Hello All,

I have a small garden pond , 6 feet deep at deepest spot . Estimated to be at about 18,000 gallon, around 8 on Ph. I have stocked with some bluegill , channel cats and fathead minnows based on my local hatchery and dosed with 4 lbs of Alum sulfate. The edges started clearing , probably 4 inches of visibility.
They contend my muddy water is due to crayfish and frog activity.
They recommend to start trapping out the crayfish, I have already caught 3 snapping turtles and now they say my crayfish population will explode due to not enough predators.
They recommend to keep dosing with alum sulfate until I achieve the clearing I want and buffer with baking soda if ph starts falling.

Thoughts?

Welcome to Pond Boss!!

Muddy water can be due to several reasons. If it's due to crayfish, or other fish, then you could do a jar test. Take a mason jar and fill it with pond water, and just let it sit for a few days. If it clears up, and sediment settles to the bottom of the jar, then it does lend credibility to the muddy water being caused by some of the live creatures.

If it doesn't clear in the jar, then it points to other issues.

I'm no expert on this stuff, so let's see what others have to say.

I agree with Sunil. You need a jar test to determine if your water chemistry still needs correction due to suspended clay, OR if you water is murky due to your organisms stirring up the sediment.

Channel cats are not "notorious" sediment stirrers, but they COULD be causing your problem in your very small pond.

Here is a link to an old post on that topic. (Bill Cody gives a long answer, and he IS an expert.)

Channel Cats Stirring Up Sediment

P.S. Be sure to put one of your jars in a very dark closet to test if the suspended particles are photosynthesizing organisms.

There are more causes of murkiness than just the two implied above in my previous post!

I did the jar test prior to going the hatchery ....1 gallon of water starts clearing in about an hour, 3 days later completely clear. On the first night of the test, I inspected the sample and seen thousands of what appeared to be swimming organisms.

They recommended the alum sulfate to help settle any particles stirred up by the crayfish and frog activity, and hybird bluegill to feed off the organisms.... Has been 10 days since I introduced the fish and sprayed the alum slurry onto the surface....I can now see the puffs of mud when the crayfish, frogs and minnows run from the edge....This pond is clay soil bottom and has never had any fish in it, until now. The crayfish have started making mud towers into the yard and around the edges of the pond.

Is your goal a beautiful landscape feature, or a pond that is teeming with lots of different organisms?

"Life" ponds are going to look messier, but most of the people on the forum prefer supporting creatures rather than strictly ornamental. The crayfish "landscaping" your yard is just one example.

Many of us grow fish to catch and/or eat, but there are lots of people that do projects specifically to support pond related creatures and the enhancement of their habitat.

If you search some of the postings from RAH or azteca, you might find some projects that interest you.

A healthy pond should have thousands of tiny organisms in the water, especially at certain times of the year. You might try your jar test again, now that you have performed your alum treatment.

I suspect part of your water murkiness may be due to stirred up sediment (that is the part that cleared after 1 hour), and part may be due to all of your micro-organisms.

My goal is a small fishing pond for the grandchildren to fish in . Originally this pond was going to be used for an aquaponic grow in which I was going to use tilapia. I am still on the same path , just a slight detour. Nothing says bluegill and channel cannot be used in the aqua setup. Just the growth rates are slower and tilapia will yield more meat with less feed. Either will be challenging for children to catch on ultra lights...

In order for the aquagrow to successful , I need micro-organisms.

Maybe it is ready for a bio filter to start growing...I have already successfully grew tomatoes on a floating raft in the pond

Sounds like a fun project!

I assume based on your 18,000 gallon estimate, that your pond is roughly 20'x20' by 6' deep?

If so, then there is a limited mass of predator fish (BG and catfish) that can be supported in that volume. (Treating it as a "normal" pond.)

If you treat it as a Recirculating Aquaculture System (RAS), then obviously you can go much higher. That appears to be your plan.

There are some RAS experts on the forum. You are way out of my expertise, but I believe they all say you have to intensively manage that type of system, especially as your biomass increases.

Good luck! We look forward to some good pictures when you get everything going.

Yes, you are pretty close on the estimated size, little longer and kidney bean shaped with varying depths. I did not introduce too many predator fish such as bass. Iam not sure if they would survive the winter and I already have plans in place to over winter the current population if I need to. Originally the plan was to harvest tilapia by now, so I did not go deeper or account for low oxygen over winter...

Are you in Trenton, NJ?

Ohio

Sample today at 4:45pm

Thanks.

I think you can overwinter a lot of fish with about 6' of depth then.

As of now , my knowledge of overwintering them is very vague in an uncontrolled environment. I have the necessary 275 gallon totes with aeration I used for tilapia. The pond currently has (30) 5-6 inch hybrid bluegill, (6) 9 inch channel cats and about 300 Fathead ..

Do you intend to use aeration in your pond to overwinter?

I had not made any plans to aerate. If aeration would allow them to over winter in this small pond I would do it, but I do not know what the water temps would stabilize at. I would think water temps would go below 40 *f

Looks to be about 150 crayfish trapped last night. My jar test clarity has not changed overnight, although it is way better than the first test before the alum treatment...

I think you can overwinter fish with 6' of depth in Ohio without aeration. Conventional wisdom says that if your pond freezes over, keep it clear of snow if possible to allow light to get through the ice.

Also, your fish count is low, so I think you're currently in good shape.

How deep can you see a white cool whip lid on the end of a broom stick, pole, or cord in the pond? An all white coffee cup could also work. How deep do you want to be able to see the white lid in the pond?

About 8 inches to see the end of my skimmer handle . I never gave it any thought as to the depth I would want to see at...I suppose I would like to see some activity and bottom conditions in varying depths, not necessarily everything on the bottom 5-6 feet.

You will never get water clarity of 2-3ft when crayfish are common in the pond with several even small-medium catfish in this small pond size of around 20ft X maybe30ft. These two species are very bottom oriented that always disturb sediments in foraging activities. Any sizable number of any fish and feeding them pellets will always create nutrients to grow more plankton that will tend to cloud the water. Nature's rules. Even quite a few just reproducing minnows in this tiny pond will eventually cause turbidity. The Shiner species at low density might not significantly cloud the water. A few sunfish or a couple bass of just one sex so they could not reproduce with very limited pellet feeding OR them eating just the bugs produced within this small pond could produce good water clarity IF done correctly.

Fish feeding and resulting extra manure always adds nutrients to grow plankton that clouds the water. Green water is caused by excess nutrients. Nature's rules. IMO the local fish hatchery is not giving you good ecological information to achieve your specific goals. They do not know,,, what they do not know. Adding alum was just a money making fix to create temporary clearing because the causes of turbidity were not removed. To get noticeable water clarity of 3-4ft in this current type of pond you would need an extensive filtration system similar to that used by koi enthusiasts to eliminate the numerous types of suspended solids. Extensive filtration systems are not feasible in dirt bottom ponds.

Frogs nor tadpoles do not cause turbidity unless the tadpoles are 10s of thousands per acre. They at the local hatcher do not know what they do not know; they could use more learning.

I will let everything run its course until Spring, the alum fix has made a difference, water clarity is a lot better then when I started . Currently the jar test is just sitting idle, no difference in about 24 hours.. Before the jar test started clearing within the hour. Seems my crayfish trapping has slowed down to about 4-5 every couple hours... Since last night , I have pulled out over 200 crayfish, the last round yielded some pretty large crayfish in the 5-6 inch range... I will re bait tonight and check in AM. All the turtles have been cleared out for now, I am sure new ones will return. I can pull the Channels cats out , I only put them in there based on a recommendation to thin out the crayfish population .

Improvements made is the last couple weeks :
Added fish
Consistent inflow of well water daily, about 300 gallons.
Alum sulfate treatment.
Removed 3 snapping turtles
Trapping of crayfish

CC will eat crayfish however Bass either LMbass or SMbass will eat a lot more crayfish per predator compared to catfish. Fish hatchery probably wanted to get rid of CC before end of year. The more crayfish and catfish that you can remove the clearer the water will become.

The crayfish trapping might be slowing down due to falling water temps too. Welcome to the forum and Bill is a wealth of knowledge.

“ Bill is a wealth of knowledge” is an understatement.

Everything looks to be going good, I have 1 foot of clarity..When I do see the bluegill or minnows scamper from the edge and leave cloud of mud, I watch it settle right back down....Crayfish trapping has stopped, probably trapped about 600 total. The kids are enjoying the catch and release on ultra lights...The channels are hitting hard and fast for them and the bait stealing bluegills are keeping them entertained... The fish they have caught seem to be growing rapidly....

Well, Spring has almost sprung....Seems the overwintering was successful, the water is warming in the sun and I counted 26 hybrid bluegill just suspended under surface.. I did see 2 dead channel cats mid winter floating, have seen or been able to verify whether the other cats survived...Minnow activity is moderate at the edges. Still catching crayfish, the hawks love me...No turtles caught yet, yay. Been alot of rain, clarity is about a foot. Have some type of oily spots floating around. But all in all , everything appears well.

Good