I recently used an algicide because of excess algae bloom after accidentally fertilizing my pond when trying to fertilize my lawn. I have been struggling with controlling wash out due to runoff, but after finally bitting the bullet annd giving up on grass seed I put down some sod and now my problem seems to have been stabilized. Now with the runoff controlled I attempted to re-clear my cloudy water, and did another Alum / hydrated lime treatment, and my water has cleared up to now about 2’ visibility. The following day I noticed a few casualties which is unfortunate, but sorta expected. Was only a handful of 2-3” bluegill and a few older fathead minnows. It’s been 2 days and fish seem to still be struggling a little, no more casualties that I see, but fish are not quite back to normal. I tested the water and my ph is a little high (7.8-8) and I’m sure it will stabilize and go back to desired the 7.4 -7.6 range in a few days. My concern is I have high nitrite and ammonia levels now. Ammonia is 1.5 ppm and nitrite is around 2.0ppm. Should I be concerned and take action or do you think this will subside on its own and could be from the prior algicide treatment I did last week (pre-clearing) and maybe some remaining dead algae still present. My phosphate levels are around .25ppm, so that isn’t bad especially with some lawn fertilizer probably still making an impact. Testing was just done this afternoon and weather is sunny / warm. Hasn’t rained either in 2-3 days. Any advice and help would be great. I have some pics on other phone and will upload to tread to give better idea of size and what I have going on. Thank you in advanced for your help!
Also pics are pre algae treatment and then water clearing. The algae killed all my pads so those aren’t in the bog anymore, but the elephant ear has done well.
Killing off algae during the hottest time of the year is a recipe for very low oxygen in your water.
Do you have a recirculating pump to the bog? If so, I would run it 24 hours/day for a few days. Maybe pump into a bucket cascade or something similar to max out your dissolved oxygen.
Yes, so that top put of the waterfall is actually about 6’ deep with rock and gravel filled all the way to about 6” below waters surface. Large rock on bottom to smaller rock on top. I have a 9000 gallon an hr pump on the other side of the pond about 4’ deep that pumps the water to the bottom of that pit and then cascades down a 3 tier waterfall. I also have a fountain in the center with a 3600gph pump. Both the bog and the fountain run 24/7 for the most part. My whole issue is water clarity effecting plant growth which is the reason for the algicide. I cleared the water about 2 months ago with alum, but then when trying to control run off by growing grass on the banks i inadvertently fertilized the pond and cause an algae bloom that killed all my Lilly pads and took visibility down to around 2” again.
