Brown, sludgy, leaves, etc - 08/03/11 05:28 AM
Location is Western Washington. We inherited a pond recently and are trying to determine how to "fix it". There are no fish, but does support a large number of frogs (which we like).
Any suggestions would be appreciated. In particular I was thinking of purchasing an aeration system. Heavy equipment is not an option, digging it out by hand would be close to impossible
Description is below. Thank you for taking the time to read my rather lengthy post.
Bob
The pond is in a natural ravine which the previous owner built a 20+ foot high dam. The pond is roughly 100 feet long 25 feet wide, depth from zero feet on one end to 15 feet at the other end.
During the summer a small stream feeds it which trickles over the dam on the other end. In the winter it turns to a full on stream with white water over the damn. It was surrounded by large amount of bamboo (which we have removed), a bunch of bushes and quite a few maples and alders (which I am removing quite a few).
The water is a very brown, maybe 2 feet visibility, with no vegetation in or on it. If I take a stick and jam in into the pond (anywhere in any location), it hits "mud" after a few feet, which promptly release a large amount of gas. If I look at some of the "sludge" it is mostly black muck mixed with leaves (especially the bamboo leaves).
Any suggestions would be appreciated. In particular I was thinking of purchasing an aeration system. Heavy equipment is not an option, digging it out by hand would be close to impossible
Description is below. Thank you for taking the time to read my rather lengthy post.
Bob
The pond is in a natural ravine which the previous owner built a 20+ foot high dam. The pond is roughly 100 feet long 25 feet wide, depth from zero feet on one end to 15 feet at the other end.
During the summer a small stream feeds it which trickles over the dam on the other end. In the winter it turns to a full on stream with white water over the damn. It was surrounded by large amount of bamboo (which we have removed), a bunch of bushes and quite a few maples and alders (which I am removing quite a few).
The water is a very brown, maybe 2 feet visibility, with no vegetation in or on it. If I take a stick and jam in into the pond (anywhere in any location), it hits "mud" after a few feet, which promptly release a large amount of gas. If I look at some of the "sludge" it is mostly black muck mixed with leaves (especially the bamboo leaves).