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| I have a small preformed pond with just a few plants and no fish. To help keep the water oxygenated, I added a piece of ceratophyllum demersum hornwort. Then later that same day, I noticed the surface of the pond was covered in foam. Is this normal? Will the foam eventually go away? Thanks. |
Follow-Up Postings:
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- Posted by pondbucket 5 (My Page) on Mon, May 17, 10 at 17:48
| Have you added any dechlorinator recently? I doubt it since you have no fish. But stuff that adds to surface tension is the usual culprit. Do you have any muck at the bottom that has been there for a while? Sometimes I find when the temperature cools off and I still haven't gotten into the pond and done my spring cleaning I get a white foam starting to cover the surface. It sometimes gets hung-up around plants, esp. those around water that's being turned over (oxygenated). Foam-B-Gone has worked for me for those times when I can't get in to do my cleaning. After cleaning, no such problems. It might go away on its own. Again, this is usually seen in my pond around the time when we have a rapid cooling off. I've been able to net the bigger clumps of foam before and just toss it out of the pond, rinse with hose (rinse the net) and continue. Good Luck! |
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| hi pondbucket, thanks for your reply. The pond water is fresh and clean, no muck whatsoever. I just drained the water last week and added fresh water. Everything was fine until I put in the (ceratophyllum demersum hornwort) in less than 24 hours after I put it in, I had foam. I want to know if there is any possibility that the hornwort cause the foam on the surface of the water? The only other thing that I can think of is I also added a couple of rocks. Thanks again for your help. |
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- Posted by pondbucket 5 (My Page) on Tue, May 18, 10 at 14:26
| I would think the rock more than the hornwort. Organic compounds interacting with the agitated waters can cause foam to form. You probably can wait it out, or try Foam-B-Gone. The FBG product works in seconds/minutes. I wonder too if your water just doesn't have a lot of "stuff" in it. Ours is ripe with all sorts of things the water department claims is "harmless." |
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| My pond is about 3'x5' - just a small preformed pond. This is what I have in my pond. I've never added anything else except clean fresh water. 4 hyacinths I have a few rocks in there and nothing else. I will look for the Foam-B-Gone. thank you pondbucket. |
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- Posted by sleeplessinftwayne z4-5 IND (My Page) on Tue, May 18, 10 at 22:47
| Some plants look fresh but have a coating of slime that forms to prevent dehydration or it could be organic debris from a plant that was dying from being exposed to high temps, too much sun, sunburn or heat burn from being in a plastic bag in the car, water loss from tissues, rot or a number of other problems. Running tests with a water quality kit would give you a lot of information. |
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- Posted by louisea_2010 5 (My Page) on Wed, May 19, 10 at 8:13
| Great info from everyone. I work at a garden center with a very large pond/fish department. Many guest have come in with the same foam issue recently. The strange weather, cold-hot-cold,seems to be the consistant factor in the foamy ponds. |
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- Posted by pondbucket 5 - 6 KS (My Page) on Wed, May 19, 10 at 10:38
| Thanks for the verification, Louisea. Recently I knew my pond had a little surface tensioning going on, I hadn't accomplished my main spring cleaning where I get in and net the lower reaches of the pond with a hand-held fine net. When I do this I can walk around and FEEL the pond's bottom underfoot -- that's important because after about 5 minutes or so of moving around the potted plants and skimming the bottom, the water gets real clouded (and I can't see the bottom thru the water). Before I cleaned this year we had a nice temperature warm up where my plants really started to grow. I could see the signs of surface tensioning around my water lily pads, little white bubbles that didn't really go away; and, where the water gets agitated, at the stream inlet of the upper pool, and at the lower pool's waterfall, that agitation would produce a few more bubbles of foam and they would just glide and coalesce around the pond walls or other obstructions. Then we had a cool overnite with temperatures down into the high 30's, half the pond was covered with foam. I netted the stuff (it was so thick) and I would rinse the net, repeat until I got most of it... but I still saw the little bubbles around the lily pads. About two days later we had the same weather conditions occur and I still hadn't found time to do the deep cleaning of the pond. I treated it the same way, except I had purchased the Foam-B-Gone product... I then remembered this happening in previous years, usually in spring or fall. Last week I finally got in to do my deep cleaning. Took about six hours. I repotted a couple of plants. I haven't had to add any water so no more dechlor. has gone into the pond. I did add some Accu-Clear. I've always had good luck with it. My understanding is that Accu-Clear is a polymer additive that binds small particles of floating stuff together. I used that because when I do a deep cleaning, I really make the water cloudy... I mean really, really cloudy... I don't know if my goldfish love it or hate it. They seem to feed well during those times, what I can see of them. Anyway, we've had a few more cool nights just recently but I've noticed that the small bubbles around the lily pads are gone. Any bubbles created by the stream and waterfall quickly disperse, and I've had no more overnight foam situations. As was already pointed-out, the text book source for foaming is usually the presence of high organic compounds in water (from what I've read on the subject), that or certain types of algae blooms. |
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