In about mid-May this year our pond water was amazing! The dust settled and you could see all the fish clear as day. As a matter of fact, it looked so good that Rob had to take a break from yard work to do a cannonball smack in the middle of the pond! I was surprised he didn't swoosh any of the fish out with the massive wave he made! It was pretty awesome. Well, as the days got hotter and July came around our pond water developed a not-so-inviting green tint to it. It was starting to look a little swampy. This really bummed me out!
We looked into investing a sand filter, but we want to be able to use the water for feeding our plants, and filtering it would make it less nutritious (to tell you the truth, that is just an assumption. We didn't really do our homework on that theory). Also, a filter would be a lot of maintenance. It would have to be cleaned weekly. We would like the pond to be as close to a natural system as possible.
We constantly pump the pond water via submersible pump into the planter box. The box floods and the water runs through the lava rocks (we used this as a growing media). The rocks catch particles from the water as it flows through. Then the water flows over into the header pond, which is also filled with lava rock. We have parrot feather in there, which spreads really well. Some other plant life has found its way in there on its own as well. This all acts a filtration system. From the header pond the water flows into the pond. All this natural filtration is great, but the pond is still greenish!
After doing some research we found out that barley straw is great for clearing up a pond. This was great news considering we can buy it for $4 a bale. We just went on craigslist and did a local search. We found a farm that was selling it about an hour away.
Rob made little bundles of the straw and tied it to a piece of bamboo about one foot long. The bamboo made the straw bundles float. If the straw sinks to the bottom and decays it will do no good. We put two bundles in the pond. As the straw decays it releases enzymes and humic acid into the water, which will prevent the growth of algae while being harmless to plants and fish.
It's been just 2 days since we put the bundles in the pond. It will take a few weeks for the straw to start to decay. When you can see the straw has really decayed and broken down after a few months, then it is time to replace the straw. I really hope this works and our pond is back to cannonball status soon! I will keep you posted :)
