Holly vs. pond

I have a little pond in my yard. Actually, I should say that the boys in the neighborhood and I have a pond in my yard. Pat put the pond in for me a few years ago.

Ian and I rearranged the little ponds this spring. I have four goldfish in the pond and the neighborhood boys have tadpoles and frogs that they have imported from a “real” pond in the field behind one of the houses.

This year I decided not to put any new plants in my pond. I have one struggling water lily and I decided with the boys being so involved this year, I wasn’t going to invest in plants. Then I remembered what I learned the first year of back yard ponding… feed fish=fish poop=nutrients to grow plants. The problem comes when you decide not to put in plants. Those nutrients have to go somewhere, and that somewhere is algae! String algae. The worst! The filtration system was clogged so bad that the water was barely flowing anymore. I had been suffering through pulling chunks of algae out every so often, but I just couldn’t keep up any more.

Yesterday, I broke down and bought a few plants. So there I was yanking out looooong yucky clumps of string algae thinking, “Where is Mike Rowe when you need him?” I figured it would take a week or so to clear up the algae bloom. I was thrilled this morning to be able to see my fish happily chasing each other around in the clear water. As a bonus, one of my plants flowered this morning!

The frogs weren’t so happy. They all moved back to the “real” pond.