Water Problems

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Hi All
New to the forums :)
and sorry in advance if this is a repost.

Recently had a pond put in the backgarden (6+ weeks ago)
We have a filter that was giving to us by a family member, and the water was clear as crystal for the first 3 to 4 weeks, after putting some fish in the pond, it took less than 5 days for a massive growth of algae to appear and you could not see the bottom of the pond, emptied the pond and started again, the filter spounge was washed and replaced back into the filter box, 7 days later i the pond water was clear as crystal last night looked again less than a hour ago and the water has gone brown and brown+green algae has growing in huge quantites overnight on the waterfall feature leading from the filter

any ideas what the heck is going on with the pond because i am baffled :sun_smiley:

thanks in advance
 

addy1

water gardener / gold fish and shubunkins
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They like to you to post an introduction first, explaining your pond etc

But to help we need to know what size of pond, what kind of fish, what kind of filter, the size of the pump, how many fish
 
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Pond Size - 102 Gallon Pond
7 Goldfish
Unkownin Branded Filter received from relative that used it for a number of years, but it uses 4 rectangular spounges to filter stuff from the water.
Pump is a Cascade 700 by Hozelock
 

ididntdoit99

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Welcome Matt! Algae is completely normal, theres no way around it. The cloudy water is going to be normal until your pond cycles also, it needs to build up a nice colony of benificial bacteria. Don't empty it again, by doing that, you just started the process of cylcling over again.

Do you have a water test kit? You'll probably want one, and you didnt say anything about plants, do you have any in your pond?
 
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the water was crystal clear for the first 4-5 weeks it was 4-5 days after putting fish in the water went off. and yeah my dad has 3 aquatic pond plants in i dont know what they are called but they got put in about a week after the pond was first filled
 

stroppy

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mattdunn1991 said:
the water was crystal clear for the first 4-5 weeks it was 4-5 days after putting fish in the water went off. and yeah my dad has 3 aquatic pond plants in i dont know what they are called but they got put in about a week after the pond was first filled

sorry to be the barer of bad news but 10 fish in that size pond is too many , but ponds do go cloudy after adding fish until the bio filter starts working, if you need to rinse your filters you should wash them out in a bucket of pond water i would cut right down on the feeding and if the pond is in full sun try and shade it if you can
 
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i only have 7 fish not 10 :( lol and they only get fed 4-5 times a week its the same amount my grandad feeds his 7 pond fish and his is fine, the filters were washed befor they went in and again when we had the problem, and the pond gets hardly no sun at all as its in the most shaded place in the garden
 

ididntdoit99

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What stroppy was saying is the IF you need to wash out your filter (which you probably didnt need to do at this point) use pond water to do it instead of water from the hose. The chlorine in the water will kill any good bacteria that has started in your filter.

You may want to look up pond cycling and do some research, maybe there is a good thread on here about it, someone might be able to point you in the right direction.

All of your problems so far have been completely normal for the cycling process, but you just dont want to freak out and start over, because your pond will never cycle.
 

stroppy

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mattdunn1991 said:
i only have 7 fish not 10 :( lol and they only get fed 4-5 times a week its the same amount my grandad feeds his 7 pond fish and his is fine, the filters were washed befor they went in and again when we had the problem, and the pond gets hardly no sun at all as its in the most shaded place in the garden

sorry my mistake
 
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Welcome.

Can you post a picture of this filter and the "foam pads" inside it? It sounds more like a mechanical filter than a bio filter. And like others have posted, in the future only clean the filter material with pond water.

It would be great to see the results of a test. Some pet stores like Petsmart will do one for free. If the nitrAtes are to high and you don't have enough plants, then that could be a cause for the algae. You may have to add a few more plants or do some water changes to bring them down.
 

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