I was delighted to get an email from Brenda B. who is a subscriber of ours and had been battling pond algae in her small pond. She was dedicated to working with bacteria to clean things up but wasn’t getting the results she had hoped for.
Through her own research she discovered that the municipal water supply she used in her pond was very deficient of minerals and what one might consider soft water. As she pointed out, and rightly so, this isn’t the best type of water for a pond because many natural pond treatments require some minerals in the water to work well. And once she was able to address these deficiencies (by adding crushed coral to add calcium carbonate) the pond cleared up quite nicely.
This is a good example of why testing for water hardness is a good idea. Many combination test strips (like our 5 in1) will test for this and it’s quite easy to adjust the mineral content of the water if you find something lacking.
In the video below I cover water hardness readings and what might be considered adequate and offer a few basic tips to improve the mineral content of pond water.
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