Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Creating habitat Building a marsh

Here we go with a new topic for the week.

I have learned so much traveling through this forum.

My main entry in "Starting the Dream" under pond construction. I have a couple of new pictures to post there.

My second and third venturse were "Yellow Perch Questions" and "Catfish and What" in the selecting fish section.

Now I have questions about constructing some type of marsh area. My land slopes downward from south to north at 15:1 drop or so. The ponds will be maintained by a gravity fed water from a well and a small amount of surface run off. There are about 6-8 acres of watershed which I know is small and for that reason I will have the well in place, however, the 6-8 are sloped to run any runoff water into the basin of the main pond. Since 2-3 of the acres is crop land and fallow at this point, I am concerned about sediment washing into the pond. Also, I would like a small area for creatures who might not survive well with the fish predators.

I would list the reasons for the marsh as
1. Control sediment
2. Provide additional and safe area for frogs and other small creatures.

Above the marsh, eventually the fallow land will be hay and following Dan VanSchaik's advice, I will put in a strip of vegegation as a buffer zone and to break of the edges from the hay production.

The marsh will stretch across the top of the pond site. I have initially set the width at 8-10 feet which is the size of the dozer blade. The length will be 200-300 feet long. Excess water will be moved via overflow into the forage ponds hopefully after the sediment has been allowed to settle out.



Tapping into your collective geniusness please help me with the design.

1. How deep should it be?
2. Should one side be deeper than the other side
3. Should the entry side for water be sloped?
4. Should the exit side be a deep cut or shallow slope?
5. Should the marsh be riprapped? I have more than enough rock.
6. Is 8 feet wide enough to filter water.
7. What vegetation is used in a marsh type setting?
8. Should I stock some minnows?
9. Do I need to worry about birds eating the animals or just include them as part of the wildlife system?

Any suggestions and inputs are tremendously welcome. We will not be digging it for a month so I have plenty of time.

I am sure after several responses, I will have more questions but this is a good start.

Come down to Florida and i will sell you some swamp land...wink/wink.

I'll only tackle #'s 8 and 9.

Skinny water breeds a lot of mosquitoes. Fatheads will help.

In nature, everything eats everything that is smaller. Accept the birds. You can't stop them anyway.

1st consideration: how much will the water level fluctuate?

You could plant a huge variety of marginals or marsh/bog plants. They will do a lot as far as preventing wash through, erosion, plus you get forage cover and critter habitat. Very, very few people go for a bog or a marsh. In nature they dominate, and are more plentiful then ponds. But people just want the ponds. You are very wise. Please post photos.

Most likely the water level will fluctuate. The well will sit just above the marsh, function of cost of running electric 100 feet more to pond (more) versus running PVC for well to main pond (less). If fluctuating water level is an issue, the water for the ponds could start in the marsh and work its way through the other ponds. The original idea is to bypass the marsh since the well water is sediment free.

I only mention the water level because it was an eye-opener for us. We did something similar in one area of our pondsite when it was created, albeit considerably simpler in scope. We left about 1/4 acre of wooded timber untouched where the slope of the land was minimal and would put the area under no more than 12 - 15" of water at normal pool. It works and looks great at spring, after the winter brings it up to full pool. By July, it's largely dry land. This is no biggie for our project, particularly since we took no significant steps to enhance the area with any vegetation or the like. It just points out something (else) that I didn't anticipate for this area when we constructed our pond.
Did I ever tell ya about the first time I cleaned out the wood duck boxes from the frozen water surface...

It is often desirable to have fluctuating water levels in a wetland. We built a small wetland above a 1+ acre pond. It is quite small and does not go completely dry. Currently, the sound of spring peepers is deafening at dusk. With no fish in the wetland, the frog population is incredible. The tadpoles and frogs feed the herons and mink, and many migrate to the pond and feed the fish. We are working with a company to put a 2 acre forested wetland mitigation on another piece of ground on our farm. We have discussed what we want in the plan but only the survey has been completed so far; no plan yet. The advantage is no cost to us; the disadvantage is permanent loss of development rights. We are pretty excited about the project, but progress has been very slow. I guess this is another disadvantage.

Try this link
http://www.epa.gov/owow/wetlands/pdf/hand.pdf
Gives a fairly complete guide to your marsh project

Thanks for the link. I just knewe someone here would have a resource. Gave some great ideas. moving forward.

I'm no pro..but I do know this....My Dad's lake is right next to a wetlands conservation area in Illinois, basically a giant marsh that holds a few inches of water year round. There are minnows in it, yes, and in the spring/early summer, the marsh kinda overflows as the fox river does, and some minnows even wash through into dad's pond...so bonus forage. Plus, there are crayfish, and insects that make the 200 yard migration to dad's pond, as well as turtles and waterfowl that are easy on the eyes on a hot summer evening (if you haven't guessed, dad's place is my vacation spot of choice).

Also....frogs. Tons and tons of frogs and toads and salamanders. Bullfrogs, chorus frogs, northern cricket frogs, spring peepers, wood frogs, the list continues. Not a huge amount of them come over to the lake, but enough that a good scum frog is a lure of choice at the right time of year.

As far as i understand it, a bunch of frogs are a good thing (somebody hop in here to correct me) both in providing a protein-rich food base for your fish, but also in helping to keep down your mosquitoes and other biting insects.

Now...for the third time....I'm no pro, and don't pretend to be. I am sure that there is much more to this that i don't understand. But given the opportunity, after seeing the benefits the nearby marsh has to my dad's BOW, I would say yes to putting a marsh near my own pond.

Just saw this, i guess it is the benefit of having it be 200 yards away....can't hear the tons of frogs. The few that survive daily around the pond i find to be pleasing to listen to, and the splash of an LMB night-feeding on an american bullfrog is just plain awesome.

I was about a hundred feet from the wetland when I felt the spring peepers were deafening. I was not complaining though. I also freed the pond of the last muskrats the same evening. I was hoping a neighbor would trap them out after the deer hunting season, but the ice interfered. They were tearing up the plants, but hopefully they left some CC breeding holes.

Hi again Kurt
Have another link/pdf with some good info on marsh building
http://www.rbg.ca/pdf/MARSHVEG.pdf

Thanks. We have not yet dug the marsh so this will be very helpful. I appreciate the info.

You might check with NRCS to see if you can get any funding for your marsh or ideas. In Kansas, you could get funding for ponds but they have pretty much stopped that and I think they give some help to marsh areas. Idea is to attract waterfowl, which typical wetlands do. Just an idea to look at.

Found a little book book over at the Texas Agrilife Extension bookstore that may help you on constructing wetlands

We are supposed to have a 4 acre forested wetland constructed on our farm this fall along with 3 acres of upland habitat. It is a wetland mitigation project, so I won't be paying for it. I will have a permanent deed restriction on this land. Pretty excited about it.

And you might find this one interesting, good info to be proactive on potential mosqito problems.
http://ucanr.org/freepubs/docs/8117.pdf

Hope you get som pics, and document the progres on the marsh

Interesting that they do not discuss invertibrate preditors in this document, perhaps due to low water quality in treatment wetlands. I have never seen mosquito larvae in our 3 wetlands, but they are in every water-filled tree hole. Our mosquito population has been consistently lower since building our wetlands. I credit this with joining isolated little puddles where invertibrate preditors did not thrive.