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Much of the following on this page is from Doc Johnson, at Koivet.com as passed to the editor from Jim Germann (Thanks Jim).
Yellowish Water
There are at least three places yellowing can come from and they are NEVER good for fish. If ammonia accumulates sufficiently, it can cause a yellow cast to the water. Of course, this is easily tested and not the most common cause of water yellowing. When water testing rules out ammonia, look further.
Leaves falling into the pond (very common at this time of the year) will decay and cause yellowing. This is from the release of tannins that are astringent for fish. They are NOT terminal or deadly, but they represent deterioration of water quality, which especially makes fish more vulnerable to disease organisms. Remember that fish are most susceptible to disease organisms and parasites when water temperatures are between 47 and 62 degrees F., the temperatures we are experiencing this month.
The most common and worst cause of yellowish water is plants and their pots, or bog gardens which share water with the main pond. Basically, it's a tea being made with your pond water percolating in and around the dirty root ball of the plants. Soil tea, it's awful!
Under no circumstances should bog gardens have waterways that communicate with the main pond. In those bog gardens, there are numerous decay processes that liberate noxious gases, carbon dioxide, and which consume dissolved oxygen. Bogs also contribute unnecessarily to the elevation of dissolved organics in the water.
Potted plants can leach tannins and other amber colored contaminants from their soil into the pond. These are almost as hazardous as bog effluents. Folks are highly recommended to repot their plants in large sized aggregate gravel, and repot the plants every year to minimize the development of anaerobic decay conditions in the pots.
NEVER allow your pond water to become or remain yellow. If tannins are the culprit, remove all leaf litter and take your bog gardens off line to enjoy their own tannin stained water, sagging dissolved oxygen and hydrogen sulfide, and leaving the pond to have it's own clear, clean, well oxygenated water.
A major water change will remove most of the yellow color. If this is not feasible, carbon can be used to control the yellow color. Carbon is a black aggregate media which is made from superheating organic materials like coconut shell and wood as if in a kiln, except in the absence of oxygen. The product is black and light in weight.
After rinsing, the carbon can be put in a nylon bag and placed directly in the water flow. It is NOT as effective to put the carbon in your waterfall because even though the water is moving rapidly, it's not moving THROUGH the carbon bag. This takes some engineering. If you can get ALL your water through a pump in three hours, and that pump goes through a five gallon bucket half-full of carbon in mesh bags without channeling or bypass, you will see gin-clear water in two days. The idea is that ALL the water is PUSHED THROUGH the carbon, not just over it.
Carbon expires rapidly, in direct proportion to the organics in the system. If the system has a lot of tannins, the carbon will expire in days. After replacement, with cleaner water, the next bags of carbon will last longer. Unsure if your carbon is still working? Simply take some and put it in a glass of water. Add a couple of drops of Methylene Blue. Check it again in the morning. If the MB is gone, the carbon still has some "life" in it.
Algae Fix
Aquarium Products, "Algae Fix", kills all single celled algae while sparring all multi-cellular plant life forms.
- Good thing ….. kills green water and doesn't hurt the plants.
- Not so good thing ….. kills carpet and string algae too. That means if you don't have some plants to keep your nitrates under control, you won't have ANY nitrate control.
- There needs to be some form of plant life to reduce nitrates and phosphates in the system. So its kind of "be careful what you wish for", because while ALL the algae vanishes, educated hobbyists will deploy floating plants for nitrate control and uneducated hobbyists won't..
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