3. Eco-Balancing Act

Diatoms are part of the pool’s microbial food web. They feed tiny zooplankton, which in turn help control mosquito larvae and other nuisances, keeping your pool biologically balanced.

4. Low-Maintenance Allies

Unlike mechanical filters or chemical treatments, diatoms do their job quietly and efficiently without any added cost or effort from you—assuming your pool stays within healthy ecological parameters.

Encouraging Diatom Growth
Want to make sure these microscopic allies thrive in your pool? Here’s how:

• Avoid harsh chemicals (Obviously): Diatoms can’t survive in chlorinated environments. Natural pools give them the ideal chemical-free home.
• Maintain plant zones: Healthy aquatic plants create the right conditions, nutrient balance, light filtration, and oxygen for diatoms to flourish.
• Support water circulation: Diatoms prefer gently moving water, which also helps prevent unwanted algae.
• Let sunlight in: Diatoms are photosynthetic, so ensure they get enough indirect light (too much sun, however, can cause unwanted algae to compete).

The Bottom Line
Diatoms may be invisible to the naked eye, but their contribution to your natural swimming pool is huge. By supporting a vibrant and self-sustaining aquatic ecosystem, they reduce your workload while keeping your water naturally clean, safe, and sparkling.

So next time you dip your toes into your pool, take a moment to appreciate the tiny glass-walled organisms working tirelessly to keep it beautiful.

Stay Safe and Healthy.

We hope you all continue to stay healthy during these trying times and wish all of our BioNova® Dealers our best to you and your families.

Questions, Concerns, Thoughts

As always, we encourage you to contact us and share your thoughts, questions, and concerns with BioNova®. We are available to assist you in any way we can. Feel free to email me directly with photos, project updates, testimonials, etc., and we’ll include them in an upcoming Newsletter.

Respectfully,

Ryan Harmer
BioNova® Natural Pools
ryan@bionovanaturalpools.com
609-318-4707

The post BioNova Weekly News – 5/8/2026 appeared first on BioNova®.

Wildlife in Winter Part 2: What Happens to Beneficial Organisms in a Natural Swimming Pool?Winter brings dramatic changes to the biological activity within an NSP. Understanding these shifts can help pool owners protect their investment and appreciate the remarkable natural processes that continue all year long.Amphibians and Larger Wildlife: Winter Guests

Depending on your region, frogs, toads, newts, and small mammals may use your NSP as winter habitat.

Frogs and Toads

• Some species overwinter at the bottom of the regeneration zone, where water remains unfrozen.
• Others burrow into nearby soil, leaf litter, or stone crevices.

Beneficial predators

Creatures like dragonfly nymphs continue to quietly patrol underwater, feeding on mosquito larvae even in cold months, though at a slower rate.

Water Chemistry: Stability in the Quiet Season

Winter often brings some of the clearest, calmest water conditions of the year. Why does this occur?

• Cooler water holds more dissolved oxygen.
• Reduced sunlight slows algae growth.
• Dormant organisms produce less waste.
• Plants draw fewer nutrients from the water.

This seasonal “reset” helps the ecosystem start fresh each spring.

Ice Cover: Friend, Not Foe

A layer of ice, in moderate thickness, can actually protect the natural pool ecosystem by:

• Maintaining insulated temperatures below the surface
• Reducing wind-driven mixing
• Preventing harmful freeze-thaw disturbances

As long as your regeneration zone is deep enough to stay unfrozen beneath the ice, aquatic life will remain safe.

How the Pool Owner Can Support Winter Health

Although the ecosystem is mostly self-regulating, there are a few steps owners can take:

1. Remove or minimize excess organic debris. This reduces nutrient buildup and ensures better spring clarity.

2. Cut back dead plant matter. Leave some stems for wildlife habitat, but prevent heavy biomass from decaying in-pool.

The Big Picture: Winter Strengthens the Ecosystem

Rather than weakening the natural swimming pool, winter fortifies it. Dormancy, dieback, and slowed metabolism are all strategic adaptations that ensure long-term health. By spring, beneficial bacteria, plants, and wildlife rapidly rebound—often more vigorous than before.

A natural swimming pool isn’t just a summer feature; it’s a year-round ecosystem. Understanding what happens beneath the ice allows owners to appreciate the remarkable resilience of the organisms that keep their pool clean, clear, and beautifully alive.

Stay Safe and Healthy.

We hope you all continue to stay healthy during these trying times and wish all of our BioNova® Dealers our best to you and your families.

Questions, Concerns, Thoughts

As always, we encourage you to contact us and share your thoughts, questions, and concerns with BioNova®. We are available to assist you in any way we can. Feel free to email me directly with photos, project updates, testimonials, etc., and we’ll include them in an upcoming Newsletter.

Respectfully,

Ryan Harmer
BioNova® Natural Pools
ryan@bionovanaturalpools.com
609-318-4707

The post BioNova Weekly News – 12/19/2025 appeared first on BioNova®.

Our Display Pool is Open!

As we all know, spring is here and with that the pool opening season has begun. Here in Hackettstown, NJ the weather is still a bit chilly and certainly not swimming weather yet but it is warm enough to open our NSP display pool. So last Wednesday we pulled all the plugs, threw some valves, and fired up the pumps and got the BF4 up and running.

Also, per our springtime startup recommendations, we bubbled and backwashed the BF4, netted out the debris, and cleaned excess algae out.

We did not cover the pool for the winter, so off course there was some netting of debris that needed to be done and a good initial vacuum, but otherwise the pool didn’t need much TLC to get it in shape. The rest was done by nature and the BF4. The pool was a little cloudy and a little green for the first few days but 1 week later was absolutely crystal clear.

Our Podcast on Natural Swimming Pools Continues to Grow

There are new episodes of our podcast. Click below to listen.

Listen Now!

We would love to hear about your current BioNova® projects. Please send Ryan, ryan@bionovanaturalpools.com, any information and pictures of your projects and we will gladly put them in the newsletter to share with all of the dealers. Thank you and we hope to see your inputs soon!

Questions, Concerns, Thoughts

As always, we encourage you to contact us and share your thoughts, questions, and concerns with BioNova®. We are available to assist you in any way we can. Feel free to email me directly with photos, project updates, testimonials, etc., and we’ll include them in an upcoming Newsletter.

Respectfully,

Ryan Harmer
BioNova® Natural Pools
ryan@bionovanaturalpools.com
609-318-4707

The post BioNova Weekely News – 3/28/2025 appeared first on BioNova®.

Here’s what’s happening at BioNova® Natural Pools North America…

New Online NSP Education

As mentioned a few weeks back, BioNova® was in attendance at this years 2024 Pool and Spa Show in Atlantic City, New Jersey where our Vice President of Dealer Development, Allen Schnaak, was in town to promote awareness of Natural Pools and gave two separate presentations on natural pools.

We had a great turn out to both presentations, but to help expand our audience and spread the word even more about natural pools  we recorded both presentations. These recording have been edited and the slides provide in the corner of the video so they can be easily read, and these videos are now available to anyone on YouTube.

The first, titled “BioNova NSP Natural Swimming Pool Basics for Builders“, provides the intro level information on NSPs. Specifically how some use a planted regeneration zone, others employ a biological filter that don’t require plants and how in all cases, a properly designed NSP will provide clear, clean, soothing water that is entirely chemical free.

The second presentation, titled “BioNova NSP Natural Swimming Pool Design for Builders“, discusses the design of NSPs to include details about properly sizing the biological filter area to accommodate the size of the swimming area as well as the anticipated use and bather load requirements. 

We hope these are a valuable source of information to you and your clients and encourage you to disseminate these as you see fit.

We would love to hear about your current BioNova® projects. Please send Ryan, ryan@bionovanaturalpools.com, any information and pictures of your projects and we will gladly put them in the newsletter to share with all of the dealers. Thank you and we hope to see your inputs soon!

Questions, Concerns, Thoughts

As always, we encourage you to contact us and share your thoughts, questions, and concerns with BioNova®. We are available to assist you in any way we can. Feel free to email me directly with photos, project updates, testimonials, etc., and we’ll include them in an upcoming Newsletter.

Ryan Harmer

The post New Online Natural Swimming Pool Education appeared first on BioNova®.

The Webber Park Natural Pool in Minneapolis is the first public natural swimming pool in the United States. The pool was built when the town wanted to replace an old chemical pool that had fallen into disrepair. The neighborhood residents and park users met and championed an eco-friendly design. Building a natural swimming pool aligned perfectly with their priorities.

The Webber Park Natural Pool consists of a swimming vessel of 21,000 square feet, with a 13 foot deep diving area and racing lanes for competitive swimming. The pool is filtered with a separate 16,000 square foot regeneration basin near the pool with approximately 7000 aquatic plants. 

The post BioNova Natural Pools Wins 1st Place! appeared first on BioNova®.

In general, however, you can expect to see different pond weeds pop up at different times of the year based on environmental temperature, just like the dandelions and clovers in your lawn will grow and flower at different times during the spring and summer. If your NSP or pond freezes over, the perennial weeds will typically die back in the winter and re-emerge in the spring. Some plants, however, will continue to grow throughout the cold season, though at a much slower rate than you’d see in the warmer summer months.

Trouble surfaces when water temperatures drop to the point where algaecides and herbicides become ineffective, but the weeds continue to grow. Algaecides such as copper, for example, stop working when the water is below 60° Fahrenheit. In addition, beneficial bacteria in an aquatic environment slow down and will even become dormant when temperatures fall below 50°F.

It should also be noted that some winter algae blooms can be beneficial once spring arrives. Diatoms, a major group of algae, can thrive in the winter as they take advantage of reduced competition from other plants that grow through the summer. Come spring this will benefit the NSP as diatoms with take out nutrients in the water, and other beneficial organisms will in turn eat the diatoms leading to clear water.

Unfortunately, if you are seeing an excess of algae growth during the winter months and the water temperatures are below 60° Fahrenheit, there is not much you can do to fight it, other than manually removing it, until temperatures rise in the spring and beneficial bacteria begins to thrive again. Just know that this a normal part of an aquatic environments life cycle.

The post Winter Natural Swimming Pool Tips: Does Algae Stop Growing During the Winter? appeared first on BioNova®.

January 7th at 2p EST

January 21st at 2p EST

February 4th at 2p EST

February 18th at 2p EST

No registration required.  Simply click on this link on the date you’d like to attend.

All Sessions will provide the same content, providing the attendee with information on

What is an NSP
Types of Biological filters
Operation and maintenance
BioNova’s role in your project

The post Webinars: All you need to know about Natural Swimming Pools appeared first on BioNova®.

This invitation is extended to all current BioNova Dealers as well as Landscape and Swimming Pool designers/builders who are interested in adding NSPs to their current business portfolio.

This 4 day seminar is FREE to our BioNova Dealers

$275 per person for NON BioNova Dealers

Hotel reservations should be made direct with the Marriot

Contact Allen Schnaak (allen@bionovanaturalpools.com) to register those who would like to attend.

The post BioNova Dealer meeting 2023: Mar 29th – Apr 1st appeared first on BioNova®.

BioNova® has been a Fox Pool Dealer for many years. In addition to the steel and concrete pool systems that Fox manufactures, Fox also manufactures the vault for the BioNova® BF4 biological filtration system.

The post Fox Pool Dealer Seminar 2022 appeared first on BioNova®.

The post BioNova® Contributes to Realtor® Magazine appeared first on BioNova®.