Good morning,

I am in charge of landscape and grounds maintenance at my job. We have a retention pond-turned reflection pond in front of our facility and I have been tasked with keeping it clean. We are dealing with a lot of clarity issues because of the combined effect of trees, pollen, ducks, and fish contaminating the water. I was asked to look into the possibility and feasibility of adding a skimmer to the pond. I don't have dimensions handy and all I really know about is this:

It's a mud bottom pond. Dug and filled in 1996. Has a fountain and two waterfalls for aeration. As far as I know, no maintenance plan (outside of "dye it blue") was ever established.

Forgive me for any errors in terminology. My background is in maintenance and automotive technology, not ponds.

Thanks for any direction y'all can pass on!

Doug

Doug, welcome to Pond Boss. When you said ducks, you have most likely identified the problem. Waterfalls and fountains don't aerate anything and are more aesthetic. Where in Texas are you?

I assumed the ducks and geese were the culprits, but they are "untouchable," so I am left with trying to find a way to work around them. I'm in Tomball, NW of Houston.

If the ducks and geese are untouchable, I think you're hosed. They are adding nutrients full time. But, look at bottom aeration. It works.

A skimmer, if sized appropriately, can make a big difference when it comes to surface aesthetics. I am talking about a screen-type system that pulls water from the surface and basically screens out the bigger floaties. Combine that with a water filtering system that filters out the smaller bits and water clarity starts to improve as well. I'm not a expert on the matter by no means, but I have been to BassPro and their water systems are top notch...ducks and all. They have basically created swimming pool clarity without the chlorine.

Your earth bottom pond will not likely get to that level, but given the right budget...improvements can be made.

One thought is to control the duck's diet. Cheep food creates more waste and excessive feeding will amplify that.

There's also plenty of talk here at the forums about Alum treatments for dropping out nutrients in the water column. That might be something to consider. I don't know the first thing about it, but it's worth checking into.

Plants may also help some if the pond is lacking in vegetation.

Would adding plecos or some other bottom feeder help diminish the amount of, well, crap in the pond?

Quarter Acre, do you have any recommendations on skimmers that would work? For the sake of argument, let's call it a half acre surface area pond. I'm sure that's over shooting it by quite a bit, but I think it'll work.

I'm not in the know, but can recommend checking out the Pondboss Resource Guide...

https://www.pondboss.com/Resources

Being that you are responsible for a business, I would contacts some professionals to get you where you need to be. Do you have a budget to work with? Either way, I bet some of the Pondboss supported advertisers could give you an idea of the monies involved.

As far as adding fish to help...I would concentrate more on aeration so that the micro organisms are promoted to help with the "muck" buildup...

Here's a good primer t get you started...

http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.ph...true#Post345417