john

hey everyone.. i was wondering if you could take a look at these pics i just
took of my pond.
http://thenyscene.com/pond/1.htm

last year i had the same problem... green water.
I have narrowed it down to the following possible problems:
- Too much water flow
- Not enough water flow
- Not enough plants (although its only april here.. and still goes down to
the freezing point at night)
- The pump is too close the bottom (collects muck and spreads it through
out the pond)
- Not enough shade

any words of advice?? thanx!!!!
John

kathy

Hi John!

A couple suggestions.

Drain the pond and clean any muck out,
feed it to trees and garden beds.

How many fish do you have? Consider reducing
the stocking and not feeding as much.

Many, many more plants (though you may have
more than the pictures show, it is still early days
yet).

Consider some kind of external plant filter
I have a stock tank full of water hyacinth (in
season) and a waterfall full of watercress.
(That mulched bed to the side looks like a good
place for one.)

Shade is good. Trees provide shade but also
contribute debris. A skimmer comes in handy
for this.

A mechanical filter to screen some of the muck
and mulm. You can also prop your pump up on
something. Ours sits on a builder's brick.

Algae loves fish waste, rotting plant matter, muck
and mulm, fresh water and sunlight.

good luck! Let us know how it goes.

kathy :-)

http://www.blogfromthebog.com

dkat

Well your algae certainly gets enough sun to thrive! If I remember correctly your
pond is at the bottom of a long hill where any fertilizer you used would run into
it but I think even without this under current conditions you are going to get a
healthy algae bloom. What happens once all the plants have grown to cover the
water (at least 75% should be shaded by plants)? Without lack of sun or lack of
food your algae is going to thrive unless you kill it with UV. A thriving veggie
feeder would take out the food but for that to kick in you are going to have to
wait. Last year a ponder tempted me with the thought of not having algae from
thaw to July (when my plants knock out the algae) and I bought an inexpensive UV
on EBay. I've only had it last year and this but I'm happy with not having pea
soup right now is I normally would have. Just a thought.

snooze

Lift the pump off the bottom, place it on one or two bricks so it's not
****ing up the muck, although that doesn't look like the root cause. One way
to test this is shut the pump off for a few hrs and see if the stuff settles
out.

Once it warms up, consider adding water hyacinth if legal in your state, or
water cress. Add water lillies to shade the pond.

How many fish do you have, maybe there are too many for the water plants to
filter out the muck.

UV filters is an option.

Good luck,
-S

lou

hi have just joined the newsgroup & we have about a 20,000 litre pond,
have had it for about 2.5yrs now. from day one we had a uv filter &
have never had a problem with green water. the only thing we do get
abit of now is blanket weed. which we started to get more of in the
last year or so for some reason.
hope you've sorted your problem out now re green wtr, any tips for
blanket weed? have tried barley flakes & the fish just ate them, have
tried just removing the blanket weed but hard to do when have frogs****
& baby fish in water to avoid have just bought some extract of barley
straw by interpet to add but hope it works as quite costly. 1 bottle
costs £14.99 & will only do 2 applications & bottle says will need to
be done very couple of weeks! will keep my fingers crossed!

george

hi have just joined the newsgroup & we have about a 20,000 litre pond,
have had it for about 2.5yrs now. from day one we had a uv filter &
have never had a problem with green water. the only thing we do get
abit of now is blanket weed. which we started to get more of in the
last year or so for some reason.
hope you've sorted your problem out now re green wtr, any tips for
blanket weed? have tried barley flakes & the fish just ate them, have
tried just removing the blanket weed but hard to do when have frogs****
& baby fish in water to avoid have just bought some extract of barley
straw by interpet to add but hope it works as quite costly. 1 bottle
costs £14.99 & will only do 2 applications & bottle says will need to
be done very couple of weeks! will keep my fingers crossed!

Try using Aquazyme, or some similar product. Start putting it in as soon as the
water temperature gets over 50 degrees. Put it in once a week. After about a
month, you shouldn't have any more problems with algae, that is, if you also
have some kind of filtration. And add more plants as well.

kathy

Hi Lou!

Glad to *see* you here on rec.ponds.
Some folks had good luck here last year by sprinkling
plain, unscented, generic kitty litter on blanket weed,
which we call string algae.
If you decide to try it let us know how it works.

Other than that the same rules apply to it as regular algae,
starve it of nutrients - fish waste, muck and mulm of rotting
organics, sunlight and employing all manner of plants to
compete for the available nutrients.

kathy :-)
http://www.blogfromthebog.com