Im sorry for venting but, My pond which is 1/4 acrea is getting worse every day. I had this pond dug out and increased in size and been filled up for a year and a half now and is worse on water color now than when it first filled up. I have spent money on wind mill aeration and have treated with Pond Clear Chemical and NO Change, even worse. We have no livestock and very few cat fish, but nice stock on Bass and Blue gill and minnows.Now primrose is taking over and some scum moss growing and have zero water clarity, it looks terrible.

I live in East Texas(Caddo Mills) to be exact and I dont understand it. Neighbors all around have decent looking water from the road side view and do nothing. I tried the settlement test( no Settle) NOW WHAT! I want to go fishing. I 've tried to fish and only catch a single cat on a occasion. No Bass and I have several 7+lbrs Bass in there along with decent amount of 1-3 pound range. Last year had a banner Bluegill spawn.
Any help is appreciated, Im new to this know nothing about fertilization or acid types of treatment. I have a good runoff and I excused some of that for muddy water water that not the problem and Im getting ancey. I have fish ponds all my life and finally have 1 of my own and theres where never treated and always looked nice and clean.
HELP!

Have you ever tried useing aqua shad? It'll make your pond pretty blue.If you have good runoff you should eventually have a clear pond one would think.

My pond is half acre and plenty of run off, water always seeping in and always going out.I wonder if the cc are stiring the water up?

Thats EXactly what Im hopeing for, Very Nice Pond! I would not assume I have very many CC about 10-12 I put in there from local lake. I did add some aqua shade last year when it was visabilty of about 1 foot and it turned really green. Wanted to wait this year till it cleared up. Now its worse than last year and its fishing time. Once again love your pond and Im crying over mine.

Everything is going to be fine, lets see what the pros have t say

Not a pro, but have you tried either alum or gypsum. Depending on whether it is acid or alkaline, one of those should help clear it up. What do your water tests indicate WRT alkalinity?

Some ponds never clear but around your area, it shouldn't be a problem. OK, it is a problem.

If the jar test didn't settle out you have positive and negative clay particles that keep repelling and bouncing off each other. That keeps them suspended. There's some technical wording involved but I can't find the specific reference that I want so I'll just leave it that.

The cheap way: Tear up a couple of bales of OLD erosion hay and toss it out in the pond. Yep, it looks terrible. It emits a very weak , I think, negative charge that causes 1/2 of the clay particles to stick to them. The others just fall to the bottom. The rest of the story? I've never tried it but the State Of Mississippi Aquatic Biologists recommend it. They say also that it doesn't work 100% of the time.

If that doesn't work, contact US Gypsum and ask their field scientists how much gyp to use and how to use it. I did it once and posted the results here but can't find the post. Maybe you can.

I have heard of mixed results with alum ranging from complete success to lowered Ph and resulting fish kills. I'm not going to give advice since I don't know enough about all of the factors involved.

Putting blue dye on mud is like putting lipstick on a pig. You still have no light penetration that the lowest end of the food chain, phytoplankton, needs to grow.

BTW, Lusk told me about a pond just outside of Fort Worth that they have used obscene amounts of gyp and alum on. Nothing has worked and he/they don't know why.

From your location in East Tx. you probably have acid soil and water, lots of pines? Gypsum would be the best in that respect, but not as effective and will take more than alum. Alum is tricky and you must monitor and be ready to add quick lime to bring the ph back up if needed. Soil and water tests will help someone to steer you in the right direction.

Read this and you will have an idea of what is happening and how to fix it.

http://srac.tamu.edu/tmppdfs/13452410-46...207d2fa365192a2

Thanks for the help guys, I do want to try the hay thing, when you say Old Erosion do you mean like the stuff they are using along the construction sites and highways? If so do I need to sink it or just toss it out and let it float or settle.

Yep, the side of the road stuff is what they recommend; don't know why. Take the bale apart and then take the "leaves" apart. Toss it out so it pretty well covers the whole pond. I wouldn't try it on a windy day. And, the guy put an emphasis on OLD hay.

I have never tried this and have no idea what criteria to use on whether it will work. I think he said about two bales per acre.

Go to the Mississippi Fishing website. It is state run and the Biologists answer forum questions like here.

Also look at the TAMU reference that Ewest provided.

Also described on pg 19 of this link.

http://msucares.com/pubs/publications/p1428.pdf

Maybe because it is already weathered and starting to decay? Since it's the acid decay product that is the working agent, I would think the farther gone the hay is when placed, the sooner it would work.

I called my local feed store to ask if he carried any alum, he said he only carried Copper sulfate and it was a very strong and great working product to clear ponds, does anyone ever use or heard of this. Also i mention erossion hay and he said it was just lod trash weed hay and he some oak leaf bales that are a year old for 8.95 a bale. The copper sulfate comes in a 3-4 pd jar that is granules. Which should I try first? Or Both. And do I need to diconnect my aeriator(windmill style) and let things settle down after applying.

CUSO4 or copper sulfate is a contact herbicide. It will kill your plankton and other plants. To my knowledge it will not help clear a muddy pond. Are you sure your aerator in not making the suspended clay (muddy water) worse ?

Im not sure about the airerator, it has a stone inside a 5 gal bucket, I hope not thats why , cuz thats why I bought it. I thought that was the 1st step in pond managment acorrding to the magazine.

al·um 1(lm)
n.
Any of various double sulfates of a trivalent metal such as aluminum, chromium, or iron and a univalent metal such as potassium or sodium, especially aluminum potassium sulfate, AlK(SO4)2·12H2O, widely used in industry as clarifiers, hardeners, and purifiers and medicinally as topical astringents and styptics.

DONT use copper sulphate. The aerator is not causing the muddiness, but may be helping keep it suspended, if it is causing a rapid enough circulation of the water. If you are going to use chemicals...follow the directions. Use 1/2 part hydrated lime for every part of alum to prevent excessively lowering the ph of the pond. Let the aerator get it circulated good, then turn it off so that the solid particles can precipitate.

Thanks Burgermiester I decided to not try any more chemmical. I went with a 8.95 Oat straw bales instead. I spread out 2 bales worth on my 1/4 acrea pond not pretty yet, but hopefully things will change soon. He said most people just throw in a whole bale, I might have made a mistake by breaking it up but to late now. Im desperate and went with the safer try after using a gallon of pondclear about a 3 weeks ago with no change, I would like to keep it natural if possible. I also unhooked my aerator for about a week and see if any changes are made, It has been installed for a year now with really good winds most of the winter and spring, could be to much I dont know. I will keep updated on my hay trial, and my fingers crossed. Any obvious problems from pics or any other wise ideas Im game to try, please dont be shy to inform.

Thanks www.bigfishcliff.com

5 days later and still no improvement.

Why don't you try a buffered Aluminum (Alum) Sulfate treatment? With the buffering agent you won't need to wory about lowering the PH. There is a product called Phosclear on the market.

It takes time for the straw method to work.

Sue , Im thinking thats going to be my next step. But where can I buy this, and how much?

IBF. Where did you get your windmill aerator? We could use something like that on our pond. Thanks cat

I orderd my windmill aerator out of the pond guy magazine, and it works great around hear always some wind blowing.

As the others have stated, using coagulants like alum or ferric can be tricky due to the lowering of the pH and the reduction of alkalinity. Since you are in East Texas, you can bet you have low buffered, low pH water with lots of organics. The organics such as tannic acid and lignin from decaying leaves is a natural dispersant. This tends to help keep solids dispersed and prevents settling. In order to clear the water you need to first make sure you do not have a run off source that is bringing in new solids every time it rains. If you do, then you will need to correct this. Next look for areas along the bank that could be giving you wind erosion solids addition. Once you correct any source of new solids entering the pond, then you can try some of the coagulants to settle the solids. Aluminum salts work the best. Alum will lower the pH and in your case you likely already have low pH. Sodium aluminate will raise pH and will also work. In low buffered water you can go too high very quickly due to the sodium content and the dissociated caustic soda that is formed from the reaction. Poly aluminum chloride (PAC) will not impact pH, works great, works at lower dosage, is liquid so it is easier to feed, but is more expensive. Same for Aluminum Chlorhydrate (ACH). both of these can be purchased from an industrial chemical supplier Give me a call and I can help you locate one in your area if you have problems finding one.
Lastly, I mentioned the organics acting as dispersants. East Texas is very prone to this and usually has some heavy stained waters looking like tea. If you can reduce the amount of rotting leaves and pine straw you get in the water, you will help reduce problems all the way around.

M,

Wouldn't only EXCESS alum lower the pH?

Suppose you had a pond that finally required exactly 50 pounds of alum to just clear it. Wouldn't the first 49.99 pounds attach to suspended clay particles and settle to the bottom?

Educate me!

The chemical process resulting from adding Al lowers alkalinity not just the amount over that needed to effectively coagulate the suspended solids.

http://srac.tamu.edu/tmppdfs/144249-460f...8f873f42c382435

Erik is right. The alum added dissociates to form AlOH which lowers the alkalinity and the pH.
The buffering capacity of the water determines the final pH from various feed rates. Lower initial pH results in lower ending pH.

Thanks Eric and M. Now I know! I was mistakenly assuming that as long as the water was very muddy, that I had a safety margin.

I had a Chocolate Pond last November, when I bought my property. ZERO visibility. I had Paul Dorsett come out and put 22 Tons of Gypsum in the Pond. He put it in the erosion areas, and it took quite a long time for most of it to make it into the Pond. I imagine about a ton of it stayed on the banks and grew Bermuda over it.
This was put out when it was very cold. It didn't seem to work that well, but Paul told me it would be better, when warmer.
We thought we might need another load. For a few months, I was only getting 5" of visibility, still chocolate colored.
As it got warmer, the water started to clear some more. Every so slightly.
I attended a class with Peter Woods, from TAMU, giving the presentation (Extension office's Master Urban Rancher Program). He gave some numbers of product needed and Percentages of success. He said Alum was 90% effective, but expensive. Gypsum, 70% effective. The interesting thing about his Gypsum numbers, was the wide variance of gypsum needed to work. 80 lbs to 960 lbs per Acre Foot. I have about 93 Acre Feet, so Paul put in approx. half of the spread, about 470+ lbs per acre foot.
I had a lot of Green stuff growing near the banks, looked like FA. 2 weeks ago, I bought some herbicide.
Last week, I put a little of out on the FA, just on about 1/10th of the pond's shore. I put out 2 or three more areas of 1/10 over the last week.

I'm sure it's a coincidence, as I think the warmer temperatures are responsible, but I'm at about 12-18" visibility this week, and we had an Plankton Bloom. No more chocolate milk to be seen. Totally green. It was amazing and I thought of The Pond Boss site when I saw it!

PS: I don't like the way that herbicide makes anything look. Might add some Talapia, instead.

Agent,

Glad to hear your water is clearing up. I think clear water is crucial for sunfish weight gain and spawning.

I think I read somewhere that a plankton bloom can help a little at clearing up the water.

Can anyone attest to this, or explain how it works?