16
« on: September 02, 2009, 08:41:32 AM »
I don't think winter will kill the algae. I'm in zone 5 and 2 years ago in March when the ice covering the pond finally melted; my pond was literally filled with string algae. It had grown over the winter in an ice and snow covered pond. I hadn't had any of the stuff the prior fall. All anyone could tell me is that was a weird year for algae.
If winter did kill the algae; it would drop to the bottom, decompose to feed the algae the next year. You really need to get rid of the junk before winter. Chemical usage is very much frowned upon in this forum. I totally agree, to a point. Sometimes you just have to resort to them.
After spending up to four hours a day for over 2 weeks scrubbing, twirling and hurling the stuff from the pond; only to have it seemingly grow back overnight. I caved. I used Algae Fix. I caution you to carefully follow the instructions. It can harm your fish. Remove as much as you can manually first. Apply it early in the morning, make sure you have really good aeration and if at all possible be around to monitor the behavior of your fish. Mine became motionless and lay on the bottom, I assume to conserve oxygen. About 8 hrs after the application they began to swim around normally. I had to treat 3 times 4 days apart to get rid of it. But, it did totally go away.
After the 1st application it seemed to come off the rocks easier and I continued to remove as much as I could manually. Which leads to my next caution, you have to clear the dead algae from the pond. Otherwise it will just be food for more algae to grow. Then you have to give your beneficial bacteria a boost to to get growing again because the Algae Fix can damage it. This time of year with lower temperatures is not a good time to spur bacterial growth either. Saying all that, you can see why the forum isn't fond of chemicals. If not used properly they can create more problems and cause more harm than good. But then again sometimes you have to do what you have to do.