Hello Guys, Im a newbie on the site. Ive been looking for the best way to do the bucket test, but just see bits and pieces. What I have is about a 1 Acre pond, (deepest part is 12-15 FT.)that my father dug 24 years ago. There was a lot of clay, and the pond never cleared. At its best maybe 1 ft. of visibility. I just purchased the property, and just heard of the Alum treatment. Im looking for the formula or amounts of recommended Alum to add. Any help would be appreciated.

Scott

Welcome to the forum.

You have to counter the alum with hydrated lime too. For every pound of alum, use 1/2 pound of hydrated lime. (in the pond)

The bucket test will allow you to roughly figure out how much aluminum sulfate to use.

1 acre, 12-15 feet at the deepest could require 2200 pounds of alum and 1100 pounds of hydrated lime.

Look in the Muddy water section. For the bucket test, basically you take a given volume of water and keep adding alum to it until it flocculates and precipitates the clay out of solution. You then calculate how much alum you used per gallon of water and translate that to how many gallons of water are in your pond. That will tell you how much alum to use, and you have to buffer that with 50% hydrated lime to keep the pH from crashing and killing the fish.

Bucket test and jar test complete... Alum cleared them both... Untreated jar is still muddy after 3 days.. Esseup I PM you

What is a good mixing ratio of spraying/ treating pond, that is the mixture of Alum/water dilution?

I never paid attention to that. Just pumped water into the tank, stirred up the alum/water, and pumped out. It's a continual process, water is going in and out at the same time.

I'd like to add that the bucket tests in the Alum Kicks Clay Butt thread is not accurate for pond dosages. The alum in the bucket tests are completely mixed in static, confined conditions. In the pond, wind, waves, fish and thermal differences keep water in continual motion, plus there is never a full, complete mixing and distribution of the Alum in the pond. I have never seen a pond clear fully using the dosage rates suggested in the charts. I have had to add at least 50% more Alum than suggested, often, doubling the rates suggested in the charts....

Off topic, my apologies. Rainman treated my pond a few years ago. It was crystal clear after treatment. I believe the only reason it is not perfectly clear now is algae and tannins from the trees that drop millions of leaves into the pond every fall. However, I know I get some clay washed into the pond during these big rain storms, like we've been having. My water still immediately clears. When I wade in along the bank I stir up a lot of clay particles, but they immediately settle back down.
The question is, how long does a treatment last? Forever? (Hoping this is right) or will I end up needing to repeat the treatment in a few years?
Thx
Jeff