Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Muddy Water to Green Overnight??

We recently renovated about a 3/4 acre pond in East Texas. After about a 5 inch rain a week or two ago, it filled completely. We were planning to add Alum in the next week or two to clear the muddy water before we started to stock.

Practically overnight (certainly within 24 hrs) we noticed the water started to turn green. You can see how the left side of the picture below the water is still muddy while the right side of the picture the water is now green. Who knows, by morning time our whole pond may have green water.

Is this normal???? Can we/should we still try to clear it with Alum?????

Is that algae? That is a DEEP green.

To me, that just doesn't look like a normal algae bloom. Have you had any pollen lately that could be floating?

No pollen that I'm aware of. The only thing we've done is spread rye. That was a couple of weeks ago.

Hard to tell from the pic. Is the green in the water col. or on the bottom ? My guess is the start of a winter/spring FA and not a plankton bloom.

Renovated ponds have a lot of nutrients available for plants to use.

Would some more pics help? If it is a FA, is everything ok? Should we still go with our Alum treatment? (what does FA stand for?)

Filimentous algea, horrible at spelling lol.

Ok, so this morning the green water was gone. I've attached two pics from last night, including the original on the thread, and four others from today. Completely different. You can see some of the existing grass from the original dam under water in a couple of pics.

Is this change in the water a bad thing? Again, we are going to do an Alum treatment in the next couple of weeks to clear the muddy water before we begin our stocking program.

My guess is your pond's biology and chemistry is going through wild cycles right now due to high levels of nutrients, and you may be best served by waiting it out a little before you add another variable (alum) into the mix.

What has likely happened is you had a massive FA bloom on top of the mud particles when the wind was still and the sun was out. Then during the night the FA settled to the bottom since a lot of particles clung onto it and it stopped producing O2 bubbles. Now it is down where it is dark and will likely die, decay, and then add nutrients back into the water. Meanwhile the chemistry will jump all over the place until the cycle stabilizes and nutrients are plastered to the bottom.

Alum may wind up exposing a deeper nutrient-rich water column to the sun, making the FA go nuts making things worse.

I think with what seems to be a high level of nutrients you need to get either a bunch of pond plants established to soak them up ASAP, or pray for enough rain to flush the pond, or control through the magic of chemistry.

Note: This comes from large aquarium experience, YMMV with a pond.

I would do a jar test and see what happens.

My recent devotion to observing my pond the past 2 years has taught me do not make hasty theories. Our East Texas weather can throw some curveballs. Recent rains have turned our pond over to a muddy color, reflective of the red clay soil of my area. I'd take it slow and easy, giving things time to settle after you or mother nature has applied some kind of "change."

Ewest, a jar test regarding what? What would we be looking for? We've done jar tests before to see if the clay settled but it did not. That's why we were going to do the Alum treatment in the coming weeks to clear the water somewhat before we stocked. Now I'm confused.

Why does this have to become such an obsession? It's consuming me!

Standard jar test with your water. Do several at the same time (water from different parts of the pond) and leave them outside by the pond. Wait and see if settling occurs. If not use alum or lime to get it to settle and determine the amount. Once clear leave in jars and see what FA or plankton developed. Better than a big test on the pond.Little tests are easy to clean up results while big ones not so much