Pond Boss Forums Thread Like Summary - Small muddy garden Pond

Hello All,

I have a small garden pond , 6 feet deep at deepest spot . Estimated to be at about 18,000 gallon, around 8 on Ph. I have stocked with some bluegill , channel cats and fathead minnows based on my local hatchery and dosed with 4 lbs of Alum sulfate. The edges started clearing , probably 4 inches of visibility.
They contend my muddy water is due to crayfish and frog activity.
They recommend to start trapping out the crayfish, I have already caught 3 snapping turtles and now they say my crayfish population will explode due to not enough predators.
They recommend to keep dosing with alum sulfate until I achieve the clearing I want and buffer with baking soda if ph starts falling.

Thoughts?

CC will eat crayfish however Bass either LMbass or SMbass will eat a lot more crayfish per predator compared to catfish. Fish hatchery probably wanted to get rid of CC before end of year. The more crayfish and catfish that you can remove the clearer the water will become.

Everything looks to be going good, I have 1 foot of clarity..When I do see the bluegill or minnows scamper from the edge and leave cloud of mud, I watch it settle right back down....Crayfish trapping has stopped, probably trapped about 600 total. The kids are enjoying the catch and release on ultra lights...The channels are hitting hard and fast for them and the bait stealing bluegills are keeping them entertained... The fish they have caught seem to be growing rapidly....

I think you can overwinter fish with 6' of depth in Ohio without aeration. Conventional wisdom says that if your pond freezes over, keep it clear of snow if possible to allow light to get through the ice.

Also, your fish count is low, so I think you're currently in good shape.

You will never get water clarity of 2-3ft when crayfish are common in the pond with several even small-medium catfish in this small pond size of around 20ft X maybe30ft. These two species are very bottom oriented that always disturb sediments in foraging activities. Any sizable number of any fish and feeding them pellets will always create nutrients to grow more plankton that will tend to cloud the water. Nature's rules. Even quite a few just reproducing minnows in this tiny pond will eventually cause turbidity. The Shiner species at low density might not significantly cloud the water. A few sunfish or a couple bass of just one sex so they could not reproduce with very limited pellet feeding OR them eating just the bugs produced within this small pond could produce good water clarity IF done correctly.

Fish feeding and resulting extra manure always adds nutrients to grow plankton that clouds the water. Green water is caused by excess nutrients. Nature's rules. IMO the local fish hatchery is not giving you good ecological information to achieve your specific goals. They do not know,,, what they do not know. Adding alum was just a money making fix to create temporary clearing because the causes of turbidity were not removed. To get noticeable water clarity of 3-4ft in this current type of pond you would need an extensive filtration system similar to that used by koi enthusiasts to eliminate the numerous types of suspended solids. Extensive filtration systems are not feasible in dirt bottom ponds.

Frogs nor tadpoles do not cause turbidity unless the tadpoles are 10s of thousands per acre. They at the local hatcher do not know what they do not know; they could use more learning.