[QUOTE=rcloisonne;7091973]
Can’t believe this hasn’t been mentioned yet but if you’re not dumping your water tanks every few days you’re breeding lots of mosquitos.[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=trubandloki;7091977]That is what the goldfish are for.
There are also things you can put into the water that kill the mosquitoes.[/QUOTE]
Or you could use mosquitofish:).
I use about a cup of apple cider vinegar in my water troughs after cleaning them. The vinegar changes the PH level of the water and seems to keep the algae from developing.
[QUOTE=chicamuxen1;7091150]
Plain old unscented non-concentrated bleach! Yes it’s safe, you’ll find it recommended by universities and extension agents. The quantity I keep finding says 2-3 ounces per 100 gallons.
chicamuxen[/QUOTE]
I have tried the bleach and I don’t know if is the area I live in but still by the time I visit its back to gross. I might try the fish and see how that goes. If anything it should give the cats something to do 
I also can’t use anything smaller than the large tanks or my horses will get in them or knock them over.
A farm owner in Florida (well water) told me to use chlorine pool tabs; if not, the water in tanks there would get green in 3 days. I was skeptical-- I don’t want to poison my horses’ water!-- but I tried it.
It works very well. I used her 3" tabs… one tab in a 100gal tank would last about 2 weeks, and the water was crystal clear (aside from normal sand/dirt horse debris). The tabs dissolve slowly, so the chlorine was never heavily concentrated; I couldn’t taste it. My horses drank normally-- some even preferred to drink the tanks outside, and hardly ever sipped from the buckets in their stalls.
A “forgotten” tank had turned green and thick with slime, but way too full to dump…I threw a chlorine tab in it, and a few days later it was clear.
I would suggest against chlorine or bleach; instead, a good scrub and changing them out regularly is the best thing for the horse.
[QUOTE=fiddleandco;7093767]
I would suggest against chlorine or bleach; instead, a good scrub and changing them out regularly is the best thing for the horse.[/QUOTE]
I do not mean to harp on about this and I am not some “tree hunger freak”, but I do want to caution my fellow horse owners about the use of these chlorine tabs. I realize they are a time saver because all you do is throw one in a tank and “voila” algae disappears…how cool is that? Just like a science experiment right out of high school. But in essence this is an out of sight, out of mind scenario.
If we look at the intended use of these chlorine tabs, it is for a fairly large volume of water…say a pool for instance. if we are to put this in a 100 gallon tank, what is the concentration of chlorine in you horses drinking water? Also keep in mnd that we do not drink our pool water (ok, well you are not supposed to) but it is ok to let our horses drink this? if you at least had some way of measuring the concentration of chlorine in your water tank, then you could make an informed decision as to your comfort level in letting your horse drink it.
Keep in mind that although our municipalities use chlorine in our drinking water, it is highly regulated and measured to a known concentration. I was listening to a program on CBC last fall (CBC is our equivalent to PBS), highlighting how much our immune system is weakened due to the use of chlorine in drinking water. In essence, chlorine is killing useful, necessary bacteria in our bodies and there is a direct link to many illnesses (even the common cold) because our body does not have the beneficial bacteria to fight back. In essence a weakened immune system.
Because I hate being a naysayer and finger pointer, if you still want to use chlorine. Perhaps drain the water in your tank, take a spray bottle with a chlorine solution and spray the inside of you water tank and leave it for an hour. Then rinse well and refill with just plain water. I bet this alone will extend the life of the clean water in your tank as you are killing the algae that has taken hold of the sides of your tank. Then, you are lessening your workload and not harming your horses immune system.
Crawling down off my soapbox…
I always dumped the tank on Sat…two horses could easily drain my rubbermaid tank down in a day so it was never a matter of dumping/wasting much water. I scrubbed w/ a stiff brush, then refilled with a touch of bleach added. However, that was in MI where the temps weren’t really high enough during most of the summer to facilitate the amount of algae some of you in warmer climates may encounter.
I ordered:
http://www.aspire-products.com/equine_products_full.php?pid=34
It claims to be all natural and we will see how it works.
Opposed to all the unnatural products out there ( I imagine them as being summoned by warlocks or necromancers) lol! I find it hilarious when products tout being natural.
I wonder if it’s the same as the stuff I used to use for our koi pond It was the same premise. Took a few weeks of adding the stuff before is was effective though.
I consider dumping water troughs to be a wasteful and irresponsible use of a natural resource. Worst offense is using precious groundwater just to dump the unused a day or so later. If you have to dump water, your container is too big and should be reduced in size. JMO
I tried an experiment regarding sterilizing water in all five of my fields, each field having two 100g tanks of water. After filling all the troughs with captured fresh rainwater (siphoned from large holding tanks) I left the water to green on its own for a few days. I then left one trough in each field untreated while I treated the second trough with granular pool shock stirred in.
In every case my guys, each in their individual fields, selected the trough of pool shocked water over the “green” water. Every time. They would sniff the green water, reject it, and go to the sterilized water and slurp that right down. That really surprised me.
Personally, I can’t stomach chlorine - it makes me gag and want to throw up. But one dose of shock does dissipate/break down in a very short time in bright sunlight to the point where you neither smell nor taste it. By then it has already worked to sterilize the water. It is human and animal safe when used as directed. It kills algae and harmful bacteria and mosquito larve.
I won’t use tablets because they dissolve so slowly that the chemical remains the entire time.
Did the goldfish thing for a few years. Results were poor at best; while they ate the larve, they did nothing to prevent the algae during the height of summer. The year we had that nasty killer algae hit which killed half my fish, I moved the survivors to a new garden pond with a UV filter, and started treating the horse water troughs with chemicals.
Now I have healthy schools of fish happily living in my garden ponds with their bubblers and filters, and healthy happy horses drinking clear sterile rainwater thanks to the right chemical makeup in their troughs.
OK, my horses must be weird. I had two troughs and an occasional pond at my place. One trough was small and easily dumped and scrubbed, the other one was not, and got scrubbed when it was really grubby. Both troughs had floating debris scooped out as necessary. The pond came and went with the rains, it was really more of a catchbasin.
I never used bleach or chemicals, just the mosquito dunk disks in the summer.
My guys would walk right past the lovely clear water in the freshly scrubbed tub, and go drink out of the disgusting looking pond (after splashing and churning it up of course). If the pond had dried up, they still preferred the big tank that had clear water in it, but long flowing algae on the sides and occasional bits floating around. They loved that big tank! It mostly stayed full without my filling it because it caught roof runoff from the shed (Old metal roof, no tar, no paint) and was pretty much straight up rain water. The small trough was filled with the hose which was city water. I suppose that may have been a factor, but the city water was pretty good actually, not chlorine-y or bitter with minerals.
Horses is weird, that’s all I can say.
Barley straw!:yes: My pond related algae solution, may help here.
I’ve been battling increased algae growth and summer “fish kills” when the algae dies off for the last 8 years or more, having not had the problem for the 17 years prior, except in dire heat and drought situations. Fish kills “happen”.
As I suspected, the reason they happen yearly now and my pond, from June on looks like disgusting pea soup, is because of massive development upstream from the creek (Little Bull Run) that flows into the pond during flood situations. All those houses who use lawn services and massive amounts of fertilizer are washing downstream and winding up in my pond.
I can’t aerate as it’s in flood plain and would wash away.
Just learned about using barley straw in nets to stop the problem – and I’m overjoyed. The pond hasn’t looked this good for almost a decade. I used one bale on a 1 acre pond – six nets (about 2’ x 3 ') stuffed with fresh barley strawg…weighted down with rocks and tied to trees so they don’t leave when it floods.
No reason you couldn’t do the same thing for stock tanks. I’m going to try it. It will not get rid of existing algae, but if you bleach out the tub, put some barley straw in a small perforated container, weighted with a rock, I can’t imagine one would not get the same results.
I’ve come to learn that Koi pond dealers sell little bags of barley straw in nets for this very purpose…for like, $9. As horse owners a bale of barley straw is easy to get and cheap compared to what the Koi pond dealers are selling. So I’m makng my own…go figure I didn’t know this modality even existed, but it’s working beautifully !!
I’ve just ordered 8" x12" mesh fruit and veggie bags from Amazon for a whopping $10 total (I have 12 stock tanks)…what does a bale of barley straw cost…$6.?
I’ll let you know how my experiment works!
^Sid - I’d love to hear how the barley straw experiment works in a water trough. Mine are various 150 and 300 gallon troughs, rainwater from the stable roof, so they get “refreshed” whenever it rains. I used to run a UV filer, doing each trough in turn, but I have so many tanks that it is more expedient to use chemicals. Would prefer something natural like barley…if it works. I’m tired of buying the chemicals. Too expensive.
If ONE bale, distributed into 6 large mesh bags that I put in in May still has my 1 acre pond looking stellar after years of problems…I can’t imagine putting about a water bucket full into a mesh bag and sinking it into the bottom of a stock tank could not do the same thing, no?
Regardless if it works, water gets warm …though it does cool down at night. If the tank stays clear and you just run the hose to flow out the hot and refresh with cool, then it should be good to go.
The most important thing in all my years of having horses, breeding, training – and also doing post surgical layups for a local hospital – is that water must be conducive to drinking…“the juice of life”.
I’m sick of bleaching and refilling (I dump and scrub mine every 2 days), but I do it and won’t stop. If this can be a solution, I’d be thrilled and will pass it on.
K & H Stock Tank filter
http://www.khmfg.com/farmandranch/stock-tank-de-icers-filters/clean-flow-filter.html
Only uses 30 watts. Mine’s on a timer, so using less in summer.
Watch their video.
Barley bags work well for me. Also use mosquito dunks to keep those at bay.
[QUOTE=nashfad;7090207]
www.clearwatertroughs.com have been using this product for 3 wks and the troughs are soooooooooo clear and the horses are drinking even more from them----they have a running creek also[/QUOTE]
Just placed my second order for these gems. They soooooo work for our troughs and pasture situation. Thanks! 
We’ve tried a number of things over the years. Have not found fish to be effective maybe we used the wrong type. But they do give one something to look at while filling up the tank. Bleach/chlorine in the right amount seems to do all right and have not found horses to balk at the taste if the right amount is used. It doesn’t take much. In the end I found the most effective is to size the tank to the horse population so it has to be refilled once a day during the hot months of the year. The tanks will be near empty so easy to dump, no siphoning, no bucketing etc. Place in plain view so the horses will remind you if it needs to be refilled by standing around and banging on it. Just like us most horses like their water on the cool side and just as importantly “aerated” which happens when being filled. Set a glass of water on the counter for a day and take a sip, then take the same and shake it up most people find it tastes much better. Of course the best and least labor intensive are auto waters. But not the kind that hold a lot of water at any one time. A small Nelson waterier set in a drain pipe can easily supply 3-4 horses. With a larger population we use the “igloo” shaped that hold 30 gallons. Because they are tapered, wide at the bottom narrow at the top the horses can’t try and play in them.
For those that have tanks using a siphon hose can be easier then dumping a heavy tank but all tanks have a drain plug. It the tank is set and secured to the fence just remove the drain plug and install a “ball valve” they have a handle on them, open or closed. Can be had at just about any hardware store. Plastic or metal. The Rubbermaid tanks we use, 70-100 gallons if I remember correctly the drain hole is 1 ¼ inch or just measure. Ask for a 1 ¼ inch “male” ball valve, which means the threads on the outside of the end that screws in. Threads on the inside is a “female” connector in plumbing terms, male to female I’m sure you get the idea. Wrap the threads with some Teflon sealing tape also. But this will only last if the tank is secured to the fence otherwise a horse will step on it at some time and break it off. Metal ones may last longer.
Some horses like their water one way, others another way. Some drink a lot some not so much. In the end they will drink what ever is available. Just as I have on various backpacking and mountaineering trips over the years. You would be amazed at what one will drink and eat when that’s all there is.
As always to each their own.
Fill mine 2/3 and dump/scrub every other day in summer ~ every 3 days rest of year
[I]I fill ours about 2/3 and dump and scrub every other day during summer ~
maybe every 3 days the rest of the year ~[/I]
Thanks to this thread, I’ve just ordered the Clear Water Troughs product. Out here in CA, when horses are on large pastures, it is normal to have 100 gallon PLUS stock tanks to water them. They are on automated water filling/constantly (connected directly to the water lines)
I don’t dump, scrub, clean and refill regularly. It’s just not done very often. I have two of these HUGE stock tanks in two pastures.
Folks out here often use fish. But again, I’ve just ordered the Clear Water Troughs product, so fingers crossed
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