Pond Boss Pro "the block"

Don’t have any first hand knowledge of this specific product and the SDS sheet states it is a probiotic of facultative bacteria. IMHO the odds this product has bacteria that aren’t already present in your pond current decomposing organic matter on the pond bottom is likely pretty remote.

It certainly won’t hurt anything, other than your wallet, to use it, but you’d likely be better off with a diffused aeration system in the pond to insure you have sufficient oxygen present at the pond bottom to aid in the aerobic decomposition of organic matter that accumulates there. But it is a pond, plankton are going to die, sink to the bottom, and over time “muck” is going to accumulate, there is no silver bullet that going to prevent/fix that.

I’ve also had success using cutrine.

Did my pond in 3 different sections over a month to prevent fish kills.

Dyed it black afterwards. No issues since

quote:

---

Looks like two different discussions are going on.

---

Yep.


OP (me) asking about muck, and other people chiming in on weed control.

quote:

---

Already in existence. Big fountain, pumping water from deep, you can smell the funk in summer./fall.

---

How old and deep is this pond? Size? Does it have fish? Earthen pond or lined pond? Smell - “rotten egg” (hydrogen sulfide) odor? Methane odor?

You won’t like to hear this, but sometimes the only solution to the problem you are describing is to drain the pond, allow it to dry (assuming it has a drain) for several months in the heat of summer and let the organic muck oxidize to “nothing” in the presence of sunlight and air. This is a common practice in commercial aquaculture and fish farmers don’t like to hear or do this either because a dry pond is not making them money. Not uncommon for people with old backyard koi ponds to do something similar. Once a decade may be sufficient.

Really there is no chemical or probiotic solution available that can reliably and effectively correct this although as you can see, many products are marketed with this claim, rarely with any independent scientific evidence to back up their claims.

Reduce muck

quote:

---

I can say with certainty taking same $ and lighting a match to it in the driveway will be just as effective.

---

What makes you say this?

Stuff that was once live vegetation.

There sure are a bunch of products out there.

quote:

---

4 acre, 1960's build. Deepest spot about 25'. Has all the regular fish you'd expect in a southern pond. In your opinion is the anaerobic bacteria in the product a good thing, eats muck without consuming o2?

---

I think I missed the part in their advertisement of the product they mentioned anaerobic bacteria and not consuming oxygen. Anyway, decomposition of organic matter via anaerobic bacteria is a very, slow and inefficient process - many times slower than aerobic decomposition. Plus as by-product of anaerobic decomposition, you get the production of potentially toxic gases (to the biological community) such as hydrogen sulfide and methane. And all aquatic habitats in the south are going to have anaerobic bacteria in the sediment, slightly under the sediment surface. It’s not good, it’s not bad, it’s nature.

As an analogy, if you are a gardener with a compost pile, if you turn the pile frequently providing oxygen you might have useable compost in a month, but if you don’t turn it and have anaerobic decomposition, it will still decay but slowly and you may get useable compost in a year. The presence of oxygen speeds up decomposition and carbon dioxide is the only gas by-product - you won’t smell that.

As you can imagine an old pond, that hasn’t been possibly drained in 60 years, is going a have a massive amount of organic matter in the sediment. In deep areas of the pond, it’s stratified in summer and fall, anaerobic conditions exist in the deeper area of the pond, and your fountain is not circulating oxygenated water to the deeper zones of the pond, and if it was you wouldn’t be smelling “funk” which is probably hydrogen sulfide. Deep ponds are incredibly hard to mix/circulate during the summer because of thermal/water density differences from surface to bottom. The surface fountain aerator is not moving and aerating the pond water to the depth you may think it is. If it’s a fountain/aerator designed to pull water from depth to the surface, and it’s working properly, this tells me that it is undersized for the volume of water present in the deeper area of the pond.

Tell me the size (horsepower) of the fountain aerator and if you can provide me a link to the unit you have or something similar so I see see how the system you have is supposed to operate, then I might be able to provide a little more insight. To solve your issue of ridding yourself of this funky smell you are going to need to get more oxygen down to the deeper zone of your pond in summer. That’s not going to be done with a chemical or bacterial probiotic. In the meantime I’ll look for some links to some literature that might help you with this.