permaculture

[Marimike6@cs.com]

Dear Claude (Genest)----

I've been following your plan to stock your pond with zebra mussels and think it would make a great experiment to see what they will do. Theory sort of requires that they stop multiplying when they've reached equilibrium with their food source.

I suspect that what they do is eat stuff that no one else wants to eat. In the Caspian, where they come from, they have been in equilibrium for millennia and are not a problem. In the northern States and Canada they are a terrible problem because their uneaten food has built up for those same millennia and they are busily trying to get up to the task of chowing it all down. Once they do they'll get back to a more reasonable density.

In the meantime the municipalities have a problem because they clog the intakes and outflows of all their water & sewer pipes. I assume you don't have that problem in your pond. Also, you don't yet have an ecology to disrupt. Start with the zebras, or with any other filter feeders you can find that will keep your water clean.

If you do have the pond fill up with mussels, sell them to the Highway Department. They can crush them up and use them to make road bed.

Mike in Fuquay