Diatoms: Nature’s Best Water Cleaners
New Technology for Cleaning Lakes
We’re always on the look-out for the most effective new technologies. We apply three criteria in assessing whether these new technologies should become part of our Lake Renewal Process:
- Is it good for the lake?
- Does it work?
- Is it affordable
With these criteria in mind, we began testing a potentially revolutionary new product for improving lake ecosystems and dramatically reducing the nutrient pollution in lake water that feeds harmful algae growth. Nualgi Lakes is a natural, micro-nutrient formula that stimulates the growth of diatoms.
Diatoms are a fundamental building block of life on earth and are quite simply nature’s best water cleaners. Diatoms have unsurpassed power to consume nutrients in the water column. They’re also the favorite food for fish! In fact they form the the base of a lake’s food web. The relationship between diatoms and a healthy fishery is simple, direct and compelling:
Nutrients get eaten by Diatoms…Diatoms Get Eaten by fish = Clean Water and Bigger Healther Fish!
What are Diatoms?
Diatoms are one of the reasons life emerged from the swamp. Millions of years ago when the oceans subsided, land masses emerged, and runoff started to carry granite and silica into the oceans, a microscopic life-form emerged that scientists consider to be a fundamental building block of life itself – the diatom.
Diatoms are microscopic food power cells (phytoplankton) that convert carbon dioxide, nitrogen and phosphorus into dissolved oxygen and oxygen rich organic compounds and zooplankton which result in a healthy ecosystem and ultimately a thriving fish population. They play a dynamic role in nutrient conversion and regulation of ecosystems.
How Diatoms Benefit a Water Body
- Diatoms outcompete less desirable forms of algae for nutrients in the water reducing harmful blue-green algae and filamentous algae.
- Diatoms are the primary food source at the base of the fish food chain. Grow diatoms, Grow fish! When nutrients go into the fish food chain, they are unavailable to weeds and algae.
- Diatoms increase dissolved oxygen in the water and at the sediment boundary! They produce more oxygen in their life cycle than they consume. Scientific study confirms that diatoms are the single largest primary producers of oxygen for the planet earth!
The problem is that they are boom-and-bust in nature. When diatom population is high, nutrients are converted to fish. When diatom population is low, nutrients that would normally be converted to dissolved oxygen, phytoplankton, and zooplankton and released as CO2 gas in the atmosphere is instead utilized by explosive weed growth and toxic blue-green algae (cyanotoxin). Diatom diminishment typically happens in mid-summer. The “bust” happens when the supply of silica, iron and other micronutrients fail. Diatoms need all these inputs.
Nualgi Diatom Regeneration Eliminates the Boom-Bust Cycle
As part of our ongoing Biological Acceleration research and technology we’re deploying a nano-silica based micro-nutrient formulation developed for Lake Savers by Nualgi Nanotechnology that’s proven to stimulate, regulate, and sustain continual diatom growth. One year after initial treatment in one of our highly distressed urban-environment freshwater bodies we’re seeing the development of higher order complex siliceous diatom species that are indicative of extremely high water quality environments (oligotrophic).
Results of our Testing
- Nualgi Lakes has proven capable of stimulating diatom growth in a wide variety of water bodies from urban ponds to natural lakes and everything in-between.
- Nualgi Lakes has been proven to increase zooplankton populations within 7 to 10 days of application. Zooplankton feed on diatoms and fish feed on zooplankton.
- Nualgi Lakes has been proven to raise dissolved oxygen at the sediment interface. This increases organic muck reduction of the “compost pile” at the bottom of the lake.
Nualgi Lakes Diatom Regeneration: The Bottom-Line
Nualgi is the most exciting Bio-Acceleration Product we have ever tested. Its impact on water body nutrients is immediate and profound. Best of all, Nualgi is cost-effective. Just one 1 liter bottle treats two to twenty acres of water for one week to one month depending on condition. Cost for Nualgi is $72 per liter.
Stimulating Diatom Growth for $36 per acre is quite simply the most stunning breakthrough in natural water body restoration developed to date.
1 Acre Urban Test Pond Before and After Lake Bottom Aeration & Nualgi Diatom Regeneration Treatment
