When you manage a pond, you�re really managing sunbeams. Every fish your pond ever produces, every lily pad that sprouts, every sneaky little screeching frog�.no exceptions. They all came from that carefully managed sunbeam.
In a vacuum, light always travels at a speed of 299,792,458 meters per second. The average distance from the sun to the earth is 150 million kilometers. When light leaves the sun, it takes 8 minutes to speed through space and reach Earth. When the beam of light hits your pond, �let�s call him RAY�, it is a packet of energy that will ultimately influence how your pond meets your expectations.
The energy flowing through living organisms starts with sunlight and photosynthesis, then travels through the food chain in bite sized chunks. Primary producers will capture RAY and, through a complicated chemical procedure turn him into usable energy. The animals in your pond called primary consumers, can�t do this on their own, so they aren�t interested in RAY. They just want to eat who ate him. Secondary consumers eat primary consumers, so RAY moves right on up the chain. Humans can be primary consumers or secondary consumers, but they all rely on RAY as well.
If your pond has suspended silt, RAY hits these little particles, then get sent back out to space. Unless you have a pond on the moon, then this won�t help you much. If you have lots of algae, which are primary producers, those near the surface capture and hold RAY, so he can get to you. But if your algae are too thick, some of RAYS friends will get sent to the moon.
A fish is a packet of energy, too. He�s a lot bigger packet than a single celled algae, but you can weigh a fish and make a calculation how many sunbeams it took to make him. If you are sending your sunbeams to outer space, then you won�t have as many pounds of fish. If you are adding energy into the pond in the form of pellets, you are using RAY'S buddies that landed on someone else�s pond or field. Primary producers, like soybeans, may have been a pit stop for RAY. Maybe they landed in the ocean, then became algae, then became a krill, then became a whale, then became a whale poop, then became a bacterium, then became a zooplankter, then became a smelt, then became part of a salmon�s spinal chord, then ended in a five gallon pail which got sold to a dude who makes pellets for pondmeisters. It still all started with RAY.
Sometimes RAY becomes busy and can�t help you. If you love largemouth bass, but the neighbor kid is a bucket biologist who likes to transport brown things with whiskers, then RAY may become occupied for a few years in a bullhead�s left eye. If the bullhead dies, then maybe some friendly bacteria will help guide RAY to your biggest largemouth. If you are not lucky, then RAY will go to another bullhead.
Every RAY that�s ever successfully met a primary producer in your pond can still be accounted for. If he left the pond, he�s somewhere that you could find him. It�s fairly easy to guess where he went. He may have been eaten by you. He may have gone through your overflow pipe. He didn�t evaporate. He may have left in a kingfisher�s body. He�s definitely somewhere.
Sometimes RAY enters your pond straight from the sun. Sometimes he hitches a ride on a teeny speck of clay. Maybe RAY had already joined in a great chorus of RAYS in the form of a three inch tilapia. If you could count every RAY in, and subtract every RAY out, that would tell you how many RAYS are left. This number dictates how many pounds of precious fish you have in your pond, be they smallies, �gills, brookies, Tee-Laps, or golden shiners. Every fathead, bigmouth, little redhorse�each and every one owes his existence and thickness to RAY.
RAY is king.
