Pond Boss Forums AQUATIC VEGETATION Controlling unwanted plants Green water

This has happened the last 2 summers.. This Pond is downland from a large Poultry Farm.. I am sure its a Algae bloom.. Is there something I can do..

Beautiful pond you've got there. I'm definately not an expert as some on the forum are but I'll ask a few questions that might help out. How much visibility do you have? In other words how deep can you see a white object in the pond? How long does your "green water" last each year?

No more than a foot
about 3-5 months during our hot summer

All I can think of is to divert some or most of the runoff from the chicken farm. Once the water is overly fertile, only time can remove the excess fertility.

What do you mean by down land ? Does the chicken waste run into your pond when it rains ? If it does then talk to the neighbors and have them stop the problem. It is possible that with warm weather your pond's natural fertility kicks in.

aeration, aeration, aeration; if at all possible.

That has all of the looks of a manure overload.

Some of the dairies South of Fort Worth in the Stephenville area were closed down several years ago because they couldn't control the effluent. I would talk to them and if necessary, I'd get in touch with the County Health guys. After they ignore you, I would go to the State. The next stop would be the EPA.

Actually, I know of a couple of cattle feed lots that had to do some pretty severe terracing. What you are showing pictures of is not OK.

Text book bluegreen alage bloom. Too many nutreints, you need to as burger mentioend aerate to lessen nutrinet lodaing. Bottom diffused aeration if deeper than 6 feet to create oxygen on the bottom of the pond to create beneficial that can then reduce organics and nutrinets.

I recognize water like that! Bright white side of split mollusk shell was only semi-visible under less than 2" of water. Not surprisingly, there was a big fish kill on the fairly large (50 acres?), shallow, private lake. Neighbors living next to lake are upset. Spent a bunch of time in the last week talking with experts from Dept Natural Resources, Agriculture, Public Health, Environmental Protection, and Corps of Engineers. Bad situation. May get worse before gets better... Anyway, based upon water color and my limited experience / knowledge, you're walking a fine line to a fish kill.

Seems like I heard a contributing factor was people using copper sulfate to kill off plants so nutrients took form of algae which is more likely to fish kill. Suggested draining down, killing off trash fish, revamping, and then planting plants to take up some of the nutrients so wouldn't be picked back up in form of algae blooms again or something like that. I may not be translating the essence correctly. If I am, then - longer term - if you can't control the nutrients going into the water, maybe you can add plants to control what uses those nutrients... Does that make sense? It's been a long week.

The land in the drainage area of this pond is private land, and these folks are only puting there chicken litter on their land.. Which is a common practice in East Texas, nothing illegal bout it.. There is no way to aireate this pond.. 4000' ft from the nearest power source..

Even though it is private property that they are fertilizing, they do not have a right, either legally or morally, to let it run off onto you.

The lake does not have the ability to assimlate the excessive nutrients that are washing in. Two things can help reverse this problem and solve it.

First as mentioned, secure the problem at its root or as Barney from the Andy Griffith show used to say..."Nip it in the bud" I would speak with your neighbors to help eliminate the washing in of the chicken waste.

As that is in the works, secondly add aeration. Aeration as Greg Grimes so well described will allow the lake to degass the harmfull gases like hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide while it allows the water that is brought from the bottom to absorb oxygen.

Once the bottom of the lake is aerobic (containing oxygen) it will provide the correct habitat for benificial aerobic bacteria to start tying up those nutritents that are feeding or for lack of better terms fertilizing the algae.

Secondly, by changing the bottom sediments from a negative charge to a positive charge when we aerate, we bond those nitrates and phosphates to the bottom sediments. This also ties up the nutrients so the algae is really hungry now.

Lastly, by circulating the water, the free floating algae cell will be brought down to the lower regions of the lake where the sun light will not be able to help this algae cell to produce chlorophyl (the green color). By combining all four of these elements, you should be very happy with the results.

Make sure if aeration is in your plans that it is sized properly. If a system is undersized, you will have even more of a mess on your hands since it will be lifting those nutrienst into the water column but not satisfying the oxygen demand.

That might not be a bluegreen algae bloom. The color looks to me to be too deep green, assuming the camera captured the true color. If phosphorus and nitrogen concentration are high and at correct ratios in the run off it could be a dense green algae bloom. I have seen deep green color similar to that in your photo in other manure laden ponds.

Loop,

How far downland is your property from the area where the chicken squeezings are laid out? You stated that the pond has experienced this color the last two summers, do you know if the poultry farm just started spreading the goods two summers ago or have they been doing this for some time? How old is the pond and have you had any fish problems over the past two years?

Bill you mentioned nitrogen, which I'm sure you know is one hot component of chicken poo, but in Loop's second picture, the water near the shoreline looks more blue-green like Greg mentioned. The trees reflection may be misleading.

If the poo gardens are some distance from your pond, I think Eric's comment about the natural fertility of the land may be worthy of discussion.

No expert here, just some thoughts.

I don't see obvious films or scums usually associated with bluegreen algae blooms.

LoopTech do you have surface scums or films that accumulate on the down wind shores? OR is the water a uniform green as you go deeper into it?.

How far downland is your property from the area where the chicken

about 350 ft.

do you know if the poultry farm just started spreading the goods two summers ago or have they been doing this for some

10 + years

LoopTech do you have surface scums or films that accumulate on the down wind shores? OR is the water a uniform green as you go deeper into it?.

No scum at all.. The water appears to uniform green

The color looks to me to be too deep green, assuming the camera captured the true color

It is a deep green color ( Pictures were taken with a 6 Mega Pixel camera)