Where did my algae go?

[buckry]

I can't believe I"m about to ask this, but is it ok to have almost zero algae in your pond? My walls have almost none, the floor doesn't appear to have any, the waterfall has been running for a month and doesn't have a single spec of green. I only feed on Tuesdays and Thursdays, twice usually, and then on the weekends i let the kids feed them two or three times. I'm a little worried there isn't enough algae for them to eat on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, but also a little worried that whatever the reason the algae is dying off might be killing my fish. This might be my imagination running away with itself, but it's concerning me. I don't have floating algae, I don't have blanket algae, there has never been string algae, and my plants really aren't that big of a factor yet. 1 tiny lily, 30 or so hyacinths, I've got like 90% of my surface exposed to the sun.

I know that by asking this question I'm dooming myself to an algae bloom, but I'd rather have that than dead fish. Any advice? Am I over-reacting to nothing here?

 

[adavisus]

When water temps go over 95f, quite possible for ponds exposed all day to hot sun, that can kill algae off

Regards, andy
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[buckry]

95 degrees, that's bathwater. I'm not there thank god.

 

[Waterbug]

Just because you can't see algae doesn't mean it isn't there. If you're really interested get some high mag reading glasses and get down close to the falls, nose to the water. You might be able to see some algae. There are thousands of species, different colors, sizes, textures. The plants certainly carried macroalgae into the pond.

Macroalgae don't have to be large to clear green water, almost by definition they can't be large. Marine algae has been shown to battle each other by producing chenicals toxic to each other and I assume freshwater algae does the same. So if the green water microalgae was inhibiting macroalgae the only way for microalgae to stand a chance is to produce a lot of microalgae inhibiting chemical as quickly as possible and in large amounts.

There are experiments you can do to confirm this if you were interested.

Or you can just wait a couple of weeks. Current species of macroalgae will continue to grow until you can see them. They will battle each other and likely by the end of summer one will dominate. Next year will be a new battle.

While it is possible something in your water is killing both the algae and the fish, but it's unlikely unless you added some algae killing chemical like AlgaeFix. Then it would be very possible.

But it's generally better to work through the common causes of fish deaths before spending time on the more exotic causes. Given you've ruled how water quality next up to bat is parasites or disease brought in by the fairly new fish. There's a reason why you hear about water quality and quarantine tanks until it comes out your ears...because most of the time that's the problem. New keepers almost always resist that and instead look for outside causes. You're in good shape because you haven't been dumping one chemical after another into the pond to solve unseen problems. Normally that's what people do.

It's kind of tough thing. It's work and expense to nail down a cause or even eliminate causes. Then the treatment is often expensive especially once the fish are in a large pond. Because the fish aren't expensive and you're not attached to them most people would just let it play out. If you do lose all the fish you can start over by sterilizing the pond and quarantining the next batch of fish. Some people assume parasites and treat them no matter what. That's safer, easier and cheaper to do in a quarantine tank.

 

[Waterbug]

Reminds me of a story...Lady was losing fish and we were talking about all the different causes and things to check and she says "I even made sure to use unscented bleach". Turns out she thought she had to add bleach to keep the pond clean for the fish. Just a stray idea that somehow got stuck in her head. It is difficult to completely rule out anything.

 

[buckry]

lol, wow, wonder where she got that idea.

Yeah, I'm not attached to the fish, and financially I'm not into the hole much for these fish, but this is frustrating beyond belief. Retested the water after the 3rd fish died just now and it's still perfect, 8.0 PH, 0 nitrites, 0 ammonia. I'm getting paranoid about my test now, maybe it's defectiv

There is no way I can catch all of those little koi in this huge pond, but maybe I should add some medicine to the entire pond. I haven't added anything foreign. I've got barley straw, added fresh AC today, added crushed shells a week ago, haven't even added coagulator in over a week.

I'm just at a loss, and I dont' know what to do. At this point my pond is half old fish, and half new fish, so that's a pretty horrible breakdown, I feel like I don't have a chance and I'm going to lose every last one.

 

[addy1]

I don't have seeable algae in my pond buckry, about 75% covered with lilies, just my bog waterfall running. No fish deaths. But also do not have koi.
I don't think, not having seeable algae would be an issue in your pond with the fish deaths. But then again I am not an algae expert.

 

[buckry]

Ok, that's good to hear. To be honest I've been contempltaing daily feedngs to make sure the fish have enough food, and just to see what kind of algae might grow.

In fact, yeah, I'm defintely going to feed twice today to see what happens. I'm not feeding them with a shovel so that shouldn't be a terrible thing to do.

 

[addy1]

If they eat it all in five minutes or so feed as often as you want, they will make more poop lol

My neighbor is watching over our pond and feeding the fish, I gave her measured amounts to feed. They will be happy I told her if she wanted to feed every day lol.

I am watching over the pond via the net just so if something goes wrong I can call her and walk her though a fix, all except pump failure. We never did get the second pump plumbed in as a back up pump. The worse that could happen is the pump dies, the water turns green, all fixable when we get home.

I could also have her take the stream pond off the timer and run it until we get home, just 600 gph but it would be some movement.

 

[buckry]

But tons of poop is as bad as uneaten food right?

 

[addy1]

Depends on your filters ................ lol the uneaten food rots more than poop rots if that makes sense. Lets put it this way, it may be an internet rumor, but I have always read it is best not to have a bunch of uneaten food in your pond Even the food bags say that

 

[sissy]

but koi produce tons more waste than a goldfish it seems .

 

[buckry]

Ok, so waste is bad, but food is worse. Yeah, I can buy that. Either way, I'll see if the water goes green again, trying to gather data here, a bad result is still something I can learn from.

 

[buckry]

Here is something new, came home today and my 3 waterfall rocks, the rocks that the water goes over to make falls are all finally covered in algae. So maybe the stuff on the liner is dying out due to the new waterfall algae. No other changes were noted.

 

[Waterbug]

So yesterday you thought the pond had no algae and today 3 rocks are covered in algae? I'm guessing there was algae there for awhile. It grows fast, but not that fast.

In the microalgae vs macroalgae battle macroalgae's best chance for survival is in shallow fast moving water. In deeper water the green cuts off a lot of light to algae trying to grow on the bottom, chemicals inhibit what little growth there is, green water wins. In shallow fast moving water the green water algae can't stick to and cover the macro algae and the max sunlight allows the macroalgae to grow faster than the green water algae chemicals can inhibit grow. Macroalgae wins.

The dead green algae falls to the bottom like a dust, that's not good for the macroalgae down there, being covered in dead organic matter and bacteria. Give it some time, it'll catch up probably.

The first time I ever had a hint of this microalgae vs macroalgae was many years ago when Greg Bickal, I think, posted that he connected two very green ponds by a new stream and shortly there after the ponds cleared. He also saw string algae in the stream. This was back when UV filters were very expensive and so clearing ponds held a lot of interest.