My pond is usually greenish in color as I have absolutely no shade and we have a LOT of sun. I try to have some plants but haven't had much luck the last few years. My fault as I used to have so many water lilies that it covered about 3/4 of the surface. Good for them I guess but I never got to see the fish. They, of course, loved it.
1"
My water is clear as a bell most of the time and the green comes from the algae growing on the bottom and sides. Sometimes the falls get all but clogged with string algae and I use barley or Algaway 5.4 (MicroLab) to cut it back. It would take over entirely otherwise. My fish aren't big enough to help out by eating it. Hmmmmm. Do fish eat algae? They certainly do like the water lilies. I have a floating ring that I fill with water lettuce and they hang out beneath it and I suspect nibble on the roots. And of course as they spawn the babies hide out in it.
Two summers ago I had one koi that was rather dark and that fall I had a lot of black babies. For the first time in spring I had about 20 1-2" babies survive the winter. Some turned grayish on the bellies and some had red or gold streaks here and there. Either the black one was a female pregnant when I got her or she mixed with a gold fish. I culled the herd last year of many of both those and the regular gold fish bitty ones. My pond can't support what they could have grown into. I would love to do the entire pond over but I have done fixes and one increase in size twice now and it cost a fortune. I would love a bog pond for plants and to provide additional natural cleansing for the water but that won't happen. It is a great hobby but I am small time compared with many here at ATP. Although it seems like this forum isn't as active as it was at Dave's Garden.
