Banish blanket weed and green water from your pond: there is an almost fool proof product that really does work!

I have never read so many glowing testimonials when I looked into possibilities of using Viresco on some of the ponds I was responsible for. These ponds had been plagued with green water or blanket weed ever since they had been created and although many products on the market were effective at reducing the problem or eliminating it altogether for a while, the ghastly strands of the green cotton wool or the thick soupy green water would return eventually. Very often with a vengeance, seemingly trying to make up for lost time, and so it gets worse than ever. Viresco however breaks that ghastly cycle forever.

You might ask; why did we not keep up with the effective treatment when it proved partially or wholly successful with those other prooducts? Well, put it down to human nature. Once the problem seemed to be solved then it was dealt with – i.e. job done, now forget it. But there are reasons for green water and unless you have dealt with the reasons the green water arrived in the first place it will continually haunt, and whatever treatment you use it is always best to address any possible direct causes of excess algae in the pond water. Also there is the expense of these products. Pouring expensive concoctions into a green filthy pond again and again just seems like pouring liquid money down a drain.

There is no doubt that effective treatment, whatever you use, is partly as a result of removing the initial cause of the problem in the first place:

Classic causes of the green water problem are:

excessive feeding of the fish, too many fish, run off from the soil or lawn that may contain excessive nutrients for plant life, regular topping up of the pond with tap water, not enough plants, no filtration or filter that has not builtGreen water is a problem that haunts new ponds. This one wasn't even finshed. up the right type bacteria in the filter medium and cleaning the filter out with chlorinated tap water. Excess hardness in the water, coming from tap water or mortar or cement products in and around the pond, together with phosphates from ground water run off or the environment, can cause blanket weed in particular.

On some ponds, especially the new ones, you often accept that green water is part of the maturation process of the water especially if you have put water straight from the mains. You can partly diminish the probability of this occuring by treating the water with Pond Conditioner, which will take out some of the chemicals in tap water. But because tap water can be full of nitrates and phosphates this will inevitably lead to a pond full of algae. Nitrates and phosphates are perfect food for plants, any water plants plants being absent (as in a Koi pond) or rather small and ineffective (as in a new pond), microscopic floating single-celled plants, collectively called algae, and thread like strand algae, often called blanket weed, fill the vacuum of plant life and arrive literally from thin air and nourish themselves and propagate until all the supplies of nutrition are consumed.

If you were to just kill the algae with a chemical algaecide without doing anything else, or if the algae starved themselves through over proliferation, then the dead microscopic cells or strands of cells would just sink to the bottom of the pond, begin to rot down very quickly to their basic ingredients, and then would form the potential nutrients for the next generation of algae. If you have higher plants in the pond, like lilies and marginal plants, the plants, in theory will starve out any algae, using up the nutrients before the algae can take hold again.

Balancing the pond

The dreaded blanket weed. It needs to be dragged out before any treatment is carried out.A full planting of plants in the water around the edge help with the balance and prevent algae growing.
If there are no plants in the pond, then you would need an efficient biological filter that has within it a filter medium in which a colony of bacteria thrives by consuming dead algae and any organic detritus that comes by. These bacteria are very particular species but they are not very difficult to establish since they are usually to be found in the bottom of most ponds. To make life easier for the bacteria a U/V Clarifier is fitted onto the inlet of the filter and this has the effect of either killing or clumping the individual cells together, making them more liable to be trapped in the filter. This is simply a tube containing an ultra violet lamp encased in a silicon tube, over which the water from the pond flows.

The bacteria involved in the filtration and breakdown process are described as aerobic which means they require large amounts of oxygen in the water to break down organic matter to the basic ingredients. Unless the filter is very sophisticated it is usually the case that the breakdown of organic matter involves it being changed to Ammonia compounds then to nitrites, and then stops at nitrates.

Thus the filter dumps nitrates into the water. The fish don’t mind these too much but if you haven’t got any water plants to hoover them up the algae just continue to take the opportunity to use them up instead. Having spent a large amount of cash on a filter to clear the water and it only seems to stay green, it must seem like a perfect waste. Up until now, for pond keepers and Koi keepers without plants in their ponds, I’ve advocated a Veggie Filter or small Reed Bed system to help remove the nitrates. This is like another filter, but this has fast growing reedy plants growing in it that use up the nutrients in the water. This can be quite a bind to maintain at certain times of the year. Wouldn’t it be amazing if someone discovered a really natural and cool way of breaking down the nutrients that didn’t involve expensive chemicals or large filter beds of unmanageable plants?

Wouldn’t be amazing if someone discovered a really natural and cool way of breaking down the nutrients that didn’t involve expensive chemicals?

Well here it is folks. Viresco.

Viresco was originally devised for fish health. Algae control was a side effect!
John McLauchlan was a natural scientist looking for a product that would improve the health of fish. Fish are healthy if they are covered with a thick layer of mucous. You have probably noticed how slimy fish are, but have you notice how much more slimy healthy robust fish are? The mucous layer helps keep out all diseases and repels parasites. In 1997 he found a bacterial product that encouraged the formation of this layer but with its introduction to a pond, he noticed a dramatic side effect. The nitrate levels in the pond were reduced to zero and the phosphate levels were also drastically reduced. Some of the bacteria had completely broken up the nitrates. The ‘knock-on' effect was that without nitrates in the water the algae were starved out of existence in the pond. What was not totally unexpected was that these bacteria were anaerobic i.e. they did their magic without the need for oxygen. They work within a very thin layer of slime, which coats the bottom of the pond. Combining these bacteria with another that would digest waste matter on the bottom of a pond you now have a pond keeper’s wonder product. Viresco.

Viresco is the pondkeeper’s and Koi keeper's Holy Grail and Philosopher’s stone combined!

OK, koi keepers have pretty clean ponds all the time anyway, so for them the sludge-busting bacteria is left out and they have Viresco Koi.John McLauchlan says that Viresco has been so effective some fish keepers turned off their U/V Clarifiers

So, if you haven’t heard of Viresco or Viresco Koi by now, then why not if it is so wonderful?

It was first produced onto the aquatics market in 1997. It was an expensive product for its volume. I wanted to treat the mammoth ponds I was building out in the Caribbean and I was sent 25g to treat 15,000 gallons of water. This would cost a little less than £50, but if you examined the cost to treat 1000 gallons as in a ‘Gardening Which?’ survey in May 2007, it turned out to be the cheapest algae treatment for that volume of water they trialled out of the six best of 21 products. That’s not the end of the good news though. This treatment does not always require a follow up treatment, as you need to do with all the other treatments. Once that bacteria is established and as long as there is no major clearout, it is there to stay.

So with even more going for it, and if it has been around for so long, why is it not available everywhere we go?
Partly it is vested interests from large manufacturers tying up retailers into large package deals. Partly, a small product with very small profit mark ups has great difficulty in breaking through the marketing structures to reach the general public. The company that produces it is not a specifically aquatic product manufacturer, but serves the horticultural trade with bacteria based soil conditioners and so it is liable to be frozen out by the exceedingly competitive aquatics trade. The serious garden and fishkeeping magazines however have been quietly blowing its trumpet over many years, but very quietly. News about treatment for algae and green water is never going to be riveting bedtime reading for a large majority of the nation, neither is the headline: Planting up the Oase Filtofall which was a small Veggie filter.: I used to recommend this product for clearing nitrates out of small ponds. I thought they were a very useful, but obviously sales didn't keep the product alive. Never mind you've got Viresco now.“THE END OF GREEN WATER” going to sell magazines off the racks, BUT ask pond keepers individually what the main bugbear of their pond is, and if it aint a heron, its green water or blanket weed.

In May 2007 "Gardening Which?" trialled 21 products and Viresco was named one of the 6 best buys. Further analysis of usage rates and cost shows that it is by far the best value product, a position confirmed by the triallist himself, who found Viresco to work the fastest and last the longest

In the Summer of 2004 , 13 products were tested and Viresco came equal top with two other products. John McLauchlan objected to the way the experiment was conducted and when one of the products other than Viresco was chosen as being best overall, he declared that the ‘full cost implications’ were not taken into account.

Now I cant vouch for it on a scientific level, because my trials were in uncontrolled conditions in ponds without comparable controls in the same circumstances alongside. However all the ponds I’ve used it on are now clear of all blanket weed and green water.

So what are the drawbacks to this wonder product Viresco? There must be some?

The problems are the sort that can be lived with. They are certainly familiar to the builders of the best swimming ponds. If you are breaking down and using up all the nitrates, the plants don’t grow very well. Lilies do excellently for some reason, but the marginals tend to look a bit chlorotic and underfed. This is easily addressed with clay balls mixed with slow release feed right at the root systems.

Also - If you are partial to taking a dip in your pond and swimming with the fish, you may notice the surface of the liner slightly more slippery than usual. It’s the valuable slime layer. Live with it, it does you good!

If you cant find Viresco on the shelves of your local aquatic store, you can resort to the internet. This is where most of Viresco’s sales take place all over the world. The product is very light, so the cost of postage is included in the price. The packaging is basic, so you are paying virtually for the product alone. This is a seriously scientifically produced substance without the razzmatazz of advertising, reps, execs and marketing geeks – it is sold on results and sales are increasing all the time. Sales to end users are often a one off, not because the customer is dissatisfied, but because one purchase is all he needs – is this why retailers are not interested in it? Anyway despite that, 87,000 packs had been sold by the end of 2007 sufficient to treat 290,000,000 gallons, more than 1.3billion litres!

There are reams of more information on the Viresco website, so to find out more or to get hold of some of the actual stuff, click the link Viresco, or the Viresco banner advert or phone:
01845 525585.
Email: sales@viresco-uk.com
Or write to:
Viresco (UK) Ltd
50A Market Place
Thirsk
North Yorkshire
YO7 1LH