As organic matter decomposes within your pond, it releases nutrients and particles that can feed weeds, algae and other nasties. The decomposition process also increases your ecosystem’s nutrient load and throws things out of balance, therefore leading to water quality issues, and even fish kills if things get too far out of hand. This is why we always recommend manual removal of matter large enough and aeration paired with biological augmentation and filtration for smaller things such as fish waste.

Generally, your nutrient load will be affected by standard variable such as your aquatic plants, the amount (and type) of fish you have, visitors like ducks, and the surrounding area. Sometimes, however, a water body’s bio-load can experience alteration from some more sinister players.

A service request that has stuck with us was a call from the groundskeeper at a local cemetery. He was in charge of maintaining the facility’s water bodies and had noticed some strange happenings in one of their dams. We sent our head consultant out and his findings were certainly spooky:

The dam in question was located at the bottom of a hill which had grave plots all up it. As such, the aquatic ecosystem was receiving all manner of disturbing input from its surrounding including fluid transfer from the coffins. In other words, run off and body seepage had found their way into the water and thrown the ecosystem out of balance. This lead to nutrient overload and some rather questionable growth within the dam which may or may not have been heading for horror movie territory.

If you think the inhabitants of the dam being fed by dead bodies is a zombie apocalypse waiting to happen, you’re not alone.

Luckily, this type of organic matter can be treated and eliminated like any other excess nutrients. We installed a quality aeration system, dosed the dam with regular biological treatments and were able to clear the water up, therefore saving our client (and possibly the world) from certain doom and brain hunting algae, fish and weeds.