Water Gardening: New at this stuff!!!, 1 by silverfluter

silverfluter wrote:
If the pond(pool) is circular, that should translate to 2900 gallons at 2 feet deep.
As far as what else you can do, it seems like you could use a form of biological filtration. Using the pool filter without the cartridge sounds like not much filtration is actually taking place. If you have a way to attach some 2" PVC to the filter/pump inlet, there is an inexpensive way to make a decent filter. Get some PVC, 2" or larger, maybe 3 feet long or longer. Get some polyester batting to wrap around the PVC pipe, if you have a pond supply place near by, they may have some filter material that would work better. The kind we have looks something like you would see in an AC filter. Before you wrap the PVC pipe, drill many 1/4 inch holes in it... make it look like a collander. Put several layers of batting around the pipe. Cap off one end of the pipe. Attach this pipe (filter) to the inlet of the pool filter/pump. The pic is our filter... it is green with algae, and thats what you want. Our pond is only about 180 gallons so our filter is only about 12 inches long. The pipe is 2" diameter so it has a little more than an inch of batting wrapped around it. The algae growing on the filter medium aids the filtration process. Rinse the bulk of the algae off the filter about once a month. It makes good fertilizer... so rinse it over the flower bed. By the way, all new ponds go thru a pea soup phase, so you are not doing anything wrong. I think the addition of a proper filter will help the process.
The idea of adding more plants reduces the amount of sunlight going into the water. This in turn slows the growth of the algae. Basically... more sunlight = faster growing algae + need for more filtration. The addition of aquatic critters will also help keep the algae in check as many of them feed on the algae. Hope this helps... Tom