Help Blanketweed!

18 years ago

Our property in the Uk has a pond and my husband who is there currently has passed on the info that it is infested with blanketweed. He is starting manual removal and has bought a treatment for which you have to turn off the filter for 72 hours. What else can we do? Is barley straw a good idea. He says the water is a bit green. Is this a separate problem? I'm not sure when the filter was put back in operation by our house carer: it does have a UV light.

I was so looking forward to seeing the beautiful clear pond that I left last summer. I shall be in the UK for 2 months so can impliment your suggestions.

I love this site and visit daily in the USA

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Comments (5)

AJC_1
18 years ago
Hi, well the green water is a seperate problem, but putting the UV on will cure that one in a week or so, somtimes less, as for barley straw yes it does work, but it takes a while to get started.

My suggestion is put the UV on as soon as you can, then get some barley straw, try and work out the ammount of water in your pond and buy the barley packs as required, add them as soon as you can too, once the water clears with the UV remove some of the blanket weed (as much as possible) with a stick or bamboo cane, it will help and the barley straw may slow down its growth to prevent it being to much of a problem again (no gaurentees tho) but the process will take a few weeks to kick in.
chippewacat
18 years ago
Well this year the blanket weed is back, and I'm very glad it is too! The alternative was the curse of the yellow globules which are very unsightly and chokes everything, and does not do much for the wildlife either. I had the yellow globules last year and much prefer the green stuff!

At least blanket weed offers hiding places and food, and gives the great excuse to get your hands into the pond and pull it out and discover what else lives there! It makes me feel young to have a chance to 'play' with all that fibrous stuff! The barley straw does help a bit. Like robins, hedgehogs, and ladybirds, maybe blanket weed is just part of british countryside...
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It sounds as if you have what around here we call 'String Algea'. Long and stringy and can be collected by twirling around a brush. What I call 'Blanketweed' is the thick slimy stuff which clogs the pumps and floats to the surface when disturbed, forming a blanket on the water. Breaks up when you try to 'twirl it'. Probably the same thing in different forms! However....whatever it is, your UV filter won't remove it. As Dampflippers says...the UV only kills single cell algea i.e. green water. I have found (by accident) that Calcium Bentonite (Koi Clay) added to pond water seems for some reason to 'remove/kill' string algea/blanketweed and I will be adding it to my ponds again this year after the taddies have had their fill and it starts growing again. It is of course very good for the fish as it adds minerals to the water. (Could it be that a lack of certain minerals in the water is the reason why some people have problems with blanketweed and others don't?) I recommended it to friends last year who had problems and it certainly seemed to work. Barley straw is another 'solution' I used many years ago in my first pond. This doesn't kill blanketweed/string algea until it starts decomposing so takes a few weeks before any results are seen. Barley straw pellets work quickly but can initially turn the water 'tea coloured' and are expensive. This is just personal experience and may or may not work for you. If it's the sort of algea you can 'twirl', unless it's a real nuisance, I would just remove any excess manually Best of luck Sue
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anyanka
18 years ago
I deal with blanket weed by manual removal (winding it around a bamboo cane like making cotton candy). There's also lots of silkweed in my pond - much finer than the coarse blanket weed. I'll remove that later in the year, as it's full of toad tads and baby newts right now. It doesn't look good, but can't be removed without taking lots of little lives.
usgirl
Original Author
18 years ago
Thank you for your input. I take the point that there is a fine line between aesthetics and function and the preservation of wild life and environment.
A pity that our revered President doesn't subscribe to that-non implimentation of the Tokyo Protocol,drilling in the Alaskan wild life reserve etc!
But my distaste for President Bush is a big digression from blanketweed!!
mark22
18 years ago
We had a fair bit of blanket weed or string algae or whatever it is over the winter but it all dissapeared a few weeks ago and now there's just a fuzzy lining over the liner. The pond is quite old now and we've finally got a filter that works for our fish load and I think that helps a lot. That and the irises in the veggie filter which are growing huge this year. It's all about balance I think (and a lot of patience and learning).

Help Blanketweed!

Comments (5)

AJC_1

chippewacat

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usgirl
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Help Blanketweed!

Comments (5)

AJC_1

chippewacat

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anyanka

usgirlOriginal Author

mark22

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usgirl
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