Hi Rapid. I used to have trouble with green water years ago but a friend of ours found a diagram of this bio-filter that cleared our pond in no time with little cost and maintenance. I never have to clean the scrubbies that I use as bio-media. The only thing I have to clean is the window screening at the top of the filter which catches all the debris from the bottom of the pond. It only takes a minute or two to clean the window screening.
I don't have bottom drains on my filters but I put the scrubbies into predator netting so that when I have to get rid of the water, I just lift everything out.

I've got a great diagram and step by step pictures of this filter if you are interested.

Your's Koily, Lorraine

You do not have to buy a UV to have clear water.

Add lots of plants and have patience. Newly filled ponds need to cycle. You can rig up a temporary shade which will help.

Black pond dye will help too. I use it in my greenhouse pond and water feature without plants.

I recently set up our first pond, 5000 gallon in full sun. Two weeks after setting it up we had a bad algea bloom turning the water murky green. I have many plants, so I bought barly pellets placed them in mesh bags in the two pools above the falls. I put then filled the pools with watercress. It has been about two weeks since I did that and the water was crystal clear yesterday. That is all I did. Good luck with yours.

Thanks for the suggestions, i will definitely take them on. It's summer time and I want to see my fish :) Patience is not something I have lots of ...

What about doing a partial water change ?

A water change will only prolong your agony. The new water will have to cycle too.

I make water changes from the bottom of my pond once a month or more often depending on how many fish are in the pond. Excess toxins from the bottom of the pond should be removed, especially nitrates and water changes are the best way to do that and it also helps with the growth of your fish.

Your's Koily, Lorraine

Doesn't help when you have a pond full of pea soup algae!

Your right Buy and that's why it is so important to have a good bio-filter that removes ammonia and nitrite from the water to starve out the algae and the nitrates are removed by water changes.
You can never have too much filtration but you have to build it large enough not only for the size of your pond but for the amount of fish in that pond and that's why the filter we use now works so well in our overstocked ponds.

Your's Koily, Lorraine

So much easier to just get a kick-ass UV. I never have pea soup ever, and I am in full sun all day long. I got a 160 watt Aqua UV unit, plus lots of water hyacinth and lettuce. The water is always crystal clear, except for brief cloudy periods in the Spring while everything is in flux. By late May, the water is permanently clear. The plants help, but a good oversized UV brings instant gratification and takes care of any algae produced by nutrients supplied to the water by lots of koi. The key is to buy sufficient capacity to sterilize, not clarify, a pond that is twice your size. In this case more is better.

KoiLady, How can we get a diagram of your filter please.
Thanks, Hal

I'm willing to bet you must pay a fee to get it....

patience. pea soup isn't that bad. You could be living in Baghdad, now that's bad. your skippy to pond ratio is more than adequate. Everybody has suggestions and advice but patience is really key. use common sense, read thru the suggestions see what makes sense and do whats right for you.

Hi Warrick. If you send me your e-mail address I'll get a copy of the diagram of the filter I use and step by step pictures that a friend took while she was building this filter. I like using this bio-filter because of the natural bacteria which grows on the bio-media and removes ammonia and nitrite from the water. It's also very easily made and hardly any maintenance. All you have to do is backwash once a month and clean the window screening at the top of the filter where debris from the pond is trapped and if you follow the directions carefully, you never have to clean the bio-media. I use plastic pot scrubbers.

My e-mail address is: koilady@execulink.com

Your's Koily, Lorraine

I did a 3 things which helped a lot, I did a 25% water change which I think really helped. I also put on the spare house hold UV and have been running ever since. My water cleared up almost immediately because of the partial water change. I suggest doing a 10% water change over a period of 3 weeks, do 10% each weekend is better and less stressful for the fish. I also bought a load of water plants which in my opinion each assisted in their own way.

Problem with buying a UV system is that they so expensive, I have a 8000 gph pump which I pump 50ft uphill, so I estimate it is probably more of a 4000gph which feeds thru a 2" pipe into the top pond ..I still get an impressive flow rate and buying a 4000gph UV is way out of my budget .. I gerry rigged my house hold UV (only 8gpm) to run 10% of the water thru it and allow the remaining to flow out .. i believe it still works, but doesn't do the entire pond.

Regards,

I have green pea soup, but zero ammonia, zero nitrite and zero nitrate. So if I get a UV sterilizer and eliminate the green pea soup, don't I get nitrate again unless some other plant can utlize it? My water seems to be 20 ppm nitrate right from the tap, so I don't have a lot of lee-way in having extra nitrate in my water (I think 40 ppm is when you need to start worrying about it).

I have tried adding hornwort and water hyacinth and neither seem to be doing especially well - leaves needles falling off the hornwort seems to be adding to the load instead of reducing it.

Does anyone know how a CU based algicide works? Does the Cu combine with the algae and result in its removal from the water? Or does the Cu concentration build up with successive treatments?
Dan

You may want to research bentenite: it is suppose to clear the pea green water. I have used it in my pond couple years back, but I used it as a precaution in the spring. I had to buy a cheap hand electric mixer to mix it into a a milkshake type consistency then add it to the pond water - hard to dissolve it in water. Bought it on ebay and it was pretty cheap, don't remember the exact cost.

Since my water has remained clear for 6 days I'm going to assume the Cu has not disipated and might be concentrated with each successive treatment.
Dan

Dan,
Copper is not something that I would want to put in any body of water with aquatic life in it. It is a good way to either kill the aquatic life or do serious harm to it.
Mike

Hello all,

We have a round concrete pond built in 1940--same time as our house. Size is approximately 6 ft 8" x 6 ft 8" and 21" deep. There's a stacked rock semi-circular retaining wall behind it that rises 54" (75" from bottom of pond) to the top. There's an old spigot at the top of the wall, a small square outlet about halfway between the top and a ledge with a scooped out basin. So, back in the day, we presume water was pumped from the house (we think we've located the pipe but valve is very old and very hard to turn so we haven't tried it for fear of it breaking) to a pipe that runs up the side of the semi-circular retaining wall to the spigot atop the wall over the pond. We assume the water came out of the spigot, splashed in the basin and fell down to the pond below. There's a 20" vertical pipe, about 1.5"' in dia. coming from the bottom of pond to about 2" below the ledge surrounding the pond. We presume it's an overflow drain.
We've never actually seen it in action. Since the water came from the house, should we presume that the pressure to pump the water up to the top came from the house and there was no auxiliary pump or recirculation of the pond water? (Those were the days of "unlimited" resources!)
The good news is the pond is still water tight. The bad news is it fills up with rain water, grows green slime and Mosquitos (we put mosquito dunks in to abate).

Other info: We live in Minneapolis--it's cold! We've let the pond water freeze over winter as well as have drained it in the fall and the snow melt fills it partially with water the next Spring. The pond is in the shade with a few trees nearby--so some leaves fall into pond in the autumn.

Here are our questions:
1. Is anyone familiar with ponds built around this time so we can get a better idea of how the system was set up without ripping up our yard?

2. We don't want to waste water from our house that would end up emptying into the ponds overflow drain, so how should we go about retrofitting this pond? We'd like to have to water fall from the top of the wall as it did originally, but we don't know what condition the plumbing underground and behind the wall is in.

3. What size pump and filter do we need? What brand? We don't want to spend a fortune but also don't want to get a cheap system that has to be replaced in a few years. We don't want fish (unless they eat Mosquitos) but do want plants.

4. How to prevent mosquitos? We have a few resident leopard frogs. We're hoping that having movement in the pond will prevent Mosquitos--but have also heard that one needs more than a few ripples to fully abolish larvae.

5. What is the purpose of the small square outlet in the retaining wall between the top spigot and the splash basin?

6. Anything else we should know?

Thanks for any and all info!

Gretchen

As a wise one once said...

The divine definition of patience is ponding.

(Here's lookin @ you mckool)

OR...empty your wallet, buy a UV & add tons of chemicals & additives on a regular basis. As for me, I prefer patience:)

blessings,
~digger

Fools rush in where wise men fear to tread. And I wasn't born when this pond was built. Most likely the pipe was lead so that along with age it's time to "begin anew" with pipe and pumps. I'd like to see a picture, as this sounds like an intriging episode.

Running water will eliminate good % of the mosquitos

Look toward a skippy type filter, IMO.

Figure the volume of the pond and then size a pump to turn that volume every hour or very 2 hours.

You'll need electricity to the area for the pump - run a separate circuit and you'll be okay for expansion, ie lighting, for example.

Plumbing - think it through, at least a size larger than you "think" you'll need so if you get pond additcted you won't be re-doing the already. School of hard knocks speaking.

Few thoughts for beginning the process