Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Water quality issues

Newbie here. Trying to get some suggestions from the experts on how to improve water quality and reduce muck in our pond. We have a 1/2 acre, 40 year old wooded pond in central PA that has a lot of muck in the bottom and develops a red tint in the summer that severely reduces the clarity. The pond is spring fed with an average depth of 4' and a max depth of 12'.

We have been using a de-muck aerobic bacterial product for 5+ years with little luck. From what I have read on this site it sounds like aeration will help...any recommendations on an aeration system?

Thanks!

Welcome markey! I hate to say it, but using aerobic bacteria without aeration was a complete waste of cash. Aerobic means it needs oxygen, and without aeration to circulate your water, the detritus on the bottom is completely devoid of dissolved oxygen.

Aeration would be the single best and most cost effective investment you could make for your pond. Expect to spend around $2000 for a quality system...you can DIY them, but savings are usually vastly exaggerated, do not include dozens of hours building, cost more per KWH to operate, and often do not function as hoped.

If electricity is on site, aeration is pretty easy to install, and if the electric is not pond side, you can bury air line pretty inexpensively...

Short of a dredging or draining and renovation, aeration is really your only other option to digest detritus.

Yes if you expect the de-muck aerobic bacteria in the bottom zone to work you will need bottom aeration, but I question how fast you will see muck reduction with annual input of leaves. A pond in a woods is a big, fast muck accumulator.

Thanks guys for the quick response. You just saved me wasting more time and money. I will jump over to the aeration section to see what I need to get started with an aeration system. We have the spring feeds coming in via elevated PVC pipes to create some mixing, but I am sure this isn't cutting it.

Forgot to mention my dad picked up a used john deere 310 extendahoe so we have the ability of mechanical muck removal along the banks although I am concerned about the impact on our tadpoles, minnows, and eastern newt larvae. Although I would not mind pulling out the toe biters, dang those things are scary.

We might try dredging the pond in the fall to lessen the impact. thoughts?

I cleaned out around the edges of a couple of my ponds with a TLB (tractor/loader/backhoe) and it worked reasonably well.

A few issues for you to consider.

Do you have a clay liner over material that might leak? If you do digging around on the bottom might cause your pond to leak. In my area we are blessed (cursed for farming) with a clay pan and if we dig a hole 9 times out of ten it holds water. So I did not worry much about digging out around the banks. But doing this in some areas of the country with less forgiving pond soils could cause leakage problems.

I would suggest doing very small areas at a time. When you start muddy water goes throughout the pond. I never killed any fish that I know of (and I did a lot of it at a time) but extremely muddy water is not good for the fish gills and surely stresses them. I think if a person would do 20 feet of bank each day it would give time for critter adjustment compared to doing the whole pond in a day.

Operating a hoe in water is a bit of a trick. After the first dip you can't see anything submerged and the digging goes mostly by "feel" and and repositioning. Places I thought I got all the dirt later showed up as strips being missed when the water cleared. That actually was not a totally bad thing as it gave the bottom some structure from the contours.

The biggest problem with a TLB compared to a trackhoe is getting the dirt away from you. You can't back up to the pond (can't swing the dirt around far enough) so you have to park sideways. This means one stabilizer is always right at the edge of the bank and can become unstable. So the first thing I learned is I could not reach out as far as I thought I could and still be safe. A trackhoe can rotate 360 degrees and is much better at getting the spoils away from itself. With a TLB there is limited area to pile the dirt although the solution to that is just move it with the loader periodically. The extend-a-hoe will be helpful. I just had a standard stick.

Operating in mud/water is kind of messy. If you have an open station tractor (no cab), don't wear your best clothes. Dumping suction stuck mud from the backhoe bucket is a bit difficult and when it comes out mud splatter goes everywhere.

All that said, I did a lot of good around my old pond. You can really clean up shallow shore lines where perhaps weeds like water primrose has become a problem.

Have fun. Be safe. Working around a slippery bank with heavy machinery........ pay attention.

Here are some pictures of my JCB 214e TLB cleaning out shallow areas in my main 3 acre pond.

I made the mistake (mistake for me at least) of putting in a shallow swimming area for my then small grand kids. They never used it as it was much more fun jumping off the dock. That and it was an FA growing son-of-a-gun. Shallow water gently sloping banks make for great FA growth. The first set of pictures is making some deeper water near shore where the swimming area was.

The second set of pictures is in the same pond (this is during a very bad drought and the water was down nearly 2 feet) in my spawning bed area. My spawning bed area works fine but I just got too much near the shore too shallow. So I dug it out deeper as far out as I could reach and now the spawning area starts at about 6' away from the bank.

As you can see, I was able to move a fair amount of dirt with the TLB but was not able to get a long ways out from the bank. Your extend-a-hoe will help with that a lot.

I moved the dirt off site by loading it into my tractor pulled scraper with the TLB loader and stock piling it elsewhere.

Thanks John for the feedback and the pics. Looks like you were able to move a lot of dirt.

Thanks for the tips...my dad is a retired heavy equipment operator so I will let him do the hard work. I plan on standing and pointing where to put the bucket.

I like your idea of only doing small sections at a time.

The decaying muck smells like sewage, so you can bet I will be dressed appropriately.

As far as the leak concerns, I am really only interested in removing the 1+ feet of muck buildup and not adding any more depth to the original pond.

Thanks!