How Nutrient Overload Could Be Damaging Your Pond

As any reliable pond management companies in Florida will tell you, nutrients are a vital component of proper pond management. Responsible for sustaining all animals and plants living in an aquatic ecosystem, nutrients, when properly managed, can aid pond owners, managers and enthusiasts in maximizing the health, and therefore usefulness and enjoyment, of a pond.

By the same token, an excess or surplus of nutrients in a pond can cause a host of problems, damaging the pond and its plant and animal inhabitants, as well as posing the risk of harm to the community's who enjoy and rely on the that waterbody.

How Nutrient Overload Can Occur
While water contains many different nutrients, the two most common are nitrogen and phosphorus. As aquatic plants decompose throughout the year, they release these nutrients, which settle in the sediment at the pond floor.

When these nutrients are at balanced levels, they help the pond's ecosystem to thrive. When they reach excessive levels, either through failure to properly clean the pond or by introducing nutrients from outside sources, an excess can develop that surpasses this balanced threshold.

Often, excess nutrients are introduced into a pond via stormwater runoff. As stormwater travels across sidewalks, roadways and other surfaces impervious to water absorption, it captures foreign matter like fertilizer residue, pet waste and grass clippings that it then carries into the pond. Such excess nutrients, along with a variety of pollutants, are thus transferred into the pond, where they inadvertently negatively impact the aquatic ecosystem there. This includes contaminating the food sources for the life in the pond, in addition to causing nutrient overload.

Potential Dangers of Nutrient Overload
When nutrients overload a pond, they can:

• Degrade water quality
• Promote the growth of invasive and nuisance plants
• Prompt harmful algae bloom development

Poor water quality can accelerate the rate of aging of a particular body of water and, in so doing, pose risks to the health of any nearby community dependent on that waterbody to thrive or survive.

A buildup of nutrients can fuel invasive species infestations and recurring algae blooms, causing thick mats to develop on the pond's surface. This, in turn, prevents the exchange of oxygen necessary to sustain aquatic plant and animal life in the pond. As a result, fish in the pond can die off en masse, and beneficial plants and zooplankton can be destroyed.

Moreover, as these dead fish and destroyed plants and zooplankton begin to decompose, they will release more nitrogen, phosphorus and other organic material into the water, thereby only perpetuating and exacerbating this cycle of destruction.

If left unchecked, this can lead over time to the accumulation of sediment and muck at the bottom of the pond, significantly reducing the volume and depth of the waterbody. Even worse, harmful algae, like Cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, can bloom, producing an array of harmful toxins to release into the water. Human exposure to these toxins, such as through swimming in tainted waters, has been linked to neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease and ALS.

To avoid the problems of nutrient overload in your pond, learn to properly manage and remediate your pond's nutrient levels, or hire one of the competent and reliable pond management companies in Florida to do it for you.