Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Soil questions Home-made pond dye for leak checking?

HAs anyone ever made or have ideas for a non-toxic dye that can be used to find leaks? I don't have access atthe immediate time for anythign commercial. I found the outflow and know that the leak has to be quite close-by... but quite close being 20 feet in either direction.

Would milk work? Maybe some of the native american (indian) dye's?

I ended up finding some pond dye at a local store on my way home... unfortunately I have only been able to narrow my search to an 8 foot by 4 foot are. (The dye was in the water and dispersing before it showed up at the water outflow.) I wonder if perhaps milk or orangejuice might be thicker and more direct in application....

Pottsy,
What about putting the dye in a small ziplock bag sinking & then punching a hole in it in different places of the 4 x 8 suspected leak area. Maybe?
Ric

Chris, I remember a post from some time back about finding a leak using water temp. The guy measured the water temp from the leak on the back side of the dam and then went diving to identify that temp on the water side. I expect diving isn't a good idea in your neighborhood at this time but lowering a thermostat should narrow it down.

Ric, Dave... A couple of interesting ideas...
I have managed to narrow it down a bit.. it isn't in the top 1 1/2 feet of the pond bank as I now have a good 2-4 inch think layer of bentonite there and didn't even slow the leak...

Ah.. the fun of it all.

Chris, I have used a lot of Bentonite trying to stop leaks in the bottom of some stock watereing tanks that I had dozers clean out. In both cases, they hit sand. The bentonite didn't seem to slow either one of them down.

I figure if I put in enough bags to fill the pond the leak will stop. Hoping for the bentonite miracle....

Pottsy,
Have you read the posts re: ESS 13?
Ric