Rotting barley straw?

[Jonna]

I bought one of those bags of barley straw that is supposed to keep the string algae at bay.  It may be working actually as I have very little anymore.  All I had before was on the waterfall and inside the skippy and that is mostly gone.  BUT, that bag smells really bad.  Like rotten food in the refrigerator.  I'm worrying that it will poison my fish?   I lost my first Wakin to bad food and now I'm really afraid of stuff that's rotten being around the pond.

Here's why I haven't dumped it yet.  I discovered that it is a fantastic snail trap.  Any time I go out there at night I can pull 25-30 snails off the bag.  They love that stuff.   I have the bag in the skippy which so far is the only place with snails, they come up to get to the alfalfa and I get a lot of them.  I just don't want the rotting barley to hurt my fish.

It seems to me that they sell the stuff to sit in a pond so they must expect it to rot?   

[Rocmon]

It is the decomposition of the barley that produces the hydrogen peroxide that restricts the growth of the string algae. You'll have to be the judge of when to toss it, remember that it takes awhile for a new one to kick in, so if you think you want to toss it soon you want to get the replacement in ASAP. Mine gets pretty gross but if it's stinkin bad I don't think it's probably a good thing.

[Jonna]

Thanks Rocmon,  I put it out in the sun today to dry it out.  It's over 100* and dry out here so it got mostly dry.  I'll put it back in tomorrow as I really love catching those snails.