Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Water chemistry green water

I was lucky enough to get a 1/2 ac pond finished the first week in January 2005. Its depths range from 4-8 ft deep and is fed with a 15gpm spring. I know new ponds are usually muddy, however I was impatient and I added a ½ gallon of Aquashade the 2nd week of February. The Aquashade turned the pond a shade of green instead of blue. Why did it turn green and did I do anything wrong in case I decide to reapply Aquashade?

To answer your question:
Adding color to already colored water will give similar results to mixing different colored paints. You end up with a different color.

If you want it blue instead of green you will have to add more blue color than you have competing color (from the suspended soils) until the desired color of blue is reached.

Aquashade is made from two dyes acid blue and acid yellow. This is what I think happened in your pond from what I could decipher from your post. Adding the dye to your particular type of muddy water (soil particles) or pond conditions probably caused a lot of the blue to be absorbed by probably the soil (I assume?) particles leaving behing just enough of the blue mixed with wellow to make green. Blue and yellow colors when mixed will make green. Sometimes when there is an abundant phytoplankton bloom of green algae the green color from the algae overpowers the blue color. I don;t think this happened in your situation because turbid water rarely has very much algae in it due to the silt/clay causing a strong decrease in the amount of light that can penetrate the water.

Bill thanks for your kind reply. I was worried
that there was something in water. I should have
listened in art class when we discussed colors.