Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Property Projects & Construction Rain, rain! Who has a pond in need of water?

Are you guys calling my pond a mud hole?

Seriously, I know you all will say I'll know when the water looks right, but are we thinking a week or a few months?

Also, thoughts on fertilizing it soon?

When it settles, check the alkilinity and PH. Also the clarity re phytoplankton. That could be a month and every pond is different.

Do ponds in your area generally need to be limed and fertilized?

I have been waiting on this kind of rain since my pond was completed, over a year and a half. We received 6.5" Tuesday night into Wednesday. I am now 10" from full pool. another 4" of rain should top it off.

What a difference 3 weeks make! Last week dumped an additional 6 inches of water in our area that resulted in about a 6 foot increase in the depth of our new pond putting us roughly 3.5 feet from full pool! When I arrived at the property after 2 weeks away I was elated to find that our mud hole had turned into a lake. We are up 10 feet in the past 3 weeks. I am losing about an inch per day as the sides wick in the water, but frankly I didn't think that I would see the pond this full any time soon. Another good rain and we will be full! Now its time to re-shoot the spillway and make sure the calculations still hold following soil movement, etc. I am amazed at the water color. The water is a light tea brown probably from all the organic matter in the ravine. I'll give it another week and then add FHM.

I can't seem to bust 6' deep. I lose about 1/2" a day through seepage in the original creek channel and I have about a 20 ac drainage going into an ultimately 14.5' deep, 1 1/4 ac pond. I need at least an inch plus rain to get a decent rise. Earlier this year we were getting a lot of those and there wasn't enough heat to dry out the ground so most of those rains went straight to run off. I was getting maybe 10" of rise for an inch of rain.

But for the last couple of months the rains have all been .2"-.3" which does me no good at all. We finally got a 2.3" rain last weekend but the ground was pretty dry and I didn't get as much rise as I had hoped so now it's back up to about 5' 11". Kind of frustrating when it's peak so far has been at around 6.5', who likes to go backwards?!

The surface area is decent but I need about 3 times the volume to get this thing full. Since we only get about 38" of rain a year here it looks like it may be awhile.

Anyway, I've got my 500 1" BG & 3 lbs of minnows stocked so at least I'm making progress while I wait.

The rocks were all turned up during the dig...arranged as rip-rap:


2 shots looking out over spillway:

Jimmi I feel your pain... I have been sitting at 2 ft below pool since the rains stopped last year. I can not seem to get a good rain this year to bring it to the top. Seems like I will come up half an inch then go three weeks with out a drop of rain.. Hang in there it is bound to happen sooner or later