Johan Wiekel in Hua Hin sits with his hands in his (thrifty) hair. Or rather, in the luxuriant algae. Every day Johan goes into battle with the aquatic plants, best compared to Don Quixote and the windmills.
The Dutchman lives in a paradise on a lake of about 2000 square meters and about three meters deep. The thousands of fish, including 15 large koi carp, are visibly having a good time. The pond is located on the side of Akamai Village, a poorly maintained and barely inhabited villa park on Pala U Road.
Johan Wiekel has one big problem: the relentless battle against a certain type of algae. The total algae family has more than 15.000 cousins, so the identity of this crop is difficult to imagine. As a result, Johan tries every day from the side or from a little to curb the proliferation. With little luck. And Johan is no longer the youngest either…
Good advice is not only expensive, but also confusing. Where one states that he should dump bales of straw into the water, another swears by pineapple waste. This produces acids in the water that the algae could not tolerate. Johan is willing to try anything (provided it is safe for the fish) to get rid of the drudgery.
Johan Wiekel is a well-known figure in Hua Hin and the surrounding area, partly because of the excellent way in which he smokes North Sea mackerel. Anyone who provides useful advice can look forward to receiving a few.
We have a pond of approximately 1.600 square meters.
As far as I know algae thrive when there is a lot of food (supplied by fish and by feeding the fish. And by daylight.
We have been trying to grow lotuses for a long time, with the idea that these plants absorb food that the algae eat and block sunlight. This partially works. We also have some water hyacinths in the pond. These grow very quickly and are easy to remove. Because of the fast growing, they eat away a lot of food from the algae.
We have also had duckweed in the pond for a long time. This grew very minimally. Recently something has changed, and suddenly the duckweed has started to grow enormously. The water is now one green carpet. The most amazing thing is that as soon as the duckweed started to grow the water became clear. Duckweed is also quite easy to remove and it turns out to be a very good fertilizer for other garden plants. The water used to be the color of pea souk, but now it's just clear. I can see about three feet deep.
If Johan Wiekel wants I can give him my email, but I won't do that through this blog.
Success!
Arjen.
Thanks for the information, my email is [email protected]
Provide enough oxygen plants
Algae and oxygen plants are food competitors. Placing sufficient oxygen plants in the pond ensures that these plants absorb more nutrients from the pond water and less remains for algae.
Ensure good water hardness
When the water hardness in the pond is too low, the oxygen plants will not grow well. Nutrients such as nitrogen compounds and nitrate then remain behind. algae will then start to grow considerably. In addition, unlike oxygen plants, algae grows well in soft water.
Limit leaf invasion
Leaves that blow into the pond in the fall and are not removed from the pond will slowly decay on the pond bottom. In doing so, they release nutrients to the pond water, which will increase the growth of algae.
Not too many fish
Fish produce waste and thus make the pond water more nutrient-rich. When the amount of waste becomes so large that the oxygen plants can no longer absorb it all, the growth of algae in the pond will increase.
Remove any algae
Removing algae by hand at an early stage will slow down its growth somewhat.
Hello Johan, I also have a pond and have already tried everything to control the algae, and as I have now found out, it is very common. I bought a piece at the pump or put it in the pond, which is allowed for a large pond. are broken, and after a while the algae will gradually disappear. It is not harmful to fish and plants, only to the algae, of course I do not know how big your pond is, but try it.
Greetings Tony
very simple throw an old bicycle in the water or a few pieces of steel after two baskets of clear water fr gr peter
Thanks for the information , going to try it out .
Koi carp are not fond of copper, which can be toxic, as can iron
You can also take a UVC flow lamp together with a pump and put a venturi (water jet air pump) on the output, put the outgoing flow over a coarse filter
This gives oxygen, destroys algae and catches them
Please note that this is not a biological filter, etc., as you put in a koi pond here, and you must indeed first know your water values
Take a look at the koi pond groups etc. on Facebook
Did you also look at the size of the pond in your advice? For a UV lamp to work properly, you need 4 Watt per 1000 liters. That means for Johan a lamp of 24000 Watt. You can of course also measure your water value, but how do you want to adjust it?? A normal natural pond usually has the perfect water value and you can hardly adjust it or it will become priceless.
I used to combat algae with road salt…. 1kg/m3 of water. Algae can seriously ruin your pond and are abundant in places where there is a surplus of nitrate. Make sure there is a lot of plant growth in the pond so that the excess nitrate is absorbed. Otherwise it is mopping with the tap open. Algae are also about the only plants that can convert sunlight into sugar and thus not die when all nitrate has disappeared in your pond.
Try to remove algae manually as much as possible and to hurt the plant growth as little as possible. Treat 3kg/m1 every 3 weeks with real road salt or pound balance. But the latter is very expensive if you have a lot of m3 pond.
Johan writes that he has a pond of 2000 m2 and 3 meters deep, he has to throw in 1 kilo of salt per m3, so that means 6000 kilos of salt at a time. That. Is more than 100000 kilos on an annual basis, an almost impossible advice
The 2 main causes of algae in the pond are: too much nutrients and too much sun.
The solution has less nutrients in the pond. Nutrients come from, among other things, the food you give the fish and the excrement of the fish. You have thousands of fish in the pond. If I were you I'd thin it out drastically. And maybe you should also give a little less food.
The second problem is the sun. Provide enough shade. This can be done by covering part of your pond with, for example, a pergola or shade cloth. Or more shade plants such as water lilies and floating plants. Copper and steel? I wouldn't start that doesn't seem good for the fish and certainly not for koi carp. Success with it.
Ps, when I look after the photo, shadow doesn't seem to be the biggest problem. I believe that there is too much fish in it and therefore too many nutrients.
Difficult. the best remedy is chlorine, but then your fish will also be white. Sun light? water purification? Just some ideas. Strong, intend to go in that direction after 10 years of Chomtien/Sattahip.
Good evening.
Ask 'Colombo'. They have good water improvers.
Unfortunately that is also impossible and priceless, once again Johan has a pond with a capacity of 6000 m3 of water or 6000000 liters of water. Colombo advises to use 1 liter of Colombo per 7000 liters of water and this is therefore 850 liters at 11 euros per liter is more than 9000 euros or 350000 baht, unfortunately not possible.
I agree with all the advice regarding nutrition. I used to have the same problems with my aquarium. Until a famous gentleman came to give a lecture at the aquarium club.
His comment: algae need nutrition. If there is no food in the water -> then no algae. Solution: put enough plants in the aquarium so that they remove all the food and nothing is left for the algae…. No sooner said than done. I've never had algae again.
Dear Johan,
There must be a way to solve your problem, for example by releasing fish that eat that algae. But then you get another problem, namely that of floating algae, so that you no longer see your fish swimming around. And to solve that problem you may have to replace all your water and also vacuum out the mud on the bottom to remove the excess nutrients. My advice: let everything go its own way.
I myself have no water plants in my pond (all of them have long been eaten), but an abundance of floating algae. I am happy with that because it is food for shrimps, among others, which in turn are eaten by fish. And I am committed to the highest possible production of fish meat.
In the Netherlands, floating algae are a problem because they die in the winter and can make the water deoxygenated, especially if there is a layer of ice on it. That chance is nil in Thailand.
I have seen a municipal water storage of 8 Rai, no duckweed, no algae, not all year round, but a lot of catfish. According to the experts, the catfish would eat the algae, no food is given to the catfish.
Nico B
Catfish, (Pla Duk in Thai) are scavengers. They will sometimes eat something small alive, and maybe even a plant, but they are certainly not algae eaters….