Hello. I have a smallish pond, about 500 gallons. I don't mind a
little string algae or if the water is green, but this year it's got
this kind of a mat of bubbly, stinky, green stuff floating on the
top. Is this algae? Half of the top is covered by water hyacinths
and the other half by this stinky stuff. I have no filter, 3 little $.
12 feeder goldfish, snails and tadpoles, and I did clean debris out in
the spring, although I'm sure there's more by now. The few treatments
I've seen say they're not suitable for invertabrates and I don't want
to kill the little creatures in there. Besides being stinky and ugly
it's also choking out my 1 lily and water hawthorne which used to do
so good. If I just scoop it out until the hyacinths spread a little
more will they eventually overtake it nutrients-wise?

Thanks for advice,
Lydia

Hi Lydia,
Pretty much, cut down on the fertility going into the pond such as fish food or water changes, keep thinning out the algae and the strong growing plants when they mass up.

Step by step removal of the surplus algae, sediments and plants should reduce the surplus fertility

Regards, andy
http://www.members.aol.com/abdavisnc/swglist.html

all you need is one of those cheap air pumps from Kmart, with two
outlets, two air stones. Ingrid

On Sun, 08 Jul 2007 21:35:53 -0700, Lydia
wrote:

Hello. I have a smallish pond, about 500 gallons. I don't mind a
little string algae or if the water is green, but this year it's got
this kind of a mat of bubbly, stinky, green stuff floating on the
top. Is this algae? Half of the top is covered by water hyacinths
and the other half by this stinky stuff. I have no filter, 3 little $.
12 feeder goldfish, snails and tadpoles, and I did clean debris out in
the spring, although I'm sure there's more by now. The few treatments
I've seen say they're not suitable for invertabrates and I don't want
to kill the little creatures in there. Besides being stinky and ugly
it's also choking out my 1 lily and water hawthorne which used to do
so good. If I just scoop it out until the hyacinths spread a little
more will they eventually overtake it nutrients-wise?

Thanks for advice,
Lydia