Chemicals for green water??

[Ponderthis]

I finally finished my build and here's what I have:

2,000 gallon pond
55 gallon skippy type filter
40 small goldfish
Green water

I put the goldfish in about 4 days before I finished and installed the filter. Not sure if this is what caused the green water or not, but my water went from crystal clear to mucky green within 2 days.

If I use an algecide to clean the water up and put some beneficial bacteria mix into the pond should this fix and sustain the green water issue?

Any help would be appreciated. I would like to get this water cleared up in the next day since we have company here in two days to visit for a week. Wanted to impress them with the pond but not very impressing right now. Can't even see the fish.

 

[DrDave]

How long has the bio filter been running? What media did you use in it?
I don't recommend or use any chemicals.

 

[Ponderthis]

I used the 1/2" irrigation tubing, 500' of it cut into 1 1/2" or so long pieces. I'm going now to buy some of the beneficial bacteria to put into the pond and hoping that will work quickly.?.

 

[Ponderthis]

Forgot to answer your first question. Filter has been running for a few days, 24 hours a day. Of course I had the fish in the pond for about 5 days before starting the filter.

 

[koidaddy]

Mine was just starting to look good and then we had a week of pure sunshine. Now it is fighting the alge bloom. Plus this rain won't help. Bummer on the company comming. I know exactly what you mean. Sadly there is nothing you can do as a quick fix other then petting tint in the water so its not green. I did this last year with some blue pond tint and it looked good. Carefull as it will stain your rocks.

 

[DrDave]

I used the 1/2" irrigation tubing, 500' of it cut into 1 1/2" or so long pieces. I'm going now to buy some of the beneficial bacteria to put into the pond and hoping that will work quickly.?.

Oh, then you have a "Doc Filter" Skippy uses scrubbies.
I am surprised the green is still there, give it a few more days. How fast is the water running through the filter? With a slow upflow, the tubes provide enough resistance to cause most of the algae to settle to the sump. This settling may not happen if you have areation going.

In time, when the anerobic bacteria get established, they will take care of this as well.

 

[jethro13]

You can get all kinds of suggestions of different natural remedies and such that will eventually given enough time will work. The item that works and that has continued to work for me hands down is UV light. I also relied on my bio filter (lava rock and filter media) and for whatever reason I fought green water on and off my first and the beginning of my second season. I got sick of farting around and bought an 25 watt Aqua UV lite installed in the water line. 36 hours later the water was Crystal clear and has been ever since

 

[DrDave]

I have had over 42 years of crystal clear water without a UV. You should consider looking at what is missing from your system. Where I live, my ponds get direct sunlight every day and we rarely get rain or clouds.

 

[jethro13]

Ya, I may have not given my biofilter and plants enough time to kick in and do their job and now that my bogs are established I could probably discontinue using UV. All I can say is,at the time,I needed something to work so I tried UV and I was amazed at how fast it worked.

 

[koikeepr]

It took about 6 weeks after I turned the pond on to get the bio in gear and I still had green water. I turned on my UV and boom! clear in two days.

 

[Ponderthis]

I went ahead and hooked up another pump I had from the first time I built the pond and a pressure filter with a UV light built in. I also purchased some beneficial bacteria and put it in too. I noticed when I look in the top of the "Doc" filter, that there is still quite a few large pieces coming up through the irrigation tubing so I put a heater/AC filter over the top of the tubes and below the outflow hole and it's catching most of the big stuff. I thought that the tubing would do that but it doesn't seem to be?

I was thinking about buying some filter material tomorrow to put over top of it and read through a post earlier today where it sounds like someone put the stuffing that you can buy for pillows to use as a fines filter material.

Kinda crazy though, a couple of days ago before I put the tubes in the filter it was crystal clear. I put the tubes in and a day later it started to get pretty cloudy and greenish.

I'll let it go for a couple of days and keep my fingers crossed.

 

[DrDave]

It will take a while for the tubes to get the colony established. Also the flow cannot be too high. I use an 1150 GPH pump that with head preassure is somewhat less. The time delay is sufficient to allow gravity to work in mine.
Patience is a virtue...

 

[Ponderthis]

I know I've read it a hundred times on here that you can "NEVER" have too much filtration. But I do think that my pump may be working against me here. I have a pump that with the head pressure is probably turning the pond over every 30 minutes or so. I think it's a 4,200 gph pump and my pond ended up being smaller than anticipated at approximately 2,000 gallons. The head height is probably 4' or so, so I'm not losing much gph for that.

I was wondering if that's why I still get some larger particles up through the tubes?

I thought about purchasing a splitter to let me run some of the water through the filter/waterfall and hook the other side up to a hose that I could use to circulate the water. I may have to consider that a little more and perhaps do it.

It takes about 4 minutes or so for the 55 gallon drum to fill up to the outflow. Too quick, too slow?

 

[DrDave]

Sounds like you found the problem. Time, not volume is the key to success. Use that pump for circulation in the pond. I have 2 ea 3200 GPH pumps to circulate mine, one is on 24/7 and the other is for my large waterfall that I only run periodically. After a major cleaning yesterday that left my ponds looking like a mud puddle, they are crystal clear today. Every customer today commented on clean my ponds were.

 

[koikeepr]

The speed at which the water runs through the barrel does not affect the bacteria. They will be there unless it's niagra falls. As DrD says, establishing bacteria on a new media can take weeks....patience, patience.