Water fleas filter my goldfish water, and they turned it from green to clear in 3 weeks!

I made a swirl pool above my goldfish pond (to settle out the bigger stuff) and threw in a few waterfleas. 3 weeks later they have bred up, thousands of them! and they have turned the green water in the fish pond clear. I can see the goldfish again! I tried all sorts of things to get clear water before this and nothing worked. AND if a waterflea swims too high, she gets washed away into the waiting mouth of a fish. So my filter also feeds the fish. It is pretty cool and I'm just sharing so other people can try it.

That's cool Brian !
So tell me... where did you get the fleas in the first place?

Hi, Miles. I got them in a local pond. I had to search a bit before I found them. Sometimes they will be on one side of the pond and not the other. I got some sort of tiny water snail too. (I didn't want anything except the waterfleas and a couple of shrimp but I guess the fish will eat pretty much anything that drops over the overflow. (I have not seen the shrimp since) but I divided everything between several pools so I think some of them made it in a little tub elsewhere. Brian

Hi Brian, That is fascinating and could be just what we need for our pond. We have an ornamental pond with fountain and gold fish. It is in full sun an is perpetually green. I don't have an option for pumping water to a separate tank for water fleas, but I'm wondering if I can make them a safe habitat in the pond where the fish cannot access.

M

Michael Cox wrote:Hi Brian, That is fascinating and could be just what we need for our pond. We have an ornamental pond with fountain and gold fish. It is in full sun an is perpetually green. I don't have an option for pumping water to a separate tank for water fleas, but I'm wondering if I can make them a safe habitat in the pond where the fish cannot access.

M

I have thought about that too. This was my first attempt, so it is just a fluke that it worked. There are a few options, one would be a container in the fishpond. perhaps you just need some sort of glass jar with mesh at top to stop the fish getting in? They sell mesh "curtains" at the pet store. I catch my fleas in a fine fish net that I bought at the pet store for about $3 so that mesh might work for the top 1/3 of your jar or 1 gallon bucket waterflea filter,, This one might even work unpowered, because the waterfleas swimming will make a bit of circulation. Or maybe, you can float a bucket in the pond? I think a 2 gallon bucket might work, somehow floating, top up. And I think you might need a throughput of water, top in and top out so that the baby fleas can survive and they do not all get sent out to be fish food. Great if you kept people posted on how it works. At the pet store here, people were clueless about what waterfleas even are. In the past they were a fairly major fish food. Small to medium ponds in boggy spots are often full of waterfleas. And maybe local is best anyway. I got mine about 3 miles up the road in a pond.