Any Ideas on What & Why?

This is my small pond, a field watering trough sunk into the ground in the winter of '05. I filled it with lots of oxygenating plants, some floaters and it is well established as a stillwater pond. There are 4 or 5 goldfish, smaller than 4 inches, some mosquito fish and a couple crayfish that hitchhiked in on some other plants. Maybe 1 or 2 resident frogs.

The lifeforms in there are fully self sustaining. I do not feed them.

This green silt floating on the surface has never appeared before. It showed up probably within the past week. We've had rain daily for about 5-6 days. Previous to that we had a couple weeks of dry days with high temps over 100 degrees. The temps are now down to the high 80's to low 90's.

The fish are still alive and the water is not foul.

Any ideas?

Molly, when I didn't use any filtration or UV, my pond would get that way when we would have consistently hot temps. Sometimes in the morning the water would look good, and by mid afternoon it would all float to the top again. It's a nasty algae bloom. I stopped using fertilzer tabs on any of my water plants, which also seemed to help a bit. Do you use any time of enzyme/bacteria additive or barley?

molly, do a google on hornwort and see if that is what you have. I reminds me of wet, icky green cotton but I do not think it is bad. I've actually bought it at the water garden nursery when looking for a floating plant. But I took it out because I wanted more of a plant looking thing, not wet green cotton. Yours may have simply come in w/ a plant you bought or something.

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.naturalaquariums.com/plants/hornwort2.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.naturalaquariums.com/plants/ceratophyllum.html&h=516&w=387&sz=46&tbnid=ESb1LJPlnsvoJM:&tbnh=131&tbnw=98&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dhornwort&usg=__DL5sgUVhUk6SeTC5wFy79NjTVMU=&ei=JwpaSu79OcmVtgesyr3dCg&sa=X&oi=image_result&resnum=1&ct=image

In this link the plant looks upright, but once in water is just lays like green cotton. I hope this helps

No Mary, I don't use anything. I haven't had any problems like this before. I don't use any fertilizer since the last lily I had in there wasn't getting enough sun and I moved it to the larger pond.

Periodically I dip the good stuff out of the bottom to feed brugs, roses, passies, or whatever else is close by that would like some fish poo.

I suspected it might have something to do with the high temps we had. And this was green last evening and at first walk this morning. The water under the surface is not particularly cloudy, I can still see the fish in there.

BTW, the pond is almost 3 feet deep and is a rubbermaid product, not metal or aluminum.

Molly

Vossner, There is hornwort in the pond. I stocked it with some in the beginning along with anachris, parrot feather, sensitive vines and the "unspeakables" you see floating in there. Those plants are well below the surface.

I harvest some of these out when it needs thinning and transfer to the large pond or friends ponds.

I'll check and see if I need to thin them out some more. Proably will make good compost too.

I think when I am netting the pool today, I will try to skim that stuff off as well as the algae on the large pond. All this, food for the ground plants.

Molly

Yep, I think it's good ol' Florida temps taking over.

It looks like to me you got a lot of pollen floating on top from some trees or plants that have bloomed and pollen could have blown in the water and the hot temps. make it look worse. I wouldn't worry. Skim it off if you like or give it time and it will probably sink or get eaten by the fish. Anyway, that is my guess, pollen off something fell in there.

Thats what i was going to say to its Pollen ive seen that happen to some lakes to Paul

That was an idea I had as well, just don't know what pollinated it. Ah well, I tried skimming it with the pool net, but the silt is too fine. So I guess I'll just wait until it sinks or the fish eat it.

Thanks yall.

Molly