Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Creating the food chain The base of the food chain

Seeding a new pond and how plants and animals get into a pond is a whole complete complex topic. Nature has a myriad of ways of how things get moved and transported naturally into water and across land. Plus human introductions provides many more pathways.

A healthy pond would be one you are very familiar with and knowing there is a good fish community present and it does not have obvious water quality and plant/algae problems.
I would say Daphnia are always present in my definition of healthy ponds. The species of fish present as grazers can skew the composition and structure of the zooplankton community and be limiting to Daphnia species. Weed beds as habitat help encourage Daphnia populations. Clear water often indicates presence of Daphnia but as usual it always depends.