Originally Posted By: Bill Cody
FF you are correct some plants can absorb and utilize ammonia directly from the water.

I'm not sure this is completely correct: ""The perfect example is cold weather where bacteria colonies die off due to fish not creating waste due to plants dying off from reduced sunlight during winter....and a ponds natural "carrying capacity" drops in direct proportions.""

Do the bacteria really die off in winter or do they go dormant or both. If lots of bacteria are dying in winter (39F) is it because fish are not creating waste or is it because of the cold temps? I propose it is the cold temps because there is plenty of waste in the form of bottom sediment / muck. At least my pond has plenty of organic muck. Plants do not always die off in winter especially in ponds where there is little or no ice cover. Trees and many other perennials do not die in winter, they go dormant due to cold and reduced day length. In addition some forms of algae (usu planktonic setenotherms, stenothermic) thrive and actually form big blooms that color the water during winter under the ice in 39F water. Research Planktothrix rubescens for just one example.


Bill, I agree that there are many holes in my example if one wants to look closely. And as Dave noted, plants also respire. Part of my point in trying to bundle the discussion into 3 basic, or general parts really can't be done because of the infinite interactions possible. That is also why I once said a single mold spore or bacteria entering a pond forever alters it's development. No matter how hard we try to control an environment, nature will do it's own thing.

I do know that in my bio-filters, bacteria dies and grows nearly as rapidly as food (waste?) is available or consumed. Does it go dormant in cold weather? Possibly, we know many fish metabolism's slow.

In my fluidized sand bed filters, I could feed 2 cups of fish food to my fish once weekly and within an hour, ammonia would spike. In another hour, bacteria growth on the clean sand substrate was lowering levels rapidly. As ammonia levels began returning to near zero, light, visible clouds of bacterial "slime" would begin to be spit out of the sand filters. I can only presume it was due to a lack of food. My tilapia would hover around the discharge water gobbling them up. But, Tilapia help reduce muck in ponds by aerating detritus and eating the digesting bacteria.....

Last edited by Rainman; 10/30/14 09:29 PM.