All of a sudden I have tiny black bugs on some of my plants. I was
thinking
spider mites but I'm just not sure.
They seem to be mostly on the floating type plants.
I used a few drops of dish detergent in a spray bottle of water. Worked
for
a few days but now they are back.
What would you use on your pond plants? Insecticidal soap?
thanks for any help
judi



"~ jan JJsPond.us" wrote in message
Aphids are often black on water plants. If it was lilies I'd say squish
them, otherwise keep using the detergent & water if it works (though using
detergent around fish isn't recommended) you'll have to do this every 3
days at least 3 times to get all the bugs and the hatching eggs. ~ jan


Thanks
I got in the pond today and on closer inspection I do believe they are
aphids.
My pond is around 1000 gals, lots of healthy plants and around 30 happy
goldfish and shubunkins. Started with only 6 fish last year. My water is
crystal clear with minimal algae, mostly in the stream. So everything is
doing great but these bugs are scaring me.
I think with the size of the pond the fish should be okay using the super
diluted detergent.
If your method doesn't work after a few tries I'm going to go ahead and pull
out the primrose creeper and water poppies. Would really hate for them to
infest my other plants.

BTW, this was my first post but have been following this ng off and on since
we started building our pond a year ago last spring. Can I just ask...what
the ? has happened to this group? You sure have to sift through a lot of
crap to find pond related stuff.
Hope all you good ponders hang in there...

judi