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Bird bath
Voowen
Posts: 1
What is the red stuff in my bird bath? Is it safe for the birds? If not, what should I do about it?
0
Posts
A photo might help?
And what is your bath made of?
i was given a concrete birdbath (second hand) it had a red staining under the water level, i filled it with hot water and gave it a scrub no detergent emptied an filled with cold i dont know what it was it hasn't come back yet but if it dose i will do the same again
Its in the cement, you can sometimes see house walls the same, just keep it scrubbed out.
Yes we had one and it was the same. Just scrub it clean now and again. Think I used a bit of my famous 'liquid for dishes'
and just rinsed it out well.
I live in west central Scotland - not where that photo is...
It's an algae, I get it in my concrete birdbath too. A good scrub gets rid of it for a little while and it's always good practice to use a wildlife friendly disinfectant as you would with bird feeders which seems to help. Whether it does any harm I don't know but I find that regular changing of the water and goo hygiene keeps it at bay.
We've had it also. it seems to form a crust on the concrete which can be blasted off with a strong water jet. I hadn't thought about disinfectant as we have only used the jet washer using just water. I will take a look and see what's out there also.
Yes, we get it in our birdbath from time to time - a good scrub and some fresh water seems to deal with it, and yes, regular changes of water.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.