Entry 2 – Green Water Algae – Spring Pond Setup

Matt's Pond Maintenance Blog — Thu, 05 May 2011 03:04:55 +0000

Today I am going to talk a bit about natural or living ponds and the experience many pond keepers have when first starting up their pond in the spring
Natural ponds are where you will find plants and fish and frogs and algae and all kinds of wonderful things are going on seen and unseen. What we have to understand about living ponds is they are not swimming pools. They do not care to be pristinely clean or looked scrubbed within an inch of their lives. Living ponds will have algae growing on the walls or liner and go through different cycles all season long. Spring time can bring green water as things balance. I have had calls from clients whose ponds we have just started looking after inquiring if we are going to come and drain and refill the pond because the water looks like pea soup. The pond was cleaned and setup several weeks before and now they are unhappy because the water is not crystal clear. This is one of the mistakes many do-it-your-self pond-keepers make. As a wise supplier of mine once told me “it has to go green before it goes clean”. Most ponds take anywhere from 3 to 6 weeks to properly balance. This can happen simply by setting up and turning on your equipment in the spring and waiting, or if you have a more complex pond or one that is stubborn it may be a matter of having the proper equipment installed and helping things along with a probiotic treatment. At Village Pond we can install any necessary equipment and also setup a regular maintenance program for you that will ensure even the most stubborn pond will look and be happy and healthy – plants and fish and frogs and even the algae.
The switch from newly cleaned to pea soup (which is caused by a bloom of Planktonic algae which is a single celled algae) can happen over a few days or weeks but often happens in less than 24 hours. You may wonder why your pond won’t just do its own thing and look beautiful like the lake or large pond you saw the last time you visited the country. The answer is that the lake or large natural pond is an enormous volume of water compared to your garden pond. When there is an event in your pond, for example an algae bloom that turns the water green it could be triggered by a rapid increase in temperature in the water. After a cool spring night a very hot day will most likely bring the water temperature to a roaring high in a matter of hours. The lake or large pond may have some surface warming but the depths stay cool and mostly the overall temperature remains stable. This is one of the reasons the garden pond needs some helping along.
Most green water algae problems can be remedied with a good filter system that includes a UVC system and a dash of patience. Just be advised it will do nothing to help if you have a problem with filamentous algae. Filamentous algae or string algae as it is often called is a whole other topic that I will blog about soon.

If you have a problem with green water algae or string algae give Village Pond a call and we will setup a program for you that ensures your pond is healthy, happy and nice to look at. Our contact information is available on our website – www.villagepond.ca

Welcome to Matt’s Pond Maintenance Blog

Matt's Pond Maintenance Blog — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 05:35:44 +0000

In this blog post I would like to welcome you to my pond blog, tell you a bit about my company, myself and my team. I will outline what we do and I will also go over what you can expect to find here in future posts.

Village Pond and Garden is a boutique pond company in Toronto, Ontario that specializes in all things ponds. We specialize in pond and water garden maintenance but we also have many years experience in designing, building and redesigning/rebuilding ponds and water gardens.

Our team consists of myself along with Erica and Jack.

As the owner of Village Pond I have been mucking around in ponds for almost 15 years and have loved it since day one. I started out repairing and cobbling together other people’s messes and quickly realized a lot of people needed my help. I had a natural affinity for working with water and stone and decided to make building and maintaining ponds my life’s work.

Erica is our staff microbiologist – you may have read her blog on the science behind the pond, if you haven’t you can find it here: Erica’s Pond Maintenance Blog
Erica works with us as a maintenance team member and as an adviser on how microbiology can help us keep your pond healthy and natural.

Jack is what I like to call the first man in, you will often find him waist deep or even chest deep in the muck or the water, whatever it takes. He is also our go to guy for hauling equipment and lifting stones. Jack likes to get right in there and experience the pond. He is currently working on getting over his fear of goldfish.

At Village Pond we offer a number of pond maintenance options for your pond. We offer a customized solution designed to suit your pond. We will design a program for your pond from seasonal opening and closing to weekly, bi-weekly or monthly visits to your pond. We can recommend and install any equipment upgrades needed to ensure your pond is happy and healthy. Having a pond should be a very satisfying and wonderful experience. We are here to make sure the satisfying and wonderful are in the experience.

In future posts I am going to talk about different aspects of pond keeping. Some of the topics I will be blogging about in the coming weeks are water quality issues, algae (actually I may blog about this one a lot as it is one of my favourite topics) and equipment types and uses along with any other topics that pop into my head as I muck around in Toronto’s ponds. If you have a shelf full of pond books as I do, you may find at times that my opinions are somewhat contradictory to what you have read. This is because most pond books only give you very basic information and try to be a fix all for every situation. I will be talking about my experiences with the ponds I maintain and the specific issues we are dealing with and how we solve them. Maybe in the future I will be blogging about your pond and how we keep it healthy and happy.

I hope I have interested you enough that you will take this journey with me. Of course if you have a pond and would like us to setup a maintenance package for you please don’t hesitate to email or call. You can find our contact information on the Contact Us page of our website.

Matt Corbier
Village Pond and Garden
Toronto, ON