Great site and great magazine. This is my first post on the site. I have a three year old one acre pond that had no alge the frist summer, some the second, and what appears to be a lot more this year. I've spent a couple evenings reviewing everything I could find on this site and elsewhere related to filamentous algae and have found answers to most of my questions. Except one. I would sure appreciate any feedback that I could get on this.

The pond is fed by several springs that originate a few hundred feet upstream. Most of the 38 acre drainage basin is Oak woods and there should be no nutrient load other than what comes into the spring drainages as runnoff through the leaf covered ground, and some direct leaf drop from 10 or 20 large trees around the pond. In the two (fairly wet) summers that I have had the pond there is continous outflow at the spillway. The pond is stocked with Bass, Gills, 3 Grass Carp, and some Koi that I apparrently added to keep the Herons happy.

I have a sediment pond about one twentieth of an acre in size upstream from the main pond to catch as much leaf matter and debris as possible. This little pond gets a large nutrient load, with resulting algae, but I don't really mind since its purpose is to catch leaves and sediment and be a minnow and frog factory.

So here (finally) is the question: Am I better off to let this algae grow and pull some of the nutriants out of the water before it gets to the main pond, or should I try to treat the algae at this upstream location with Cutrine, Barley, etc. in an effort to eliminate it wherever it shows it's ugly head?

I assume that the small amounts of algae