Why do I have algae?
For the inaugural Water Quality Solutions blog I thought it best to explain our philosophy on how we improve the water bodies we work with. I’m a big believer in ‘mother knows best’ but I mean Mother Nature (sorry Mum; you know best too)!
Most of the problems faced when managing water bodies aren’t actually problems, they’re symptoms. If a water body is out of balance then that usually shows up in the form of excessive growth or algae or weeds, odours, fish kills or generally poor water quality.
If you only treat the symptoms then you may be doomed to spend good time and money in a treat and repeat cycle. For example, if we take excessive algae or aquatic weed growth, these are usually symptoms of nutrient imbalance – too much nutrient in your system and this is feeding them.
Blue-green algae means DANGER!
You can treat them with chemicals and if the right ones are selected and applied correctly then you’ll get a good result but it won’t last and if you do nothing else. This will actually increase your problem because the dead rotting vegetation will break down and become a food source for the next generation of algae or weed. Now, that’s great for the guys that sell chemicals but you need to break this cycle.
The preferred treatment method is to look at the big picture and work out why these symptoms are appearing in the first place, then explore the tools available to fix the problem.
When Mother Nature is out of whack then we need to make her happy again. There’s no such thing as a silver bullet that’s going to fix all of the problems. Those of us that live in the real world and do this professionally know that there’s no one size fits all for improving water bodies and draw from a tool chest of products and methods to best suit the individual needs and circumstances of the client. Some of the tools in the chest include aeration systems (customised to suit the application), biological augmentation (using beneficial bacteria), selective planting and harvesting of aquatic/wetland plants and floating treatment wetlands.