My pond turned green overnight, now what? | Morris County, NJ| A Frog’s Dream

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Here’s the scenario (one at least):
It’s Friday night, you and the family are packing up to go away for the weekend.  You breeze past the pond to say goodbye to your fish friends and throw them a little food until you get home Sunday night.  The weekend weather is beautiful, sunny and HOT!
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You arrive home and go check the pond, it’s the first thing I do when I get home from being gone for a weekend. (Who am I kidding, I do this even when I run a quick errand, I love my fish!)  From a distance you can see neon green glowing from the pond, as you get closer it looks like a nuclear power plant waste area.  Your pond has turned a neon green practically overnight.   It was beautiful Friday and now it looks like this!

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Pond Before our Treatment

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Does this scenario sound familiar?  Don’t be frustrated it happens to all of us at some point in time.  But why does this happen and how do we speed the process of clearing it up faster?

Algae is a plant, which needs food, water and ,you guessed it, sunlight/heat to grow.  Put all three of these elements together and you have created an algae farm!  This time of year, July through September,  algae growth in Morris County NJ can be trying at times and frustrating, but with a little patience and taking the correct steps this algae nightmare can go away.

There is a quick checklist we go through prior to trying to clearing up a green pond.  Otherwise any efforts may be useless.

1. Is the pond overcrowded with fish?  (1″ of fish per 10 gallons of water is a good guide)
2. Is the pond under-filtered?
3. Are you feeding your fish too much?  (1-2 times per day, 1 time in the morning during extreme heat.)
4. Could the pond use some more aquatic plants?
5. Did anyone put any fertilizer or chemicals around or near the pond?

If you answered yes to any of the above questions, start with fixing that issue first.  Many times this phenomena of a pond turning green overnight is attributed to one of the above being out of balance or something foreign has entered the pond.

If you answered all of the above questions with a no or you addressed one of or a few of the issues above, let’s now talk about how to help the pond bounce back and clear up this unsightly green water.

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Same Pond 3 Days after Treatment

How did we do this, we will tell you our secret shotgun approach;

1. Install a Pond Dosing System.  We add the Clear Bag to the system which contains treatments to help clear the water.
   
2. In addition to the Clear bag we will add supplemental pond bacteria.
3. Addition of a water clarifier or flocculant (we will do this every  24 hours if needed)
4. In the skimmer we will add something we call a Rapid Clear Pad.  This is a dense filter pad that will catch the microscopic floating algae that is causing the pond water to be green.  This pad will need to be changed daily for at least two days.  This all depends on how green the water is in the pond.
5. We will also add additional aeration in the form of an extra pump or aerator.

Now we wait and keep an eye on the skimmer pad and add the after the water has cleared we will change the dosing system bag back to a Maintain bag to help keep the pond clean and clear. We have had great success with the above procedure and have seen ponds clear up in 24-36 hours after doing the above.  Sometimes though it may take up to a week or longer, this truly depends on your pond and situation.

For more information on algae and some other ways to beat this beast  please see our other blog:  Pond Algae! Help!

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Need Help? Upload Some Pictures ​
​and talk to a pond professional.

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