Mark

How to kill pond algae naturally is a valid question, because most people usually associate the use of chemicals, namely algaecides, with killing algae. It’s our basic nature to want to simply kill something, get rid of it, and go on without more trouble. The only problem is, this approach doesn’t always work that well with ponds.

At the same time, many people are becoming aware that a more eco-friendly approach to home, garden, and pond care is a good thing and they want to know how to achieve a particular result without using the aformentioned chemical cocktails.

So when someone asked me the question, “how do I kill algae naturally?” I’ll normally tell them that you can’t. At least not directly.

Now I know that many folks will say, well, what about barley straw? What about beneficial bacteria? Plants?

All are good options to the degree that they all have a history of helping with an algae problem in some way. But it would be a mistake to say that any of them “kill” algae.

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For the last 5 or 6 years we’ve had the pleasure of seeing a number of new technologies come along that have helped in the battle with pond and industrial algae. Few have garnered more attention than ultrasound. After all, it’s high tech, easy to install in most situations, and when it works, it does a really good job of stopping algae growth.

At the same time, I’ve always said that it’s not a silver bullet by any means. It has great capability, particularly on larger waters, where it can be very cost effective compared to chemical and biological solutions. But make no mistake, it has it’s limits. I don’t normally suggest that small pond owners use the device, simply due to cost considerations. There are other options like UV light that may help. For ponds of say, 1/8th of an acre on up, ultrasound may be a good solution.

As we’ve described previously here, ultrasonic systems send sounds waves, precisely tuned to create vibrations in any algae cells that are in the targeted range, and over time, these vibrations create damage that will ultimately disable the cell in some way. The sound waves do not adversely affect fish or other wildlife and visually, you’d never notice any disturbance in the pond at all.

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I don’t think it will come as any great surprise to those of you reading this, but the truth is, most people wait until pond algae is well underway before they do anything about it. I’m not being critical, I’m just sharing an observation. And I understand.

First of all, algae can grow quickly when conditions are ripe for it. Warm and sunny days are what you want when you’re growing something green. Then too, algae in a pond comes on as an unwanted annoyance and it’s a pain in the behind to deal with sometimes. And people generally, to their credit I think, tend to put off or resist the temptation to use a chemical in their pond.

Not everyone feels this way of course as some folks will use algaecides liberally, but many pond owners aren’t as comfortable with them as they used to be. I kind of hang more with the second crowd. And the longer I do this algae control thing (going on almost a decade now) the more I’ve learned that chemicals just aren’t the answer to everything.

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Greetings everyone!

We’re breaking out winter hibernation here and while it is already March, we’ve remained busy throughout the late winter season. It was such a mild winter through most of the U.S. that in some places algae never really went away, or wasn’t missing for long. In other words, the graphic below sort of went out the window!

So for most of the winter we’ve been treating ponds with all season pond bacteria to help keep them a bit cleaner and work to keep algae blooms down. As always I’ve visited with a lot of pond owners and discussed the merits of aeration and muck reduction. Aeration of course is good at any time of year, and muck reduction is usually a warm weather activity but both are worth investigation.

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