Pond Conductivity is a very useful way of measuring the impurities in water. Here I take readings from many sources in search of the perfect water to fill the pond. Pond Conductivity : The Search for Perfect Water To Stop Algae
I would love to see you test your tap water again, but through different filter types. Reverse osmosis, charcoal, sand, 5 micron, 3 micron, 10 micron, home made etc... I wonder how much of the conductivity comes from particulates and solids in the water.
Only the reverse osmosis would lower the conductivity. The other filters wouldn't remove the dissolved solids as they're physical filters. 'brita' type filters will reduce the conductivity/ TDS slightly.
Thank you, from Colorado, for another good video. I have this silly little test pond that I made in the style of your natural swimming ponds, but it’s only in a little kiddie pool, and I have yet to make the larger version and it’s been four years already! Of course I have a problem with algae because it’s so shallow, so I was grateful to see your episode about algae, because I discovered from your video that I have the good kind of algae, so I am less stressed about it. Hopefully I will get around to making the final pond soon which will be deeper and less vulnerable to algae. In meantime my pond is growing all kinds of cool plants around it and attracting dragonflies and bats, so they are keeping down the mosquitoes! Even a tiny little pond becomes the center of the garden and it’s wonderful! It’s the first place my cat and I visit when we go out in the mornings. He munches on the grass, and I look for interesting things in the water! A couple summers ago I discovered a bunch of snails and found out that they were Japanese black trapdoor snails, which actually eat algae, so that was a great discovery!
Hi David Firstly a big thanks for all the great content you have created on here. In an earlier video you said that allowing roof water to constantly fill the pool was a bad idea as it introduced nutrients. But your testing with the resistance meter would appear to show that roof water contains far less nutrients than the pool water it would be replacing. Have I missed something? Also we are planning our pool build for this summer but budget is extremely tight! Any experience with LDPE liners? They are less than half the price of EPDM or butyl.
Conductivity meters like the one shown in the video just measure conductivity, and therefore the quantity of dissolved ions in the water. There are many types of ions, so this is a very broad, rough measure. One type of ion is nitrate, which is a component of fertiliser and a product of rotting vegetable matter/dung/urine. The introduction of excess nitrate will cause algal blooms as seen in this video. Another type of ion are dissolved zinc, magnesium, and iron, which will be produced in small quantities from rainwater that runs off of roofs built from those materials. These ions are eco-toxic for aquatic life when excess quantities are dissolved in water. So here David is referring to two different problems that are both crudely measured by a conductivity meter.
The holding container should be something safe because it can eventually contaminate catchment or roof water. Also paint and a deteriorated roof will contaminate the water. Use thoughtfulness and do not drink water assuming that it is clean. 🤙🏽
Something interesting, keeping with the theme of test all the liquids. I tested my bee syrup I make from 1 part 300 ppm well water and 1 part table sugar, I found the ppm drops to around a tenth of the reading of just the well water to about 30 ppm. So I guess if you want to clean up all that dirty salty water just add an ungodly amount of sugar
Can we please have an update on the pool after introducing fish? Maybe with some opinion if it might work on bigger pools where biology is more balanced?
I imagine using a simple multimeter, set to resistance can be used. For consistency the two probes should be set a fixed distance apart. Then taking rain water as an approximate baseline, you can then compare everything else with that. Obviously resistance is inverse to conductivity.
