Your algae / bottom aeration situation is very good proof that bottom aeration does not hinder filamentous algae production. All the professional aeration companies ought to see this Forum post. Too bad it is not on YouTube.
I am more and more learning that ponds are NUTRIENT traps. Bathtubs with no drain. A Toilet with no flusher. Ponds first start out with nutrients that are leached from the dirt basin. Rain strips nitrogen from the air. Then Nature has all sorts of ways, maybe even daily, to put nutrients into that big bathtub. Tree leaves in the pond contain a lot of nutrients. Waterfowl manure has lots of nutrients. University research showed that 10 geese make the equivalent manure of ONE COW. In addition to what Nature puts in the pond, some people even fertilize the pond and feed the fish a pellet food that their manure adds nutrients. Nutrients then accumulate. Nutrients then grow plants as various types of plants or some greenery of some sort. Right now your nutrient laden pond is growing lots of filamentous algae,,,, we here call it FA.
The problem is - how do we get nutrients out of our big pond bathtub? One way if we have to harvest ANYTHING such as fish, and plants that grew in our pond bathtub. Harvest things growing in the pond that directly or indirectly used those nutrients. Plants are producers and animals are consumers. All things that grew in the pond from phytoplankton to turtles and fish used the nutrients. Harvest, Harvest Harvest. After years of nutrient accumulation the pond can grow so much plant stuff it is not practical to harvest all of it. A pond can be a big dilemma.
We can always keep killing the algae or plant growth with chemicals. We can slow the plant growth with pond dyes. Sometimes those algacide or herbicide chemicals accumulate in the pond. Where are they going to go once they kill the plants? What happend to the chemicals? . Accumulation of some algacide or herbicide chemicals for killing plants can become a problem when used long term. It depends. Then when the killed plants die they release everything that was in the plants - nutrients and any residual plant bound chemicals. Nature recycles nutrients that then grows more plants. Ponds are a big dilemma.
We can use fish such as Tilapia to eat a lot or all the algae. The fish do poop a nutrient rich manure while the fish grow from the plants/algae they ate. If we harvest the tilapia we remove some of the nutrients from the pond. Havesting any fish from the pond removes nutrients. Harvest is a good thing.
We can chemically bind a portion of the nutrients present at the time we added the chemical. There are various products used and sold to chemically bind nutrients as mostly the nutrient phosphorus - phosphorus binders. Alum as aluminum sulfate is one type. Aluminum is a heavy metal and does not decompose. They use this technology to bind nutrients in lakes to abate algae blooms. I am not sure how this frequent or repetitive binding of nutrients affects the overall pond system ecology for the long term of 10, 20, 30, 40 or more years.
There are varioius types of sediment removal systems to remove organic muck, slop and sediment from pond. The undigested organic materials in the pond contain a lot of nutrients.
Ponds can be a big dilemma.
Last edited by Bill Cody; 07/29/25 07:46 PM.
