Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Creating the food chain Plankton

It doesn't take much established FA to overpower the phytoplankton. A narrow band of FA around the perimeter of a pond is enough FA to be problematic for producing a bloom. Add some extra nutrients manually or with runoff and the FA blooms quickly. The more it grows, the clearer the water gets and the deeper and more the FA grows. It can get "out of hand" quickly. You will always have some phytoplankton even in a thick massive FA bloom. It is just the phytoplankton is suppressed from forming a dense bloom. Actually if truth be known it is probably the ratio of N:P that has a lot to do with causing the FA vs phytoplankton to bloom. More research needs to be done with this topic. Most just eliminate the FA or weed competitative factor to play it safe, then fertilize. A fish hatchery guy just told me today that he was going to kill the FA in his pond with Curtine and then fertilize to produce a bloom.

In northern ponds it is usually suggested to not fertilize to get a bloom unless you are a fish hatchery who can usually monitor the bloom and are expereined with blooms. Blooms are hard and troublessome to maintain at corrrect densities in northern ponds. If you keep the FA suppressed reasonably,, very adequate phyto and zooplankton occur naturally in our more limestone based Ohio soils. Do you know your total hardness or alkalinity of the current pond water? Usually if you feed pellets to the fish this will grow big fish and compensate for not having a dense fertilized bloom. Actually feeding fish will help create a nominal ongoing bloom due to the added nutrients from the pellet feeding. For the first year I would feed pellets, and use some manual methods to stiffle early growths of FA.

Phytoplankton is responsible for creating most of the DO in the oxygen budget for the pond ecosystem. Obvious lack of a plankton bloom then transfers the majority of the DO production to the FA or submerged plants.

Blooms typically grow and increase until the nutrients are depleated due to some limiting factor or the nutrient ratio shifts and the bloom changes species composition or size. Blooms can be managed by monitoring the nutrient compositon and concentrations but this is only practical or doable by academic types. Definately not by hatcheries or pond owners. More practically blooms can be slowed or 'trimmed' with partial herbicide applications. IMO best way to trim a blooom is with Sodium carbonate peroxyhydrate, aka peroxyhydrate (Green Clean, Phycomycin) or secondarly Cutrine-Plus (buffered copper based products).