Pond Boss Forums AERATION Systems questions Just not working?

I have aerators installed, two diffusors going 24hrs a day for the last week. Built up slowly before that. The water clarity has improved and color is more aqua than brown that it was prior. However, the algae is getting worse if anything. See last week and today below. What next???? I can't get out often enough to rake it off, it’s so much work.

last week:


Today:

Got to control your nutrients going into your pond.

So, i have no runoff from anything man made, fertilizers etc. I am using a feeder though, and i do mow and weed eat and some grass falls in, but not in july at all yet. How else can i reduce? If i use complex or copper sulfate it knocks it back a bit but but not enough obviously.

After a big wind, the algae may be all piled up in one corner of the pond. That is the most efficient time to do some raking.

If you still have too much, then the copper-based algaecides are probably your best next step. Lots of good threads on that topic in the archives where some of the experts have posted excellent advice and treating protocols.

That looks like a "backyard pond" to my eye. If you are on location every day, then pond dyes can also inhibit the algae by blocking some sunlight. With some experimentation, you can probably find a color and concentration that the family likes and that hurts the algae a little.

Finally, if you leave a little tall grass as a border between the forest in the background and your mowed "lawn" maybe you can intercept a few of those leaves from making it into the pond. You might also try mulching and bagging in the fall when the maximum number of leaves are on your lawn, but have not yet blown into the pond.

Good luck on keeping your nice pond looking good!

Ok... No, its an hour away from my house. Its rec land i own and have an RV there. I tired dye, but i have 2 springs that bring in and out over the spillway about 20+ gallons a min. The little creek from the main spring doesnt have the algae so i doubt its from the spring. The pond is only 4 years old and I was told a new pond may have a lot of nutrients until settled, not sure if that's the case or not. I guess i'll just keep hitting it with copper sulfate during summer time. I was really hoping the aerators would help more.

How deep is it? how much feed are you putting in it? When I aerated in hot weather i had your results, when I stopped it cleared up. Its been hot here in Ontario and Im getting some algae but water is still cold. Is your pond cold with the spring water?

Also how deep are your aerators and have you tried surface agitation?

I have one aerator where main spring comes in about 5ft deep. Other side of the pond i have another in the deep section 15' deep. The deep section is close the spillway so that is why i have one at the other side near the inlet as well. The water is cool, due to the springs and the mount of water, I dont like swimming in it until late summer and even then i dont think it get above 75. And no, theyre both bottom diffusers

Have you checked the dissolved oxygen? Have you tried shutting down the aerators? The feed might be part of your issue so maybe others can chime in about that. What kind of fish do you have in there?

I have not checked the oxygen. I know that the clarity has greatly improved but not checked it yet. Its almost as clear as winter time currently. I was using optimum, but now have a mix of purina aquamax 500 and endurance pro blend.

just took another look. Obviously the wind today has it all on the shallow side, but its the worst its been in a couple years. And, the last week fo 24/7 aeration is definitely not helping with the algae. You can see the one aerator production right behind the tree.

Bill Cody will probably chime in and note that there is no evidence of aeration impacting algae growth. I would agree.

It might be worthwhile to test a water sample and note the levels of orthophosphate. This is the phosphorous that makes plants grow. I had high levels last year, and have been treating with phosphorous binders this year. Algae is greatly reduced.

https://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=43758&Number=574013#Post574013

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.

Looking at the photo, I would venture to guess that the leaves going into the pond every Fall are the biggest culprit. Ditto everything that Bill said, but yoiu can also use PhosLoc to lock up P.

Thank you for the input. I'm going out there today to spray a little copper sulfate mix. But since you mentioned youtube, I'm going to take a video as well I want to demonstrate where the spring comes in and give a better picture of my situation. I do not think that leaves are the culprit. I have a large Levy over half of the pond has no trees and because of the spillway most of the floating leaves make it to the spillway and go down the creek before sinking. I'm thinking my fish population is too high and I'm not harvesting enough? I do have test strips and everything seems to be in the normal range. The aerators are definitely helping with water clarity but obviously appear to not be doing anything to fight the algae. I'll take a video and post a link later today thank you guys

Ok, here is a video from my visit at the land today. Sorry its a bit long but I wanted to give different views etc. Let me know your thoughts. BG are still being caught in good size around 9" but for sure not as plump as they were in early May.

Wow I love that spring, many on this forum would kill for that lol including myself.

I honestly dont think you need the aerators, even though you have a gentle slope from the spring to the pond you could build a cascading type of water fall that would aerate the incoming water...basically a set of tiny stairs that the water falls over and adds DO. Google cascading aerator.

If your aerators doubled the algae then there is your answer and the fish were doing alright before the aerators I suspect. Im pretty sure that if you put an aerator at the bottom you will probably kill off all the fish in your pond so I wouldnt do that.

And I think that the food is your main nutrient issue and that probably yes you need to remove some fish. My 6 acre lake actually smells fishy so I know I need to remove some.

Very nice spot.

Nutrient overload, 4 x per day, 25 seconds each is too much feeding for that size pond. Shut off the feeders for a month and monitor.

In the home aquarium world, we plant desirable plants that use the excess nutrients in order to choke out the undesirable plants. This can also be used in the pond world on a much larger scale.

Our pond isn't old enough to be affected just yet, but I'm already taking efforts by planting pickerel weed and water irises around the margins. These plants spread slowly compared to other types and are beneficial in attracting honey bees and dragonflies.

Test strips can't monitor the level of nutrients in the pond. They can't test a small enough amount. Leaves DO contribute, even though you don't think so. So does dust, pollen, basically ANYTHING that goes into the pond adds to the nutrient level.

Anyplace that sunlight can get to the bottom of the pond algae will grow. In a shallow pond, that is pretty much everywhere. Tilapia will help next year. Feed less, harvest more will help, planting underwater vascular plants will help too. Sourcing them is the issue.

I was just going through some photos and found one from last year this exact week and it was completely clear. I was feeding then as well but only about a quarter as much. All other factors were the same this time last year and the algae was almost nothing and when it did pop up a little bit of copper sulfate took care of the small patches. I'm guessing that upping the feeding and the fact I just have a lot more fish this year due to stocking and spawn. That's the only difference this year over last year that I can see

https://imgur.com/a/1d2SyFO

So, going to harvest a ton and slow feeding way down or pause and see what happens. Can't imagine any reason I'd need to turn aerators off right? One benefit I was hoping for was warmer water too

Harvesting a big number of fish from the pond will help remove nutrients. Then feeding the fish a lot less fish food could help reduce the next crop of FA - maybe. Remember that using the algaecide killing the FA sends it to the bottom to decompose. You know what is mainly in the dead algae chlorophyll, cellulose and nutrients. You know what nutrients do - right? Explore the possibility of adding some tilapia as 6 - 8 lbs of mixed gender individuals next year to help eat some of that FA. You can then eat some of those algae eating tilapia. You can't eat copper sulfate.

If with tilapia next year and you still have lots of FA then you should have added 10 to 15 lbs of tilapia. Each fish can bodily eat only just so much FA per day.

Like you said before. Big dilemma

From the video what size is the pond? The hardwater / alkalinity pond should produce enough natural food to feed a lot of fish; at least 300 lbs per ac. If it were my pond I would feed them just once a day with a maximum of 2/3 to 1 quart of pellets each day. Run feeder to deliver 1/2 to max 1 quart per day. Feeding too many fish results in too much manure to grow too much greenery. Did you tell us what brand of fish food you are using???
I think a good guideline for amount of fish to harvest each year is 60-70% of the total poundage of pellets that were fed each year.

IMO there needs to be a guide somewhere on the Forum to suggest how many pounds of fish should be harvested based on how many pounds of fish food that is fed to the fish. Maybe I can encourage editor Lusk to chime in here or better yet write an article about this topic for the Pond Boss Magazine.


Other fish pros are welcome to provide opinions on this fish harvest rate compared to the amount of fish food added to the pond. Comments???

Both in your video and in a post, you've mentioned the leaves floating over to the outflow and leaving the pond. (Sorry, pun not intended).
How about encouraging the floating FA to do the same? I've moored a small outboard boat at one end of my pond, opposite the overflow, and directed the prop wash to push both algae and leaves to the exit area of my flow through pond. This has helped to corral the debris to one spot. I've then raked some of it out and smiled as some of it left on its own. My motor is gas powered but an electric trolling motor may also work, especially on your long, narrow BOW.
A floating rope used to surround the floating FA also may be of benefit. You could tow it to the outflow area in a large mat. There are threads on the forum about sticking zip ties or the like at intervals through the floating rope to catch the algae.

I think we have a winner!!!! Got out to the property for first time in over week. The only change I made was greatly reducing feed times. Was at 35sec 5 times daily and went to 5 seconds twice a day for the last week. I did spray some before I left last week but that hasn't been helpful last few times so I'm attributing the success to lack of feeding nutrients. There's barely any algae present now! I upped feeding just a little to 10 seconds twice a day. Ill. Keep an eye on it but seems good finally!!