Just wanted to give an update. I have a 2 acre pond that has been half drained for 3 months. You can walk on the cracked silt and measure it's depth with rebar. It's very mixed. About 1/4 of it is 1 ft. silt. About 1/2 is 2 ft and 1/4 is close to 3 ft. I'm assume the remaining pond that is around 3-5 ft. deep in water is worse.

It's going to be summer before I can get equipment in and I will drain down the pond more and keep it down.

In the meantime, I experimented with a 3" trash pump. I got in with neoprene chest waders. Muck is a funny thing. The top "layer" is very loose and seems more like organic matter. Below that is the soupy stuff. I ran the pump all day (6 gallons of gas) and it wore me out. I finally developed a lazy technique which was basically lying down in the stuff and pushing the muck towards the intake. I'm sure some of you are laughing! I rented it for the day so I might as well do something with it (just $40/day). I only pulled the pond down another 8" which surprised me but I'm sure the soup slowed down the flow a bit. Hard to tell the depth of muck but the good news is there is a bottom and I could walk another 15 ft out.

I'm trying to find some resource that tells me what's an acceptable amount of muck? I understand the lifecycle of a pond. I can't see there being a good ecosystem with 3 ft of muck. Aquatic insects can't use it. Fish can't use it. How much will aeration reduce muck in a 10 ft deep pond? Does drying out a pond reduce any of the toxic anaerobic decay? Does it convert to aerobic if it is mixed around and left dry for a year?

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Can you give the name and size of the trash pump you are using? I have a couple grow out ponds that I pump down and have terrible luck with the trash pumps I use.

Yes. It was a 301 Subaru. 9HP. It had a large, maybe 8" across, intake trash filter. The intake was 2 15" hoses. I keep a roll of shrink wrap plastic and always wrap connections just to make sure. It was big enough to allow a lot of stuff into the water line but it did get clogged with leaves some. I spent most of my time pushing muck to it and pulling leaves, pinecones, etc. off of the intake. I used a stick for this initially but, realized that it wasn't going to suck my hand into it, and ended up using my hand. Maybe that was dumb/dangerous but I didn't have any problems.

It never seemed to bog with the muck. Matter of fact I could cover the intake in muck and it would suck it down.

Below my pond is a small settling area in the woods and drainage creek. The settling area is now almost pure muck. During some big rains I'll start to drain it.