GLOSSARY of terms idiosyncratic to the magazine and the aquatic industry

This is the first of several glossaries that will be interlinked and will work as one and each one will serve as an index for others. This one consists mainly of the terms and expression the beginner may encounter when he or she tries to get to know the subject. They are also expressions the potential water garden consumers needs to be familiar with in order to communicate effectively with staff at an aquatic centre and therefore not only get what they want, but also what they need.

The glossaries will be constantly up dated and references and links to relevant articles articles will be included.

Aquatic plants

Plants that thrive when growing in or under water. See the water garden plants directory for the species, varieties an types. They are generally classified into groups: oxygenators, marginal plants, deep water plants, which includes lilies and floating plants. Although Bog plants come into a separter category and should not really be sold as aquatics, you may find that some plants cross the boundaries of several categories. Some retailers do have a tendency however of exploiting certain tolerances of some plants to the wet and may be seen to be selling plants in categories that the may tolerate but wont thrive in eg hosta, sisyrinchiums and astilbes being sold as marginals. These categories for retailers also dont necessarily fit in with academic and conservationists' classifications of plants, who will make more subtle distinction with regard to planting zones in a pond, for instance they may refer to deep marginals

Bog plants

Definitively these are acid-loving plants (plants that will only tolerate a low pH in the soil) that will thrive in wet spongy ground rich in organic matter. For the purposes of this book and the companion volume Designing and Creating Water Gardens by the same author, they can include lime-tolerant plants, but are linked by the fact that they prefer moist, humus-rich conditions in which there is a certain amount of drainage – the moisture is restrained, not retained.

Deep-water plants

These are plants that grow from the bottom of the pool or pond, sending their leaves to the surface for gaseous exchange and sunlight. Water lilies are the most important and numerous in variety.

Filters, biological

These are filters that effectively clear pond water that is pump through them by trapping floating organic matter and algae in various forms of medium contained with in the filter. This detritus is actually is then broken down or digested by bacteria that build up in the filter. This prevents the filter from clogging up in a very short time. The bacteria not only process organic matter but also break up the polluting chemicals associated with rotting organic matter, like ammonia compounds and nitrites, and some cases nitrates, thus cleaning the water of some of its unseen problems.

Floating plants

These are plants that float freely on the surface of a pool or pond with their roots dangling freely underneath. Some of them are great at using up excess nutrients in a pond that may be causing green water.

Flow Rate

This is usually expressed in gallons per hour, litres per hour, even litres per minute. It is the volume of water that a pump is capable of delivering to a specific height. The maximum flow rate would be an expression of the volume of water the pump could pass through with restrictions or even any pipe work. This can be a misleading statistic.

Gate valves or flow valves

Two different methods of adjusting the flow of water in a pipe: one is based on the old plumbing fitting that has a tap that you screw down to close off the flow of water. The other, by a quick twist, blocks the pipe quickly and efficiently. Both types come with either ‘male’ or ‘female’ threads.
Head (in reference to pumps and their flow rate)
This is the height above the surface level of the pool that a pump, pumping water up from that pool, will pump to.

Header pool

The small pool at the top of a waterfall or beginning or a stream, into which the water from the submersible pump in the main pool emerges before it begins to flow back to the main pool. This small reservoir evens out the wildness and inconsistencies of the supply from the pond pump and enables the pool constructor to engineer the width and dynamics of the flow of water.

Hosetails

An aquatic store expression for the plastic hose connectors that screw into pumps, UVCs and filters, and also into hex sockets and hex nipples for joining or reducing hose diameter. The screw ends come in ‘male’ or ‘female’ forms. On the ‘male’ the screw thread sticks out in order to screw into the ‘female’.

Marginals, Marginal plants

Plants that not only enjoy the water’s edge, but actually grow in the shallow water. For the purposes of this book and how modern preformed ponds are constructed, they are all quite happy sitting planted into special aquatic pant baskets, with the water just over the level of the soil they are planted in.
There are some that are often referred to in some books as deep-water marginals that are tolerant of greater planting depth, but they can find this depth for themselves from the shallows. Examples of these are the bog arums, reed mace, and the pickerel weed (Pontedaria cordata)

Oxygenators, oxygenating plants

Plants that grow under water and have underwater foliage that exchanges gases and can, in some cases absorb nutrients directly from the water. They release oxygen into the water during daylight hours.

RCD, RCCB, RCB or ELCB

A device for breaking the circuit or power supply to an electrically powered device, as soon as there is a difference in the current flowing in the neutral and live wires supplying the power, on the basis that it may be leaking to earth through a human body or some other object. The difference at the time of writing is set at 30ma (milli-amps) or less.
If you have an old-style trip switch and no other form of circuit breaker for electrics or machinery used outside, get your system checked by an electrician before you run a submersible pump off it. One of these devices should be fitted to your exterior power supply, to isolate it from you domestic interior supply.

UVCs (Ultra-violet clarifiers)

An ultra-violet lamp, contained within a waterproof quartz glass tube around which water from the pool flows pumped through it by a submersible pump. All this is contained within a larger plastic tube. The U/V light from the lamp causes free-floating algae in the water to clump together and sink to the bottom of the pool where they are either digested by the pond bacteria or taken up by the pump and sifted out in a biological filter.