Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Help water that smells bad

I am hoping someone has some insight/experienc. I get my house water from the smaller of my two ponds - might be 1/5 acre - 9' deep in the middle.

The pond is 25 yrs. old and I have been here the last 21 years. This problem is new - has never been a problem before.

We have water that has some brown color to it and an odor of "something alive". I bring the water into the house with a pump - the take up has a filter cannister on it. I add chlorine bleach with a chlorine pump - then into a 50 gallon settling tank, then into a second 50 gallon tank, then through a "greensand" filter I believe is designed to remove chlorine.

The water coming out of the first tank tests out to > 3 ppm chlorine. Used to be adequate - causes the solids to settle out.

Here is what is different now (I think). The pond is brown and I can no longer see the fish. I think it may be an algae bloom. I am confident it is not sediment as it has not rained in over a week and the pond is not clearing up. Plus sediment doesn't smell like dead "live stuff" from a pond.

Any suggestions on how to clear the water in the pond? Remember it is most likely algae, not sediment - sediment would have settled out and plus probably no odor.

Is the pond aerated?

AatW - You probably have a planktonic algae bloom. "Odor of something alive" is not a very accurate or descriptive term. My girlfriend has quite a different odor than flowers, the dog, dead fish or a pig farm.

Your water treatment sand filter is to remove a lot of the larger suspended solids. If you are not measuring or detecting chlorine in your finish water (tap) then it is likely being bound, converted or dissipated somewhere between the retention tank (50g settling tank) and the distribution line. Chlorine ions can get bound and converted to other complex chemicals when exposed to dissolved organic substances. This is likey to occur in the sand filter where large amounts of particulates accumulate. Manganese green sand filters are designed to primarily remove one form of iron in the water. Charcoal filters can remove some chlorine by-products. If I drank this water I would have a reverse osmosis filter on the drinking water tap due to the production of potentially harmful chlorine by products.

The pond is not aerated. Bill I use the term "something alive" to distinguish from "sulpher smell" and stuff like that. I am guessing it is "dissolved organic substances". The strange part is it has not happened before in over 20 years here using that pond. We are drinking bottled water. The water test shows Chlorine at >3.0 ppm.

I was wondering if there was a natural way to clear the water. I have never seen it so lacking in clarity. It is brown stuff and I guess algae. Any ideas on how to clear it? Or where to begin to get a direction to clear it?

Unfortunately I don't have room for a reverse osmosis system under the kitchen sink. It would have to treat the entire water supply and I don't think that is feasible.

There are ways to get rid of the plankton (brown or green), if that is the problem, but they can have bad consequences for your fish and water quality. I am not sure I want to go further with this unless you want to take a major risk of a DO crash.

Thanks Eric. I guess I will "wait and see". I do not want to do anything that might have bad consequences for the fish and water quality.

I guess I was hoping I could add some "palnkton eating koi" or something like that and clean up the water and eliminate the problem. Guess that is not as simple as I was hoping for.

Water Smells, will I have a question, I have a 1 acre pond that is feed by a well that went through a 120 feet of granite and then fell into a cavity, the well ended up at 165 feet, but the water smells like sulfur actually lithium, my fish are in perfect health and extremly active, I feed Purina Fish chow. Now the question, has anyone ever experience this, the sulfur smell is real apparent when it come into the pond, but then after entering the
pond, it has a normal smell, I got a water test kit, everything tested perfect. Strange huh.

I forgot to mention that my well produces 75 Gallon of water a minute. So I only add water occasionally, becaue I don't want to waste water over the overflow pipe.

path, H2S...hydrogen sulfide is a pretty common gas released from groundwater brought to the surface....we have it in our well water, and everybody (us and pets) do fine....at least so far :rolleyes:

The H2S would outgas fairly quick once the water is pumped into the pond.

I've some of sulfur water here and there around the country. It makes the absolutely vilest grape kool-aid in the universe.

You've got that right! I've tasted some horribly skunky-brimstone-rotten-egg water around the country... especially in the Permian Basin. Not good for making beer!

path173,

H2S can also make pond water acidic. It's a good idea to watch the PH and buffer as needed.

One of the many midwestern properties that we researched for purchase was about 5 miles off the Mississippi River. When we talked to a couple of well drillers, they both concurred that we were lookin' at a 300+ ft well. They also talked of having to use sulfer tanks to make the water palatable. We ditched the property for numerous reasons, that just being one. I have no idea what these tanks look like, nor their effectiveness.