Hi all, Well the digging is done, and i'm trying to put in structure and spawining areas ,but the rain keeps on hitting me pretty hard down here. yesterday was 4-5 inches, so i have to keep pumping it out. the problem is it seems to be making more of a sludge on the bottom, like a soupy clay/silt. about 1 foot deep right now. will this hurt my pond or will it settle or hardin up some after i let it fill. pond is about 3/4 acre. 10 foot deep in the middle. Thanks
My pond was similiar to yours. When it first filled the water smelled bad, the clay was like thick oatmeal! Theres roots, and other stuff decaying in yours that probably puts off a smell, and silt in the water column makes the water look cloudy. Mine took about 3 months to start to clear. Main thing I did was plant the runoff areas aggressively to stop silt runoff. I actually brought machines back in to slow down, and redirect runoff because I didn't get it like I needed to first time. There is so much of a patience game on a new pond. It will take a while but after it fills, it will clear up if you plant rye grass, or brown top millet in the run off areas. Both germinate fast, and ryegrass will die off when it gets hot, millet does good in hot weather and ducks love it. You will have to follow up with a permanent grass to hold the soil in place. This based on my experience, there's several experts on here who might chime in.
Will it harden? Probably not. Will it hurt the pond? Not really, it'll just make it a bit shallower. That's why I dug my pond deeper than I wanted it, to plan for the future and it silting in. I'm glad that I did, I had 3' of dirt wash in when Hurricane Ike rolled thru the area not 3 weeks after I finished my pond. My 22' deep pond is now 18' - 19' deep.
It's important to have erosion control measures in place as soon as the soil work (i.e. digging) is completed.
If your soft soupy mess is mostly organics, with bottom aeration they will break down and be reduced in thickness over time. It's natures way to try and fill in all holes in the ground, be it a pond or a lake.
Thanks spinnerbait and esshup, the reason i was worried is because it's not organic. Everytime we get a hard rain it is washing the slopes on the inside of the pond, and everytime i pump it out i'm concentrating the silt to a slushy mess. no smell. Once the pond is full there wil be no runoff because of the levey. That eases my mind. Thanks Again !
I am not sure if this is the norm or not but I also had sediment in my pond shortly after it began to fill. We could not walk around in some of the areas because it was to mucky on the bottom. After it was nearly half full I used the alum treatment prescribed on this forum and not only did it clear the water very nicely in a short amount of time but it did harden the bottom up quite a bit. We still have a few areas that are still soft but not nearly as bad. I have been concentrating on getting vegetation on all my banks before doing another alum treatment...
Some sludge and stuff at the bottom of a pond is fine. Regarding the edge, if you have any planted matter, some of this will inevitably end up in the bottom of your pond - that's natures way and eventually the water will balance out naturally.