Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Muddy water What would you do?

No, it has never been clear from the time the first molecule of H2O hit it.

Outside of roasting the bullhead, not likely to have a lasting affect.

Richard, if turbidity has always been a problem, do you think that's because of the resident BH population or an ionic imbalance?

If the latter, you're probably better off starting with Alum from the beginning so you can both nuke the resident fish population and also clear the water. Good news is you don't have to worry about over applying and damaging the fishery - as that's one of your goals. Lusk has stated multiple times that while Alum is a great tool for restoring ionic balance, over application will kill fish. For you, it's a bonus ancillary effect.

It's definitely ionic. Now I just have to find a local alum supplier.

I'm not sure an over-application of alum is a danger...mis-application sure is....such as adding the hydrated lime first, or not at all......

Alum should be available in Omaha and I know it is in St, Joseph, Mo

I have a similar problem. When I had it dug, we went deep. Her in our area, there is a layer soil called "hard pan" which is dead organic material that is rock hard. The rest of the area is sugar sand. As the waqter level came up to the hard pan it slowly started to leach out the hard pan giving the water a tanic look to it. After throwing Lime and alum at it over the years, I come to the conclusion that it was always going to be tanic looking and I would just manage what I had. It has been doing well for the past 10 years until two months ago when I had a mass kill of due to low O2 concentration. Lucky for me I caught it before I had a complete pond fish kill. I lost almost all of my large channel and albino cat fish. I had hundreds of turky vultures cleaning up the kill. looked like an apocalyptic event.