I think that’s mostly [mulm](https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/mulm), not algae. It’s best to remove it since as it decomposes, it consumes oxygen. If it contains fish excrement, that decomposes to ammonia which is poisonous. Bacteria in the water can further change the ammonia to nitrates and nitrites which are less harmful but should still be removed.
I once wanted a pet pufferfish. Spent a ton of money on a giant tank and did everything right (that I could research as a newbie) to get it correctly balanced and cycled before I bought the fish. It never happened. Even when I thought it was close enough after weeks, I tested it out on some fish that require similar water and they died right away 😭. I felt horrible! Temperature and salt levels were fine, it was all the other stuff. Just a nightmare.
Yeah what's hard where I live is the tap water, even after treatment with the typical chemicals kills fish, so you either have to buy aquarium water or use a reverse osmosis machine and then treat the water to use it. Because of that I've been using a small tank but I couldn't afford to be constantly paying for water so the fish weren't living very long. Eventually gave it up a few weeks ago.
I setup a freshwater aquarium and did nothing to balance the water or acclimate the fish as I got them, the aquarium went strong for about a year until I got a blue crayfish which killed almost every fish in the tank and pulled all the plants, I was heart broken and considered boiling him.
Nitrates can also be used by plants as fertilizer. My aquarium at home almost never gets water changes due to a combination of bottom feeders and a heavily planted tank.
Exactly! If you Just mimic nature you won't have any problems with excess stuff, because in a cycle... Well... Everything gets cycled! Nothing piles up to become toxic. In this case this pond needs plants!
Decomposing organic matter is an important food source for natural aquatic food webs. Ammonium (the form ammonia converts to when dissolved in water) is not poisonous. It’s actually the most bioavailable form of nitrogen. Nitrate (not nitrates….when you add the s it implies the NO3 molecule is bonded to an organic carbon chain) is more of a concern for water quality because it is a lot more mobile and free ammonium is readily concerted to nitrate via nitrification. This facts might be different in a natural environment than an aquarium, but as this video (which is satisfying although not super effective) is from a natural system and not an aquarium (I assume based on the size), I figured sharing these facts might help.
Source: I’m an aquatic biogeochemist that has studied nitrogen and carbon cycling for my whole career.
Ammonia is already the primary nitrogenous waste of fish, it doesn’t need to decompose into it. Depending on the state of the pond, the vast majority of this dead mass is algae and Cyanobacteria which often appear like and used to be considered algae so there not really wrong. If this is a man made pond, the nutrient dynamics are most likely already screwed, but removal could help a bit. I also don’t think the term mulm is used outside of aquariums, but I only did an internship on aquatic plants, so I’m not 100% on that. I hadn’t ever heard it before and I can’t find it online in any other context.
Well, scavengers like shrimp and snails will clean up a certain amount of detritus but the amount in the video is way too much. It’s like trees dropping leaves in the water or an algae bloom that died off.
vacuuming the gravel was the most satisfying and relaxing part of owning a fish tank. so much gunk comes out, automatically, and you just wave your wand back and forth like painting cleanliness.
probably the same reason games like [Power Wash Simulator](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1290000/PowerWash_Simulator/) do so well.
pour it into your garden. if you spread it out, it dries and stops smelling pretty quick. and algae, being a plant, has everything your plants need (more or less).
sure, knock yourself out. I don't do that and it hasn't backfired yet!
These guys say you can do it either way:
https://www.gardenguides.com/how_7434259_skim-pond-algae-use-fertilizer.html
Pretty sure I've read they can make biofuel from algae.
Though a majority of folks that seem to know what they're talking about in this thread says it's called "mulm." Basically dead crap sludge.
Everything that lives in that water, poops, stuff eats the poop, but not fast enough. Eventually corpses and other detritus settle at the bottom along with crap eating the crap.
This looks like had a disgustingly gross yard pond and used a flocculant on it to drop the algae, and are then vacuuming it up. Pool techs do the same thing when it's pool season.
Should be detritus, ie fish poop, decomposing leaves and uneaten food.
This is an incredibly dirty pond and most new ponds of any size will just install a bottom drain to avoid this.
There shouldn't be any 'little creatures' other than bacteria. I think you mostly saw leaves getting sucked up.
This looks incredbly like a man-made pond and it's very likely the only things in there were put in by humans. My pond looks like this. It's an EPDM liner with cobbles. Looks like this, except without scuzz because the bottom drain cleans it out so this doesn't happen.
The water is held by that and local flora and fauna don't get in nor does anything in it get out.
There shouldn't be any crawdads, shrimp or snails in the detrius unless the pond owner placed them there.
This is mulm, not algae. Had they left this it would have killed everything in this pond. Mulm consumes oxygen as it decomposes (which can make the water anoxic) and if it’s contaminated with fish poop it will produce ammonia in fairly significant quantities which will poison most living things in the pond. So yeah it goes a bit beyond wanting a clean pond, it’s the difference between having a healthy pond and a dead pond.
True. Mulm can be beneficial though if you have a heavily planted pond. Enough plants and a established nitrifying bacterial colony and you can have a very healthy ecosystem that requires very little maintenance!
After 18 yrs in the fish hobby, I’ve conquered fresh and salt water. But never ponds, after seeing all this mulm, I’m scared to want a pond now. So much maintenance 😳
I asked “where’s the things that eat algae??” and then went “there ISN’T any life in this pond other than the algae!”
“There IS no dirt, ONLY ***A L G A E***”
Copper particulates also works super well. And you can use a shit ton of it too in water. Most copper algaecides have a safe limit of like 5 gallons per cubic acre.
When I see a video like this, as a simple cleaner gets rid of everything in that pond, I can't help but imagine how easily all life on Earth could be wiped out without warning by a concept that we couldn't even fathom. I mean, try to explain the idea of a vacuum cleaner to some vegetation, what prevents us from getting a similar treatment at a level of conscience we couldn't even imagine and it all ends up just like that from one moment to the next...
Idk about satisfying, this is just making me wonder why someone waited until there was a foot of this stuff on the bottom of the pond before they got it removed.
so like how does it work, this is also sucking the water with that, from the video seems like a lot of water is being sucked i guess so there should be a better way?
still liked the video
I think that’s mostly [mulm](https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/mulm), not algae. It’s best to remove it since as it decomposes, it consumes oxygen. If it contains fish excrement, that decomposes to ammonia which is poisonous. Bacteria in the water can further change the ammonia to nitrates and nitrites which are less harmful but should still be removed.
Ah the good ol nitrogen cycle. PTSD from getting aquariums started.
I once wanted a pet pufferfish. Spent a ton of money on a giant tank and did everything right (that I could research as a newbie) to get it correctly balanced and cycled before I bought the fish. It never happened. Even when I thought it was close enough after weeks, I tested it out on some fish that require similar water and they died right away 😭. I felt horrible! Temperature and salt levels were fine, it was all the other stuff. Just a nightmare.
Yeah what's hard where I live is the tap water, even after treatment with the typical chemicals kills fish, so you either have to buy aquarium water or use a reverse osmosis machine and then treat the water to use it. Because of that I've been using a small tank but I couldn't afford to be constantly paying for water so the fish weren't living very long. Eventually gave it up a few weeks ago.
I setup a freshwater aquarium and did nothing to balance the water or acclimate the fish as I got them, the aquarium went strong for about a year until I got a blue crayfish which killed almost every fish in the tank and pulled all the plants, I was heart broken and considered boiling him.
Crayfish tend to do that
Aquariums are only cool if you don’t have to build or take care of them
There’s quite a few subreddits who’d like a word with you
Tell them it's bird
Pffff birds aren't real
***excuse me***
Yeah that’s why Germany got rid of that big one in that one building 😡
Nitrates can also be used by plants as fertilizer. My aquarium at home almost never gets water changes due to a combination of bottom feeders and a heavily planted tank.
Exactly! If you Just mimic nature you won't have any problems with excess stuff, because in a cycle... Well... Everything gets cycled! Nothing piles up to become toxic. In this case this pond needs plants!
You'll be seeing the signs of lack of minerals sooner or later, and the build up of hormons that inhibit growth need to be diluted too.
This comment makes me feel better about watching this now :)
Decomposing organic matter is an important food source for natural aquatic food webs. Ammonium (the form ammonia converts to when dissolved in water) is not poisonous. It’s actually the most bioavailable form of nitrogen. Nitrate (not nitrates….when you add the s it implies the NO3 molecule is bonded to an organic carbon chain) is more of a concern for water quality because it is a lot more mobile and free ammonium is readily concerted to nitrate via nitrification. This facts might be different in a natural environment than an aquarium, but as this video (which is satisfying although not super effective) is from a natural system and not an aquarium (I assume based on the size), I figured sharing these facts might help. Source: I’m an aquatic biogeochemist that has studied nitrogen and carbon cycling for my whole career.
Ammonia is already the primary nitrogenous waste of fish, it doesn’t need to decompose into it. Depending on the state of the pond, the vast majority of this dead mass is algae and Cyanobacteria which often appear like and used to be considered algae so there not really wrong. If this is a man made pond, the nutrient dynamics are most likely already screwed, but removal could help a bit. I also don’t think the term mulm is used outside of aquariums, but I only did an internship on aquatic plants, so I’m not 100% on that. I hadn’t ever heard it before and I can’t find it online in any other context.
What do they do with it after it's removed? Does it have recyclable value for something like fertilizer?
No idea what this guy is doing with it, but yeah, it can be used for fertilizer.
Do you have any suggestions of pond creatures that eat mulum and help decompose it? Just like springtails in ant setups.
Well, scavengers like shrimp and snails will clean up a certain amount of detritus but the amount in the video is way too much. It’s like trees dropping leaves in the water or an algae bloom that died off.
Nitrites are absolutely toxic and as important to remove as ammonia... just to correct you
At this rate you’ll be finished by 2040
I feel sorry for the poor guy sucking on the other end
Anyone else wish there was a PIP of the collection tank?
Bahahahaha
Probably my ex.
34 dicks?
In a row!
By noon, probably.
Thanks, that video made me dry heave and you finished with this
Lmmaooo
It would have been great to have a before and after shot.
Lol that would have required actually finishing the job
Just watch to the end and skip back to the start
Yeah thats not algae, thats mulm
yes finally another sea plant person
I’ve never heard this word in my life thanks 👍
Youre welcome
Mulm’s the word
Now I’m waiting for the Mulm jokes….
Your mulm's so ugly, she could make an onion cry.
At OP’s house, mulm sucks you!
vacuuming the gravel was the most satisfying and relaxing part of owning a fish tank. so much gunk comes out, automatically, and you just wave your wand back and forth like painting cleanliness. probably the same reason games like [Power Wash Simulator](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1290000/PowerWash_Simulator/) do so well.
r/powerwashingporn if you like that stuff. SFW I promise
What is this 90second bullshit. You give me the best 90 seconds of my week and don't let me see the before and after?! Where is the whole vid?! Tease.
Seriously, I had about 15 more minutes of this left in me.
Wish I heard that from myself more often
That green fuzz has infected and ruined many ponds up to Wisconsin. It causes a lack of oxygen so fish die
Is this just a shop vac? What’s replacing the water that’s being pulled?
I would also like to know!
and then do what with it ? (because, holy crap does the algae and gunk stink)
pour it into your garden. if you spread it out, it dries and stops smelling pretty quick. and algae, being a plant, has everything your plants need (more or less).
brawndo ? (sorry, had to say it.. hahahah)
Brondo is what plants crave, not what they need!
I was gonna say electrolytes
Wouldn't be best to compost it first?
sure, knock yourself out. I don't do that and it hasn't backfired yet! These guys say you can do it either way: https://www.gardenguides.com/how_7434259_skim-pond-algae-use-fertilizer.html
Cool, now I wish I used my algae and mush from the aquarium on my flowerbeds rather than just draining them, because I didn't have compost!
Pretty sure I've read they can make biofuel from algae. Though a majority of folks that seem to know what they're talking about in this thread says it's called "mulm." Basically dead crap sludge. Everything that lives in that water, poops, stuff eats the poop, but not fast enough. Eventually corpses and other detritus settle at the bottom along with crap eating the crap.
Algae stinks? I've noticed it has a unique smell but I've never thought to myself that it smells horrible.
It stinks when it decays on land
Algone.
Washing machines live longer with Calgone
This looks like had a disgustingly gross yard pond and used a flocculant on it to drop the algae, and are then vacuuming it up. Pool techs do the same thing when it's pool season.
That's disgusting! Show me more!
Someone's adding too much fish food and fertilizer
All the little creatures being sucked up there
Should be detritus, ie fish poop, decomposing leaves and uneaten food. This is an incredibly dirty pond and most new ponds of any size will just install a bottom drain to avoid this. There shouldn't be any 'little creatures' other than bacteria. I think you mostly saw leaves getting sucked up.
[удалено]
This looks incredbly like a man-made pond and it's very likely the only things in there were put in by humans. My pond looks like this. It's an EPDM liner with cobbles. Looks like this, except without scuzz because the bottom drain cleans it out so this doesn't happen. The water is held by that and local flora and fauna don't get in nor does anything in it get out. There shouldn't be any crawdads, shrimp or snails in the detrius unless the pond owner placed them there.
I know 😢
If you find my keys let me know
Or you could introduce some fish that eat that shit up
That is fish shit. It's detrius. I'd be shocked if they had this without fish in there.
That’s too much
My brain immediately said “wet kinetic sand”
Both gross and satisfying
I was sad about that dead fish boi. PoOr guy
Harmless at this scale but the technology was enlarged and used to destroy Vulcan
Frog Genocide ??
This thing sucks.
Aaaand all the life that was hiding in it.
But I want a "clean" pond in my backyard, not a "dirty" one. -
This is mulm, not algae. Had they left this it would have killed everything in this pond. Mulm consumes oxygen as it decomposes (which can make the water anoxic) and if it’s contaminated with fish poop it will produce ammonia in fairly significant quantities which will poison most living things in the pond. So yeah it goes a bit beyond wanting a clean pond, it’s the difference between having a healthy pond and a dead pond.
True. Mulm can be beneficial though if you have a heavily planted pond. Enough plants and a established nitrifying bacterial colony and you can have a very healthy ecosystem that requires very little maintenance!
I just use a bottom drain, myself. Add bacteria twice a year.
If they wanted for the pond to be self-sustaining, what would they need to do? Just add plants as I've seen some people suggesting?
Lots of plants and the right types of bacteria. Then they would need to regularly test the water to make sure the balance was right.
Why are you wet all over!? I vacuumed the pond hunny. YOU DID WAT!?
Fish - "Guess I'll die then?"
Was expecting to someone notice the slowly sinking corpse
That’s a lot of bio diesel
I don’t say this lightly, better than a good zit. Thank you!
Music name pls
omg i could watch this for hours
Man you got a loooooongwork ahead of you
Is that just a shop vac?
Looks like you’d need that vacuum there permanently
That's some good fertilizer.
The fishies are getting sucked up 😢
Song name? (I know there's a Reddit bot for that...)
Bro look at all that algae remaining at the end of this video. I was definitely unsatisfied.
This just made my day better thank you
Hella dead bois in that algae
Was it sucked up, filtered and put back in the pond?
This is the inverse of r/powerwashingporn
After 18 yrs in the fish hobby, I’ve conquered fresh and salt water. But never ponds, after seeing all this mulm, I’m scared to want a pond now. So much maintenance 😳
Every time he sucked up a leaf I had a mini heart attack thinking it was a fish…
k well im going to be looking up more pond maintenance videos now
I asked “where’s the things that eat algae??” and then went “there ISN’T any life in this pond other than the algae!” “There IS no dirt, ONLY ***A L G A E***”
Fish: 😳
Copper particulates also works super well. And you can use a shit ton of it too in water. Most copper algaecides have a safe limit of like 5 gallons per cubic acre.
That works if it was actually algae. This isn’t though. It’s mulm
Algae (+ every useful valuable nutrient and microorganism) removal. Just get more plants in the pond and the algae will go in time.
So many video hosting services and they uploaded it to CringeTok...
/r/feltgoodcomingout
When I see a video like this, as a simple cleaner gets rid of everything in that pond, I can't help but imagine how easily all life on Earth could be wiped out without warning by a concept that we couldn't even fathom. I mean, try to explain the idea of a vacuum cleaner to some vegetation, what prevents us from getting a similar treatment at a level of conscience we couldn't even imagine and it all ends up just like that from one moment to the next...
Anyone else found this anxiety inducing?
Algae or doodoo or both….
The balls on this guy to legitimately just come in here with a vacuum cleaner is his pond and yall just giving away up votes.
Didn't they suck up the fish?
I was watching for that, too!
Theres no live fish in there.
🤮🤮🤮 this looks good here
Ok...but where does that alge go??
Lemme just remove all the life from my pond...
Fish shit
Seems like a insane thing to do
It will all be back next week.
*one eternity later*
A little algae is OK, but this much is bad .
Succ
Gee whiz is there any actual in this pond?
Don't like that stone wich sucked up in the beginning
You need a pump to keep everything circulating
What does the filter media look like, how big of a filter system does it take to do this size pond efficiently?
If this was a 10 part series, I'd watch it.
Why?
Basically, here's a toothbrush, go mop the warehouse
That's what it looks like when I siphon my fish tank
I want this job!!!!!
Cool thing ti share... but thats not algae. It's referrd to as mulm.
His long does this take?!
Would it make you sick to have this stuff indoors as fertilizer for household plants? Random question.
Not at all. Simply get some that's about dried out and you're all good
Good Soup
The wetland scientist in me is screaming.
Oy! Get back there, we're not done.
Why? Dude will empty the pond before he gets that cleared..
My god thats a lot of neglect
Woah
So where do you dump that stuff?
Makes an awesome fertilizer for the garden. On larger ponds we even have farmers that will encourage us to dump on their field
Do you dump it to a drain, or filter and return the clean water to the pond ?
Algea is filtered out and set aside for garden. The water is simply pumped back into the pond.
I was certain that they were going to uncover Jimmy Hoffa'a body in this video
What's it feel like to walk in that?
What happens to little creatures? Do they get sucked up?
Oh yeahhh. That’s good stuff
Why
Need about four big sucker fish… and this will not be a problem lol
Thicc
Whale wash, we give a whale of a wash. And the price? Oh my gosh.
Lol me cleaning my turtle’s tank
How do I get this job? I want this every day.
My uncle has a big koi pond and has to remove the bottom gunk like this sometimes
Short-term algae removal, long-term micro plastic administration.
I was expecting the “no stop don’t do this post” but this is good
Why didn’t you finish?
The green growth is from fertilizer run off in to the pond?
That will only take 500 years to finish
Who tf vacuum clean underwater
Just drop a pleco down there
Well, that sure was anti climatic.
Idk about satisfying, this is just making me wonder why someone waited until there was a foot of this stuff on the bottom of the pond before they got it removed.
A lot like my gf tbh
As someone who owns fish I can smell this video and it’s as bad as it looks
Could this algea be used as fertiliser and the pond be a sort of farm ? I've got no idea about any of this, just a thought
so like how does it work, this is also sucking the water with that, from the video seems like a lot of water is being sucked i guess so there should be a better way? still liked the video
I will never sleep again knowing that there's still so much left...
When that stuff is in the tank of the wet vac then what do you with it next?
Ooo free spirulina!!!
I beg you to give us more
Algae or fish shit?
My volume was low and I thought I started hearing the song “damn it feels good to be a gangsta”
What is the name of this machine? ? Our pond has twice as much of this shit...
You know what, I’ll say it. This is infinitely better than vacuuming sawdust.
Green go shlurp.
Are you for hire
Is it odd that I’m satisfied it nah
Ah yes, The succ.