Jonathan

Gorgeous! Do you grow all of those? I see you are in Hawaii - a more temperate climate than most of us.

Yeah those are all mine. I have 27 varieties at the moment. I'm trying to whittle what I have down so I can get new plants. I don't have much space, so when I want something new, I need to get rid of plants to do so.

I've attached a link to my photobucket page. It's just a snapshot of what I have. I haven't been keeping up with it too much so I need to update/add more pictures to it.

http://s1114.photobucket.com/a...

Ah, Carolyn. I had wondered where you were off to. It is getting awfullly slow at DG. Pond is under at least a foot of snow. Two deicers have failed and I have two more coming. While going over the pressure filter after pulling it into the garage I discovered that the UV was broken. I have ordered a new lamp for next summer. Now it is just to wait and monitor the darned deicers.

Oh Mary - a foot of snow already? It is probably not out of the norm for you, is it? We do not have our deicers in yet, but normally it is between Thanksgiving and the first week in December that our deicers go in to the pond.

I am not understanding - is your uv lightbulb broken or the entire unit?

I had wondered where you were as well. Good to see you made it over....

No, just the lamp is shot. May account for part of why my water is greenish. It is clear as a bell, just greenish. Guess they is no way to avoid that. And yes, the snow is fairly normal for this time of year.

Mary

Double Ugh! on the snow!

Do you run your uv lights in the winter? Mine will go into the house with the pumps and pressure filters. I know your region proposes quite different problems than the what the rest of us have to deal with during the winter..

lol, Carolyn. I really doubt we would have any problem with green stuff in the winter. Or perhaps you are thinking that the UV would kill microbes or such. Anyhooo, the large pump, the biofilter and the pressure filter with internal UV are all shut down and in the garage along with the freestanding 55W UV we got this summer. The circulating water seems to be keeping the water open a little longer and/or larger area on the surface. I think that is because Damien stuck each tube end into the rock to try to get circulation into the caves where the fish spend the winter. Seems like otherwise they would deplete the oxygen in there and just never wake up. We have had bad luck over wintering the larger fish. But it does come out somewhere at that end, so we are guessing the reduced ice mass is due to that. Plus the pump where the water is sucked in is right under a deicer so maybe for now the water is a tetch warmer, although this I doubt. I think it is just the water movement.

Mary

I thought that was what you meant by the green water and yet I did think that now was an odd time of year to have green water.

It would make sense to Damiens line of thinking with the pumps - I know the larger fish would require more oxygen than the smaller fish.

I take it you are no where near the storms they say are hitting Alaska? They just said it is one of the worst storms to hit in over 40 years.....

Oh, I see what you mean. About green water. That was this summer. I see almost no water now except around the deicers. The terrible storms are along the northern and northeastern coasts. We are just getting snow. Today is started slow, but now looks like a wonderful snow globe. Not as heavy as I have seen it, but qualifies as a goodly snow amount. I would rather have that then the snow thaw cycle. And it covers my plants nicely for the winter. I never have to mulch as the snow performs that function quite well. I am always afraid if I mulch, then as the snow melts it forms an icy mat composed of the mulch. I lost a lot of bearded iris that way. Couldn't get the leaves and hay off the ground in time to prevent rot.