my upper pond..have just put in some barley straw..afraid to try the peroxide.
my pond
I was concerned for the peroxide also, but put in 2 pints a week apart in 180 gallon tank. Algae is virtually gone and no more fish died since I used the peroxide. How many gallons is your pond? Let me know if the barley straw works. Just curious!!! Tom
It says that one bail of barley straw will take about a month..How do I figure out how many gallons I have in my pond?
I do beleive the formula is... for irregular shaped ponds, take the longest length, X widest point X depth, to get cubic feet, then multiply that number times 5.7. That should get you in the ballpark. Using that formula out pond holds 218 gallons. I figured it has closer to 180 by timing the amount of time it took the water hose to fill a one gallon milk jug. Then using the total time it took to fill the pond to calculate the total gallons in the pond. Both methods have plenty of room for error, but they get you in the ballpark. The think with the peroxide is, there is plenty of room for error built in to the dosage.
Just how bad is your problem? I posted a pic showing some of the growth in our pond. This was after one application of a pint of peroxide. The lower left corner shows a lot of residual algae on the lilly stems and even on the white plant marker stake. When the sun gets a bit higher I will take another pic of the same area for comparison. As you can also see, our problem was only with the string algae, no floating algae. Stay tuned... Tom
OK... here is a week later after second application of one pint of peroxide. I should also say that before the second application of peroxide, we were also getting floating masses of algae, especially during the day. No more floating algae masses. Also, with the second dose, I could see the string algae turned brown within a few hours of application. Apparently if you do not see that, your string algae population is too great for just one dose.
I am very new to all this also and I'm skeptical about quick cures. But I also have a streak of trust in me... in this case it paid off and worked what I would call wonders!!! Good luck.. Tom
OOPS... here is the pic
Let me ask this.....Could I also put the peroxide in my pond even after I have put in the barley straw thing?
I'm not the expert on this, but from what I have been told, there should not be any problem. They say the peroxide only kills the string algae without affecting other plants and fauna.
DRH2 posted some links in another thread where they talked about barley straw. They found no evidence where the barley straw produced peroxide, but it did help against the algae. From other readings on the forum, my guess would be the barley straw provides habitat for other organisms that help control the algae. Thats why they say it might take a month before the barley straw shows any affect.
One question before you do the peroxide treatment? Is your algae problem whats called string algae, or the "pea soup" algae that just murks up the water? The peroxide will not affect the pea soup algae! Let me know if I can help more... Tom