A Gardeners Forum Forums General Discussion Landscape trials and triumphs Water Gardens Another Pond Question

about a week or two ago I drained my pond refilled it. I treated it and followed all the directions but the water is cloudy and today it already looked green - what am I doing wrong?

crystal, there are so many different causes, it would depend on how much plant life you have in it, how much sun, type of pond, aquatic life (fish, snails, etc) so many things. and the type of water you filled it with.

a better solution to draining and refilling it, would be to build a filter for it. there are several easy ones out there, maybe we can get cindy or donna to post the instructions here. they are alread on the garden helper. if you use the search bar, you will find lots of pond filter info!

I kept this for when I make one here soon!

adams filter

I will try this filter out - it looks easy enough - the others I have seen are complicated.

My pond sits in full sun - I have one large goldfish and one tiny one - I put about 10 bunches of Achilles (bad spelling) in but that is all so far - I think they died from the cold tho - it dropped in the 30's after being summer for two weeks. I just filled it with the hose - which is county water and treated it with all the pond stuff that was safe for plants and fish. I looked at it closer and it almost looks like it is algea again - it's driving me nuts.

Hopefully the filter will help - I'm just not sure where to get the scrubbing things.

you can use quilt batting too... cindy did an amazing filter, using donna's instructions... i'm going to be working on one for me soon because i want to expand my pond...

Full sun is bad for algae growth....mine is in full sun too, gonna see if I can have Mark build a trellis arbor over it for some shade, that way I can grow vines over it!

So once I get this filter going will it take care of the algea or do I have to get some more plants that will get rid of the nitrates in the water to do that? I have to have an amazing pond this year - I've put to much work into it to have it looking the way it does.

Another question I have - how do you set up to be emailed when a response is posted? I can't seem to find it.

i SWEAR by the algaefix by pondcare! i will use it FOREVER!

I got my filter built!! I hope it works. How long did it take you guys to see some results? I started it up at about 3 today. I plan on cleaning it out tomorrow sometime after it warms up.

Would it cause any problems if I used the filter to feed my stream part of the pond?

it shouldn't. the stream feeds into the pond, right?

Yeah - it does. I went ahead and set it up so that the filtered water does go to the water fall - it run the same as if it wasn't going through the filter. I just wanted to make sure it was ok. The filter already had nasty stuff in it last night when I had to redo it because I yanked the hose out by accident. It will be so nice if it works.

Thanks everyone for helping me with this.

it works. and the nasty stuff out of the filter makes great stuff to put on your flower beds.... feeds them.