Algae control

Darren Wright

Administrator
Staff member
Messages
20,088
Location
Springfield, Missouri
I spent a good part of the day draining my fish pond, patching a crack, and cleaning it up. It had gotten to the consistency of pea soup. I think it was a fish family reunion as they physically haven't seen one another in 6 months or so. ;)

I've got a bio filter box, which also runs through a uv light filter, which is supposed to kill algae. It looks like the bulb went out, so have a new one on order. I kept seeing Barley bales (fish pond size) for sale. Looks like they help control algae by creating a chemical that prohibits the growth of algae, but not harm fish or other vegetation (http://extension.psu.edu/natural-resources/water/ponds/barley-straw). So anyone use these?

I went ahead and ordered some as well as some pellets for mosquito control to put in the pond and fountains too.

I was surprised how big the fish were, they were just 5 for $1 feeders last year, now about 4 - 5" long.
2013-07-14 20.30.24.jpg

2013-07-14 21.24.27.jpg
 
Amazing aint it. Sounds like exactly the same situation I had. And the little 'comet' 5/1$ really do grow pretty rapidly.

Looks great!
 
The filter with the uv light was huge, as well as putting in some water hyacinths and some other floating plants.
 
Mine fish would get a whole lot bigger if it wasn't for the herons!! They usually do pretty good for a year or so and then blam, all gone (I think it happens once they get big enough to see).

Don't have a lot of problems with algae, not entirely sure why. Some of the blue green stringy stuff grows where the waterfall feeds back in but its easy to scoop out every few weeks. I don't really feed the fish much so they eat the algae back pretty good (couple of times/year when it looks like they're running out of algae). The bristle brush screens sure do get loaded with fish poo though. About every 2 weeks I hose them off onto the lawn.

I like the waterfall, but it is a somewhat constant hunt for leaks around the edges.. It was a "complicated" place to put in as its on top of some laaarge rocks otherwise I don't think it would be quite as bad.

I'm surprised your fish don't just eat all of the plants.. maybe they aren't as hungry as mine :D
 
The filter with the uv light was huge, as well as putting in some water hyacinths and some other floating plants.
You still had algae? or did that take care of it?

I'm surprised your fish don't just eat all of the plants.. maybe they aren't as hungry as mine :D
Well, the strand of algae I've got is the floating kind, the stringy stuff I could live with and tend to let some of it form around the walls. It was literally pea soup. had to wrap the pump up in netting material and still had to keep rinsing it off every few minutes to unclog it.
 
The filter with the uv light was huge, as well as putting in some water hyacinths and some other floating plants.

It works? My wife is constantly fighting algae. She has tried using algae eating fish and cleaning frequently. No success yet.
Usually just about the time her fish get to an interesting size the racoons come along and eat them.
 
I have tried barley stray before but never noticed any difference. I think the thing with it is it does not do anything to get rid of algae growth. It is suppose to stop it from starting in the first place so do NOT use it with the intent to get rid of existing algae. Each spring I buy "water hyacinth" plants from a seller on e-bay usually based in Florida maybe California I think. They are VERY small frail looking plants when they arrive but I add them to my bio-filter and as soon as the weather starts to warm up and the fish get real active and start eating again the plants really kick in and handle the "load" in the pond. The fish poo feeds the plants and then the plants provide other nutrients back into the water. When the plants start to get too big for my filter I will pull them from the filter and set them in the pond. The Koi go crazy eating the very long roots on the plants.

(I thought I should clarify something.....here in Indiana the fish go dormant in the winter. This means they stop eating when the temps get below 50 degrees and anything below about 40 they will group together in a corner and sit near motionless for the next several months. Then in the spring as the air tempeture rises they again start to swim around and when the water temp get up to about 50 they want to eat again and the cycle starts all over.)

Darren, I don't mean to hijack your thread but I shot a quick video of my pond tonight and thought I would add it here.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10k6WAoldnE&feature=youtu.be
 
Last edited:
Very cool pond Tom, thanks for the tour. Those guys look to be pretty friendly, mine are definitely shy. Have tried to get them used to me feeding them, but the food just tends to sink as they huddle in the corner together, so I've gotten where I only feed them at night where I can enjoy watching them.

I've got an area where I could pump water above the pond and do a waterfall/stream, so may have to consider doing so with a biofilter like you've done. I stopped by the local fish store and bought some anubias congensis and amazon compactas, one of each. Both are supposed to grow quickly and be pretty maintenance free. I also remembered that I have some blue dye for algae control, so put a few drops in tonight.
 
Tom you make great videos and excellent explanation. Wish I had a nice pond like that to sit next to and have a beer at sunset. Cannot think of anything more relaxing than seeing those "wet pets" fussing and hearing the water. Cool water wheel you made. I will send a link of this to my buddy who has just re arranged his pond and water fall for the second time but has no fish. And thanks for the info on what the fish do when temps drop I always wondered about them and winter.

You did not finish your comment about the eggs, you mentioned trying to hatch the eggs outside the pond and not being successful but the ones you say were born in the pond you mean from eggs laid in the pond? If so you must have a pretty healthy pond and well laid out for fish to do that from what I understand about the temperament of fish.

Thanks for the tour.:thumb:
 
Tom you make great videos and excellent explanation. Wish I had a nice pond like that to sit next to and have a beer at sunset. Cannot think of anything more relaxing than seeing those "wet pets" fussing and hearing the water. Cool water wheel you made. I will send a link of this to my buddy who has just re arranged his pond and water fall for the second time but has no fish. And thanks for the info on what the fish do when temps drop I always wondered about them and winter.

You did not finish your comment about the eggs, you mentioned trying to hatch the eggs outside the pond and not being successful but the ones you say were born in the pond you mean from eggs laid in the pond? If so you must have a pretty healthy pond and well laid out for fish to do that from what I understand about the temperament of fish.

Thanks for the tour.:thumb:

Rob, when they lay eggs the pond surfaces are completely covered in tiny white dots. I have a video somewhere......I'll try to find it later tonight and post it here. Anyway in the past I have scooped up handfuls of the eggs and put them into an aquarium and added a heater and kept them in my garage over the winter. Only the strongest will survive. As they grow they will eat each other so in order to raise them you really have to keep them separated or else they start to disappear. One winter I must have started with thousands of eggs in this tank but only ended up with about 6 good healthy koi. Now in the pond itself the adult fish will start eating the eggs as soon as they are laid and will eat them all within about 48 hours. So it's possible for the spawning process to take place and I never see it if I miss a day or two looking at the pond. Every once and a while I will notice a new fish or two that happened to hatch, and hide long enough to avoid being eaten and will survive. I had this happen two summers ago. All those eggs and I didn't do anything to save any but one fish managed to survive and is that smaller white colored one I pointed out in the video. They are very friendly fish. I can lean in and actually pet their heads and they don't seem to mind too much. I do have Herons here also that have gotten some of my fish in the past. I have a decoy I put out to deter them. It's not fun when I see that happen.
 
Rob, when they lay eggs the pond surfaces are completely covered in tiny white dots. I have a video somewhere......I'll try to find it later tonight and post it here. Anyway in the past I have scooped up handfuls of the eggs and put them into an aquarium and added a heater and kept them in my garage over the winter. Only the strongest will survive. As they grow they will eat each other so in order to raise them you really have to keep them separated or else they start to disappear. One winter I must have started with thousands of eggs in this tank but only ended up with about 6 good healthy koi.

I have a friend who had a "pond" (of sorts) at a place he was renting. He had a fairly bad mosquito issue around it but didn't really want to engage chemical controls so I suggested a handful of goldfish which love mosquito larva. This ended horribly. Apparently goldfish are a bit more prolific than koi.. By the end of the summer he had literally hundreds of goldfish in a pond of rapidly diminishing size (it was quite large but was in the back 40 where getting water to it was difficult so mostly depended on rain). The amount of fish poop from those little fellows was unbelievable. The worst part was that his dog absolutely LOVED it.. so there was the multiple times/day bath.

Oddly I have the same goldfish in my pond and have never had a problem like that, I believe its mostly because the eggs get sucked up and sent over the waterfall in my setup as I occasionally find them in the filter.
 
...you say were born in the pond you mean from eggs laid in the pond? If so you must have a pretty healthy pond and well laid out for fish to do that from what I understand about the temperament of fish...

It's actually pretty easy. You just feed them a nice dinner, light a few candles, put on a little fishy mood music, and then just let nature take its course. :rofl:
 
Darren,

The only thing that ever worked for me was a *very* low tech biofilter. I got a submersible pump, a heavy duty 55 gallon trashcan, and enough lava rock (like one puts in a barbeque) to fill up the trash can. Dug that into the ground right next to the pond, pumped the water into the bottom and let it percolate up. I used the cover (lid) so I wouldn't get mosquito larva in there. It ran back into the pond via some 2 inch PVC. Worked like a dream... especially after they made water hyacinth illegal to sell in my region (something about them escaping into the waterways).

One caveat: I could never, ever, clean it. Tried one time, and went right back to pea soup for a week. Seems I destroyed all the bacteria.

Good luck!

Bill
 
Now if I had not met you recently you might have convinced me of this point but after having met you I very much doubt you were not the one in stockings. :)

Legwarmers, yes. Stockings, no. :D And especially not fishnets. This ain't the Rocky Horror Picture Show, buddy. :rofl:
 
I've had a barley bale and new plants in the pond for about a week, it's been slowly getting cloudier and cloudier. I had ordered a new UV bulb from Amazon for my existing UV filter, but found the quartz lens/tube had gotten cracked and needed replacing. Water had gotten into the lighting socket and corroded it. I ended up doing a return on the bulb and buying a new UV filter, which should be here by the end of the week.

As a side note, Amazon was awesome about the return, they simply refunded my money and told me to keep the bulb.

Edit: Reading some additional info on the bales, it looks like it takes about a month for them to kick in as the bales start to decay, they were pretty fresh when I received them.
 
Last edited:
My (2500 gallon) pond is cloudy every Spring, as the water starts to warm up. At around 60°, it gets really murky, but then the various plants start to grow. I have a dozen lilies, and eight or ten dwarf papyrus, and some iris the are all winter-hardy, some 'submerged grasses,' and every Spring I add water hyacinths and water lettuce to it - about a dozen of each. Within a week of the plant's growing, the water magically clears. Last week, during our long heat wave, the temp got up to 82°, but the water stayed clear. The various plants' foliage now covers about half the water surface, and the hyacinth & lettuce roots hang down about a foot below the surface.

I haven't added any chemicals at all since about mid-march, when I added a couple doses of MicrobeLift® Spring/Summer treatment..

BTW, others have mentioned the fish eating the plants' roots. I've not (yet) had that problem. I have a dozen Koi, ranging from 4" up thru 16", and several Shebunkin, as well as a couple dozen Comets in there. Also, a few frogs, and some snails.

These pix are from about six weeks ago:

IMG_0156 (Custom).JPGIMG_0157 (Custom).jpgIMG_0158 (Custom).JPGIMG_0159 (Custom).JPGIMG_0160 (Custom).JPG
 
Top