Killing algea in pond?

[Britishmum]

We have a small pond in our yard with a waterfall at the back. It usually stays pretty free of green stuff because we run the waterfall a few hours a day. But the pump went wrong, and in the time it took to get it running, we grew some lovely green algea along the sides and on the rocks at the bottom.

We have water plants in there, so can't put anything in to kill it. Not that I'd want to put chemicals in there anyway.

Yesterday I spent ages with the kids digging the stuff off the sides (and the kids screaming as they threw it at one another ), then removed the main rocks from the bottom. We got a lot of it out, and I am hoping that having the water running will finish off the remains over time. Am I right?

Here's my main question. If I just leave the rocks out to dry, will the algea die? Or do I have to scrub each individual rock? Or treat them with something?

Anyone any ideas?

[lightheart]

I would think that overtime running the water will clear things out... you may speed the process by dipping out water (using it on houseplants or the garden) and adding some fresh, may want to do a lot of dipping before you add the clean/clear water back.

You may be able to rig up something like an aquarium filter that the water from the waterfall runs through to clean it, maybe an air conditioning filter???

what about adding a fish or two to the pool, something that eats algae? More plants?

My hubby is the water-pond-plant person, his water is pretty clear, but his rocks and plant buckets seems to have a nice green slime to the outside, he says it's better for the plants and the snails and the frogs living there... more habitat..... I'll ask him tomorrow about his thoughts of getting rid of the algae.

[SleeplessMommy]

Is it hair algae? (long thin green strands)

We have a farm pond - it has horrible algae blooms when we add too much creek water (runoff from neighbor's fertilized lawns). When we bought the place, the owners were doing conventional lawn care (fertilizer) and it was green, green, green We did a water test during the last algae bloom and either the nitrites or nitrates was just slightly elevated. (We can't filter due to huge volume of water.) This past year has been good, no algae blooms.

I think manually raking out the algae, increasing filtration, and finding hungry fish or snails are about all you can do.