Here’s the scenario (one at least):

It’s Friday night, you and the family are packing up to go away for the weekend.  You breeze past the pond to say goodbye to your fish friends and throw them a little food until you get home Sunday night.  The weekend weather is beautiful, sunny and HOT!

You arrive home and go check the pond, it’s the first thing I do when I get home from being gone for a weekend. (Who am I kidding, I do this even when I run a quick errand, I love my fish!)  From a distance you can see neon green glowing from the pond, as you get closer it looks like a nuclear power plant waste area.  Your pond has turned a neon green practically overnight.   It was beautiful Friday and now it looks like this!

Algae Pond

Pond Before our Treatment

Does this scenario sound familiar?  Don’t be frustrated it happens to all of us at some point in time.  But why does this happen and how do we speed the process of clearing it up faster?

Algae is a plant, which needs food, water and ,you guessed it, sunlight/heat to grow.  Put all three of these elements together and you have created an algae farm!  This time of year, July through September,  algae growth in Morris County NJ can be trying at times and frustrating, but with a little patience and taking the correct steps this algae nightmare can go away.

There is a quick checklist we go through prior to trying to clearing up a green pond.  Otherwise any efforts may be useless.

  1. Is the pond overcrowded with fish?  (1″ of fish per 10 gallons of water is a good guide)
  2. Is the pond under-filtered?
  3. Are you feeding your fish too much?  (1-2 times per day, 1 time in the morning during extreme heat.)
  4. Could the pond use some more aquatic plants?
  5. Did anyone put any fertilizer or chemicals around or near the pond?

If you answered yes to any of the above questions, start with fixing that issue first.  Many times this phenomena of a pond turning green overnight is attributed to one of the above being out of balance or something foreign has entered the pond.

If you answered all of the above questions with a no or you addressed one of or a few of the issues above, let’s now talk about how to help the pond bounce back and clear up this unsightly green water.

In the past, our shotgun method used to have numerous steps, but we now have a fantastic unit at our disposal that does most of the work for us, it’s called the Water Treatment Dosing System.

This is what we do when we run into this problem:

  1. Clear Pond

    Pond 3 Days after Treatment

    Install a Dosing System.  We add the Clear Bag to the system which contains treatments to help clear the water.

  2. In addition to the Clear bag we will add supplemental pond bacteria.
  3. Addition of a water clarifier or flocculant (we will do this every  24 hours if needed)
  4. In the skimmer we will add something we call a Rapid Clear Pad.  This is a dense filter pad that will catch the microscopic floating algae that is causing the pond water to be green.  This pad will need to be changed daily for at least two days.  This all depends on how green the water is in the pond.
  5. We will also add additional aeration in the form of an extra pump or aerator.

Now we wait and keep an eye on the skimmer pad and add the after the water has cleared we will change the dosing system bag back to a Maintain bag to help keep the pond clean and clear. We have had great success with the above procedure and have seen ponds clear up in 24-36 hours after doing the above.  Sometimes though it may take up to a week or longer, this truly depends on your pond and situation.

For more information on algae and some other ways to beat this beast  please see our other blog:  Pond Algae! Help!

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A Frog’s Dream Aquatic Services is offering this blog as a personal information source to our website visitors. Pond services are performed in Morris County New Jersey (NJ) Hunterdon County New Jersey (NJ) Somerset County (NJ) and Warren County (NJ).Waterfall pondsStreams, and Fountains are all in our wheelhouse of talent. Explore our website for more ideas. Like ourFacebook page for daily inspiration. Receive our newsletter for monthly tips and a coupon or two.

 

12Jul 2016

Here’s the scenario (one at least): It’s Friday night, you and the family are packing up to go away for the weekend.  You breeze past the pond to say goodbye to your fish friends and throw them a little food until you get home Sunday night.  The weekend weather is beautiful, sunny and HOT! You […]

19May 2016

“When can I start feeding my koi or pond fish again?”  is a question we are asked almost daily this time of year. We understand why, too!   Your pond has either been cleaned or turned on for the spring,  the fish are becoming more and more active almost begging for food, and you can’t […]

08Apr 2016

Frogs!  All over the country spring is “hopping” and the frogs are singing, sometimes a bit too loud.   It’s no different here in Morris County, NJ, the frogs are getting busy.  We can hear them at night, the ruckus and noise they can create is music to our ears here at A Frog’s Dream as […]

01Mar 2016

Spring is around the corner for us in Morris County, NJ, it’s time to start thinking about planning a pond renovation or what you might want to do to change and enhance your existing fish pond or waterfall.  If you’re still dreaming of your first fish pond or waterfall, this too is a great time to plan […]

10Feb 2016

There is a constant fear in Morris County NJ among our existing customers and those looking to jump into the water garden hobby that raccoons and other four-legged pond predators will go swimming in your backyard pond, and while they’re in there, they’ll help themselves to some of your prize koi, shubunkin, or goldfish. Read more on how to deter them.

10Feb 2016

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