I think my friend needs some advice and I don't know what to tell her (green water)

[JenH]

A friend of mine built her first pond late last fall. They have had nothing but green water since they first filled it and she's getting pretty frustrated! Can't say that I blame her there! But her setup is different then mine and I am so clueless when it comes to equipment so I told her I would ask all of you here cause this is where I come to solve all my problems! LOL. Her pond is about 1200 gallons, basic round shape with slanted sides no plant shelf. She has a 2-3" river rock bottom over the liner, but that is fairly new. They finished the rocks last week, I think it was, so I'm pretty sure it isn't contributing to the algae problem. She has about 30 fish or so, a mix of goldfish and koi, they are all small fish 3" size except for a couple she bought with me when we went to Indy. Those 2 koi are in the 10" range. You'll be able to see from the pictures she has very little plant life in the pond, just a few potted plants, and I am not sure if she has gotten the water lilies I gave her potted and in there yet or not. She says she feeds the fish twice a day, but that they eat all of what she feeds them. She hasn't done water testing but I keep telling her she needs to. She has 2 pumps, the one going to the waterfall is 2000gph and not sure about the one going to the fountain 1200gph maybe. The filter on the fountain is that typical box filter that sits on the bottom beneath the fountain and contains foam and bioballs. For the waterfall you can see her filter on the porch, there's also a UV light too.

Now I realize there a lot of missing variables for any of you to be able to tell me really what is wrong but maybe offer some ideas for where she she should start to correct this problem. We already know she has a large fish load for the size pond, but we aren't looking to the future here just for right now, and for right now, I know her size pond can support that many fish and be healthy and clear because mine does. I'm concerned that she just doesn't have enough filtration and that her UV is too small for the waterflow going through it. I don't know how to tell her to fix those things though or how/where to incorporate a bigger filter. ANy advice is appreciated and if you have more questions I'll try to get the answers.

 

[sissy]

1200 gallons and 30 fish that could be it .How much has she been feeding them and has she tested her water .Koi get big 9 years and my koi are over 2 ft long .

 

[sissy]

I meant to say she needs to test and needs to do it fast and now .The water will heat up fast and it will get worse .I see all concrete around the pond there and that heats up and will heat up the water .Ammonia from the fish may be feeding the algae .It may clear up with time but I don't think so . Others may know more

 

[fishin4cars]

Under filtered, over stocked, not enough plants to help remove waste nutrients, sunny location and shallow pond. All these variables combined are probably the reason for the green water, Problem is what are the water parameters, green water can be fixed pretty easily if that's the only problem. Add plants and/or a uv light and it should clear fairly quickly. But having clear water for a while isn't going to make the water better. Green water can be beneficial so my first concern would be check the water before doing anything and then report back, Knowing what the ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, KH PH and water temps are can go a long way in helping us all come up with a plan to help.

 

[Waterbug]

The UV isn't working. It needs to be fixed. The sole function of the UV is to stop green water and it is 100% effective in every single case when properly sized, installed and maintained. It is 0% effective when not sized, installed or maintained correctly. The test to see if a UV is working properly is to look at the water. If it's green the UV isn't working. From the pictures I can determine the UV is in fact not working properly.

There are around 3,745 other ways to clear a green pond. 4 of those may even work sometimes, under certain conditions.

If the power went out in your house you could look into buying a generator. Maybe convert appliances to run off propane. There are many, many choices. Some even work. Or you could just check to see if the breaker tripped. I tend to like the simpler solutions, but that's me.

P.S. Testing water doesn't really help anything if the person doesn't know what the results mean. Generally it just leads to doing lots of really bad things that make things worst. So I wouldn't push them to test.

Should your friend kill the algae they may find out the hard way why testing water and learning a bit is a good idea. But then fish are pretty cheap.

 

[Mucky_Waters]

There are a lot of things that I would change with that pond, but if green water is the only thing she wants to change then the UV light is the simplest answer.
Likely problem is too much water flow for the UV wattage she has. The solution is to reduce the water flow or get a larger (wattage) UV light.
Personally I'd get a higher wattage UV light since the low wattage ones can cost nearly the same as the higher wattage ones and the larger wattage one will clear the water quicker and can double as a sterilizer. If she buys the UV light I linked too and hooks it up to her waterfall pump the green will go away in a few days.
Of course you know, when the green water disappears the string algae will start taking over, right? Oh, and her ammonia levels may spike as well. Tell her to put her fish on a major diet for a while till the string algae gets a good foothold.

 

[HTH]

I agree with Mucky_Waters but he put the most important bit last

Of course you know, when the green water disappears the string algae will start taking over, right? Oh, and her ammonia levels may spike as well. Tell her to put her fish on a major diet for a while till the string algae gets a good foothold.

Getting the UV fixed will not help the basic problem which is over stocking and maybe overfeeding! The green water is secondary.

I would like to know what the nitrate level is. It may be time for a major water change.

Waterbug you have become jaded and I know the feeling. the same people who will do wrong based on water test results will do bad things without. The key here is that with the request for test results there has to be guidance. Spend some time teaching the basics which many people do not want to hear.

 

[Waterbug]

Jaded...oh yeah. Kind of bored. Green pond?

Thousands of threads on the subject on this site, more than a million total on all pond forums. Not sure why no one ever does any research but I just got a clue...cell phones. I don't normally use one but did a week ago to look up something, it is a real pain. This may also explain why people want short answers, because reading more than a few sentences on a cell phone is not fun.

So it makes more sense that just posting the same question and letting people with real computers do the grunt work for them. There was a post here awhile back that was something like "I don't have a calculator handy would someone add these two numbers for me"? I thought it was strange, you're posting on the internet and don't have a calculator? Or the even sadder thing of not being able to add 2 numbers. But now it makes more sense if the person had a cell phone.

I'm also starting to think many posts are being made by bots. I know people have been working on human interaction software for a long time, I worked on such a game 30 years ago. And I also know lots of businesses would very much like software that fooled people into thinking they're talking with a real person. The social aspect of the net is growing and it would be good for a business to have millions of human like bots that could have Facebook pages, friend people, recommend products.

If I was writing such a bot I would train it by having it post in forums. Free testing, free data. It's a pretty simple thing. In just this forum there are thousands of posts that ask the same question "my pond is green, how do I clear it". Easy to read all of those, chop them up and generate a slightly unique question. You can analyze answers to formulate answers like "XYZ sounds like a good idea. How would I do that?".

The increasing dependence on cell phones makes the job a lot easier. No serious conversation needed at all. Just feed people what they want to hear. That's not too difficult.

Now that's interesting...to me.

 

[HTH]

LOL Waterbug. I hosted "The Goldfish Mailing List" on col.hp.com back in the pre web days.. .I turned the mailing list over to Jon Aseltine, an AI graduate student, who turned it over to Brian Skrab.

Aseltine's thesis was an AI program to answer the question people asked on the list. For the most part people are still asking the same questions. But a few of the answers have changed.

 

[Waterbug]

I never really thought AI would have a large impact on humans in my lifetime.

That was based on people who were using computers at that time, very aware of how computers and software operated. I never envisioned a ubiquitous computer. The joke was a Dick Tracy wrist watch.

My incorrect assumption was people would demand smarter software. Cell phone computers expanded the user base almost over night the standard for what was considered useful software fell. Angry Birds, Facebook may require a lot of infrastructure but not smart software. 1980 algorithms for the most part.

Now serious money is in the equation. We already have companies who are hired to promote products on Facebook, Yelp, Amazon, etc. Companies have known for a long time the power of social, celebrity endorsements. Now anyone can be a celebrity. Anyone can sign up in 5 minutes to push products and get a cut.

Bots could create thousands of Facebook pages, forum user accounts, and interact and over say a year have an established identity and maybe millions of friends. 10,000 bots x 100 friends = 1,000,000 friends although probably some overlap. No reason you couldn't have a million bots with a few computers and several internet connections.

Seems like it would be pretty easy. A bot in a forum could just welcome any new members, post something like "That looks great" when someone posts a picture, click "Like This" a few times a day, do the "friends" thing. Easy to get 500 posts in say a year. Then wait for a post asking about pumps and post a glowing review of an over priced pump and a link. Someone clicks on that link or goes to that site with a cookie of having seen that post and I collect say $100. Duplicate that a few thousand times and you're talking money.

If someone comes back and posts "that pump was a piece of crap" my bot can post "yeah, mine broke down too, what a piece of crap". The money has already been collected and the bot gains more credibility. I've seen various forum gurus post unbelievably dumb advice and there is never any kind of review or retribution. They continue being a guru. It seems like new users trust anyone with lots of posts and says what they want to hear. And what new people almost always want to hear is "what can I buy to fix this mess"?

Affiliate programs make this doable. A person can hype even a completely fraudulent product and not be held responsible in any way, but I collect a cut of the take. Legal thief.

I've never been that interested in AI, but am now. Seems like it would be pretty easy. Start today and in a year or so, with thousands of bot users with established identities would be fun to create and be worth a lot of dough I think. Cost would be pretty low. I think this has already been going on for awhile already. I'm always getting emails and personal messages in forums from "people" who clearly aren't people, but are pretty convincing. But there's probably room for more. E-commerce is just ramping up.

 

[HTH]

God I hate Affiliate programs. I was looking for info a while back and most of what I found was amazon affiliates which mostly copied the info from amazon. I wrote amazon and told them so too. But I am sure they were delighted to know that they had flooded the internet with free adds, and did not give a rip about my feelings on the subject.

The existing CAPTCHA's are bad enough. I dread what will happen next.

 

[HARO]

W.B.; was wondering what a bot was, but you've covered it pretty well. Several months ago three different "persons" signed up around the same time, all from India, and all posting what I thought were rather inane comments. I chalked it up to the language differences, but now realize these were "bots". Live and learn! BTW, in case you hadn't guessed, when it comes to computers I am a total illiterate! Thanks for the enlightenment.
John

 

[Waterbug]

I've spent the afternoon researching...boy I have a lot to learn. As is normally the case when I have an epiphany, I soon find out a million other people have already had the same idea. Sure enough, forums full of people making all kinds of bots and have been for years. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Digg, forums, you name it. Really easy to do. Lots of free code. Full bots can be purchased by wantabe hackers too lazy to learn anything. So authors sell them bots and the bots send data back to the author. Sweet.

Twitter seems to be super easy to bot which makes sense. Already thousands, maybe millions of bot users. And of course Twitter doesn't mind at all. Millions of new users is still millions of new users whether human or not. Traffic is traffic. There has been some blow back on bots that just click banners and ads so the owner gets a few cents each clicks. But the bots just got smarter.

God I hate Affiliate programs. I was looking for info a while back and most of what I found was amazon affiliates which mostly copied the info from amazon. I wrote amazon and told them so too. But I am sure they were delighted to know that they had flooded the internet with free adds, and did not give a rip about my feelings on the subject.

The existing CAPTCHA's are bad enough. I dread what will happen next.

Absolutely. That seems to be the beauty of it, everyone is in on it. All legal, all normal e-commerce stuff. The bots are just acting as sales people trying to convince real people to buy stuff or even just to get them to click on a link which is worth money. The companies love it. The web sites getting their kick backs love it.

CAPTCHA's may be bad, but people will do whatever is asked of them. There seems to be no limit to what the masses will accept. Sure, a small percentage of people are lost but who cares? Probably can't sell crap to those people anyways. Sheep are the target.

There's been increasing security when it comes to financial fraud. But for creating accounts, posting, stuff like that, security seems to me to be getting less and less. Take any forum for example, if there hasn't been many posts the forum dies. A forum owner isn't going to make it harder for bots to register and post as long as they're human enough and that standard gets lower everyday.

I've never been that interested in the web...I am now. It's a whole new world. It's like the wild west.

 

[JenH]

LOL @ Waterbug and cellphones! Lord knows that's the truth especially here. I try to read up on my phone but have to get online on the real computer for most of it, which is hard when your pressed for time. And yes I know there are a million posts about green water, and whatnot, I've read tons of them. But I don't know crap about all those filters and cause I don't have any of them in my pond. So here's the update though. I guess her fish were surfacing today, she described it like they were coming out of the water onto her rocks. Sounds crazy so maybe she was exaggerating a little, not sure. But 3 of her goldfish died. She went to a water garden store near here, and all they did was infuriate her by telling her nothing she could do would make it better besides buying their outrageously expensive stuff. Same crap they tried to tell me when I went there. Funny how my bog works just fine (I think anyway, lol) She took water with her to test and apparently the idiots there couldn't even figure out how to do that for her. Amazing since they have 2 fully stocked ponds on grounds and a fish dr and all kinds of shit. Anyway, I told her to go get test strips from walmart. She never got back with me with their readings, yet anyway. Now I already figured her UV wasn't big enough, since I've read you write that lots of times, Waterbug. I also had suspected that the filtration wasn't enough either. Now she has a tight budget and running out to buy an expensive UV light that can sterilize 2000gph probably isn't gonna happen. I actually told her today that if she didn't want to break the bank to start off with building a skippy filter, and I'm gonna email her the link to do so in the morning. She did a water change today. But that's not going to fix the problem, I know. And I told her to stop feeding them till it's all under control.

So I guess I'm down to what would you do if you were limited financially to fix this pond? Mucky_Waters, you said you would change a lot of things about her pond....care to elaborate?


btw, thank you all for your input

 

[HTH]

As first aid she needs to do a massive water change, 90% or better . Water needs to be dechlorinated and temperature matched.

May be a good time to clean the pond if it has not been done recently. Not going to reread the thread to check.

@Waterbug. The net used to be a nice place. It has gone to hell in a handbasket. Used to be only a few misguided hackers could mess it up. Now everyone and his brother can dump on it even if they can't program their way out of a wet paper bag.