Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Brown Surface Algae?

Hello everyone at Pond Boss! I'm a pond rookie and this seems like the holy grail of pond experts and info!

I live in MN and dug a 1/4 acre pond over the winter that borders a type #2 wetland, the base is all sand and the pond naturally filled and is about 10' deep. I've got FHM's breeding in there like gang busters and I'm waiting on a permit to stock it with HBG's. The surface water around here is super rusty and my pond probably only has 8" of clarity due to the rust. I'm aerating with a 7CFM pump (way overkill I'm told), but it circulates the water nicely!

Within the last couple weeks it has begun to develop a brown surface film and I'm trying to figure out what it is. From what I've read brown algae doesn't fair well in full sun, and it is some type of paper thin coating. Everyone that come over can't believe I would let my kids swim in there, but I can't find any good reasons not to let them swim out there. People seem to have some very odd misconceptions about ponds around here.. But have no problem swimming in larger lakes.. I don't quite understand it? I don't have any waterfowl or animals using the pond, and the water quality appears to be quite good.

Does anyone have any ideas on what exactly is forming here? It has been super hot up this way and the surface water temp has to be 80+ degrees during the day. I think I attached the pictures correctly, I guess I'll find out!



THANKS!
Ben

Welcome to the forum. I''ve never had that around here, but since it's the holidays some of the experts may not check until tomorrow.

When you say rust, I'm assuming that your water has a high iron content. Do you know what the iron content is?

Thanks for the reply and welcome!

Yes, the water is high in Iron. I haven't had it tested, but I know we had the same issue with our well water and had to add a special element to our water softener to eliminate it.

Thanks Again!
Ben

I have the same stuff that just started showing up here in my pond in Ontario this week. I have attached a few pictures of it. Last year I had the same thing happen but after I had been gone for a week and power outage reset my timers and I had no air for the week. When I got back the pond had a major bloom going, killed about 6 brown trout and larger perch. Turned the diffusers back on and by the next day the green was gone and I had the rusty looking scum for a week or two.

This year, the pond was perfect (I have kept the pond died pretty hard as I still have about 25 brookies and all my browns and tigers still alive and doing well) and I wanted to keep the temps down. In the last week our air temps have been in the low 90's and the surface temp is just getting into the 80's now. Yesterday the rust colored scum started showing up pretty good as well as a few matts of floating algea. I am wondering if I had a mild bloom going and it died off. So far, so good though and no fish are floating!

Ryan - your trout may have died and are decaying on the bottom releasing nutrients stimulating the "bloom". Maybe? Maybe not. You won't know until fall when water cools and trout show up again. Expect the brook trout to die before the browns.

Hello Ryan!

It looks like you took those pictures from my pond! We have been dealing with the same weather (which sucks!).. Good to hear your fish are handling it well... I'm going to purchase a microscope to try to identify ours, and I haven't been letting the kids out there till I figure it out. Let me ask you this... Does your Algae change colors? Maybe this is totally normal, but I really have no idea? When the sun falls behind the trees, within 10 minutes the Algae turns bright green.. It is the craziest thing I've ever seen! I was going to take a time lapse video just because it is so crazy to watch, like a Chameleon! I've attached 3 pictures from last evening, while it was changing.

Thanks for the reply!

Ben

The trout are still very much alive Bill... hooked into one of the brookies for a split 2 nights ago.

Ben- mine actually doesn't turn color a whole lot but durring the day in the heat/sun it turns the very brown/rust color. In the early morning it has a little green tinge to it and has bubbles all over it but nothing major. I moved my diffusers up to within 1' of the surface today and will leave the air going all weekend. I have the air turned off in the other end of the pond (peanut shaped) and this floating junk can't make its way past the middle diffuser in the narrow part of the pond. All the trout are keeping cool in the deep (18'+) area where I have the diffusers shut off and the bottom temp is at aprox 68*. This area of the pond is also shadded the most from mature maple tree's.

One thing I am wonding with mine is if it is just decaying leaf mater thats coming up the surface. Being in a hardmaple bush, and the tree's within 20 feet of all edges of the pond its impossible to keep the leaves out in the fall. Up untill last week I could still alot of leaves on the bottom that were decaying and almost discenagrating when I would touch them with my net while manually removing algea around the edges.

Any idea's or opinions if this could be the cause?

RyanB

RyanB your pictures show something that looks like pollen, and a bit of floating algea.
Gravinus, your photos show what I would think is blue-green algea and not all BGA is blue or green, some can be red too!

BGA is easy to control with a light dosage of 0.1mg/l (0.1ppm) of copper in the water for most species of BGA.

Pollen is difficult to remove without breaking surface tension, but it is not dangerous.

Ryan - do you feed the trout pellets when the water is cooler? Feeding fish adds nutriets to the water body depending how much is fed /ac per day. A higher phosphorus and lower nitrogen in the water could cause a bluegreen algae surface scum bloom as mentioned by M.Paris. If you use a copper product to reduce it, I would just spray the scum part and not treat the whole pond with copper. Trout and minnows are very sensitive to copper compared to bass and sunfish. Get some suggested dosages of Cu to water ratio here before doing a copper treatment. Note that killing all that algae biomass and allowing it to sink and while sinking and sunk, it will consume lots of DO in the deeper water stressing the trout. It would be best to try and skim out using a very fine mesh net or pump out the thicker surface scums to mimimize DO consumption.

I've been trying to think of an easy way for you to check if it is bluegreen algae without looking at it with a microscope. Try this: collect some of the surface scum with water in a glass jar about 1/3 to 1/2 full. Cap the jar for 8-12 hours in open light not darkness. Open the lid and carefully smell the air in the jar. If the air smells very moldy or a strong vile odor then it is very likely bluegreen algae. Note: some bluegreens will not have an offensive odor.

Thanks for the info everyone!

I've got a couple samples out in the sun right now. Initially, there wasn't any real smell to the samples and the pond still smells fresh. Has anyone ever came in physical contact with Blue/Green strains before? I'm just curious what the likelihood of showing symptoms after contact with it would be. I've definitely came in contact with it and our dog has swam/drank it (now we keep him chained up).

In my situation there is definitely a lot of decaying matter in the pond. This area was about 18" of peat on the surface, which is now exposed to the water around the entire perimeter and the oxygen content of the water should be quite high. I've been finding chunks of this material washing up along the shores and you can tell it is all breaking down and rotting away.

Hi Bill, I quit feeding for the season back in the 2nd week of May. I was told by the supplier of my Browns and Tigers it may be best for them to just quit eating pellets at this time as the other years I fed most of the summer and they consumed more oxygen at that time and put more stress on them. They are quite hungry now and I pretty well quite any fishing in the pond other than a quick toss of a line/grub to check up on them with a barbless hook.

About the pollen...About a month ago, the pond was actually completly covered with it and the small maple shoots from the tree's around the pond..it was noticable for almost a week and then I assume it all sank. I am going to try out Bills recomendation for the BGA and see what happens.

Ryan

Some bluegreen algae Cyanobacteria can produce harmful affects to humans, animals and sometimes fish. Mostly but not always the concern is with floating scums as in the posts above. Very good idea keeping your dog out of the water. They can get sick from licking toxic algae off their fur. I am going to look at Gravinus's algae that has interesting color changes. Stay tuned for what it is.

http://www.odh.ohio.gov/features/odhfeatures/algalblooms.aspx

http://www.pca.state.mn.us/index.php/wat...gal-blooms.html

I left a couple sealed jars of the chameleon algae out all day today that were about 1/2 full. They were in the sun most of the day and I was scared as hell to open them up! Ended up not having any real smell to it, a little earthy smell, but you really had to get your nose in there to really smell anything and it wasn't an unpleasant smell.

Thanks to Bill for offering to identify this stuff! I really appreciate it!

My pond started showing this same symptom 2 days ago, the pictures posted look identical to what I'm seeing. I do have a microscope so I took a look to see if I could identify what was causing the brown film. It was really easy to make the prep by laying the glass slide on top of the film and the scum adhered. There is no odor to the water.

What I saw was predominately a lot of simple, single cell structures, some were clumped together and the cell walls were green even though the film looks light brown on my pond. I'm not an expert but I think this is planktonic algae. Maybe someone with knowledge in this area can verify for me. I saw a few other plankton on the slide that I could positively identify, Scenedesmus and Cyclotella. I did not see anything that was filamentous or branching and I have not had any FA since my pond was re-dug 2 years ago, knock on wood.

The slide also had very active moving organisms even though the slide appeared dry to my naked eye. There were some Paramecium and what I believe is Chilodonella in greater numbers. That's about it, not too exciting.

I have a 15' floating hoop made out of 1" pvc tubing that corrals my water hyacinths and there is no film inside the hoop so the hoop is keeping the film back. If this were pollen I would expect to see it inside the hoop.

I found this link that might help someone Algae Identification Field Guide

Background on pond:
My pond is 1/4 surface acre with Spotfin shiners and Bluntnose minnows, 13' deep at full pool but right now the water is down 2'. I haven't made a secchi disk yet but visibility is less than 2'. Water temperature is 85! I checked the water temperature a few days before the film appeared and it was 82.

I have a Vertex XL-5 that I've been running 24/7 and I add beneficial bacteria. I'm also trying a product that I can get local called EcoBoost which is supposed to help clear the water. The MSDS on EcoBoost says it's composed of Lithothamnium calcareum, an algae! The product is supposed to bind phosphates and my research shows that it softens water.

Ryan's algae film is comprised mostly of Euglena. I have never seen it form a scum that thick.

Bill we get that on occasion but not that thick over the entire lake. The down wind sides can get an inch thick with clumped red/brown euglena with some green phydo and during really hot periods some cyano patches.

Interesting thing is we had it every year until we put in TShad. After that no really thick outbreaks. Not sure of the cause and effect however.

Nice find Loretta.

What I have isn't Euglena, the cells are roundish shaped.

On page 27 of the Algae Identification Field Guide that I posted above it says that Chara is resistant to Copper Sulfate? Really?

its been two weeks since since I had the major issues with the pond but now things are pretty much cleared up now. I did loose a couple brook trout the last few days of the hot spell the other week but all looks good again...hopefully for the rest of the summer!!!

Ryan