Soup to Gin ... what happened?

[gcuss]

Hello everyone,

Ok, I'm not complaining, but I am curious if this is normal.

Wife and I were out of town for the last 5 days. When we left, the water had maybe 18" of visibility. Now we return, and the water is gin clear.

No feeding for the 5 days....
Lots of nice weather....
Pond temps rose from 62 ish to 68 ish now...

My ph is high ( 8.5 - 9.0 or so ) but of course the water hasn't been changed since I was gone. I assume the ph spike is related to the organic load all of the algae placed on the sysetem. Dumped a bit of water tonight when I got home, but it got dark. I'll be doing a 10 - 15 percent change in the morning and then 10% per day for the rest of the week, and then back to my usual 5% daily. Should get the ph back to normal.

0 ammonia and 0 nitrites

So anyway..... this is normal ? For such a fast turn around???

Thanks,

Grant

[MikeM]

It is not unusual. Typically this occurs when the bacterial community gets to full functioning, out-competing the unicellular algae. In your case, the lack of feeding may have contributed.