Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations You guys are bumming me out

I just found this site..... unfortunately we have one of those tiny ponds that are not recommended and are hard to keep...dang it. I was so excited too. We just bought this place. It has catfish and some kind of flat fish in it. My hubby says he does eventually want to make it bigger.... It is only about 12 wide and about 25 feet long. In a horseshoe shape. 8 feet at its deepest point. Then to find we also live in an area that is difficult to get clear water in... ahhhh. I don't like the brown water at all. And, it is in the shade most the day...with trees all around it...I ordered the management book.... and will have the water tested. So much to learn. I am secretly hoping someone will tell me all is well... yes, it can be done....even a tiny pond like ours...

Yo, teresa. Thanks for stoppin' in and welcome!
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You are definitely in the game and able to play. There are alot of smaller ponds, and their pondmeisters are on this forum. If you are willing to invest the time and $ to move forward with your dream, you will find the experts on board here that will help you get there. They took my project from water feature to deluxe. I never would have done it without them, and man am I glad I stopped by, too.
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There are huge advantages to smaller bodies of water. There is a substantial population of posters that are Lone Star pondmeisters, so you are in good company with regionally knowledgeable folks. As always, they will start you with one basic fundamental question that will require a host of responses from you. What are your goals? You have already provided some of this stuff in your first post, but you to need to draw a thumbnail sketch of what you (hope to) envision when it's done. This should/must include your water inhabitants and what you plan to do with them.

Welcome to the Pond Boss Forum Teresa . I can tell you that with out hesitation. We have some folks on the forum who do incredible things in very small ponds. Read here and the book. Ask questions. A good place to start is the archives ( Common Pond Q & A section).

Small ponds are easier and cheaper to manage. And it's also easier to clear up a small pond like that.

You have more of a resource there than you think!

Teresa, you just might have the beginning stages of lemonade.

BTW, where in the dickens is Sour Lake, Tx?

you should post a picture of your small pond!!!

Thanks everyone. I do feel better about this.

Where is Sour Lake Texas. About 15 minutes out of Beaumont.

I will try and post a picture. The picture I took was to get the little aligator and doesn't really show much of the size, etc. But trust me, this forum will be a mainstain in our journey. I will post better pics when I get moved in. (we officially own our little pond on May 29th)

I appreciate all the encouragement... really, I do..

O.K. where do I go to learn how to post a picture? I have adobe photoshop pictures. ????

You need to set up a free account at Photobucket.com. Once that is taken care of click BROWSE at photobucket.com to find the pic in your file that you want to post. Next click on that pic and then click on UPLOAD on the photobucket site. Wait a little bit and it should appear with three web addresses below it in your ALBUM on the site. Copy and paste the address that says img in it (bottom one) to your box here on this website. Add reply and you should be all set.

No need to mess with the img button on this site. It just makes it more complicated.

thanks Cecil, I am trying it now. I did find a pretty good photo. Has most of the pond shown.
I am so excited!!!!

If you have any questions feel free to fire away. Gotta go for a little bit though. I need to cut the grass, set up another diffuser, change out a compressor, and clean the iron off of my plastic media of my packed column with muaratic acid.

Here goes my try at photobucket

Yikes, Am I in trouble for having it too large?

I tried making this one smaller. It should be a cropped photo of the little aligator that scared me good. I didn't see him/her on the bank, just heard the big splash. Looked around in the pond for the source of the splash. Finally he/she popped its head up. It has since been captured and put in a bayou.photobucket.com/albums/z316/puddlepond/DSC00556_edited.jpg[/IMG]

Trying this again. Sorry. I am new at this.

Teresa, why is the local pond water discolored?

Teresa,


Looks good to me! You're smarter than the average bear on here. Most try several times before they successfully post a picture.

I also think you're fine on picture size. If it's too big it probably wouldn't post.

Cool alligator!

Hey Dave maybe it was the alligator!

I'm not sure about the water discoloration. I will have to do the bucket test. If it settles, it is the fish or ????, if it doesn't settle I'll look into the charged particle theory. I have a lot to learn... a lot to investigate.

I suspect East Texas tannin discoloration but I don't see a lot of pines in the picture that usually contribute to it.

I would send it to A & M for testing.

In the meantime: Get a jar of it and put a drop or 2 of bleach in. If that doesn't work in a little while keep adding the bleach. If it clears, you might get some swimming pool chlorine to clear it. If it clears using bleach it might be a tannic acid discoloration.

You need to realize that clearing the water using chlorine is a pretty radical deal. It does have a residual effect on the water and it will also kill off the phytoplankton base. That ain't real good and the water, as it is, may be just fine for fish. A & M will be able to tell you about it.

Watch out for the water lizard while sampling.

The coloration might be from the gator. They tend to stir the water some and in a small pond like yours, it could keep it stirred

I also see lots of potential erosion around the pond when you get a heavy rain (bare ground). I would suggest seeding and staking down burlap on top of the seed. Then do some jar tests with both gpysum and alum. I've postes some links farther down in the appropriate categories to determine what you problem is and how much of either to add.

If it is tannic acid water(I see oaks) then ag lime (or pellet sack lime not hydrated) will help.

I know, I know... so much to do. We close escrow on the 29th of May. I wanted the pond to be level. I don't like the crater look. But there is a ditch at the back of the pond. When it rains really hard the water level of the ditch can reach the top of the crater edges. We are thinking about pulling the pond forward towards the side of the house, away from the ditch. I'll tell you. I am quite tempted to argue for putting the pond at the front of the house. Quite a low spot there, no trees left after Rita, much larger area to work with. We could have a good sized pond out there. Our new house sits on 2.27 acres. Most of that land is to the front and the sides, not the back of the house.

I don't know squat about pond water and the reasons for the muddy look. But I can say that we looked at several houses with ponds. Most were muddy. The larger the body of water, the better the water seemed to be.

I will look into filtering if I have to. I just cannot take the muddy water.

There are fish in it now. Some type of brim and some catfish. I guess the brim are quite large, according to the owner. My husband can't wait to fish in the pond.... I can't wait to name the fish....uh oh....

H ere is the front. A nice pond could sit here... We could mess with the existing pond, have some fun and learn... then build a nice one out front. It would mean fencing in the yard though. We are in a development of properties ranging from 2 acres to 5.

I may be giving you more info. than you care for...but I'm so excited I can't stop myself.

This is the side of the yard the pond is on. There is a low area there that we thought could be a good area to stretch our pond towards. See the dead tree stump. it has a bog in that area already. Just like the front. Lots of low spots. Lots of rain runoff too. the entire property slopes to the back and sides.

IMG]http://i189.photobucket.com/albums/z316/puddlepond/DSC00557.jpg[/IMG]

hmmm, just when I thought I was all that. let's try that again.

Hey T...BEAUTIFUL home, ya got there.

Start with the lime, but the finer particle size the better, for clearing. (I used to treat waste water for a living). Don't add too much at a time.

Great place for a pond in the front, but then you're gonna draw the gator out there...oh, well.

Before you safe the pics to photobucket, go into MSoft picture viewer (or whatever software you manipulate them with) and to the compression routine. Compress for doc's or websites...some folks with dialup (or even less than ideal high speed i-net) will spend all day waiting for those pic's to download...not that they wouldn't be worth waiting for.

If you resize first, they'll be quicker to upload for you, as well. It doesn't affect me any, but others may have troubles. Looks great, regardless.

Thanks for the info. on resizing Matt. I have adobe photoshop. The only place I can find to resize is when you send to email. I will try some more.

I will try some experiments with lime and the rest just as soon as I get there. I think I'll play in buckets of the brown muck. See what happens in the bucket before I get crazy on the pond. I also ordered the pond management book from the Pond Boss site.

I ordered the Tim Matson Pond book before I found Pond Boss. I was surprisingly disappointed with it. It gets such great reviews. Seemed more like a diary with little bits of information. Maybe I ordered the wrong one....but after reading the one, it didn't leave me wanting another.... If the book off the Pond Boss site is anything like the info you get off the forum I'll be good to go.

Hi Teresa, on your page at photobucket you can change the size for all of the images in your album, regardless of the size you upload. I have mine set so that they are resized to 600 x 800 pixels automatically which is a safe size for almost any monitor.

If you look at the "upload" section of your photobucket page, just above the first BROWSE window, you'll see the size you're sending followed by an "options" link. Mine looks like this:

max image size: 800 x 600 (options)

I'm guessing that yours is set to the next larger size. Matt is right that uploading full sized images from your pc takes longer, but I like the convenience of not having to manipulate image size manually.

BTW, I like your little pond. Good luck.

Thanks Yankee. I have adjusted all my photos at the bucket. Now everything will be sized for forums such as this. So easy too.... as my hubby says to me "if you would just slow down"...could be true in this case....

I will post back when I get there and try some tests on my muddy water.

Just so you don't go thinkin you are rid of me. I have done two samples on the water so far.

Lime - cleared the water quite a bit. Seemed to get the rust colored "stuff" to settle all on the bottom and sides of the jar. Went from orange colored to a lighter yellow color.

Bleach - This cleared the water just a hair better than the lime did.

I went to buy gypsum and they only had 50 lbs of it. I wasn't sure what the heck I would use 50 lbs of the stuff for so I decided to look for a smaller bag of it to conduct my testing with.

So far the lime does seem to help. I have no idea the gallons of water I have at this time. I added 12 lbs of lime to the pond with very little result. I suspect this isn't nearly enough....but I am afraid to over do it until I can measure and calculate the gallons of water. My best quess is about the size of a large swimming pool. It has an area 8 feet deep, but most is 4 to 2 feet deep.

There are tons on leaves in that pond. A drawdown is in order. We are waiting to see if we get a natural one this summer. At least the most shallow parts.

There are channel cats in there. Lots of little ones. There are bluegill in there as well. Also a fish I am unable to identify at this time. Looks like something that belongs in an aquarium. Hangs by the shore. Has bright edgings on the fins. Shaped more long and narrow. I know, this doesn't help at all. I will research it on the internet.

On that new fish that you are unable to identify... it could be that new strain of alligators that's running the neighborhood.

o.k. I just did a search on liming. Man am I out of the loop or what. I can only imagine the laughing going on about my 12 lbs of aglime.....

1 ton per acre..... o.k. I have a little pond....but 12 lbs is too funny. I'm learning, I'm learning

First I would like to say Welcome to the site!!! You have a beautiful place there!!! How are the Saratoga lights? Can you still see them?

I had to look up saratoga lights. I am new to Texas. No, I haven't seen those mysterious lights.........yet.

I am off to research a bottom difuser. I have my ph at acceptable levels but any lower and I could cause trouble. So no more lime. I am in search of a construction site for some gypsum board. The chlorine really did the trick with the off color of the water. Unfortunately it is not an option. But boy, it really cleared up my test water.

Managing a pond is no easy task I'll tell ya.