As ya mention in
post#8, it is a good thing you are waiting till you put your fish in the pond so to allow the pond water to mature, but I would be concerned that there may not be proper amount of nutrients for the biofiltration to build up and the plants to become established. Since you do not have fish in your pond yet, then this could be a prime time to jump start your bio-filtration. I am curious also if your source water has any ammonia or nitrate in it as well since it is quite curious as to your floating pea green water algae. I imagine there is just enough nutrients available in the water for the pea green algae to thrive. I know, after a big rain here, the big ditches full of water take a long time to absorb the water so soon after there is an appearance of pea green algae thriving.
Two approaches to clear up pea green water: 1)
using a properly installed UV device (very fast solution); 2)
quilt batting in trays (which works, although a bit slower) and another thread
talking about its effectiveness of removing it. Also, as mentioned in the
mechanical filtration discussion thread, you could look into buying or building your self a wet/dry filter (also called trickle or shower tower) such as
Tetra's Wet/Dry filter and you could just place some quilt batting on the top of the tray.
Since you do not have any fish in the pond, I would definitly look into doing a fishless cycle, but the pea green algae would need to be resolved otherwise you will just be feeding the pea green algae. The fishless cycle is a process to build up the bacteria and organisms in your biological filtration. As mentioned in the
remedial water chemistry and treatment thread, the thread titled
Ok, no what do i do has a good discussion and other hyperlinks talking about and instructions for a fishless cycling.
I imagine Nebraska has quite alkaline water, but I would definitely double check this to make sure by contacting your local municipality building for a water report or by geting a KH test kit so you know your water's alkalinity measurement. If your alkalinity measurement, also known as KH, is quite low and you are receiving all the rain you are, then I would strongly recommend a major portion of your bog and plant medium to be a calcium carbonate product such as crushed oyster shell or any other formulation of it out there. This product can be found quite cheap at farm feed supply stores, but I would make sure it is primarily calcium carbonate with very little of any other nutritional additives since you just want the calcium carbonate rather than adding more nutrients to the water. This product will help to stabilize the water, but it may not be sufficient; however, even if not sufficient, it does still help.
Glad to see you are planning ahead. :cheerful: Good luck to ya!. :claphands:
darnit but should be here this week, until then I'm not going to worry about it since my fish are not in there yet. It's a new pond and a deeper/bigger pond so am sure eventually mother nature will work her magic until I can help her along abit. It is not horrible pea soup just abit green. The two trees about 25 ft from it are now starting to shade it more and more with the earths rotation towards fall here, only about 1/3 of the pond now has sunlight for the majority of the day.
