How do you get rid of that green hair like weed that grows in outside ponds?

I have emptied the pond once (the fish weren't too happy about living a bucket for a few days), scrubbed everything including the plants and it seemed gone for a few months. Now its back again.

Do I have to keep scrubbing the pond out?
Can I take the fish out then put something in the water?

I know light makes it grow faster and I have the pond shaded as much as possible.

Help!

KRin

The key here is UV sterilisation/clarification

Not as expensive as home aquarium kits and the pond kits are slightly bigger and use a different bulb wattage but they work really well.

OR

many people swear by putting in bales of straw, im sure that a Google search would pull up a lot of info on that.

The algal blooms are similar to what happens when cycling an aquarium, same sort of thing.. do you have fitration?
big water changes may just feed and help the algae!!!!


Adding lots of aquatic plants will also help

hope that helps
C

I just ignore it, pull it out as necessary, and wait for the food supply to die off, due to the other desirable plants in the pond becoming stable and growing. You can also add Apple snails, they don't overbreed, and you can sell the babies for about 5 bucks! They will consume a lot of the hair algae...
Good luck!
Greg

We acutally have a pond too and a lot of the algae that you're talking about. The hay bale does work but they cost a fortune getting it from a pond store (15 bucks for a small cube). We also have some snails that we "stole" from our local river and they clean up a bit.
I don't think the algae will hurt the fish though...

The key here is UV sterilisation/clarification

Not as expensive as home aquarium kits and the pond kits are slightly bigger and use a different bulb wattage but they work really well.

OR

many people swear by putting in bales of straw, im sure that a Google search would pull up a lot of info on that.

The algal blooms are similar to what happens when cycling an aquarium, same sort of thing.. do you have fitration?
big water changes may just feed and help the algae!!!!


Adding lots of aquatic plants will also help

hope that helps
C

Thanks for the info.

I have a pump and filter I clean every two days. I have two plants in pots - one is a papyrus, the other some sort of iris.

I'll have to wait to get some snails - apparently they didn't like breeding in winter and the supply is almost non-existant at the moment.

Pity the fish don't eat the weed...

KRin

What fish do you keep in the pond krin? Maybe getting a few herbivorous fish will do the trick as they probably eat at a faster rate than the snails do.