Over the past few days, I have been monitoring a strange jelly like organism (or colony?) growing in the pond. It grows root like (or tentacle like) strands down into the water. The top part accumulates bubbles inside to make it float, and the part the floats out of the water gets crusty in the sun.

Here is a picture from Monday:

If you look in the center of the image, you can see the tendrils going down into the water. The stuff seems to anchor itself on the “pak ka choot” plants at the bottom of frame and then grow down from there.

If you zoom in, you can see the tendrils going down into the water about 20-30cm.

By Tuesday, it seemed to have grown to about 50-70cm long tendrils:

 I will try to describe its physical properties, because they are interesting. Any attempt to hook the stuff out with a stick causes it to fall apart. It has almost no structural strength at all. Based on how easily it falls apart, I doubt it will cause any problems for my large 12″ impeller circulation pumps. This location in the pond is “down wind”, so it seems likely that this is something growing in the water that is being blown to this part of the pond. I picked it up in my hand and it has the texture of mucous. It has no smell at all. It is mostly clear, with maybe a slight greenish tinge, although this may simply be algae from the water embedded in it. As mentioned above, it is crusty like a dried brown scab where it sits above the water, and if you grab a handful of the crusty stuff and turn it over, it is mucousy on the underside and has lots of visible bubbles. (Presumably this is what it uses for flotation.)

Here are some pictures of it in my hand:

With regards to the conditions of the pond around when it started to appear: This is the hot and sunny season in Bangkok. Highs are around 33-36C and lows at night are around 27-28C. So it is really hot. And really sunny. Also, we have been turning on a pond aeration pump for about 10 hours every day starting in the past few weeks. The aeration is about 5 meters from where these guys are accumulating.

My top two guesses are that it is a form of algae or some kind of colony of bacteria.

My questions about it are:

1. What is it?
2. Is it dangerous or toxic?
3. Does it reflect some problems in the water?
4. Is it actually a beneficial organism for the pond?
5. Should I be actively trying to eradicate it?