waterbug_guy,

Wow. Thanks for the plethora of information! It sounds like my only option for swimming in clean(er) water is to drain the pond and put in a swimming pool! ha!

I will use up what i have as far as the pondclear and will not buy anymore...that was a waste of money.

Ponds change. Later on you might wish your pond was as clean as it is now.

I only have experience with ponds, but there the #1 remedy to get clean water is to have enough desirable plants that consume the nutrients that the algae don't have a chance to grow. My own small pond has so much submerged vallisneria and parrot's feather that there simply isn't enough left for algae to take a foothold. Before the vallisneria took over I had a bit of algae growth in spring and I would buy some water lettuce and water hyacinth to consume the nutrients, which worked well.

I've been researching "natural pools" for a while but haven't been able to find the time & energy to build one myself, but the principle is the same. If I were you, I'd dedicate 1/2 the pond to plants that consume nutrients and keep 1/2 to swim (or something like that). You would have to install a barrier to separate the areas and I'd put a jetty of some sort to allow you to get to the deeper swim area without slipping at the margins (where having plants is a better plan anyway). Given your climate, you'll have a bit of work each spring to re-establish plants and so you'll probably go through a phase where the algae leap ahead before they're reined in, but it ought to work.

A resource that I've found very good (but not all free) is http://www.organicpools.co.uk/ (I have no affiliation with them but I did buy the ebook). The free stuff pretty much gives you the overall gist.

Good luck! The best is if you can view it as an experiment and work slowly at it.

It is a myth that plants can consume enough nutrients that algae can't grow. A green pond almost always has zero ammonia and nitrate while clear ponds often have way above 0 nitrate. This has been proven in many studies done over many years by Universities and the Department of Agriculture in many states related to fish farm ponds. And can be confirmed by anyone with a pond and a test kit.

Interestingly though I think Vallisneria is one of the plants currently being tested for producing a chemical (allelochemical) that kills single cell algae. We do know clear pond water is often toxic to green water algae, kills it on contact. I believe string algae is the normal producer of these allelochemicals, but Vallisneria could too. I wouldn't be surprised if most underwater plants do.

waterbug_guy, do you have any references to any of the studies?

Here are a couple, but there are 100's, maybe 1000's.

An Introduction to the Study of Algae by V. J. Chapman contains a lot of references.

U.S. Geological Survey, National Water Summary 1990-91, Hydrologic Events and Stream Water Quality

THE INDEPENDENT HIGH RATE ALGAL POND (I-HRAP)
INCORPORATING DENITRIFICATION IN TERTIARY
WASTEWATER TREATMENT by A. Neba and P.D. Rose 2004

Compare that to zero studies showing plants can reduce nutrients to zero and starve algae to an almost complete absence. But to be fair the reason there are no studies on this is because it makes no sense to anyone with even a basic understanding of how plants work. It would be like trying to get grant money to prove the earth is flat.

The only cases where a green pond shows > 0 ammonia/nitrate is when that isn't the constraining factor. Like if farm fertilizer is entering the pond. But for most ponds macro nutrients ammonia/nitrate/phosphorus is the limiting factor.

A common way to control weeds (plants) in farm ponds is to add nutrients to try and start an algae bloom. That blocks light to the plants and slows their growth. This works because suspended algae is better at using these nutrients than the plants. In the contest of using nutrients it is suspended algae that is the winner, not the plants. There are studies that show this.

There have also been studies that show why humans create and believe such myths as plants starving algae. See work by Jennifer Whitson and others. There have been other studies that explain why people who believe these kinds of myths question any challenge to the myth but never question the myth itself. Very interesting stuff imo.

man, you really get worked up about this stuff! I asked a simple 1-line question for references and you act as if I was questioning your sanity...;-) Anyway, thanks for the references.

Mother nature is all about competition.
Oh, and by the way, I wouldn't swim in that pond.

man, you really get worked up about this stuff! I asked a simple 1-line question for references and you act as if I was questioning your sanity...;-) Anyway, thanks for the references.
Sorry I upset you. It is a forum...discussion...stuff like that. If you wanted a simple answer, some references, I suggest you try Google in the future. It really is pretty useful. Gives you just what you want without the discussion. A bit more work maybe than asking other people to do the search for you but it saves you being forced to read all the bah, bah, bah crap.

Useful information is brief & to the point.
The rest is just overflow waste!

It's an interesting concept. Not just asking for free advice, but also demanding it be in a certain form. Trouble is I don't much care to converse with such people so I don't really care what they want or demand. In general I've always found them to be very poor conversationalists.

I think some people may not understand the point of posting, at least for me. I don't post to help regular posters. They're not here to learn, teach, or have a conversation. I post because I like to think about ponds and to help guests. And questions give me something to research a little more each time, learn a little more. So I go on and on basically because I enjoy it. Sometimes I play Freecell, sometimes I post. I sure don't expect people to read it. Why a person would chose to read all that stuff they don't even care about...and then take the time to post a nasty response is beyond me. I assume it has something to do with self esteem.

Regular forum posters think my posts are directed at them, and therefore they think posts should be tailored to their tastes. I prefer to tailor posts to readers who who never post, the guests. In all forums if you look at the number of registered members online compared to guests it's always 10 or 20 times as many guests. Guests read my posts and often email me directly with questions. Which is always fine with me because I find these people much more open minded, secure in themselves so not as defensive, and more interested in actually improving their ponds than regular forum posters. Plus some of these guests even hire me to help them with their pond design so that's nice too. Regular forum posters are a big help with that too since many guests do see thru the nastiness and crap info normally posted in forums for what it is. Which is why I think so few guests ever register and post. Forums are pretty nasty places, always have been.

Sure hope that was useful.

Its not the forums that are nasty its the people on them who chose to be.

Forums are people. Without the people it's just unused software.

Each pond forum has a distinct personality driven by the handful of regular posters.

Within that group you have the forum royalty, normally just a few people. They post 20-100 times a day, have been a member forever. maybe even a forum monitor.

Then a bunch of minions who always agree with the royalty. Getting a kind word from royalty is nirvana.

Then a bunch of newbies that post for awhile and leave. Always a new flow of newbies at least in popular forums.

And then a sprinkling of trouble makers. You know, the real A wads. People like Dr Eric Johnson who post actual info and disagree with forum dogma. It makes the royalty look bad, exposes their lack of any actual knowledge about ponds. We can't have that! People don't spend 6-10 hours a day posting for 10 years to be dethroned by some johnny-come-lately.

First into the attack are the minions... repeating royalty dogma. What they lack in original thought they make up for with sheer numbers and personal insults, pummeling the invader with logic so relentless and mindless the invader can't type fast enough to refute it all. Each response the invader posts only adds to the word twisting and spinning the minions can use against the invader.

As the invader starts to tire from the avalanche of nonsense the royalty step in for the coup de grâce. The oh so standard logic used in all forums to shut someone up once and for all... "well I don't know about all that data and science stuff...but I fart in my pond once a day and my pond is great".

And with that the invader finally realizes that pond forums have nothing to do with ponds and everything to do with personal kingdoms. And Dr Eric Johnson stopped posting in forums.

Many troublemakers like Dr Eric Johnson have been shown the door by self-proclaimed "friendly" members over the years. It's a nasty ugly affair. After the invader has been purged the nice, friendly, members can go back to patting themselves on the back saying what a friendly little forum they have. At least until another troublemaker comes along who dares to question forum dogma.

I think nastiness may depend on perspective.

OMG, I'm a minion :-)

I'll call being a minion also. if thats ok?
King of a forum, who knew such aspirations existed!

Yeah, it is pretty sad.

Barley straw immersed could be helpful.

Let me say up front, I don't know anything about this. I have been hearing/reading lately though about "natural pools", and might want to look into it to see if you could adapt the concept to your situation. I do know that they usually create a second pond with plants that serves as a bio filter and the water circulates between the two ponds. I don't think they include fish though. I don't know if it could be done successfully with fish in one of the ponds. There is currently a TV show on Animal Planet called the Pool Master, and I think the pools he creates are natural ponds using a second pond as a biofilter, although on a pretty grand scale.

Barley straw.

I've seen the Pool Master show in the guide and haven't been recording it but am now. I didn't realize they had any kind of bio filter scheme for swimming pools in the main stream. Never heard of that. Sound interesting. I have heard of swimming ponds but these have been just ponds that made swimming more enjoyable.

A google search for "natural swimming pools" will turn up quite a bit of info. I do believe you can also find online info about the pools built for the show.

Awesome show recommendation. Watched a few eps tonight. FYI they can be found on YouTube as well. Now to figure out if and how I can retrofit my pond!