Topic: a question about hard water.

[thifasmom]

One of my mini ponds refuse to play nice and though it is full of oxygenating plants and only in the full sun till say about 14.00, it is still a disgusting pea soup green.

(my other pond which had a lot less oxygenating plants and is in full sun all day is pretty clear not crystal but no alga growth)

so i plan to change the water of the pea green soup today with the water from the girls paddling pool.

the pond i plan to clean has been topped up over the last two months with tap water as my rainwater butts ran dry. do you all think the pond water alkalinity would be more neutral now and therefor safe to use around my boggy area which has a few acid loving carnivorous plants (the boggy area isn't attached to any of my ponds per say and so only gets rain water). the pond was last it was last topped up last weekend.

[Robert_Brenchley]

Something is out of balance if you've got an algal bloom. These things can be transitory and unpredictable, but how long have you had the pond, and has it had a bloom before? Could anything nitrogen-rich have got into the water?

[thifasmom]

yes Robert I think I might have gotten to the root of the problem the ponds are both 2 seasons old and exactly the same type of plants but the problem one also seems to have acquired more life forms as in tadpoles and tiny mussels.

I cleaned both ponds at the beginning of spring to ensure there was no leaves etc. but on emptying the green one the bottom was thick with leaves ::) again from the oak tree close by (probably due to the high winds earl June).

the sludge content was also immense and I know the other pond hardly has any sludge. thankfully the sludge was not at all smelly so at least i know the oxygen levels are good like i said the oxygenating plants are pretty thick in this pond.

i removed about 5 litres of sludge (i did leave some behind as it was really full of lots of creepy crawlies) and all the leaves and replaced with fresh water which was standing overnight from the kids paddling pool.

hopefully the problem will sort itself out now for the rest of the season.

a new thing i found in the pond today was some freshwater shrimp ???, gotta assume its eggs came on birds feet, actually i think that's how the peacockle mussels got here too. they certainly weren't there last year and all the plants were brought as corms etc from Lidl last year.

[Robert_Brenchley]

Mussels are filter feeders which eat algae so don't remove those. The dead leaves may well have been the problem. It sounds like a thriving pond though, so the problems can't have gone too far.

[thifasmom]

no i  won't be removing the mussels or any of the little critters, checked it out this morning and everything has settled nicely. its great to be able to see whats swimming around again :).

[Kea]

You need to stop the leaves falling in in the autumn and being in full sun will also cause an algal bloom, you need to shade the surface of the pond more a water lily would help.

[Robert_Brenchley]

Scoop the leaves out before they sink.

[thifasmom]

You need to stop the leaves falling in in the autumn and being in full sun will also cause an algal bloom, you need to shade the surface of the pond more a water lily would help.

i generally net it during the winter months but we had some extremely high winds since spring which i think dumped lots of young leaves in the poor pond.

i plan to get a pygmy lily one each for the ponds. but this pond isn't in full sun all day like the other so i think it was more the extra nutrients from the green leaves that ended up in the pond which caused the problem this time.

Scoop the leaves out before they sink.

i do this quite regularly but it seems i missed a few ::)