Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Water chemistry Pond Scum

My pond gets a lot of organic matter going into it. Leaves stuff off trees etc etc. I had the pond redug & dedged last summer.
This year I have been aerating 24/7 and added some bacteria
When this organic stuff hits the water now it really decomposes fast. It turns into a brown film that stacks up on the downwind side of the pond near the spillway then goes away in about 24hrs. Do I just have to live with this situation?
_________________________

Dan: I am not sure what you mean by: "Do I just have to live with this situation?" Most of us would be thrilled if our organic stuff decomposed fast, turned into a brown film that went away in 24 hours.

FB

Gotta say I agree with Bing on this one, Dan! Sounds like you actually have a pretty good situation if stuff is handled that efficiently. If the scum bugs you enough, you could probably just skim it out and toss it onto your garden or something so it's out of the water. My only thought, not knowing much about how the decomposition process works in a pond, is to be sure that the scum is, in fact, decomposed organic material, and not some sort of pollution entering your pond from outside.

Thanks Todd & Bing

Not polution. I can see the twigs leaves & tree stuff almost turning to brown scum before my eyes.
I guess the scummy film bothers me. If I go out in the boat & stirr it up, the surface tension is hard to break up and i just have a lot of brown bubbles. Readjusted the aerator flow last night and the downwind side is a lot better but the shallower inflow area has a lot ofsurface tension scum on it. Maybe i'm getting an algae bloom along with it?

Could you post some pics, Dan? That may help everyone get a better sense of what you're dealing with, at least from a visual reference standpoint, and then be able to offer some other thoughts.

Good idea. I will take some pics tonight and thanks

Here are the Pics What do you think?

Last fall


Now







At the Shallow inflow end Algae?


A little duckweed?

FA, duckweed, some kind of rush or reed, and I can't tell on the other stuff.

I agree with Dave's assessment, Dan. The scum you're talking about looks almost like bubbly crud, which prompts me to ask how long you've had the aeration in place. If it's new - and I have absolutely no idea about this - could it be that the aeration is stirring things up and just doing some sort of deal where the crud is getting trapped on the bubbles? I know it's a bad example, but in our hot tub we use a chemical that we put in after we've used it several times and it just grabs all of the skin oil, hair stuff that my wife and daughters use, skin lotion, etc. and binds it to bubbles that we can then skim out. The funny thing is that your pond looks a little bit like that stuff and that's why I'm just throwing that idea out there. I wouldn't have any real basis in knowledge or experience to offer an explanation of what you're seeing, but I'm always happy and willing to throw out some random ideas for folks to chew on!

All that aside, that's a beautiful looking place you've got!

Also some FA and some windblown planktonic algae(plankton bloom). Of those get rid of the DW ASAP.

Yep, no emergency except on the duckweed.

Thank you everyone. Should I treat the FA (hey now I know what FA stands for)and what do you recommend for the duckweed?

Go to the website aquaplant.com. Click on floating plants, then common duckweed, then management options. It will give several chemicals you can use.

The duckweed is extremely invasive.

Dave, that URL leads to a page that is advertising the site name "aquaplant.com" for sale for the extremely reasonable price of $21,600. Got another link? Sounds like a site I'd like to peruse.

Thanks Eric. Todd, I've never had that problem.

Thanks, Eric. Turns out that's a site I already have bookmarked and it is definitely a great resource. Just didn't recognize the URL.

Than you Dave

That's called clean living, sir!

I can't take credit for clean living. Actually I just put Aquaplant without the .com and it works right. I blew it by getting more precise instead of more smart.