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So Augie are you keeping pellets in trunks for a lil snack for yourself or that sweet pup?

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Most evenings when I feed Booger gets in the pond, swims around with the fish, and sucks up pellets like she'd never been fed.

I don't have to sweep up if I drop any on the dock. She cleans that up too.

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If Booger is a dog, I have a similar canine.

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Getting stressed/worried about my exposed clay problem around the edges of my new pond. The grass seed took off beautifully on the dam, which is the silver lining. Got a bunch of rain last week, and added about a foot of water to my puddle, but when I waded around in it this weekend, there was already a bunch of silt/loose clay just sitting in the bottom from all the runoff.

I tried using a stone rake on the east bank, but the clay is packed so hard, its almost like digging through rock... I couldn't even break through it. Trying something different... I threw down a bunch of grass seed, and took buckets of mud/clay from the pond and covered all the grass seed with it (just a thin layer, barely enough to cover the seed), and will see if it takes off. I'm just worried that my 10' deep pond will only be 5' deep by the time it fills. The hard rains we had dug massive grooves into my very steep pond banks, which also has me worried.

I also checked on the water sample that I stuck in the back of a closet 3 weeks ago. In those 3 weeks, only about the top 2 inches of the water bottle had cleared. I really don't want to be fighting a muddy pond for the rest of my life, but this red clay is getting the best of me. My fingernails are still tinted orange from the work I did yesterday.

My next purchase will be a Rototiller if the grass seed doesn't take off.


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Steve have you had a water test done? That can help with the clay not settling out. I had to add lime to clear mine up. Might add a little topsoil for the seeds to start in. Clay doesn’t grow much around here unless adding topsoil and hope it doesn’t wash in with the first rain. Mine washed ruts and gouges till got some weeds going.....how old is your pond?

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[/quote]
SG, a bit late but I would remove a good number of these if you suspect a high recruitment rate. I'm looking at the eye and would be concerned with growth rate. Eye is indicating to me a lack of food.[/quote]

Thank you sir. It was getting ridiculous. We were catching more of these than anything else in the pond. At least a hundred a day. We’ve been removing them, and now I see your post with relief! I’ve always liked my RES, and have thought they were good for the pond. But we hardly ever catch any that are big enough to clean. Just 100s of these small ones. I’ve got clouds of something that just hatched, along the banks right now. I’m not sure what else besides my golden shiners, that would be hatching now.
Thanks again


9 yr old pond, 1 ac, 15' deep.
RES, YP, GS, FHM (no longer), HBG (going away), SMB, and HSB (only one seen in 5 yrs) Restocked HSB (2020) Have seen one of these.
I think that's about all I should put in my little pond.
Otter attack in 2023
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Steve, what I did this year after rebuilding the dam, was any of the ruts on the face of the dam, I tore up sod chunks and packed in the ruts. Working really well.

Last edited by Mongos Pond; 08/23/21 06:43 PM.
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Originally Posted by Pat Williamson
Steve have you had a water test done? That can help with the clay not settling out. I had to add lime to clear mine up. Might add a little topsoil for the seeds to start in. Clay doesn’t grow much around here unless adding topsoil and hope it doesn’t wash in with the first rain. Mine washed ruts and gouges till got some weeds going.....how old is your pond?

Its new, just finished in July. I literally have all clay in and around my pond. The grass on my dam actually took off pretty good. I took the rake to it to loosen the top inch or so, threw down seed and it's doing great. I probably need to add lime to it eventually, but I'm assuming I wanna wait for it to fill up first? Would liming it now be beneficial?

Forgot to mention that my pH is in the mid-5 range. VERY acidic red clay. How does lime affect the clay settling? I thought it was just the aluminum sulfate that affected that.

Last edited by Steve_; 08/23/21 08:04 PM.

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Steve I think it would do some good now but you need to take a water sample and see what you got to start with. Mine was cloudy and it started to clear up in a few weeks

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Originally Posted by Pat Williamson
Steve I think it would do some good now but you need to take a water sample and see what you got to start with. Mine was cloudy and it started to clear up in a few weeks

Thanks Pat. Forgot to mention that my pH is in the low to mid 5's. Does acidity affect turbidity directly?


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Wow that is low! Might be part of the clarity problem I would think. Do you have ag lime available by the truck?

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Originally Posted by Pat Williamson
Wow that is low! Might be part of the clarity problem I would think. Do you have ag lime available by the truck?

Not sure, haven't dug into that yet.


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Originally Posted by Steve_
Originally Posted by Pat Williamson
Steve I think it would do some good now but you need to take a water sample and see what you got to start with. Mine was cloudy and it started to clear up in a few weeks

Thanks Pat. Forgot to mention that my pH is in the low to mid 5's. Does acidity affect turbidity directly?

Does acidity affect turbidity directly? Yes and no.

Nature can grind sand grains finer and finer. From beach sand, to silt sized, all of the way down to some of the dust motes you see floating in the air in your house. However, sand (SiO2) is basically inert, regardless of the size.

Clay is the geologic term for an entire class of complex phyllosilicate minerals that display a wide range of interesting chemical and physical properties. Unfortunately, the very smallest size on the sediment grain-size chart is ALSO called clay.

THIS IS VERY CONFUSING! We use the same term for two separate concepts.

"Clay" on the sediment size chart means a particle that is less than .004 mm in size. "Clay" should more properly be used as the term to describe an entire class of minerals.

My best analogy is the person that calls every tiny fish a minnow. On Pond Boss, we know that it really matters if the tiny fish is a FHM or a green sunfish fry!

For this discussion, don't think of clay as tiny sand, think of it as a very special kind of tiny fish.

You cannot build a functional core seal in your dam by crushing and compacting sand grains. The wet sand grains will not form a ball in your hand, no matter what their size. However, wet clay grains will form a ball, and will lock together to make a sealed core in the dam due to the specific physical/chemical properties of clay minerals.

Finally addressing your question:

If the suspended "clay" in your jar will settle out in a reasonable time, then it is probably mostly clay-sized INERT sand grains. (*** At tiny sizes, even "inert" particles can have electrical surface charges, but let's skip that further caveat.)

If the suspended "clay" in your jar will NOT settle out, then it is probably particles of clay minerals that actually have a weak surface electrical charge. These are usually negative charges - and they are attracting the positive ions in your water. (Your low pH water definitely has positive ions.)

The positive ions are attracted to the negative charges on your clay particles and create a kind of "cloud" around each individual particle. These clouds push away the adjacent positive clouds surrounding other clay particles. (Like when you were a kid and tried to push two magnets together with the same poles touching.)

The best way to get actual clay mineral suspensions to settle out is to get the tiny particles to be attracted to each other and clump together. This is called flocculation. If you change the water chemistry (by adding lime) you can change the properties of the suspended particles and cause them to flocculate. [Basic (high pH) water chemistries would utilize alum to cause flocculation.]

*** Sorry for the very long post. I started typing a "brief" response, but my answer always seemed incomplete without additional background information. I decided to go ahead and make it long, because lots of people ask your same question!

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Incredible post, FishinRod! I appreciate the time it took you to write all that.

Given my circumstance, it took 3 weeks for my bottle of muddy water to go from 0 visibility to maybe 2" so that seems like a major problem. I have very acidic red clay with pH in the mid-5 range, but I guess my main question is, would it be beneficial to add lime now? Will higher pH change the flocculation rate?

I currently have about 2 feet of water in a puddle that's maybe 40' across, in what appears to eventually be around a quarter acre pond.


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Sooner you get lime in the sooner things will get better- in my opinion (don’t amount to much sometimes). With only 2’ water it will be muddy anyway for a while with all the runoff

Last edited by Pat Williamson; 08/24/21 05:01 PM.
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Rah I had a cormorant visit today also.... they are early it seems

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Steve,

I am a geologist for my day job, and definitely NOT a pond expert. I just gave you the full "science" answer, because so many people have the same problem you do and not a lot of the advice they receive makes sense without a firm grasp on the underlying problem.

To get a real expert answer, you might start a new thread in the Water Chemistry section. I would ask what properties you should have checked during the water analysis. Come back to the forum with your results and then you will get some valuable advice.

The water analysis is very cheap compared to all of the cost and effort to spread the wrong product!

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Originally Posted by Pat Williamson
Rah I had a cormorant visit today also.... they are early it seems

NO! NO! NO! mad

Last edited by anthropic; 08/25/21 02:05 AM.

7ac 2015 CNBG RES FHM 2016 TP FLMB 2017 NLMB GSH L 2018 TP & 70 HSB PK 2019 TP RBT 2020 TFS TP 25 HSB 250 F1,L,RBT -206 2021 TFS TP GSH L,-312 2022 GSH TP CR TFS RBT -234, 2023 BG TP TFS NLMB, -160




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Originally Posted by RAH
If Booger is a dog, I have a similar canine.

She is 100% pure roll-in-horse-poop bite-the-mailman beat-up-the-cats canine. lol

[Linked Image from hosting.photobucket.com]

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Originally Posted by Steve_
Forgot to mention that my pH is in the low to mid 5's.

That is some seriously acid soil. In my area, 6.0-6.5 is the natural soil pH. To mitigate that for crop production it's typical to add 4 ton/acre ag lime.

I'd be looking to hire a spreader truck. If that service isn't available in your area you can have a bulk load delivered and dumped, then spread it
with a tractor/FEL or skid steer, or even by hand if you have to. With the natural pH that you're dealing with you can't add too much crushed limestone.

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With his pond just filling it would be a good time to lime the whole pond bottom. Lots of feed stores have lime service and can back up and sling it all around the pond and in it. Price around here is about 450$ per 6 tons




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Dang, Pat... that is crazy money compared to up here in Misery. The last load I had delivered cost $257 and change for 25 tons.

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That was delivered and spread in field or pond. Was yours dumped in one spot?

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Yep, delivered and dumped. Would have cost more for sure if it came on a spreader truck.

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Hmm.. well now y'all got me thinking my cheap Amazon pH tester is off. I bought some cheap test strips, and I will try them to see how accurate my digital one is before I make any hasty decisions.


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