Natural pond safety.

[elliefeather]

Hello! I'm starting to plan for ducks that I will get in the fall, but I had a few questions.

We have a small man made pond (I assume it was intended for livestock), and I wondered if it was safe for ducks to swim in. It's currently green with algae, but I've researched barley straw treatments and water plants and things like that. My concern, though, is about bacteria. Could a stagnant pond cause e coli, botulism, or something of that ilk? Or, would it only affect eggs laid in the water? Is there a way to test your water? If it is an issue, how do you keep them out of the pond?

 

[elliefeather]

Anybody?

 

[MeepBeep]

Yes, stagnant dirty water can be bad, doesn't matter if it's in pond or in a swimming pool...

But algae growth alone is not an indicator of it being bad, that is generally just a sign of too many nutrients in the pond, with no competition from other aquatic plant life...

You might consider installing at minimum a fountain or blower to aerate the pond and promote the growth of good microorganisms and bacteria or consider installing a bio filtration system to knock down the nutrient levels...

And the barely bales work wonders at helping keep algae in check...

 

[elliefeather]

Thanks for an answer! Now I'm excited for an excuse to check out water plants at the spring nurseries.

 

[emichels]

How do you use the bales to get rid of algae?

 

[MeepBeep]

You can read all about with a Google search, when I have used to for small ponds I put a few clumps of it in an onion sack or other mesh like netting sack and then simply let it float around the pond... For my mothers vary large pond, we put a few bales at the bottom of the pumps return water location to the main pond so it constantly has water flowing over it... And we have also spot treated some of the more algae prone areas of her pond with the floating mesh bags like I have done for small ponds, but we anchor them in place with a rope and weight so the sack stays where we put it...

https://www.btny.purdue.edu/Pubs/APM/APM-1-W.pdf