Established pond, lost half of its water now pea soup water

[ponder630]

Hi again fellow ponders. About two weeks ago I had back drained my bio-filter (100 gallon stock tank) and filled my pond like a normally do for my weekly water change. My pond is about 1000 gallons and by draining my stock tank and filling my pond back to its normal water level it is a ~10% water change I do weekly.

The next morning I woke up and saw my pond drained more than 1/2, the gasket around my ball valve on the bottom of my apparently was leaking all night and I did not notice it. I filled my pond back up with fresh water from the hose and replaced the gasket around my ball valve.

Everything was ok until the last week, where my water turned pea soup. Never had water that green before and I was sort of expecting it with about 60-70% of the pond water is now fresh uncycled water. My pond has water lilies, dwarf papyrus, water hyacinths and lettuce and the past 2 years my water has always been clear.....never had to wait for my pond to cycle as I moved into a pond that was established already and as I increased my fish load I upgraded my filtration.

Unfortunately my API test tubes all cracked and unable to test water at the moment. I am waiting for my replacement order to come in so I can test.

Do I continue with my weekly water changes or let the water stay put and let it cycle? I do know that the aerobic bacteria lives on the pond liner and in my filter medium so I am a bit confused if frequent water changes will help or slow down my pond cycle.

Is the balance so thrown off that it will not "fix itself" now for the rest of this season?

Frustrated......

 

[sissy]

It should be ok and as the new water mixes with the old .I would not do weekly water changes now .I started over again in March with a new liner after moles chewed through my other one and even with saving as much of the old water as i could it has been an uphill battle ,Since you are already getting to the cool season all you can do maybe is add some bacteria .I know some on here use a flocculant to bind it together .

 

[steve/gridnot]

If you have a partition bio filter you can put in activated charcoal, pumice and some small micron filter fibre , R/O works as well with UV. Just pump it through. If you leave it alone it will balance on its own depending on the water temp.

 

[sissy]

I use quilt batting to pick up the fine stuff .

 

[callingcolleen1]

I had trouble getting the little front yard 100 gallon pond water clear this year and last year. I added the liquid pond peat, it turned the water dark for a couple weeks, then the water went crystal clear!

 

[ponder630]

Well, I noticed my filter media picked up alot of fine debris so I flushed out my filter again. I noticed I had a bunch of built up gunk on the bottom of the filter which was weird, because i had that filter apart two weeks ago to repair it so it was clean. There were also a bunch of tiny snail shells on the bottom. Can the snails all die with the influx of new water from a few weeks ago? Is that why my pond got green so fast from the decaying snails? Either way, the filter is clean again and the water looks a bit clearer now, I can see the silhouette of the fishes now at least....

 

[sissy]

I just use a crate with quilt batting in it to pick up the fine stuff .I put the reusable furnace filters on top of the quilt batting this way it picks up the larger stuff and the batting under it picks up the fine stuff .

 

[dieselplower]

You probably ruined the cycle 2 weeks ago when you took the filter apart. Has nothing to do with the water.

 

[ponder630]

It's been about 2 weeks now and I still did very small water changes, but I did add a layer of lava rock on top of my bio filter to increase surface area for bacteria to grow and finally the water is clearing up, now i can see the bottom again.

Lesson learned, be patient....happy to see my finned friends again!