We came up to the pond for the weekend. Thought we’d swim and fish. However, the pond is covered with a weird orange algae. I haven’t seen it before. I suspect the guys farming our bean fields had applied fertilizer, and possibly weed killer right before a 4.5” hard rain hit a few days ago.
Anyone know if this is a dangerous algae to swim in? Hopefully it’ll just go away on its own.
Thanks,
Jeff

[img]https://photos.app.goo.gl/ATtz6y5mSZGhuKqp8[/img]

I can’t get a photo to come up. I used to use photobucket, but now they’ve raised the prices again. Not sure how I can get a picture posted.

I screenshot your picture, saved as file, uploaded as attachment, then embedded in this post. I can see your google drive picture but it won't upload or display here. Folks who are actively logged into their google account will be able to see your picture.

Seriously the photo management of this forum software is about North Korean grade technology or reliability...

Thanks CC. We went ahead and swam in the pond today. But, it was cold! Ha!
We did catch our first “keeper” HSB today. 18” and a blast to reel in. My grandson got to actually get it on the bank.
Sorry, no pics of the fish either. I can’t post here anymore.

Yes you can, just throw them on Imgur and put the link here.

UBB has a fix it ticket regarding the images here, but they don't have a time frame on when they will fix it. There is nothing we can do on this end.

I gave imagur a shot.
[img]https://imgur.com/a/lNjWM95[/img]

Hopefully it works.
Thanks


I think it’s working. I’ll try a pic of the orange algae. Hopefully it’s not dangerous to swim in.

[img]https://imgur.com/qLnsqTP[/img]

[img]https://imgur.com/a/eRJYIyz[/img]

Nice pic of the grandson with a fat HSB!

Is that algae or clay that washed in?

Test

Setterguy, I'm not sure if the forum bug is causing this or if the direct links you put in your post to IMGUR are not quite correct. When I click on those links in your post they do come up on the IMGUR page but they do not embed in our post.

For now the workaround is a bit tedious.
1. You use the attachment manager to attach your pictures to your post. They do not show up in the post but as attachments under your post.
2. If you want to manually embed them back in you go back to your post on the forum, click on the first attached file which will pull it up in a new window.
3. Copy that address of that pulled up file.
4. Go back to your original post, edit it, use the picture attachment icon in the 'Full Editor' and click the picture. Paste the full address from step 3 into that box.

Do that again for the other 2 attachments step by step. Now all 3 will embed.

You can play with the link you used from Imgur and see if editing that or using a different way to link it will embed it. With Photobucket there were several ways to copy the link (direct, email, HTML etc) so maybe IMGUR has the same catch to get it to embed directly.

On the imgur page, once he's logged in he can click on the upper right of the picture that has the pencil mark. The next page will pop up with that picture and a box in the upper right corner that has three dots in it. i.e. ... Click on that, and a drop down menu shows up. Click on "Get Share Links". Then copy the BBCode (forums) info. Paste that in the post directly here, don't use the picture looking thingy at the top.

It takes longer to describe what to do than to do it.



NOT my leg.....


But then again, I do everything here on the forum from my desktop, not my phone.

A possibility on the algae is that it is dust or pollen that has blown onto pond. Not sure just a idea.

Could be pollen. We had a strong south wind yesterday. It moved all of it to the north end of the pond. Here’s a pic.
Thanks
Jeff

Gave photobucket $5..

How has the water visibility been?

Nice little tractor back there!
I am always a bit cautious of BG algae blooms, which can be fairly hazardous. The orange, unknown, but perhaps pollen from water plants in the pond? If it smells bad (very obviously not fish smell), or looks like spilled paint, stay out!

Any chance the orange is possible pollen from an unrelated source?
Forget that.. didn't see SG's post.....

Big rain (4”) last week, when St Louis got the 8” rain. When I got there Wednesday, visibility was less than a foot. When we left today it was 18”. That’s about as good as our pond gets. Our water is almost always green, except after a hard rain, it gets almost tea colored.

LS and Snipe,
It very well could have been pollen. I’ve been trying to figure out what plants may have been producing pollen. My guess is, it’s the American pond weed. It has a funny stem that comes up this time of year. I haven’t looked at it closely, but it must have some kind of a flower on that stem. Maybe it’s orange?
There was no foul odor to the algae or pollen, whatever it is. We swam in it for four days, with no adverse side effects (so far). Ate some YP, HBG, HSB, and SMB for dinner last night. No I’ll effects so far.
The kids were trying to net frogs and or tadpoles. They caught crawfish and some glass shrimp almost all the way around the pond. I believe the pond weed is helping. We also just had another hatch of GSH. There are schools of fry everywhere. We still catch a lot of RES, but none big enough to eat.

The tractor is a little Bobcat. Made by Kioti I believe. Bought it when Bobcat got out of the tractor business (they are back in for now). We’ve been abusing it for 8 or 9 years now.
From 2014, during construction. The little Bobcat did zero work. Ha

Bobcat small tractors have a super reputation. Would love to score on one of these. never see a used one and the dealer prices are right up there with a new car...
Great news on the explosion of growth in your pond of all types.

How did you source your shrimp and how did you get them to survive? I'm really thrilled they established by you. I'm afraid without the right kind of hardness in the water or vegetation I'll never see that survival. I'm assuming your water temps get cold enough to get skim of ice on pond? You must have PK shrimp then.

I'm also happy to see after a long wait and no luck on adult HSB that your new stockers are growing like crazy. You also prove that SMB and HSB can do well together in your size pond.

I just got extremely lucky with the shrimp. There was a lady in Nebraska that was selling them several years ago. I think TJ here on the forum recommended her. I ordered what she would sell, and she put them in the mail. Unfortunately they didn’t get picked up by her carrier until the next day and got delayed. I was out of town by the time they came in. My wife picked them up at our local post office and told me the shrimp were still moving around. So she drove to the farm and dumped them in. They must be a lot more resilient than I thought they were. They survived a prolonged drought, where our water levels dropped 3+ feet. There was very little FA, and no weeds for them to survive in. I assumed they were cleaned out. A few years ago my daughter was netting tadpoles for her little ones, and caught a few shrimp in the net. They survived. Now we have a lot of pond weed almost completely around the pond, and just about everywhere the pond weed is, we have the shrimp and crawdads.
My pond is totally surrounded by mature hardwoods, I suspect that the huge number of leaves that get dumped in every fall helped with the shrimp survival as well. I don’t have aeration, so the leaves aren’t going anywhere.
As far as the HSB are concerned, we may have caught the sole survivor from our last stocking. I hope not. If we don’t catch any more, I’ll add some more, or try to source some walleye. We have had some SMB recruitment, but not a lot. My son in law caught one a few days ago that was about 12”. Our original stockers are all pushing 20”. So we’ve had some recruitment, but not a lot. As I mentioned in a previous post, we have a lot of golden shiners. So far the predators haven’t been able to reduce their numbers. I’ve restocked YP twice, and we are starting to catch a lot more of them, but most are very small 3 to 4”.

HSB are nice in that way that you know how many you put in, they don't reproduce so you know how many you should be catching and at what size.

Thanks for the backstory on the shrimp. You got them from Carol F and I also was lucky enough to get a few from her. Mine seemed to last about one season and then fade out. Probably not the right water chemistry and underwater vegetation. I am dedicated to keep trying. I'll PM you

I do have lots of trees and way too many leaves on the bottom all the time. The last 2 years FA has exploded and I'm raking nonstop. I hope you don't get into that trouble.

Walleye sound like a great addition to the SMB.

Catch those large GSH and leave them on the bank. They tend to put the hurt on the young YP fry. Since my GSH got large I'm getting almost not YP recruitment. Scads of eggs, no babies. I'm seeing more YP eggs not get fertilized so my daddy perch might need some fishy viagra or something.

or...like you it is likely time to start with a new batch of fresh 4-6" YP stockers.

I'd love to see you get a different shiner species started (common, emerald, spotfin etc) We should work a deal and I swap my countless spotfins for another shot at stocking your PK shrimp. I also have lots of green frogs but no bullfrogs. Your pond excels at bullfrogs!)

Thanks for the update and hope you can use the normal process to attach pictures without using imgur if the forum software is fixed. I assume your algae is a healthy thing, a temporary bloom plus pollen and that it will blow around and settle.

Jeez, has it been that long? How time flies!

I recently purchased a Kioti/Bobcat and love the little bugger, but haven't used it a whole bunch other than dealing with my driveway. That's why I commented, I have one too. Really well-built machine for the money.

Interestingly, If I turned around and sold it today, I would make money as it is selling near $8K more than I spent on it 2.5 years ago.

I had the same thing happen with a new truck, but if I sold it, I could not get one back. Decided to thank my good luck and enjoy the new truck. My other vehicles are at least 13 years old. I got an incredible deal on the new 4x4, 3/4-ton truck at the end of 2019 due to my son negotiating the deal. I took him 2 weeks of back and forth with the dealer. The purchase was extremely painless and we bought it on Black Friday and were surprised with a free 52" TV!

I’ve had my bobcat for about 8 years. I’ve only put about 250 hours on it. However, it looks like 1,000 hours. Life in the woods is rough on them.