Repairs, Maintenance, Pest and Disease Control
Pond Maintenance
>How to Cure Murky Water
Pest and Disease Control
Pest and Disease Control2
Other garden pond pests
MURKY WATER
At times minute plant life in your pool, particularly forms of algae, will grow in superabundance. When it does, there are means of thinning the water. One popular way is to drop a few fresh-water mussels into the pool. I must admit they do a remarkable job of clearing up the water, but many gardeners feel they are more trouble than they are worth. Watch out for dead ones which have to be removed immediately; for they decompose quickly.
Another way is to treat the pool with potassium permanganate (obtainable at your drugstore). Figure out the water volume in cubic feet. Then multiply the number of cubic feet by 7.48 (or 7½ is close enough) to get the water volume in gallons. For each 100 gallons of water, throw into the pool ½ ounce of fined (not crystallized) potassium permanganate. The "fines" dissolve more quickly. Keep them in a tightly stoppered jar and mix only when the solution is needed. For a day or two the pool will look like diluted grape juice. However, the pool will regain its natural pale-green color after two or three days -and the excess plant life, particularly the stringy, unwanted forms of algae, will have been killed off. Potassium permanganate, used in this manner, kills off lesser organisms, both plant and animal, which might be annoying or hampering to goldfish and water-lilies, and it is a sort of general, all-round tonic for the fish.
A word of warning: Measure as carefully as you can for this treatment. If the potassium solution is too strong, it will kill the goldfish. If too weak, it will not kill off the objectionable plant and animal life.
COPPER SULFATE TREATMENT
There is an alternate treatment for murky water, effected with copper sulfate, 23 grains for every 1,000 gallons of water. I do not recommend it for various reasons. First, the potassium permanganate treatment works out quite well, and so an additional treatment is not needed. Secondly, it takes only a slight overdose of copper sulfate to kill plants and goldfish. Thirdly, copper sulfate does the job too well, killing every bit of algae in the pool, including desirable forms of it, too. Moreover, traces of the chemical remain in the pool water for two or three days after the treatment, and I think they hamper plant and fish growth.