Plankton, – the pea-soup algae that most pond owners are familiar with is probably the most common type of algae in ponds -both large and small. Plankton is the type of algae that makes the water look green. It causes you not to be able to see your fish as clearly as you may want to.

Getting rid of pea-soup algae is fairly simple if you understand how it got there in the first place.

Plankton requires sunlight and nutrition to grow. The sunlight comes from the sun and the nutrition comes from bi-products from fish waste, dead and decaying leaves, decomposed fish food and plants.

The way to get rid of or reduce the amount of algae in your pond is by reducing the amount of sunlight and nutrients available to the algae. First and foremost is to have the proper size pump and filter. Next, sunlight can be reduced by providing shade to your pond. Pictured above is Pond Water Shade by Jungle Labs which is a chemical sun blocker.

Another simple way to add shade is by adding aquatic plants such as water lilies. Floating plants including water hyacinths can also help. The leaves of these plants help to cover the surface area of your pond and they make your pond look better to boot!

Nutrients can be reduced in a couple of different ways.

• Clean your pond – obvious .. but these tips will really make a difference

• Get rid of any dead and decaying leaves on the bottom or along the sides of the pond.

  Get a pond skimmer so you can suck up leaves and debris before they ever settle and start to decompose.

  OR get a pond net (you also can keep out predators such as raccoons, blue herons, cats, etc. with a net)

  Make it a practice to clean the debris off the pond every day or so.

  Get the leaves out of the bottom of your pond with a pond vacuum.

• Add beneficial bacteria (we’ll talk about this in a later post)

Happy ponding!