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...