With the temperatures rising and a long, dry summer in front of us there are a few things to keep in mind when maintaining your ecosystem pond or pondless waterfall.
First the good news – your water plants will love it! Warm weather means warm water and most of your water plants; particularly the tropical ones like hyacinths will thrive. The optimum growth temperature for a water hyacinth is 25-30 Celsius and in some parts of Southeast Asia they’ve been known to grow in excess of 3 meters per day! This vigorous growth is of course what has landed it on the invasive species list in several countries around the world… but I digress.
The bad news is that these warmer water temps are also prime growing conditions for algae. Without treatment you can expect algae blooms, green water and higher than normal levels of string algae. Luckily there are solutions for both prevention and maintenance regardless of your budget. There are several powdered treatments on the market such as SAB and Ecoblast for string algae as well as many flocculants for green water.
If you’re looking for a more permanent solution we can install a UV Light or a Pressure Filter to eliminate green water situations or an Ion Gen to combat the string algae. The Ion Gen works by slowly releasing a mixture of copper ions into the water which quickly break down the string algae. There are even “auto dosing” systems available now that will automatically apply the correct amount of a given treatment turning low maintenance into virtually no maintenance.
The other thing to watch during a hot summer is evaporation. While water is always evaporating at some rate throughout the year, the summer months can really expedite this process. The factors that contribute to evaporation are: water temperature, air temperature, humidity in the air, and the velocity of the air above the surface. So as you can imagine on a hot, dry, windy day your water feature can be losing quite a bit of water! For reference a typical swimming pool can lose ¼” of water per day under NORMAL conditions.
The solution here can be as simple as sticking a hose in your water feature for a few minutes while you’re watering the terrestrial plants or you can have an auto fill valve installed which will automatically add water to your feature once it drops below a certain level.
Stay cool and happy ponding!
Contact Streamworks Designs for all of your water feature maintenance needs.
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