Last few years have been having a lot of algae & weed troubles with my ponds. much more so than previous years. See this annotated picture:
The ponds are fully excavated, on very flat land. There is really no watershed due to the flatness of the land, so the ponds fill up in the springtime with field snow melt from the east. What looks like a runoff ditch is actually slightly pitched towards the small pond, not away from it.
The only time my ponds gain water is the couple months the snows is melting + rain. When the ponds get as full as I think they will get, I put a plug into the 12" culvert that leads into the small pond. The plug stays in until the fall. When I dug the ponds there was no real clay in sight, only some very silty grey clay, I lined the banks the best I could, but my pond level is at the mercy of the water table. Last year the water level fell 5 ft from spring to fall, as there was a terrible drought last spring.
Ever since I finished these ponds in 2009, the larger pond has always had very clear water, the smaller pond not as clear. However, the small pond always seems to get algae right away, almost like there is some under the ice even.
So far this spring, the algae cover looks like what is depicted in that annotated picture. The large pond does have a very thin patch of algae along the perimeter at the moment, but the small pond is already quite terrible.
The algae is bright green when it's under the water, but the part that floats turns brown, gets thick and matted.
Also, last year the weeds in the pond were the worst I have ever seen, it was pretty impossible to fish the pond. I bought a weed razor and a weed rake, and only got about 1/3 my way around the large pond before I gave up. I had filled the FEL on my backhoe many times with weeds that I yanked out.
I'd like it to be different this year so the ponds can actually be fished by my 85 year old father without him complaining about weeds.
What can be done? I've never added chemicals or pond dye because I didn't "believe" in that, but now I think I make be considering that...
I've been adding grass carp every 2-3 years, whatever the NYS DEC allows. I just added 18 more this past Friday.
I can go today and take pictures of the algae if that helps. However, I know some ppl say you can't identify from pictures on the internet...
I'd really like minimal weeds and algae this year if it's possible.
Some years the weeds/algae were not a problem at all...
