It's a pea souper!

Having been thrilled in mid March with a pond full of frogspawn, have returned from a weeks holiday to a hole at the end of my garden filled with green pea soup. The frog spawn has vanished (and my son who investigated further than I dared says that there is no sign of it atall - but that the water smells like sea water)(which I can verify). There is also a funny kind of powder or oil on the surface - which I guess could either be the pollen from the Kilmarnock Willow which had a few 'pussy willows' this year (though I think that is unlikely) - or a bathing woodpigeon, or a symptom of something more serious?

It is quite dispressing - especially the lack of frogspawn. Although there were a couple of frogs. I wonder if the frogspawn/warmer/lighter days have all contributed to an immensely rich environment for algae etc to breed. But what do I do? It is really quite fowl - there are even some bubbles on the surface too. Do I clear the whole thing out - dredge the bottom too - and refill from water butts - or leave it and see what happens next?

Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

 

Mines pretty thick just now as well.
I'd leave it alone and watch what happens, if things dont sort themselves out in the next few weeks then it might be worth trying one of the green water remedies. But I would steer clear of any algecides, there are other alternatives.

 

See the 'Ducks' thread! http://www.gardenerscorner.co.uk/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=17;t=000103

Could be you had some visitors while you were away.

 

After painting the shed and gate, I decided to thoroughly investigate the foul (fowl?!) mess which used to be our pond, bearing your advice in mind Pete.

I scooped out a couple of trugs worth of water - and found tons of decomposing frogspawn, sludge and yukky ooo. The only living creature was the very occasional water slater. Not even midge larvae!

Thinking about it, the pond is eight years old, and I have never dredged it - just filled it up with water butt water in drought, and added the odd aquatic greenery. Decided that infact, leaving it would just make matters worse, so ended up draining it entirely (very smelly job) and scooping out as much of the aforementioned ooo as possible. Also scooped out no fewer than 35 frogs!!! This was really a most unpleasant business, as also found 2 bloated, and very dead frogs. I'm sure this must have contributed to the death of my once thriving wildlife pond.

With as much of the awful stuff removed as humanly possible, and frogs escaping all over the place, I refilled it with butt water. It is that new brown colour, and the only plants are a now divided water lily, a fair amount of mint, a bit of iris, a carex, two straggily pieces of elodea and some duckweed.

I wonder if perhaps we did have a duck or two in our absence Frogesque? Our pond is about the same size - maybe a bit bigger.

Intend visiting the garden centre first thing tomorrow for some more oxegenaters and other plantlife (and perhaps even a ramshorn snail or two). Any recommendations?

 

It could be the malm at the bottom of the pond 'turned over'. Decomposing sludge forms methane (marsh gas) and can sometimes be seen as small bubbles coming up through the mud if you jump on the ground beside a pond. More drastic is a huge bubble of methane can form under the mud that will eventually create enough pressure to break through like an underwater volcano mixing up mud, toxins and general yuk into the pond water. That old sludge does make great mulch and feed material for roses!

Frogs can drown during amplexus if more than one male frog attaches to a female. Generally female frogs are larger than males and can swim with her partner piggyback but two or more males can cause problems. Frogs, like everything else also die of old age or exhaustion.

Providing you have a few of the old plants and some pond water there should be enough bacteria and wildlife present to start the new pond very quickly. New water normally produces an algae bloom but it should rectify itself so long as there is no chemical or other run off from borders and lawns getting into the pond.

 

Hi jarbax we had the same problem as you with green water not very nice and couldn't see the fish, then someone recommended clear pond, so purchased it, put some in and it has started to clear a little. You have to do it once a week so it will take time to clear but at least we can see the fish now.

 

Sunlight will make pond water go green so the more plants you can get to cover the surface of the water the clearer it will become.

 

When is the best time to clean a pond out, mine is in dire need of immediate cleaning but I have lots of fish in it and they have produced baby fish in the pond two years ago

 

so are there any fry now?

 

Please don't clean your pond out now, as the poor fish are just getting over winter and the last thing they need is the trauma of changing water etc Autumn is the best time, but if you are dead set on it the only advice I would give is to get large containers and put the fish and your old water in, clean the pond and replace - good luck

 

Update - the pond is green again - but not smelly! The water lily leaves are just reaching the surface, so hopefully sometime soon it will clear up again, of it's own accord!

Forgot that I had taken a couple of pictures, mid manoevers!

Here I am looking into the depths of glooop! You can see some of the lovely stuff already removed, on the right of the picture! I'd forgotton that we'd used a couple of layers of liners over the top of the pond - to delay sun-damage. Tis working so far! The deep portion of the pond is actually therefore quite a bit bigger than the overlapping liner shows!



And just a few of the gathered frogs!

 

I will heed the advice and leave the clean out of the pond seeker of knowledge, yes there are baby fish in the pond they are about one and a half inches long and at least ten of them have survived the winter.
I still need to know the best time to clean it!!!

 

http://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profiles0302/pond_clean.asp
This will help.
I do mine at this time of the year too.

 

Cleaning

I would not recommend using a "yard brush" as the link provided suggests, most of have pond liners not concrete (as suggested in the picture) soft brush or hand brush yes, but you must be careful of it ripping / puncturing the liner.

I also do not agree with the recommended cleaning intervals, I would suggest once a year for smaller ponds (as in average back garden) and 3- 5 years for really huge ponds.

Fry

If the pond does have fish that were ââ?¬Å?bornââ?¬Â last year it will be safe to clean it now, but do it soon.

Liners

Pond lines will NOT instantly disintegrate when exposed to normal sunlight, it takes years (depending on quality of liner) they go brittle then break, I have only ever seen one do it and they really do look like large black corn flakes.
The part of the liner that is below water level will take considerably longer to deteriorate, since the harmful U.V. rays are ââ?¬Å?dispersedââ?¬Â by the water. Any liner above the water surface will deteriorate eventually, but it should either be trimmed off during construction or covered with something, i.e decorative stones, or have plants hanging over it.
Extra liners only serve one purpose, to act as an underlay, nothing else.

Water clarity

Just because a pond has ââ?¬Å?gin clear waterââ?¬Â does not mean that it is ââ?¬Å?sweetââ?¬Â just because you can not see it does not mean to say its not there. There is the PH value of the water to consider (you canââ?¬â?¢t tell by looking at it what the PH value is) but to be honest most of the time unless you have KOI you need not worry