Winning The Pond Scum Battle

This is the 3rd Friday I’ve started to work on a post.  The previous two weeks I got interrupted and never got back to it.  Hopefully, I can get this done today!

Last time I posted, I showed you our scummy pond, and mentioned how The Farmer was working on getting it cleared up.  Well, look at it after he treated it with algaecide and it rained:

But he wasn’t content to stop there. He wanted BLUE water.  So he threw in a packet of biodegradable stuff that is supposed to turn the water blue without hurting any of the wildlife.

It’s kind of hard to see, but the packet is located where the arrow is pointing, and the darker color trailing after it is the dye.

The Farmer decided to help things along and stir up the water.

It’s hard to get a picture to show how nice and blue the water is now, because the water makes such a great reflector.

At first the water was kind of blue-green, but it isn’t quite as intense a color now. At any rate, the pond looks much better.

Maybe too much better. Earlier this week I went out to get the mail to find someone fishing in it.  There’s not much there but some little fish that got washed into the pond when the creek flowed into it, but they were catching those little fish right and left.

The only problem is this someone never bothered to ask permission to fish in a pond on private property.  It never ceases to amaze me how often there is a total lack of respect for other people’s property.  We’ve been talking about stocking the pond, and it’s sure and certain that for a while after that, we won’t be fishing in it.

It’s difficult enough to keep other wildlife from eating fish in there.  I tried putting some koi in there once and they didn’t last a week before the herons had sushi.  But this is to be expected, and the critters are just looking for food.

But people should know better.