Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Pea Soup (Algae Bloom)

Okay, first the snapping turtle, now the algae. I recently had what I thought was my first algae bloom for this year. A scummy looking substance that over the course of a few days took over the whole surface of my pond turning more green every day. I treated the surface of the pond with copper sulfate. By the next day the pond was free of the scum and clear again. That was last week, starting a couple days ago I noticed a subsurface green band running through the pond, yesterday the whole pond had almost taken on the color, and now today the pond water is green. Not really any floating green scum, just green water, you can still see down into the water about a foot. What's going on? Do I treat again with Copper sulfate, or do I let this go? The first bloom I let go for a little over a week before treating it, I thought you did this so the microscopic food could multiply and jumpstart the food chain. Any help will be appreciated, the pond is between a 1/4 and 1/2 acre and 12 feet deep to 6 feet in shallow end. And yes, there are fish ini it.

RBC--Glad to hear you're making some progress, but it's not suprising that you didn't achieve any balance just by killing algae. When you killed the algae, its rapid decomposition added a massive amount of nutrient (decaying biomass) to the water column, and it seems logical that it is now feeding whatever is growing in your green band. I would not add more copper sulfate (by the way, did you end up using a chelated product like Cutrine?), but this would be an excellent time to initiate some kind of microbe treatment (see the current thread on this subject). The microbes chow down on those free nutrients and deprive the algae of them. It would also be a good time to dose the pond with Aqua Shade. I'm not sure that a CuSO4 treatment would have any impact on microscopic suspended algae (for some reason, our pond has never had that particular affliction), but I'm sure someone here can help you with that. For what it's worth, I was at Tractor Supply this morning and they are carrying both Cutrine Plus and Aqua Shade, as well as competing and cheaper brands; as others have pointed out, the competing and cheaper colorant has blue dye only, while A.S. includes a yellow dye and so affects more of the spectrum.

RBC,
It sounds to me as though you have going on in your pond is what most pond owners on this site are trying to acheive with fertilization.
What is the clarity of the water? As long as it doesn't get below 18" everything should be fine & your pond will be more productive.