Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Help Blue green and white scum on pond

My 1.5 acre pond was refurbished last year. Drained 98% and dredged about 80% of the muck out.
I live in Illinois and it filled up fast this spring with torrential rains. We went ahead and stocked as well.
I had a little filamentous algae bloom but nothing major. Planktonic algae really bloomed about a month ago and just got worse. Now the water is a milky green and an I have bluish green and white scum gathering along the shore line and it stinks!.
I do have one aerator in there now and second going in later this summer.
Any idea what is going on? is this just the remaining muck moving up from the bottom or is my pond really sick?

Tom

Pics would help identify the problem..

I will post some tomorrow.

Here are some photos of what it looks like today.

Here you can see the planktonic algae suspended in the water. Nasty stuff!


I haven't seen any dead fish but there was a catfish meandering pretty close to the surface last night. Probably looking for some oxygen.

Here is the view from my deck. We are just finishing this house and are pretty excited about getting this pond cleaned up.


T

Have you sprayed anything on any of the algae?

Nope.

Blue-Green algae (Cyanobacteria) bloom. When the cell lysis, the pigment of the algal cell is released. Water entering this pond most likely high in phosphorus (or runoff from adjacent lawn fertilizers containing phosphorus....septic tanks...etc) (Total phosphorus >25 ppb).

Thanks Jeff, that is what I thought based on web research. There is not a lot of lawn fertilizers that would directly run off into the pond but there is another pond above ours that runs in when we get big rains.

What can you do to reduce it? Will it eventually dissipate?

Tom, I too have problems with planktonic algae. I'm wondering if anyone has any experience with a product called phoslock. Supposedly locks phosphorus permanently. May help you also.

Does anyone have experience with Phoslock?