#10: Too much phosphorus / silt in your Lake, Pond, Settling Basin?

Greetings!

Its time for another another heaping helping of pond pontification from your friendly neighborhood bioremediation technologist.  (Thanks Mike McGrath, love the show! and Spidey).  Looking at phosphorus and silt in this one.

As a follow up to Blog #7: The Southwestern Desert Golden Algae Defense Project, we’ve been receiving more interest in our solutions to lake nutrients (eutrophication) and silt removal.

How do we pull phosphorous, silt, And increase fish summer/winter survivability?

Install 1-3 PermaCyclers (Mk307’s) on the lake shore, attach rack mounted solar panels that run a one horse power pump, and pull water through.  You have an electric service near by, great, even easier.  The effluent disturbs the pond bottom and removes more silt and phosphorus, readily captured by a flexible influent suction pipe.

Phosphorus is a macronutrient and necessary for all life to exist.  The Redfield Ratio does a great job at approximating metabolic requirements of  carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus in an array of biomes.  Phosphorus is a limiting nutrient and can be focused on to limit algae/macrophyte growth.  So, by growing biomass that accumulates more biomass, phosphorus is removed along with the suspended solids, which are mostly silt and attached biomass.

Using our acid mine drainage inspired flush manifolds, annual maintenance is down to a few hours, total.  Done.

In some cases (depending on your dissolved/precipitating solids load) maintenance will be related only to the pump and influent (clearing clogs).  The PermaCycler stirring and flushing will be negligible as most of the influent load will be organic and off gas to CO2 through aerobic respiration.

Give us a call if you need a year round, freeze proof system that reclaims nutrients and silt directly from your lake or pond; clearing the water, expanding fish survivability, and supplying land applied agricultural amendments.

Cheers,

Colin