WILDLIFE GARDENS AND PONDS

Your marginal plants are doing the best they can to take out the excess nutrients in the water, lucius, but it takes time for them to grow enough, using the excess nutrients to grow, so for the moment have patience and keep taking out the blanket weed. The ironic thing is that the Blanket weed itself is using the excess nutrients to grow!!

There are no nutrients in UK tap water, lucius,but there is Chlorine but that will not encourage growth in Blanket weed. However, the warm weather will encourage any algae cells in the water to multiply and form Blanket weed. In this dry, warm weather I top up my pond almost daily with tap water, via a 100' hosepipe permanently laid at the back of the West border, from the outside tap. That takes around 75 minutes to top the pond up the right level and because of the depth of the pond, some shade, but more importantly because the marginal plants are all established they keep the proper balance of the pond and the water crystal clear.

 

This is a well trodden subject, Martin UK tap water has 50 miiligrams of nitrates per liter of water. Rain water has 1000 milligrams per liter, and also contains Sulphate, heavy metals, calcium, acids, organic matter, algae cells, etc. So the level of Nitrate in tap water doesn't, contrary to belief, encourage algae, but rain water will. The other factor in a pond is that pond water will never be sterile and is full of dormant organic matter that given the opportunity, such as warm weather, will proliferate time and again.