why not treat a pond like a giant aquarium?? - algae -

[frog girl]

Hi I new.

My question is if you can control algae in an aquarium by limiting P & providing all other nutrients in slight excess why not do that in a pond. If the pond was heavily planted enough couldn't you let the plants outcompete the algae just like indoors??

[Fishinapond]

Absolutely! That's exactly what many people do. The problems come in when you have too much decomposing material or too many fish supplying more nutrients than your plants can handle. As long os you remove dead leaves, blossoms and other muck (sometimes much harder than it sounds) and keep the fish load low enough you can balance the algae.

My pond is green until late June when the plants grow out enough to keep up then it usually stays balanced through the summer.

[frog girl]

Hmm. . .

So do people do things like add micronutrients, CO2 supplement etc. in ponds too?

I'm not sure how much I want to control the decomposing stuff though (I am trying to create an ecosystem and wild ponds do have a muck layer at the bottom.

I don't mind doing algae removal because it is just harvesting those nutrients without disturbing all the microorganisms that live in the bottom but last year my filamentous stuff got to choking levels & sunk some of my aquatic plants. I definitely need more.

I'm also thinking of installing a large scale biological filter. Water trickled through a bed of cattails. Do people do that??

[frog girl]

Also wouldn't my lilies eat the muck if I let them out of their pots?? Is there a drawback to that?? (Giant water lily turns into Ceimore )

Or maybe just put them in basket so their roots could get at the muck.

[RogerMcAllen]

You will probably want to leave the lillies in baskets so that you can easily move them around the pond. The biggest problem with muck is that it builds up over time, and toxic gases can form underneath.

I don't see a problem with letting the roots go into the muck, since this should be a good source of nutrients.

Depending on how you design it, your bed of cattails idea might work. On my pond I have a section that I fill with anacharis that does a pretty good job of grabbing particles out of the water and controlling algae. What other types of filtration do you have?

[frog girl]

I don't have another filter & don't really want one that isn't au natural (I know things like bioballs etc. do the best job but I don't want anything that artificial).

I have thought of running the water through a bed of pumice before the cattails which would do a similar thing except I might get anaerobic instead of aerobic bacteria going in there. I know aerobes do their job faster. I guess if the pumice was higher and the water just dribbled through it would work though. Hmm . . . (My husband will be after me about all my plans again -maniacal laughter)

I have one fastish waterfall & another that is just slow drip (i figure about 1500 gallons size). I might be able to put a pumice pile under the lip of the slow drip & run some water through that. Probably even pumice in the water under the fast waterfall would work. The problem is the algae covers everything so maybe it wouldn't help. With that much algae our water clarity is pretty great. I just work at removing a little bit every day. Less of that would be nice this summer.

Last year was our first year with the pond. We did pretty well for the first year really (tons of blooming lilies) 2 happy bog gardens & happily reproducing pup fish.

[frog girl]

P.S. I do clean out leaves & other dead plant materials but not obsessively. We do have a couple inches accumulated at the bottom.