How are your plants doing?

larryl:

the plants are doing fine .. the water lilies covering most of the surface & have bloomed all summer. The pond is on the north facing side of a 6 ft. white lattice work fence that gives some shade but it does get quite a bit of sun most of the day any way. The lilies shade the surface a lot though. Is that what you were thinking ... too much sun?

The skippy filter has the 4x6 inch scrubbers cut up in it for filtration.

-vieja

See the postings lower on the list of topcs for "Clear My Water" - you'll find some good info there.

I wrapped my pump with quilt batting and change it every 4 days or so and the water hasn't gotten green at all. plus it cleans out the stuff that goes thru the net and just circulates back thru the pond so it is nice and clean too.

Vieja, actually I was wondering how your floating plants are doing. It is the floaters that remove algae fueling nutrients from the water. If you don't have floaters or if they aren't doing well, you are probably accumulating phosphates in your water. Phosphates equal algae.

In my experience sun exposure really doesn't make all that much difference. I have seen pretty well shaded ponds turn green.

You can filter the algae out with the right filter, but it is a lot of work keeping the filter clean. A filter that is fine enough to filter unicellular algae will usually clog up pretty quickly.

You mentioned "clean the pond...again". If you drain it and clean it you start over at square one every time. If not, the skippy and good plants should take care of it with time. Patience?

Don't know about skippy filters... but I have no more string algae thanks to hundreds of very busy tadpoles. Maybe a UV filter would help ?

UV's do not do anything for string algae. And if you have string algae you usually don't have pea soup water. Glenda

mybusyfamily6: Wow!! I did try the batting (I have used it before one year when I had a smaller pump also)in the basket the pump sits in. The first day it was plugged with that green slime in just a few hours. I cleaned the batting & put it back in again and ..... the pond water was noticeably clearer!!! I've been doing this now for a few days & no more slime on top of the pond & the fish can be seen in the clearer water & the sponge prefilter on the pump doesn't get plugged up again either. The batting needs to be cleaned/replaced every day for awhile until it has trapped all that 'goop' I guess. Guess that batting is dense enough to trap that tiny green algae that just slipped right through the sponge filter before & got recirculated back into the pond again. Thanks SO much for your idea & reminding me of the batting I had used awhile back!

Of course, when the skippy filter got plugged & nearly drained the pond, the pond had to be refilled with fresh water so the batting had some help & a 'head start' initially! Can I hope this clearing is due to the batting or is it just normal pond clearing?!

Usually the first algae bloom takes a couple of weeks to clear up. I want to suggest you get rid of the worthless sponge prefilter and use some other type. All you really need for a prefilter is something to prevent larger debris from reaching the impeller. If you have algae trapped in the sponge it is still passing enough through to repopulate the pond. I adapted a well filter that works just fine. I may have to add more batting to the skippy but I only need to check the prefilter when leaves get in the water. Sandy