Your new koi pond turned green! What's up with that?!

6/25/2018

Your New Jersey pond professional, or maybe you, has just finished installing a new koi pond and you are so excited. It's beautiful and you can't wait to relax with your favorite beverage and take in the sights and sounds of your new waterfall. Your fish are happy and stunning, you're just elated!
A few days pass, your fish pond is doing great and you go outside one day and see something horrible. Your newly installed koi pond isn't clear any more, not even cloudy, it's GREEN! You can't see anything and you want to cry! That beautiful pond is now UGLY and you can't figure out what went wrong or what to do. What just happened?

"New Pond Syndrome" What is it?

We call this phase of a new ecosystem pond or a pond that's just been cleaned out/had filtration upgrades- "NEW POND SYNDROME". Why is it turning green though? You have just created an ecosystem, every ecosystem needs to be established with bacteria, plants, fish etc... Whether your pond is brand new or you have had some work done to it (new filters, pond cleaning, etc..) that pond needs to age and the filter needs to "seed". In short, your pond is out of balance because it's brand new! Suspended algae on the other hand just grows, and can do so much faster than it takes your pond to become balanced. "New Pond Syndrome" is not uncommon, so don't be discouraged, but what can you do?

What do I do now?

There are 4 essential items we all need to have a healthy, clean, and clear ecosystem pond. As long as you have these 4 items, your pond will balance itself out and clear itself up. If you're missing one of the 4, it may take longer or you may need to other measures to clean your pond up. What are these?

4 Essential Elements

Proper Filtration: Filter should be properly sized to your water volume and fish load
Proper Pump Turnover: Each type of filtration requires different water turnover to properly filter a pond
Aquatic Plants- You should have the correct amount of aquatic plant for your pond. (These are important! Aquatic Plants use the same nutrients as algae, thus they can "starve" the algae)
Bacteria Treatments: Consistent addition of beneficial bacteria

If you have these four elements for your pond, just trust in the new system you have, it will ultimately defeat that green water and new pond syndrome.

However, I forgot to mention, there is one more essential element to clearing your new pond. It's so important, but the hardest element to implement. It's a new pond or you just had work on it, and you really want to just see a beautiful pond! New pond owners, the most essential element is PATIENCE!!

As a rule of thumb, a pond, especially a new filter, can take 4-6 weeks to properly "seed" and cycle out. That's not to say your pond will be green for that long, but as pond owners PATIENCE can many times be the best treatments for our fish ponds.

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