother nature does not use chlorinated water nor does she use plastic for a planting bed. Then there's the fish. Look at a natural lake and you tell me. How many fish per 1000 gallons of water does mother nature place in her bodies of water? The answer is somewhere between 0 and 1.

So that brings me to filtering this artificial natural environment. If the ancient ones have their way these water gardens only need a pump and hose to create a natural waterfall and some movement. That's all fine and dandy for a couple of months. Then the natural processes between water, rubber and rock begin happening. The sun and fish poop join forces to fuel algae growth that clings to the rocks, the plastic pots and the rubber liner and turns the water from murky haze to solid green. The plants sprout new leaves, shed old leaves, flower and die back and drop dead organic material into the water which falls between the rocks where it joins the fish poop and uneaten fish food to metamorphis into a nasty, decaying matter that just sits there being covered up with more layers of natural processes. Lovely, isn't it?

I invite you to reach into this natural backyard pond environment with your naked hand then take a sample and look under a high-powered microscope. Yummy, isn't it? --- Oh, and let's not forget to take a big ol' whiff, especially after turning over a rock off the bottom.

With the proper filtration (and a few changes to the pond itself) this natural pond could be relatively clean and healthy environment. ...And how to do that, my friends, will be the next posting to my blog...