Considering dyes to control algae

[mouseams]

Hi there, we live in 5b zone and have an inherited pond. We had a beautiful, clear pond once it was done cycling, which took us almost 4 years to get, then a snapping turtle found its way in and tore a hole at the bottom of the liner. Drained the pond, and now we are in the second year, and we have lots of algae. The pond is an average of 2' deep and 14' x 28' , in full sun. It is sloped all over, built into the side at the base of a hill, so maintaining plant coverage is near impossible. We have a bog filter, aerator and a 4,000 gal Laguna pressure filter. We stopped running it when the bitter cold was coming, then we had a week of warm days, and the algae began. We are thinking of trying the UV dyes now available and wondering if anyone has thoughts on it. We have one 24" blue channel cat, 2 22" koi, and maybe about 40 comets, most of which were born in the pond last year. I think our fish load is too light, when we had more fish our pond was clear .

Thanks for the help!

Mary

 

[budgenator]

I generally dislike dye because it's unnatural and merely covers up the under lying problem. Honestly they don't even cover up the problem that well.
Now if you have an earthen bottom pond and your afraid swimmers will get entangled in plants and drown that a completely appropriate use for dye.

I wonder if everybody coming out of the water would look like Smurfs?

 

[Waterbug]

I also don't care for the look, but some people like it. To me dye has the same problem as green water, just a different color.

I don't know your pond at all, but my first choice would be to add a Trickle Tower to get some string algae going I like TT because they're so simple, cheap and can be effective. If you already have a good size waterfall with water running 24/7 then maybe not a TT. Can be built right on top of the bog which is easy and that way you get some use out of the bog which obviously is really doing anything. That's kind of the deal, when a pond clears the owner gets to pick whatever feature they like to give credit. Fountain, air stone, waterfall, Skippy, bog...etc... Lone list. I can tell to that TT had a lot of testing done and were used a lot in Koi ponds before UV filters became reasonable. Although there was never any wide consensus on why they seemed to clear ponds there did seem to be a correlation between TT and clear water. In those days string algae was never considered a factor which I think is unfortunate.

My plan B would be a UV filter. In Koi pond this has been the standard for awhile. But TT and streams still can work, but aren't 100% like UV. If you do use UV you can likely turn it off after a few weeks, certainly after you see string algae appear. So you shouldn't let electric cost of running 24/7 forever be a factor. And you can even sell the unit on Ebay to get some money back since you'd be looking at a fairly expensive unit.