I have green alge sticking to the sides of a concrete fountain that is painted white. It also gets on the decorative pieces sitting in the water and the ones around the 3 bubbling spouts. It has a recirculating pump. Is there anything safe for the pump & the birds that will get rid of the algae? The water stays clear but the sides, etc. look awful.
Any help will be greatly appreciated.

It might help if you can place it in the shade. Kent

Adding a little Horticultural Cornmeal or Pond Cleaner (Alliance product) to the water will take care of most of the algae. Make sure your pump has a filter/screen as the cornmeal might clog your pump. From my experience, the cornmeal will control the algae in the fountain but not have much effect on rocks, etc. that poke above the water line. Too much sun aggravates the algae problem as mentioned in previous posts.

You can put the corn meal into an old sock (not too old) and tie it shut. Toss that into the pond for a couple days, then pull it out and scatter the corn meal into the garden. More than a few days underwater will develop some powerfully strong fragrances from corn meal.

David-
Does the same advice apply to a pond? We have about 1/2 acre pond (should call it a mud hole) It gets really scummy-looking, is never 'clear' & is full of bull frogs. Neighbors threw bleach in it in past years, didn't sound like the right thing to me. I filled an entire pair of pantyhose w/corn meal & tossed it as near to the middle as I could about a mo. ago. Should I pull it out? Is it going to help anything?
Patty

I was searching the forum for something and found this question from last year that I didn't see. I guess there's no time like the present to reply.

Yes. You can use the corn meal in any size pond. There is a rate to use it but I can't remember what it is. It has to do with the surface area. And yes you should pull the corn meal out after a few days. Corn meal underwater gets an incredibly bad smelling anerobic something or another growing on it. If you pull the bag out of the pond and it stinks, spread it out over the soil somewhere. Or you could compost it if you have some dry leaves to cover it with.

Well, just FYI-last summer when our pond/mud hole dried up, there was NO evidence of the nearly full (of cornmeal) pair of pantyhose that I threw into the middle early in the year...would the frogs/turtles/snakes have eaten the whole thing?
Patty

And fish. Yes.