Should I worry about chlorine affecting my duck's eggs?

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Greetings. I had a pool. Chlorine tabs vary in size. What size tab are you using???

Pool tabs (1", 3" mostly) generally contain stabilizers in addition to chlorine, and are intended to treat tens of thousands of gallons. Your puddle is... Not. Its about 59 cu ft. Roughly 440 gal, or what you should be able to fill with a faucet in 3 hours, a hose in under an hour.

Even a 1' pool tab is a LOT for that volume of water, and as your stailizer builds, the free chlorine will be less and less effective, while your algae will increesingly slect for greater chlorine resistance.

How does the water SMELL??? Do you have pool test strips? Commercial drinking water is deemed unsafe by EPA at 4 ppm. There is considerable safety factor in that. Commercial pools are generally 2-4 ppm. In either case, your chlorine levels are likely extremely high, even if it is exposed to full sun.

Recommend you empty. Allow to dry. Clean/brush. Treat. Refill.

Find an aeration system - like a solar powered pond fountain - O2 is no danger to your ducks, it can be quite effective in controlling algae, and after the upfront cost, is unltimately cheaper and scaleable over the long term. Moving water is also less attractive to mosquitoes and others known to lay eggs in stagnant sources.
 
Hiya, and welcome to BYC! :frow

I was going to ask what those tablets say for when they are kid-safe/pet-safe, but now after reading a few replies, I like @Jenbirdee and @U_Stormcrow's ideas even better regardless of whether bleach pellets are deemed pet-safe at any point.
 
FWIW, I also have a duck pond. It's 26' long, almost 20' wide, and when we get the rain, about 6' deep. More often closer to 3'. 1,560 cu ft shallow, about 11.5k gallons, twice that when full. Still looking for a way to run a DC pump on solar cells in cost efficient manner that doesn't clog.

My ducks (see sig, below) swim in the green water all the time. No issues. Though they stil prefer the 30 and 55 gal stock tanks the goats are supposed to use as water troughs, which I refill every other day.
 
Jenbirdee said:
that sounds small enough to just drain it scrub it and refill it once or twice a week like I do with all my baby pools that that I have here . or hook up drainage hose that can be turned on and off so you if it might be too heavy to lift to dump, or is it in ground? I really really don’t think chlorine is good for the ducks at all. I wouldn’t put it in there myself. There is such a thing as barley balls you can google it. They are sold online and it’s just a bunch of barley rolled up in a ball and tied, and you throw them in the pond and it keeps the algae down much better than chlorine. I have no idea what the chlorine would do to their eggs. I think it might bother their eyes and also they drink a lot of the water when they swim in it so they’re drinking a lot of chlorine it might not be good for their digestive system.
Click to expand...
Ok. Barley balls sound like a much better solution... thank you for the advice. it is in the ground to it would be pretty hard to drain... it is also a waterfall so there is pumps and such attached.
 
CocoandDaffodill said:
Ok. Barley balls sound like a much better solution... thank you for the advice. it is in the ground to it would be pretty hard to drain... it is also a waterfall so there is pumps and such attached.
Click to expand...
Can you modify your waterfall so it aerates more???? That will also help.
 
Thanks all for your warm welcomes... we did see a fox in our cameras last night and the ducks are fine, but I was wondering if there was any way to naturally repel them? I was thinking of letting our dogs run around the area (with the ducks penned up) to sort of repel by scent? if there is any other suggestions I am open to ideas.
 

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