This week while tending the water sprinkler for my new grass seeded dam I paid attention to the pond more so than usual and observed the water clarity and color changes(among other things) practically on an hourly basis...

Monday...water seemed to be clearing up as the new muddy water settles out with a slight green tint. I could see the bottom of the pond in about 10 inches of water, better than it has been since renovated.

Tuesday... the pond was ghastly green (espercially towards the afternoon hours), no real muddy color to the green areas because the green was soooo thick. Where the sun was hitting the water, it was a nice solid green color. In the shade it was emerald green. Clarity was reduced from 10 inches to about half that. There was, however, sections of the pond that had muddy water that was not so green as if there are more turtles than I am aware in there stirring up the areas near the bank.

We got over an inch of rain Tuesday night and it appeared muddy again this morning. I will visit the pond today when I get home to check on its condition.

I was a little unnerved on how quickly the color went from what I would call normal pond water to green water that looked unfavorable for swimming. Does this sound like normal pond behavior?

The pond is bout 8 feet at its deepest, mostly shaded except for the mid day hours, and was drained dry and mucked out last October.

Probably lots of nutrients in that much and surely some of it remained even after being cleaned.

An algae bloom in fertile water can happen quickly and can die off just as quickly if unfavorable conditions for the bloom happen.

Thanks for chiming in snrub!

I think you are right about the nutrient levels, even though the pond was mucked out, plenty of dark soils remained scattered here and there.

The water color yesterday evening showed little signs of green partially I assume to the rains making it muddy again. Very dynamic color changes over a few days. I find it most interesting.

Here are some pics of the greenness of my pond water. I had to include the one of the tadpoles because they are of overwhelming proportions. Clusters of what I think are toad tadpoles, maybe leopard frogs, are scattered every few feet around the pond.

EDIT: removed photob@cket links and will attached images.

Should I be concerned? My plan at this point is to observe and wait and see what happens.

Your green planktonic algae is at a density capable of a fish kill when conditions are correct. Warming water and a few days of cloudy conditions or if the algae runs out of nutrients will result in death of all the algae quickly. This quick extensive death and the immediate algae decomposition will cause an oxygen shortage that could get low enough for to fish suffocate.

The next few days should supply 4+ inches of rain which may fill the pond up to the overflow pipe or at least add water to it, cloudy days in the forecast, no real warming. I only have 1000 newly stocked FHM in there. I'm betting the nutrients will not run out for a while, several acres of cow pasture feed the pond, it was recently de-mucked, but I guess 1% of the muck remained (it was 8 foot thick in the center). I doubt conditions will be right for a DO wreck anytime soon.

I wonder what I could expect from this? Could this be a good thing with a FHM spawn in the near future? Any experiences out there similar to this?

Runoff from cow pastures is not good for a pond, especially if it is heavily grazed. It's almost like having the cattle in the pond, except for the erosion issues.

QA,

Are FHM the only fish stocked so far?

Food for thought and comment from the pros..... With that amount of nutrients in the pond, does an Alum or Phoslock treatment at this point make sense to get some of the excess phosphorus tied up?

Fatheads will tolerate low DO; lower than most other fish. The green water can be quite productive for producing FHM. I know of one old cattle manure pond of similar color that is aerated and grows lots of FHM. Prior to aeration it had regular DO crashes.

We have thousands of what look like those same tadpoles in my sediment pond and even in my brand new Redear pond that has just reached full pool for the first time this last week.

A while back before all the recent rain we had peeper toads (at least I think that is what they are) that would screech so loud that it almost hurt the ears. I assume (a dangerous thing) the tadpoles are from them.

My pond(s) will go from a nice green cast to kind of a brownish stained cast sometimes. From what I have read here on PBF I assume that is a pyhtoplankton bloom happening taking advantage of the algae bloom.

Well, the rains this weekend totaled almost 6 inches between Friday evening and Sunday afternoon. The pond was about 1.5 feet below the bottom of the overflow pipe as of Friday and by Saturday afternoon the 15 inch overflow pipe was all but underwater. Plenty of watershed, actually too much. The pond is now very muddy looking. I am guessing that a lot of the greenness has washed out as the overflow pipe ran from Saturday mid-morning and was still running a bit this morning (Monday). A am wondering if this event acted as a nutrients flush of some sort. Time will tell. I would like to think that the nutrients in the pond was left over muck scattered here and there, but the cattle pastures will always contribute to it. The pastures are not overused, but there is rarely a need to mow them.

There were still a lot of the tadpoles hanging out around the banks after the rains so the FHM should still be there in good numbers. I did discover that one cinder block is NOT enough to hold down some of my pallets. A few of the triple stacked pallets let go an it's now time to learn the hard way.

BILL - FHM are the only thing stocked at this time. This year will help determine if my pond is worth spending the extra money and time on feeding hybrids or if I just throw in LMB and BG and see what they can make of it. If my pond nutrients is to hard to manage or the excessive watershed creates problems I won't go the extra mile to buy a fish feeder and the feed.