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we have a pond that is in full sun, i have no idea how much water it holds but it would be over 300ltrs. we have 12 2inch comets in it and tones of hair algae that the fish love and the few pond snails but if we didnt remove it with a stick every weekend it would consume every inch of the water! it choked and killed the hornwort we floated in there. how do we slow its growth down without adding cemicals?
we added some floating duckweed but it was gone in a week, either eaten or died?

How often and how large are your water changes?
Do you know nitrAte levels for the pond?
Frequent feedings and few water changes are almost always a cause of algae issues.

I've heard of various fish like barbs eating hair algae (I think my gold barbs munch the BBA when I'm not looking). I'm surprised that the hornwort was outcompeted by the hair algae .

You might do better if you ask a mod to move this over to planted for you .

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we top up the pond weekly, dont do water changes. the evaporation rate is huge! plus the splashes out of the pond by the fountain, we would id say be replacing 30/40%weekly. we have a pond filter in it with just a outlet tube from the powerhead pointing up out the water to airate and a tube going up to the fountain above the pond. the goldfish dont get fed, there is larvae for them to eat in there and there always picking at the hair algae growing up the sides ect. sometimes they get a pinch of flakes but rarely. ive put a layer of gravel at the bottom about 2inches thick.
as for the hornwort, it was only about 4 pieces.

manually remove as much of the algae as you can and do a big water change , also go to a local nursery and buy some water lillies as they use a lot of nutrients and also cut down the light in the water.
and while your there ask about any plants that can be grown emersed as they will also use nutrients and look really good

OH TOLEEDY!

See if you can get your hands on some American Flag Killies down there. Their appetite for hair (and other filamentous) algae is insatiable. As long as the temperature of your pond doesn't go below about 15°C, they'll be fine.



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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

dan76, we have been through the emersed plant stage. for some reason all the plants we bought where all on deaths door within 2 months so we removed them before they totally polluted the pond. the only surviving plant is 1 water lilly that died back to a few leaves then came to life and now is producing a few leaves a week. ok so hopefully now i know lillies suck up lots of nutrients hopefully as it does that and as it shades some of the pond with its leaves this might slow down the algae. its not helping that the filter is fighting to keep up with the poop. considering we dont feed the fish they poo an awful lot.

Not doing water changes is part of the problem, topping off is fine but that's not reducing the ammount of nutrients that the algae is feeding off of.

Water changes are done for a reason after all ...and not just so we can get a workout .

If you've got a fountain thats seperate from the filtration and isn't part what's oxygenating the pond then you may be better off turning the fountain off for part of the day/night as that leads to a massive ammount of water evaporation.

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