How to Troubleshoot Garden Ponds

It's not that easy to have a garden pond with clear water, healthy plants and thriving fish all summer long. After all, a pond with all those elements is not just a decorative ornament--it's your own little backyard ecosystem. Your pond residents are engaged in a fierce struggle for nutrients and oxygen. Sometimes the less attractive inhabitants--such as the amazingly persistent algae--may gain the upper hand at the expense of your elegant water lilies and beautiful koi. Follow the instructions below, and you'll be able to put things back in balance.

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

1. Identify your problem. Likely headaches range from excessive algae to too much sunlight, too many nutrients to cloudy, brown water.
2. Treat excessive algae. This means there's not enough competition in the pond. Introduce other plants to keep algae from gobbling up all the oxygen and nutrients.
3. Prevents too much sunlight from coming in. Algae thrives on the delicious rays of sunshine, so add floating plants like water lilies to help shade the bottom.
4. Monitor your nutrient levels -- too many nutrients equals a bad environment. Don't use regular potting soil or fertilizers for pond plants. They leach excessive nutrients into the water. Instead, use soil especially made for aquatic gardens and slow-release aquatic plant food.
5. Keep your water filtered. If you encounter cloudy, brown water, it means your pump and filter aren't working efficiently. Regularly clean the pond filter (up to weekly in summer months). Wash foam filters with liquid detergent and squeeze out. Hose down cartridge filters with a strong stream.
6. Take care of unhealthy floating plants. This is typically because they've outgrown the container. And when a plant such as a water lily has excessive leaf growth, with leaves rising above the water surface, it probably isn't getting enough nutrients from its container to promote blooming. Remove the plant from the container, divide it, and put half of it in a second container elsewhere in the pond.
7. Prevent unhealthy or dying pond fish. A lack of oxygen is the primary culprit of sick fish. Add more submerged oxygenating plants like duckweed and eel grass. Reducing the amount of algae will also help.
8. Watch for overpopulation. A general rule is to have one to two inches of fish length for each square foot of pond. For example, in a 60-squarefoot pond, 15 fish at four inches long is acceptable, and 30 fish is an absolute maximum.
9. Monitor chlorine and chloramine levels. Too much of either is deadly to fish. A pool store will have kits to test for these chemicals, and commercial treatments to reduce them to a safe level.
10. Watch for dense, matter underwater plants resulting from excessive growth. One or twice a season, thin out submerged plants and divide them if necessary.

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