pond algae controll

[Bullwinkle]

Any one having any luck? with all the sun we have been having the fish ponds are now an emerald green.

Has any one had any luck with filter media? .... I would like to avoid the chemical route as I plan to eat the fish.....

[nanawaledeej]

Are you using a bio-filter at all? Can you shade it ? How many gallon to how many fish?

[Lee M-S]

add more plants--water hyacinth is good. They consume the oxygen needed by algae. I also hand pull the larger algaes--a clean toilet brush is great on string algae.

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[Peter Epperson]

The rule of thumb is to cover at least 60% of the surface with plants. Lilies are good. The shade created and nutritional demands of the plants will clear the water up. No need to filter.

[okedokey]

Plants clear algae because they compete for nutrients. Underwater oxygenating plants really help, also as mentioned water hyacinth because they have such large underwater roots. So I like to plant a lot of underwater plants to help with this. You can get some of the common ones at the pet stores and put some in a bucket of water to reproduce before planting. My Koi will eat them if they aren't pretty well established before planting in the pond.

[oink]

Boy I sure wish I could give you a few thousand of my water lilies.

Pua`a
S. FL
Big Islander to be.

[MarkP]

My brother had a small pond in his back yard. We put a turtle in it and he lived for a few years but eventually died. Not sure why. Anyway we put water hyacinths in it. The turtle ate them. When I had him in a 90 gallon aquarium he destroyed the plants but when we put him in the pond that had much more surface area the innate productivity of the hyacinths was such that they kept ahead of him.

The water hyacinths were extremely messy in that they dropped a lot of root material to the bottom of the pond which became anaerobic and smelled like rotten eggs when you cleaned the muck out. In retrospect that might have been what did Yertle in.

[dakine]

azolla.. it'll cover your pond.. will eat all excessive nutients.. is a legume.. so can be scooped up and use as a top dressing in your garden to great benefit to all your plants.. and will disappear once your pond is clean

[dmbwest]

My situation ( problem ) was smooth bottom ... Threw a bunch of gravel in and water cleared up by itself ... Amazing.

Peter, do you recommend to folks to have some substrate in there as more surface area ?

aloha,
pog

[Bullwinkle]

Thanks for all the great replies - some times being a newbee comes with a big learning curve

Punaweb the best!