Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations New guy here, new pond owner...

Hello everyone,
so hopefully some of you can help me out and give me some solid advice. I am brand new in every way... to this forum and to pond ownership. So I have a few questions and need some help to clarify or expand my extremely limited knowledge. I have a pond now (constructed approximately 10 years ago) on our new property that was put in by the previous owner who hired professionals to build it. It is about 1/2 to 3/4 of an acre and approximately 6-8 ft deep in probably 50% of it or more. Doesn't seem to leak or evaporate too quickly, so that's the good. Now for the bad, at least I think its bad. The pond water is murky/silty and a brownish color all the time now, it's much worse now than when we bought the house a couple of years ago. The original owner claims to never have had to do anything to the pond to keep it clear the majority of the time. I assume from my limited research this is colloidal clay in the water column not settling to the bottom. I also assume that this situation is being made worse by the high number of (75-100) catfish in the pond as the result of the previous owner stocking the pond with them. I am not sure what kind of catfish, but I am thinking they are bullhead due to their color. I read that catfish, and in particular, bullheads root around in the substrate constantly looking for food, making the turbidity in the water worse. There are also large amounts of bluegill and some other smaller (too small to make a good guess) fish in the pond. There is no vegetation in the pond, the pond is completely surrounded by grass and rock embankment which stretches around three sides of the shoreline which sizes from pebble to about 12" across, and several Large (2 Sycamores and 4 Walnuts that are 24-36 inches in diameter or larger and 75'+) trees either at the edge of the pond or within 10 feet of the waterline. No livestock have access to the pond except for the local deer that sometimes graze at the edge. I have been researching Alum and Gypsum to figure out what to do about the current clarity of the water. The more I research, the more questions I seem to have. So now that I have given you a good description, on to the questions.

1. What happens to the clay after it binds and falls out of the water column using one of the recommended methods for clarifying? Does it just stay there? Once bound does it harden or remain bound even with agitation over time or will the catfish eventually just stir it up again, making the whole endeavor of clarifying worthless?

2. If it doesn't bind and turn into something harder or more dense, will I have to drain the pond and dredge the clay out with a backhoe or bulldozer to fix it?

3. Is there a way to fix the problem without removing the catfish or killing them all off? I could be wrong about them being bullheads, how do I tell for sure? I thought I read somewhere that LMB and Channel cats will eat bullheads, would this include larger ones (the majority of the cats in the pond all range in size from about 10-12 inches)? Will any species of catfish in the pond be just as problematic? We have otters that come and occasionally eat the fish and I wouldnt want to chance accidentally poisoning them in the process.

4. Is there a way to filter the suspended clay particles out of the water instead of binding them, or would the cost to do so be exorbitant enough to make it not worthwhile?

5. Can I replace the grass around the pond with something shorter in height that will benefit the pond or the soil surrounding it. Mowing around the pond is problematic since three sides of the berm are too steep to mow without tipping over the mower or sliding into the pond, so that leaves weedeating which of course slings grass and weeds into the water which will just create a new problem (thats the current method being used, and we try to be careful not to get too much in the pond, but, you know what happens). Any recommendations for replacement plants instead of grass to cut down on that maintenance would be a godsend.

6. Should I plant some kind of vegetation in the pond to help with filtration and shade the water to cut down on temps and water loss due to evap? If so, are there any really good, non pervasives that you guys would recommend? I live in the Ozarks of Missouri if that helps with making a rec?

7. Should I aerate the pond, what would be the best method of doing it for a pond this size?

Any other advice or recommendations not already touched upon would also be greatly appreciated. I am a big believer in "knowledge is power", so TIA for any help.

Welcome to PB. My personal thoughts and others who have fought clay will have a better idea than me. I fight drought.
1. The clay binds and falls to the bottom unless it gets stirred up. Cats can do it but I've rarely seen or heard about it. More than likely the previous owner isn't shooting straight with you. I've heard that products exist to bind it but I know nothing about them.

2. Draining and dredging isn't the answer. If the bottom and sides are clay a dozer can't help that.

3. Size sounds like bullheads and adding bass or CC's won't help for a long time. A predator can handle prey from 1/4 to 1/3 it's length.

4. I don't know. I fight sand.

5. I have the same issues and just live with it. I'll be taking the weed eater today and enjoying the Texas summer outdoors. I don't worry about getting grass or weed clippings into the ponds.

6. In the pond vegetation is something I'm not familiar with.

7. Aeration is a great tool and right now there are some interesting discussions going on here about best practices. Not having power to any of my water holes, I've never done it.

Take a mason jar full of your cloudy water, seal it, and put it in a dark cupboard for a few days. If it settles, then it's mechanical agitation disturbing the silt (wind or animal). If it doesn't, you might have colloidal clay.

Even with alum treatment, mechanical agitation will cloudy it up again. But you can ask Rex (rainman) on the forums for a real expert opinion.

Thanks for the response Dave. We moved here from Bastrop, Texas and my kids live in Denton. So its good to hear from a former neighbor. So to answer some of your responses.

1. We dont feed the cats, so I assume rooting around in the substrate is how they get their food. From what little I know about fish, arent catfish bottom feeders? Thats how I used to catch them, throw something out and let it sink to the bottom. I imagine all that searching around does exactly what I imagine it does, stir everything up.

2. If the bottom and sides are clay, then it must be a very thin layer of clay... the area I live in is grassland prairie bordering on dense woodlands. The soil according to the county survey for this area is silty loam down to about 72" and sits atop shelves of bedrock. We live in what someone around here wrote as offically prime agricultural land with nice loamy black dirt with gently rolling slopes and hills. So any clay would have had to been trucked in. I assume when they dug out the pond it was the same, and they sealed it with bentonite or something similar. Dredging it out in my mind would remove the excess clay from the bottom after it was bound in the water column. I get what your saying though if it was a clay pond.

3. Ok, so predator fish to lower the high number of cats (regardless if they are BH or not) is out. Not sure what I should do then if the clay doesnt bind into something that doesnt get disturbed by them rooting around.

4. Ok, I will do more research on the filter idea and see what I find out.

5. I know little to nothing about ponds in general, but I have learned that grass and weed clippings will significantly increase the nutrient load in the water over time as they break down, further adding algae problems later on to the "muddy water" issue I already have. I would think how long it takes for that issue to appear would be dependent on how large the BOW is and its capacity to digest the nutrient load. How big is your pond? Mine is pretty small, so I imagine it wouldnt take much to tip the balance, between the clippings and the leaves from the trees in the fall.

6. Ok, thanks. I plan on checking out the plant threads on here as well.

7. I dont have power to my pond area currently, but It was something I was looking at later. Maybe solar or wind powered if its cheaper, not sure, still looking at options as money is tight and being a disabled vet limits my budget more than I would like.

I am going to cross post this to another thread, since it seems like I may have posted this in the wrong place now that I have looked around on here a little more. Looks like most new people post in the "Help" thread.

If you catch out some cats and post pictures we can ID them definitively as bullheads or other species.

Thanks, I will try that and see how it goes. Any thoughts on a filtration system to remove it from the water for a pond my size? Doable, expensive, worth it?

Dadeville-
I think the common wisdom is to get underwater aerators that shove the soil that is clogging the water back to the edge of the pond rather than 'filtering' it out. This is a bonus to the fact it areates the pond, which allows bigger/healthier/more fish

CityDad, shove it so that it goes where at the edge of the pond? If it is colloidal clay, which I suspect it to be and am going to do the jar test as suggested, it wont settle at the pond edge since the particles repel each other in the water. Aeration does seem like a fantastic idea for both the pond and the fish, but wouldnt that just recirculate it around in the water? Can you elaborate on what it is the aerator will do to clarify the water and remove the particles? Correct me if I am wrong but it seems like it might clear the water within a certain distance directly adjacent to the aerator possibly but doesnt seem like its going to "shove" the particles out of the water and up onto the shore. In my mind as to how suspended charged particles react in a liquid when agitation is added doesnt seem like they would do anything but get churned up, possibly even more than whats already happening between the fish and the wind which would just push the particles back out away from the pond edge and the cycle would repeat, like a washing machine? My goal I guess is to remove the particles causing the problem so that they are no longer a problem, and not sure how pushing them to the edge of the pond would get them out even if that is what would happen. I suppose I could rig up some kind of pump system at the same time to suck water from the edge of the pond and through some kind of a sediment filter with micronic filtration. Seems like that would cost a good deal of money though and would take years before all the murkiness is completely gone.