Great website/magazine. As a reference tool, it's top notch.

Question:

Our pond was dug last fall, approximately an acre according to the pond builder and the fish man who recently stocked it for me.

The problem; the day it was stocked I walked around to the back of the dam and saw two trickles of water, well, more like a steady flow of perhaps a gallon a minute from two places, obviously leaking, coming out at the base of the dam, one trickle in the middle of the dam, the other several yards to one side. The water level of the pond was down from full pool about a foot. The last rain to fill it was two weeks ago.

The pond contractor told me when he was building it there was a lot of rock in the area of the basin but that he thought he had sealed it with clay.

Question, would it do any good to add bentonite to the water and if so, how should that be performed? Along the base of the dam? Poured in dry? Digging out the dam, draining and reconstructing is not an attractive option.

I searched the site for bentonite references and saw only four msgs, none addressing this particular problem.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Joe