Water Gardening: I finally went to see the experts, 1 by fredrump

fredrump wrote:
At least they claim to be pond experts and have about $40K in koi in their tanks in one place alone. This is Driftwood Nurseries in Naples and Estero. Since I can't find anybody else around here these folks must do all the ponds in Naples.

Anyway, I took pictures there. All kinds of pictures of my pond. My water is dark and yet in a bucket it looks clear. The fish are down deep and are hardly to be seen except when they feed. I don't feed them much as I want them to eat algae. :-) My lilies don't look as good as they did in May. Maybe they need more food. Some have died.

I sat at length with one of the guys and he consuled with another expert at the other store and they will combine to come up with a proposal for me as I asked for. At some point, before I do anything, I expect one of them to come and do a physical inspection.

The bottom line was that I've done everything right but that the heat and sun will cause what I have no matter what. It's just a tsunami of perfect growing condition for algae. A mechanical filter outside of my two 150 gal bio filters may help keep the bios clean longer. So they showed me what they use: these large round balls filled with little tiny balls of ceramic filter material with a backwash. One or more UV lights can be added but they too won't beat the algae completely. The man said that they UV will try to kill every living organism, good and bad. That can be more bad then good with a good bio setup. But he said they won't and can't kill everything and the bios will still have some effect. It just partially defeats their purpose. I have a lot of water and that makes things more difficult to manage.

I've asked them to recommend a better solution to my current setup even though they kind of said I should just wait out the summer and then clean the pool real well. The fish will be fine. So a better more efficient and higher flow base pump, a mechanical bio-tube filter for about 10,000 gal and a separate UV light tube which I can turn off or bypass as needed. We'll see what they come up with.

Has anybody used this filter from http://pondsolutions.com/filters.htm :

Ultima II Bio-Tube Filters
Independent Laboratory Testing Confirms Ultima II Filters are the Best!
Gillespie Biomonitoring Labs, an independent, certified testing laboratory tested the Ultima II filter and the other 3 leading bead filters. Ultima II filter proved to be superior in all areas including setup, nitrification, back washing and overall efficiency. These top-of-the-line filters are the best choice for fish holding systems, aquaculture and koi ponds.
Patented Bio Tube Filter media has extremely high surface area (one cubic foot of media has 750 square feet of surface area) for maximum filtration. This lightweight, non-clogging media is seeded with natural bacteria for quick filter start up after installation.