How do I kill this Algae!?

[shakaho]

Waterbug made excellent points. (My hair stood on end when I heard about spores, LOL.)

I see clear water with a layer of flocculant material on the bottom. This stuff may include dead algae. Vacuum it out. Any that gets stirred up will be caught in the quilt batting.

As Waterbug said, unless the pond is a foot deep, plants generally do better on stools than sitting on the bottom. The fish love to hide under these.

 

[MarcusNZ]

Great thread.
I have recently had all the string algae dissapear from my pond and the algae growing on the sides, bottoms etc looks as though its going brown.
This has all happened since reintroducing my waterfall and short streams to my water feature. I put 15mm-30mm riverstones in the stream beds for the water to flow through and this was covered with algae within days.

Am I right in guessing that the algae in the falls and stream is getting first dibs on the nutrient rich water from the filter before it gets to the pond thus starving the Algae in the pond?

 

[Waterbug]

Am I right in guessing that the algae in the falls and stream is getting first dibs on the nutrient rich water from the filter before it gets to the pond thus starving the Algae in the pond?

I've never believe in the concept of nutrients and plants. Yes plants need nutrients to grow, but somehow that concept morphed into the idea that plants can remove all or most nutrients. Think of it this way, you have a long hallway with open windows on each end so air is blowing down thru the hall. If you stand at the down wind end and 100 people cram into the other end are they going to remove enough O2 and produce enough enough CO2 that you suffocate? Of course not. If you got some good air testing equipment you could probably measure lower O2 and higher CO2, but there's a difference in being able to measure something and it being relevant.

Also a concept I think is often missed is most people seem to think plants need nutrients to grow, not to stay alive. Nutrients are used to build new cells. That's a bit over simplified, but for sure plants don't consume nutrients like we consume food to stay alive. They produce food via photosynthesis which doesn't use nutrients like nitrate.

What is common in the plant world is production of chemicals to gain an advantage. Poison Ivy for example we understand for sure. But also to stop other plants from taking over their space. Called allelopathic and an example would be a Black Walnut tree produces a chemical to reduce plant growth on the ground around them.

There's been a lot of research with different species of saltwater algae being allelopathic, but unfortunately I haven't found any research for freshwater algae. My theory is at least some, I assume many, species of freshwater algae are allelopathic and their main target is other species of algae. Norm Meck proved at least to me that in at least some clear ponds the water contains a substance that is deadly yo green water algae. His theory is it's produced by bacteria, mine is allelopathic. I did some experiments where I placed a small amount of string algae in green water and the water did clear in 24 hours, but in some cases the string algae died. That's as far as I got which was good enough for me.

 

[Waterbug]

I'm really intersted in what you are saying about planting outside of the water, do you have some examples (maybe some pics or video) that I can use to learn more about what you are talking about?

Here's the basic idea.

The size and shape can be varied.

And of course regular garden plants can be made to appear to be in the pond.

Here's a small pond where one end has a cement fake rock separator which is filled with gravel so the gravel is above the water. Water from the pond still goes into the gravel.

 

[Waterbug]

Quilt batting and algae...

These are photos of a knitted polyester material under a microscope. On the left is pantyhose and on the right is a similar industrial material that seems like tee shirt material. These were used to filter green water algae. On the right you can see a few bits of trapped algae. Harder to see in the brown material.

About 15 years ago, when UV was expensive and not widely used, pond forums discussed green water a lot. There weren't a lot of options. One person made a single post about using pantyhose to catch algae. This was before quilt batting was considered. Unfortunately they didn't post anything more. It was a 5 gal bucket full of pantyhose by the side of the pond. Water was pumped into the top and drained out the bottom.

I started asking friends (close friends) for their pantyhose. You'd think this was awkward but probably not the strangest thing I ever requested. First problem, wow, this takes a lot of pantyhose. It was going to take a long time. Phase II, called wholesalers and bought a huge box of discontinued pantyhose. Hooked it all up...complete failure. Pond was just as green, nothing much trapped in the material. Yeah, when washed lots of green came out but no real effect on the pond.

A few years later I was building a filter to do an entirely different task using the white material above. A day after installing this filter I could see the pond's bottom. I didn't make the connection since the new filter was unrelated to green water and I knew algae comes and goes. It's normal. Pond got clearer and clearer. About a week later my new filter starting overflowing. This was not suppose to have been a mechanical filter, just the opposite. It was suppose to not clog. Another failure? I take the filter apart and find the material is caked with dark muck, like maybe 1/4" thick. It was a huge filter so there was a lot of muck. Because of where the filter was getting its water I knew it wasn't muck from the bottom.

I wash the material off in a bucket and the water turned the same green color as the pond had been. Eureka! I'd solve the green pond issue forever! Dancing like a little girl ensued. I set about making a reasonable filter using this miracle material. Created a temp pond for testing, got it really green, installed the miracle filter and came back the next day...failure of the complete and absolute kind.

Months and months of tweaking. Gave up, came back. Got the microscope to try and see what was going on.

First surprise was how small the bits of trapped green were compared to the huge openings in the knit. I started measuring stuff in the photos. Those trapped bits in the picture are clumps of algae (called colonies), actual single cell would barely be visible at all. Not only could clumps of algae sail right on thru those big openings but single cell algae could have passed right thru even those tightest spots. How had this ever worked?

Lots more experiments and also key was I started testing filters in other people's ponds. I got it down to where I could look at a pond and tell whether the filter would clear the water or not. There were two basic issues. First was water flow. When I cleaned the material dirt came out very easily. If you just touched it muck would go thru the material. The water passing thru the material had to be almost dead calm.

The next important thing was the suspended stuff in the water had to be large, or more exactly, there had to be some large particles. What happened was a small percentage of larger particles would get jammed into the fibers which decreased the size of openings. Openings got smaller and smaller with time which trapped smaller and small particles until really small particles were being trapped.

In my first experiments my ponds were clear so I had to create new ponds and new algae blooms. At that stage in their life cycle most of the algae are free floating single cells. So they just passed thru the filter and it failed. Later in their life cycle they bind together into colonies, clumps which could be trapped.

I don't explain anymore how to build this filter because it was just too difficult to get right or know whether it would work for a particular pond or not.

I've read about people using quit batting and lots of people saying it works. I've read far more posts of people saying they're trying it and then you never hear anything more or "the batting worked great, but my pond is still green". As far as I can tell if the white material becomes discolored and when washed in clean water that water becomes dirty. To many people that seems to mean "it works". To me the "works" means the pond becomes clear in short order, like a couple of days. I do think batting could work, and may indeed have actually cleared a pond for some people. But I don't think it's as simple as just flowing some water over it. Not saying people shouldn't try it. Just relating my experiences for your info.

 

[capewind]

[/COLOR]

and this is the point WB, in many cases, it does work in short order. This isnt a new idea by far, but one that is at least 40 years old to my knowledge. My earliest FISH TANKS had a silly, clear plastic box that sat inside the aquarium, that held a tiny bit of carbon, a wad of white cotton ball looking media, and a cheesey little airline ...

 

[MarcusNZ]

I've never believe in the concept of nutrients and plants. Yes plants need nutrients to grow, but somehow that concept morphed into the idea that plants can remove all or most nutrients. Think of it this way, you have a long hallway with open windows on each end so air is blowing down thru the hall. If you stand at the down wind end and 100 people cram into the other end are they going to remove enough O2 and produce enough enough CO2 that you suffocate? Of course not. If you got some good air testing equipment you could probably measure lower O2 and higher CO2, but there's a difference in being able to measure something and it being relevant.

Also a concept I think is often missed is most people seem to think plants need nutrients to grow, not to stay alive. Nutrients are used to build new cells. That's a bit over simplified, but for sure plants don't consume nutrients like we consume food to stay alive. They produce food via photosynthesis which doesn't use nutrients like nitrate.

Nice explaination. I like it.

I find it a lot easier to retain information when it makes sense.

Thanks WB.

 

[shakaho]

Also a concept I think is often missed is most people seem to think plants need nutrients to grow, not to stay alive. Nutrients are used to build new cells. That's a bit over simplified, but for sure plants don't consume nutrients like we consume food to stay alive. They produce food via photosynthesis which doesn't use nutrients like nitrate.

I appreciate your point about plants not competing with algae for nitrates, but I have to call you on this.

The only food produced by photosynthesis is sugar. Like us, plants can use sugar to make starch (in our case, glycogen) and fats, but they can't make protein without nitrogen. Plants are much better than us at making proteins. We need to eat protein to get amino acids. We can't eat nitrate and use that to make amino acids the way plants do. A plant can survive as well on photosynthesis alone as you would on a diet of pure sugar -- slow, but inevitable death.

Almost all land plants use nitrate as a nitrogen source. Some can use other sources with the help of symbiotic microbes ( we all know about legumes and their pet nitrogen-fixing bacteria). On the other hand, algae and many aquatic plants (duckweed is a good example) prefer ammonia as their nitrogen source, even though most can also use nitrate. This means that algae get nitrogen from ammonia before it can be oxidized to nitrate and then compete with plants for the stuff they missed after it has been converted to nitrate. The plants would like that nitrogen, but the algae beat them to it.

This is why green water has great nitrogen parameters (typically 0,0,0). It's also why killing your green water algae can result in a "cycle bump." The huge number of algae use up so much ammonia that they starve the nitrifying bacteria, which then fail to grow. The reduced number of bacteria can't process all of the ammonia that becomes available upon the death of the algae, and one suddenly sees ammonia and nitrite in the water.

But plants in the filter system, whether growing in a bog filter, in the top of a barrel filter, or in a trickle filter, do clean out nitrate. They also do a lot more that ponders rarely give them credit for. Plants are a vital part of every bio-remediation project. While they can make their own organic compounds from sugar and minerals, they happily slurp up any that are supplied to them and modify or store them. Many take up heavy metals. If you remove dead vegetation, all of this stuff comes out of your system.

 

[Waterbug]

Also a concept I think is often missed is most people seem to think plants need nutrients to grow, not to stay alive. Nutrients are used to build new cells. That's a bit over simplified, but for sure plants don't consume nutrients like we consume food to stay alive. They produce food via photosynthesis which doesn't use nutrients like nitrate.

It's my understanding that amino acids and then proteins are used primary in plants to make more cells and protein use for metabolic processes is fairly limited. The point I was trying to make is many people seem to think plants consume nitrate like sleep consume grass. That placing a few plants in a pond would be like putting a couple of sleep in your backyard. They would eat every blade of grass and starve out any other herbivores, and some plants would consume all nitrates and starve algae to death.

I've used the 0 nitrate, ammonia in green ponds many time to show plants don't starve when nitrate and ammonia is 0. They're just limited in growth of new cells. Long term of course they would terminate, but I wouldn't call it starving.

 

[divedaddy03]

I appreciate your point about plants not competing with algae for nitrates, but I have to call you on this.

The only food produced by photosynthesis is sugar. Like us, plants can use sugar to make starch (in our case, glycogen) and fats, but they can't make protein without nitrogen. Plants are much better than us at making proteins. We need to eat protein to get amino acids. We can't eat nitrate and use that to make amino acids the way plants do. A plant can survive as well on photosynthesis alone as you would on a diet of pure sugar -- slow, but inevitable death.

Almost all land plants use nitrate as a nitrogen source. Some can use other sources with the help of symbiotic microbes ( we all know about legumes and their pet nitrogen-fixing bacteria). On the other hand, algae and many aquatic plants (duckweed is a good example) prefer ammonia as their nitrogen source, even though most can also use nitrate. This means that algae get nitrogen from ammonia before it can be oxidized to nitrate and then compete with plants for the stuff they missed after it has been converted to nitrate. The plants would like that nitrogen, but the algae beat them to it.

This is why green water has great nitrogen parameters (typically 0,0,0). It's also why killing your green water algae can result in a "cycle bump." The huge number of algae use up so much ammonia that they starve the nitrifying bacteria, which then fail to grow. The reduced number of bacteria can't process all of the ammonia that becomes available upon the death of the algae, and one suddenly sees ammonia and nitrite in the water.

But plants in the filter system, whether growing in a bog filter, in the top of a barrel filter, or in a trickle filter, do clean out nitrate. They also do a lot more that ponders rarely give them credit for. Plants are a vital part of every bio-remediation project. While they can make their own organic compounds from sugar and minerals, they happily slurp up any that are supplied to them and modify or store them. Many take up heavy metals. If you remove dead vegetation, all of this stuff comes out of your system.

So, it seems like a quick solution would be to kill the water flow for an hour or so, put some peroxide in a garden sprayer...spray it down and let it set. May even scrub it with a toilet brush and repeat.
Then treat your pond water with peroxide to volume and repeat weekly until the algae is controlled?

Wayne, SC
http://www.youtube.com/user/AWorld4Change/videos

 

[divedaddy03]

I love where this thread is going.
Thanks to Waterbug, we have a soundly based discussion throughout.

Update on my pond coming shortly...it's looking better!

I'm starting to see that I was/am being oversensitive with my expectations of algae control...

I build a nice little quilt batting rack yesterday and put it under the waterfall and in short order the batting was green and the water was noticeably clearer...more to follow!

Video hopefully for you tomorrow, we will see how much time I have to produce and edit.

Cheers,

Wayne, SC
http://www.youtube.com/user/AWorld4Change/videos

ps. Can I have some pantyhose?! LOL

 

[capewind]

I'm stating to see that I was/am being oversensitive with my expectations of algae control...

I build a nice little quilt batting rack yesterday and put it under the waterfall and in short order the batting was green and the water was noticeably clearer...more to follow!

We had three healthy (as in good sized) clumps of hair algae growing on some vines that didnt get removed ... I got some of it out yesterday, but I want to take the broom (plastic bristles) to the sides to get some of the other algae loosened up for the filters to grab ... Said something to hubby last night, and he informed me I stole his last spare pump (ok, so I stole 5 spare pumps in total LOL) ... guess I need to get up to Harbor Freight to get another "spare":-(

 

[divedaddy03]

Hey ya'll!

I was able to get some video of the DIY Air Lift Pond Vacuum in action this weekend.

I build a DIY Universal Camera Mount this weekend (See Video Below) and now will be able to produce much higher quality video as a result.

Here is the Air Lift Pond Vacuum in action (See Video Below).

All the best,

Wayne, SC

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[sissy]

and they say does quilt batting work, yes it does ,is it work ,yes it is .Keep it in all the time less work .There is nothing easy out there and if it is it costs money and is it really worth what your paying for it .I think Uncle Sam is the only one who can brag they pay me for doing nothing ,or can some of the pond company fixes brag also and they all laugh all the way to the bank .I guess they all need some kind of money maker .I sit on mine no that's a big joke

 

[HTH]

I am not yet convinced that Waterbug is right about nutrients plants and algae. That is not the same as saying he is wrong. I have a lot of respect for his knowledge and experience.

Most people keep aquatic plants in pots. Plants generally take up nutrients through the roots so potted plants do not use nutrients from the water. What is needed is roots in the water. This is not practical with small ponds. So maybe this is one of the things that is true in theory but will not work for most people. If you can't keep bare root plants with you fish try putting them in a pool above you falls or a bog area where the fish can not get to them.

Currently I have string algae in my largest pond. In a month when the lilies become active it will be mostly gone. It could be that their shade or their use of nutrients is the cause. The lilies will bloom for about a month and then stop. Adding nutrients to the water will cause them to continue blooming.