Pond Boss Forums AQUATIC VEGETATION Controlling unwanted plants Historically clear pond now green soup

Our 1 acre pond in sw Grayson county tx has been crystal clear all of its 12 years. Overnight about 3 weeks ago it got murky. I brought in a jar of water and let it settle over night but it didn't settle, rather the green algae floated to the top.

It got worse this weekend and is green soup and very ugly!

The pond got very low - probably 4 feet deep vs 10-12 normal during the drought but filled up with winter and spring rains. Didn't get the algae until after it filled up.

I have never fertilized and there are no fertilized fields that run off into the pond. We have some neighbors that have been fishing quite a bit and it was after one of their fishing days that the water first became murky due to the floating suspended algae.

I have a gallon of copper sulfate but have been reluctant to use it. I have read about barley straw and such but there is no barley in is area that I know of. Have never had a fish kill. It has bass and channel cat which I used too feed but my feeder quit working a couple of years ago. I did hand feed last summer some but no more than the fish would eat. And have not fed this spring at all.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

I'm going to assume that you have a common algae bloom going on.With the pond level getting so low, and the quick increase of refilling,it's probably nothing to be concerned about. It would be my guess that the nutrients were laying there waiting to be used, leftover from days of deeper water. Since there were no other aquatics to use the nutrients, the phytoplankton bloomed.

Did there used to be rooted plants before the drought? If so, they too will return. They should take up some of the nutrients, reducing the bloom.


Welcome to Pond Boss!

It's never had a lot of rooted plants but did have some. Forgot to mention that I put a gallon of blue dye in the pond every spring but this time didn't get it in until after the green started. Only put a half gallon in last year because it was low due to drought, but this time I put 1.5 gallons since it is over full. Here again the green growth was already there before I put in the dye.

The green stuff is just suspended in the water everywhere making it green and murky. Not the filaments we used to call "moss".

Perhaps you didn't notice this before because of the application of the dye?

Moss and bloom are too toatally different things.. Bloom will be suspended making the water soupy almost thick soup looking.. It's a good thing (not visually)

I think GTA is aware of that when he said:

I read it as maybe he was making a comparison.

No, this is definitely suspended in the water whereas what we used to call "moss" which is actually another kind of algae seems attached to the bottom or at least to itself. Really have never had this before. The blue dye only slight tints the water - you can't tell except from a distance, so I know its been clear before - you could see the bottom whereas now you can't see 6 inches. Really ugly looking and I don't like it at all. Way in excess of the desired amount my understanding would be where you could see maybe 20 inches deep.

Anybody heard of using talapia or something for this? Not sure where you'd get them. Thought they were a salt water fish but I read somewhere that they can help with an algae bloom.

My guess is that the runoff brought nutreints into the pond from somewhere, and created the bloom. A local lake has the same thing happen to it every year, for a week or 3, then the suspended pieces disappear and a photoplankton bloom starts.

This year in that lake might be different. We'll see. It has a heavy infestation of EWM, and curly leaf pondweed. We got notice a week or so ago that they will be treating the whole lake with Fluridone for the next 90-120 days to try and control those plants. It'll be interesting to see if FA goes crazy. 365 acre lake...........

You could try some of the algacides that are on the market. I'd go with a liquid vs. a granular formulation, but tread lightly. You don't want to kill all the algae in the pond at once and cause an O2 crash.