Pond Boss Forums AQUATIC VEGETATION Controlling unwanted plants Green Surface Algae?

Purchased the house/property with .41 acre pond in 2017. Have used pond dye every year. This is the first time I've had this surface algae / scum.

Pond is aerated. I hand feed optimum, and have kept the tightest schedule of feeding nearly every day this season, which may be contributing.

Any advice on what it is and what to do with it?

I have a bottle of Cutrine-Plus algaecide that came with the house.

[img]https://drive.google.com/file/d/10Us5MywRZ9lXLXAUnNMovE42fhGx2EnI/view?usp=sharing[/img]

[img]https://drive.google.com/file/d/10OHenKK8ftWnpTdt6pmDSxuah2QOGI6b/view?usp=sharing[/img]

It is one of the several thousand types of green algae. To verify skim some of it to half fill a jar. Cap it and after a few hours uncap and smell the air inside the jar. If it smells vile, moldy and rank then it is a bluegreen algae. Fishy smell or not much smell then it is one of the green algae.

Algae and pond plants grow based on nutrients. Fish manure is full of nutrients. Nutrients for growing pond plants also come for numerous other sources. The more fish you have the more fish manure you have and the more nutrients released into the pond to grow more green stuff. Harvest some fish each year so you don't have so many fish to reduce the feeding and amount of manure. Feeding too many fish can result in numerous algae problems.

Try this - take about 2 cups of your Cutrine-Plus and mix it with 10-12 cups (3 quarts) of water Wait for the scum to blow into one area and spray this mixture on the surface film. It could take several days to notice a significant reduction. Report your results.

Bill - I can answer that quickly without doing the jar test, lol. It smells. My daughter and I noticed the smell just standing near the shore.

I may try spraying with the Cutrine Plus. Thanks!

Strong offensive odor indicates bluegreen algae and a potential for it producing toxins when it dies. Don't let your dog swim among it and then lick-eat the algae off its fur. Spray it with the Cutrine-Plus mixture every time it forms the aggregated downwind shoreline patches. the nutrient balance in the water determines what grows in terms of different types of plytoplankton. Report your results.

Hi Bill - So my first application was 2 cups of Cutrine-Plus with the proper water mixture in a backpack sprayer sprayed across the top of the concentrated algae in one corner of the pond from a breeze. This seemed to make a fairly large improvement the following day or so. After a few days there was still a decent amount but this time it only took a 1 cup ratio to get good coverage of the algae. The next day we had some pretty heavy rain that broke it up but now after a couple dry days I still have a floating mass of algae, although much improved from where we started.

So I am two applications in. Should I continue this process or should there be a certain amount of time between applications?

As long as you are only spraying small areas for killing gently breeze concentrated algae youi can keep applying the Cutrine mixture. It is best used on sunny days when the algae is primarily at the surface. Keep in mind as long as you don't have any type of submerged vegetation the natural competition and growth of submerged plants there will regularly be these green surface films to deal with. Why wouldn't there be these invasive films when nothing else green is allowed to grow in the pond?

Will the bacteria/enzyme blocks or the sphere pond cleaners help with this type of algae?