Hi all, its been probably about 6 months since i last popped onto this forum, if you dont remember my pond this is it:

Its a good year older than in those pictures now though! certainly more matured and the fish have grown nicely. so Far i have around 20 fish in there, a good mix of everything. Ive lost only one small koi in the ponds life.

Anyway ive started to get some blanket weed. i keep pulling it out when i can but its gettin out of control at times! the water itsefl is lovely but it does get a lot of sunlight. I have a large UV to cope with this and it seems to be doing the job

Ive added a large net of barley straw to aid the pond, will this solve my problem or is there something else i can do? I read the barley straw, when it deterirates realeses natural chemicals that ea the food that blanket weed grows on, true or not?

Also im gettin a lot of sludge at the bottom of the pond, perhaps its fish poo or the odd leaf but i do scoop it out now n again, worth gettin a pond vac to clear it?
Thanks all.

Nice to see the forum still going strong!

Sean

I've tried it in the past but didnt see much difference. If your ponds big enough bring in the grass carp. But dont feed them floating pellets, if you feed them floating pellets they will eat them and not the weed as they are surface feeders so give them sinking ones.

All the best.

had a look at the pond this morning and it seems the blanket weed is dying off. hopefully its done the trick.

Good news

I found that a certain type of plant was causing the blanket weed in my pond, it was growing on the roots. Took it out, never had blanket weed again.

What type of plant? Is it possible that the blanketweed was on that plant when it went into the pond?

It's very possible, as I took it as a cutting from my neighbours pond. It's called floating pennywort (Hydrocotyle ranunculoide). This plant is actually very bad for your pond, which I didn't know at the time. Theres a good article on it here..

http://www.bourneconservation.org.uk/floating%20pennywort.htm

Phosphorous is said to be the nutrient that limits algae in most ponds, hence you could try a phosphate reducer.