Algae in Mississippi and Alabama Lakes Explained

Question: What is algae in ponds and lakes in Alabama and Mississippi?

Answer: Algae is a plant that can grow in your pond. There is actually two types of algae that will grow in ponds. You have a phytoplankton algae, which is microscopic and you see it a lot of times in ponds. It just looks like, it just makes the pond look green. There’s no, there’s nothing you can really see other than a color to the pond; it just makes the water look green. And this is actually, in most situations, that’s a good thing, especially if you’re growing fish because that’s the base of your food web: that’s what the little bugs eat and that’s what the fish eat and it just builds up your food source. The other type of algae is filamentous algae, and this is what you’ll see a lot of times floating on the top of the pond. People call it pond slime, those sort of things. But it’s filamentous, so if you pick it up a lot of it will look like cotton or something and it will have a green or a greenish-brown color to it. And this really hurts your pond. It’s taking out your nutrients, and it’s hurting the fish and it’s hurting the recreational use. And it’s one of the biggest problems we see in ponds as far as what we control through herbicides and through other biological things.