The Mysteries of pH

 I know the title sounds like a best selling murder mystery title but we are really going to talk about the pH readings in your pond and how they change, what changes it and what you need to be worried about.

First let me clarify that i am not a big advocate of " Micro Managing " your pond. I mean I don't want you out there everyday doing all kinds of water tests and keeping a journal of your findings.... that doesn't sound relaxing to me at all.

The questions about pH start every year about this time. When our weather turns warm and a lot of ponds experience an algae bloom.  Algae is a plant right?   Remember photosynthesis? During the daylight, plants produce oxygen directly from the carbon dioxide dissolved in the water and energy obtained from the sunlight.... this is also known as photosynthesis.


Without getting too technical ( talking about alkaline carbonates and bicarbonates ) we will just say that is causes the pH to fluctuate ... the more algae =  the more fluctuation.



pH is not generally a problem but it can and usually does have an  effect on the toxicity of ammonia.

The problem comes in when we don't understand the reasons behind our pH levels and instead of fixing a problem in the pond we want to add in a scoop of this or a scoop of that.


We want you to understand that it is the organics that build up in the pond ( ie fish waste) , the heat, and the amount of algae in your pond that is the culprit here. We need to remove the waste from the pond by both biological filtration ( adding in beneficial bacteria ) and physical removal ( cleaning your filters ).


We have found that it is a complete waste of money and time to try and  artificially control pH in a pond.

Learn anything?  Have questions? Stop in and we can go into more detail !