I have a seven foot diameter pond that is home to four huge goldfish, three algae-eating fish, two turtles, and dozens of snails. The water is always clear even though I don’t have an expensive filtration system because I maintain a natural ecological balance. I suspect that some of the lessons I’ve learned taking care of my pond apply to Florida’s rivers and bays, but that no one in authority will bother to learn from them.

The first thing I realized when I bought this house in November, 2004, was that many pond creatures can be killed by household chemicals, including the ones put into drinking water to keep it safe for human consumption. A friend noticed that my pond water level was low and decided to fill it from the hose. Poof! The smaller fish (minnows and guppies) all died immediately, as did the snails. While the goldfish didn’t die, they were gasping on the surface, trying to take in oxygen without taking in water. I rushed to the pet store and got some chemical treatment to overcome the chlorine and other chemicals in the tap water and saved them, but barely.

One of my (plecostomus) algae eaters also died. You could say, as my friend did, that the only losses were unimportant fish and that no one should care about snails, but this is not totally true. The algae-eating fish and the snails are what keep my pond free of visible algae growth, and until I restocked both, brown algae started to cover my pond sides. Now that scourge is under control again.

Plants are more important than fish

A great piece of advice I got when I was starting to nurture my pond (which came with the house — in terrible condition) was to regard it as a water garden for plants that happened to have a few fish in it rather than to think of it as a fish pond. That is, if I put most of my energy into making sure I had plenty of healthy plants, my fish would also be healthy, while if I only worried about fish and didn’t make sure my plants were healthy and plentiful, I’d have a dirty pond and sick fish.

Whenever speed limits are proposed for powerboats in our rivers and bays, I think less about the Manatees than about plants. I’ve seen sea grass — the predominant local bay-bottom vegetation — torn up badly by the passage of a fast-revving prop in shallow water. But no one seems to worry about this problem, not even speedboat people with fishing gear all over their decks. Don’t they realize that the more they hurt the plants, the fewer fish there will be? Apparently not.

Aquatic plants are also sensitive to chemical runoff. Some experts — but not all — say our recent Red Tide episodes have been made worse by chemicals released into the Gulf of Mexico by humans. No one is saying humans’ wastes are causing Red Tide; it was observed when there were only a few Indians and Spanish explorers around. But it is entirely possible that Red Tide is made worse by human-caused runoff, especially of nutrients that help it grow when blooms spread near the coast.

This sounds like the equivalent of overfeeding pond fish or overfertilizing pond plants, both of which fill the water with additional nutrients and produce algae blooms. I’m not saying this is the same thing as Red Tide, but it’s similar enough to be worth a thought.

New lawns and lawn chemicals next to the water

One feature that seems common to all existing and proposed waterfront building projects here is lush landscaping, the kind that takes constant watering and fertilizing to maintain its appearance. This is understandable. All new waterfront buildings here are priced for the overmonied, and they naturally expect to have plenty of pleasant plants and lawns surrounding their expensive dwellings.

Hopefully they’ll all use recycled, unchlorined “grey water” to keep their plants looking healthy during Central Florida’s dry winter season. I’m sure they will irrigate because the dry season is when part-time residents are most likely to be here, and it’s also when any units up for rent are most likely to be rented.

But what about fertilizers? Are all of our new waterfront residents and the developers and condominium boards who oversee their buildings willing to swear off even benign “organic” plant nutrients in order to keep the rivers and bays around them healthy? I doubt it. Someone who has a “sacrifice for the greater good” mentality would not be building or buying waterfront highrises in the first place.

My pond is a cement construct, partially above ground, so there is no chance of fertilizer runoff getting into it. Our rivers and bays have no such protection. Even the most arrogant and self-centered waterfront developers need to start thinking about the long-term effects of their building and landscaping if they want to preserve the waterfront beauty that attracts buyers for their overpriced offerings in the first place. If they destroy our waterfront, they will also destroy sales of their own products. Unfortunately, by the time our public bodies of water are so smelly and lifeless that no one wants to live next to them, the damage to them may be nearly impossible to reverse.

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