"ebruvold" wrote in message
oups.com...
OK....

Live in San Diego. Had a pond installed last September. About a 3
foot rise waterfall into a pond of about 800-1000 gallons. Installed
by local contractor. Gave us Koi (6) and some water lillies plus
"Aquascape Designs String Algea Buster (SAB)" and "Aquascape Design
Aquaclear"

Followed all directions rigorously in respect to bacteria, cleaning,
etc. But as you may have heard, southern california had more rain than
we have had in the last 100 years. So a fair amount of run off into
the pond and outright rain. Had to pump out water on numerous
occasions and other times simply let it overflow in to landscape.

With warmer weather planted some more lilles and some marginals.
Lillies going well. I have about 10-15% surface area covered and more
pads every day. I do not have any "bottom plants" but strongly
considering adding them.

HOWEVER, I have a serious string and single cell (green water) algae
problem that is driving me to frustration.

Been spiking (triple the dose every day) my pond with both "clear"
bacteria and SAB. Hand cleaning out every day the string algae that is
easy to get out and actually pulling some off from individual rocks.

But not sure it is helping! Or at least I can not noticeably see a
difference. Is my only hope to drain the pond and start over? Should
I have patience with the product I am using? Should I try something
different (there seem to be a huge number of different concoctions out
there - any objective reviews?)

A lot of us here will tell you that you should avoid using algacides, if at all
possible because they can damage your aquatic plants, and the resulting dead
algae will settle to the bottome, decompose, and add evern more nutrients to the
water. You should be adding a product like aquazyme, which provides beneficial
bacteria to your pond to help reduce the nutrient load. Adding more shade to
the pond also helps. You can accomplish this with more water lillies, which
will also use up those nutrients. You are having a problem with too high a
nutrient load in your pond. You need an effective filtration system, either
mechanical that you can clean, or biological (much preferred). I recommend that
you read the information provided at this web site. It contains very valuable
information, and should help you solve your problem:

http://www.naturalsolutionsetc.com/g...ae-control.htm

The keyword with garden ponds - patience. Don't rush things. Nature is on her
own schedule. The key is to learn what that schedule is and how to facilitate
it in a way that is beneficial to the flora and fauna of your pond. Whatever
you do, don't clean or do partial water changes with straight tap water, and
don't change all the water at one time. UV filtration (very expensive) will
help with pea soup algae, but not with string algae, and may actually make the
string algae problem worse. I also have a big problem with nuking pond water to
solve what is essentially a biochemical imbalance in an ecosystem.