You spend time trying to get your pond looking just right. At the beginning, you may notice a little duckweed appearing on the water's surface. Over the course of a few days, more and more duckweed will appear. Duckweed tends to grow exponentially, so it can overtake your pond quickly if it's not managed. While some pond owners may enjoy the look of duckweed, others do not like it covering the water's surface. Regardless of whether you enjoy it or not, it can be harmful to the plant and fish life in your pond. You need to remove it in order to keep a clean, healthy pond at all times. 

Identifying Duckweed

One way to identify duckweed is by the color. It is usually a pale green or a lime green color. It can be mixed with watermeal or mosquito fern that can cause it to look a little different. Duckweed consists of small green plants with a tiny hair like root coming from the bottom. Each one usually measures about 1/8 to 1/16 of an inch. If you see it aggressively covering your pond each day, it is important that you take immediate action to remove it. 

Eliminating Duckweed

The first step to removing duckweed from the pond is to take a net and scoop it all out. If you wait until a day when the wind is picking up, you can usually find that the duckweed will float all to one side. This makes it easier to catch all the duckweed much quicker. In the event you miss some of the duckweed, you could see it come back and take over your pond in a matter of days. This is why you may have to take a more aggressive approach to getting rid of it than just netting it out. 

Pond fountains look beautiful when placed in a pond, but they can also be useful in eliminating the duckweed. A pond not only keeps the water moving, making it hard for duckweed to survive, it also aerates the water so that the healthy algae in the pond can get rid of the duckweed on the surface. If you choose not to use a pond fountain to help with the issue, you can also purchase a bubble aerator to do the same job. This allows the healthy algae to do its job. These pieces of equipment are better used for larger ponds connecting to big bodies of water.

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