Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Muck Eating Bacteria Experiment

I'm using a multi pronged approach I take a trash pump and send the discharge to a pool about 35 feet above the pond and I take the intake with a flexible hose on it and suck up the muck off the bottom.I then let it settle and drain the clear water to my bait fish pond. I also added aeration last year. I will see how good it works.diving down I can feel holes and troughs were I pumped the water down. So it is letting some aerated water get down to the bottom at least for a short time. I can feel the softened areas when I dredge afterwards. Long slow process but I don't have to drain the pond down and kill my fish.

It will be slow but should work out.

I am new to this forum and new to pond ownership as we purchased a house last year in Southern Arizona with a 1/4 acre pond about 4' deep that was stocked with bass and mosquito minnows. There was a resident duck (Daffy) who found a mate last fall and flew away with her (at least there was no sign that predators had gotten them both).

Last summer during monsoon season, we had a flood during a heavy rain in which water from the cattle ranch to the north flooded the pond and left manure stink, some dead fish, and stimulated a lot of underwater plant growth (duckweed). We manually cleaned, added lots of fresh water, and our aeration pump sits on the bottom, pumps the water out a little rivulet up a slight hill to a creek bed that then flows down to the pond, over a water fall. It brings in oxygen but doesn't get the water in the entire pond moving.

The pond developed an algae problem quite recently this year and we have been removing manually. The muck is not too deep, maybe 3" or a little more in the center. In searching for solutions to restore the health of the pond, I have been reading on this site but, as always, there are different opinions and different products. Since our cats drink out of the pond and the creek, and lots of wildlife come by to drink here in the desert, and some people swim in the pond, we only want to consider remedies that are [1] non toxic and [2] can establish a healthy biome that maintains itself with minimal intervention.

Solution A most recommended on this forum seems to be purchasing big tilapia that won'5 become snacks for the bass. If we go this route, how do we figure out the size when our bass range greatly in size? Also, how about numbers? And finally, will we have to eat the tilapia to keep their numbers in balance with the bass, which we do eat?

Solution B we found on a commercial site. It involves purchasing four products that included healthy bacteria and enzymes. The pond is surrounded by mesquite trees, one mulberry, and a butterfly bush, so it's in partial shade most days. It also has about 1/10 of the surface covered by lily pads that produce yellow flowers. The mesquites drop small leaves and flowers onto the surface. The proposed products were supposed to deal with the muck, the algae, and digesting the organic matter. I'd like to hear from anyone who has used this kind of approach with success. I don't mind a one time expense but won't get into a yearly have-to-repurchase to keep it going.

Solution C buy an additional pond aerator, ideally solar, to set in parts of the pond that the existing pump doesn't reach, and continue manually removing the algae.

BTW - we did borrow a backhoe, dug a huge trench near the properly line, and will not have flooding from the cattle ranch again.
JaBe

should I have started a new thread for this maintenance question? I see now that all the other answers are pretty old, more than 10 years

You will always have elements enriching your pond with nutrients from leaf litter, wildlife and fish poo. I have a 1/4 acre pond and rake blown leaves out of my pond in the fall and I try to keep waterfowl out. I’ve done algae raking in the past and I would rather not deal with it. I run aeration May to November and put bacteria and aqua shade in as needed. I think you will find there is not a one time fix that’s going to keep your pond enjoyable. The tilapia will add more bio load to your pond too.

PS You can post on old threads it just brings them to the top again and in my case I received an email telling me there was a new response to a thread that I had once posted on, I haven’t been to the forum in quite a while so I guess using old threads can pay off with more viewership 😄. Welcome to the forum!

Loretta, glad to see you back!!

Thank you Loretta! I will look at the threads on here, but if you have found a bacteria product that seems better acting and appropriately priced, can you let me know?
The company I contacted was Aquaplankton but they recommended four microbial products instead of their name brand due to the size of our pond (1/4 acre, about 90 ft diameter, 4 ft average depth). You pond must be a pretty blue green after you apply the Aqua Shade. There is so much light here in AZ, it would be hard to block it for long.

Janis

Wow Loretta, so glad the email reminder came through. Awesome to have you back again! What is the news on your pond? Did your YP have a good amount of ribbons this spring? Seeing baby YP yet in the shallows?

JaBe - I'm with you, would like to learn more about 'healthy' bacteria and muck dissolving pellets but it is one of those things where each has to try in his/her own pond and then it is a little hard to measure results accurately. One factor is it takes a while for the muck pellets to work, so your experiments tend to run a year or longer.

I got into the muck dissolution experiments last year and so looking forward to see how this season goes. I shouldn't give free advertising I guess so I can email you privately about the brand I went with. Being fairly frugal, I found something about half the price of the name brand stuff and also found something that would ship to my door via Amazon. Bonus, they shipped it in a 5 gallon bucket and I get to finally put the packaging to good use too!

Canyoncreek,
Have you noticed any improvement with the pellets you are using?
I sent you a PM.

I am trying to revive an old pond. It is about 20 years old and was covered
In brush around the edges. I had it partially re dug.
It is 3/4 of an acre. It's a u shape with a large point down the center.
I currently am using 4 double headed aerators on a 3/4 horse pump.
I use a product called pondvive.
I'm looking to get rid of the pond muck. It's pretty thick.

Hi Dlatulip,
Rapid City is a northern climate probably colder than the GR, MI area as we are shielded by Lake MI. But we have a short summer and warm water works better for the bacteria to dissolve muck.
I am only starting my experiments and it is hard to say how one product does compared to another as you need a controlled environment to really test. But being that the product I tried was easily available on Amazon and about half the price I thought I'd give it a few seasons and see.
I did not take a lot of samples around the pond so I'm judging mainly by the edges where I wade around when checking traps or putting our my turtle floats.

I'm happy so far that in the shallows I see a difference with the leaves and surface muck being mostly gone. Maybe it reduced 1-2" per season in the shallows? I still feel thick muck in the deep but that is colder water, and water that probably doesn't get the oxygen mixed down into the deep as well. I have a single station, dual head vertex aerator that I run about 8-10 hours in the overnight cool temps.

I think I would do way better if I had a trash pump with outflow going down a long pole and blasting it down under the muck to aerate everything. Those deicers which are really a propeller on a long pole that blast underwater currents across the bottom are hugely helpful in cleaning and aerating the bottom in the range of the 'prop-wash'.

A side benefit of the muck pellets is they must have some sort of 'flocking' agent that binds the suspended solids as my water has been much clearer. That is great for clarity but not so good for sun penetration as I seem to have algae growing more deeply on the bottom this year. I don't seem to maintain as good of a bloom this year as in other years.

I'll probably throw some in again and see. By recall I bought a 25 pound supply in a 5 gallon bucket and that worked pretty well for my 1/4 acre pond ( or smaller in the summer).

I have been reading this thread on muck digesting pellets and something struck me but I don’t know if what I am thinking is accurate. I am quite sure that someone on this site will know.
It seems that stirring up the bottom of a pond creates a more fertile environment for plants like algae to bloom creating more organic matter that makes muck.
My question is this. If there was a way to remove the living organic matter, prior to it dying , would this help reduce the over fertile situation of the water since the plant life would be using the newly introduced nutrients, from the water to flourish?

Yes, you are thinking about it correctly.

Organic "muck" usually accumulates under anaerobic conditions at the bottom of the pond. Under normal pond conditions, anaerobic bacteria are much less efficient at breaking down complex organic molecules.

If some silt washes in on top of this muck and isolates it from the water column, the net effect would probably actually be to remove nutrients from the pond. However, this is not beneficial for most ponds because losing depth every year can quickly turn a pond into a marsh.

For a pond that is well aerated, most of the complex organic material over an annual cycle can be broken down by aerobic bacteria. This turns the material back into CO2, water, and lower molecular weight organic molecules (such as humic substances).

As you have speculated, most of the nitrogen and phosphorus of these smaller organic molecules is now available in the water column as nutrients for the next batch of photosynthesizing organisms that are growing in the pond.

I think(?) your question is about removing at least a portion of this endless nutrient cycle from the pond?

There are several ways to do this:

1.) Physically raking the mats of filamentous algae out of the pond. They must then be discarded OUT of the watershed, so they don't decompose on the bank and the nutrients wash back into the pond.

2.) Tilapia eating a large portion of the organic matter. In warm climates (where the tilapia survive the winters) you eating the tilapia or discarding them as garden fertilizer does actually serve to remove nutrients from the pond. In cold climates you probably need to catch as many tilapia as you can at the end of the season, and scoop out as many dead ones as possible after the cold deaths occur. Unfortunately, many of the dead tilapia will not float to the surface.

I suppose to a lesser degree, crayfish eating some of the plants, then bass eating the crayfish, then you eating the bass would also remove some nutrients. Likewise with omnivorous minnows, or even catfish that do eat some plant material.

3.) Phosphorus binders have also shown some excellent potential in early testing. There are several threads on Pond Boss about these types of products. As more pond managers start using them, I expect we will learn the optimal way to use these products to reduce fertility in eutrophic ponds.

4.) I don't know how efficient this would be, but theoretically, if you deliberately grew shallow water rooted plants in your pond, and then drew down your water level and "harvested" the plants in the fall, then that would also serve to remove some nutrients. I do NOT recall any threads where people have actually done that, so I may just be making up speculative BS.

Finally, I think one of your best "bang for the buck" practices is to intercept as much as possible all of the NEW nutrients trying to make their way into your pond. Keep leaves, pine needles, etc. from ever entering the pond. If they do enter and are floating in some corner of the pond, then skim them out.

Surface water runoff into your pond will also start picking up some nutrients. Make sure your groundcover around the pond is lush enough to grab up those nutrients. If you mow the cover, never throw clippings into the pond.

I know I didn't provide any good and easy solutions. I think tilapia are probably the most efficient solution. (I believe you can stock them in Ohio.)

Good luck on your pond improvements!

This a copy of the two year study from the fellow who stated this thread.

I did a test on a customers property. 4 ponds, all built within 3 years of each other, all about the same size and depth. It was a 2 year test.

#1 Was the control - no aeration
#2 Had bacteria added per mfg recommendations no aeration
#3 Had bacteria per mfg recommendations w/aeration
#4 Was another control - aeration but no bacteria added

The thickness of muck was measured 2x year.

#3 had approximately the same amount of muck reduction as pond #4. Pond #2 had slightly less muck than pond #1, (approx 1" per year) but the juice wasn't worth the squeeze..... Ponds were all 10'-12' max depth.

I asked THE Ohio State University about the effectiveness of pond muck pellets, and boy, I must of danced on his last nerve concerning this topic. He sent me a long dissertation about they are pretty much a scam. I can post it and leave his name out if it is allowed.

It's allowed if his name isn't on it.

Great replies and thank you for the information. I am in the process of getting aeration in my pond and after it gets acclimated I may take the ol’ Jon boat for a lap or two and start seeing what the outcome is.

Thanks again

This is what the program director of aquatics at the Ohio State University sent me a few years ago. I had a heavily silted in pond and was using muck reducer pellets from various manufacturers all to no avail. I ended up draining the pond and had a dozer come in and he removed enough muck to fill a ~1/4 acre field 3' deep full of muck. He held it in by creating a bowl out of clay, otherwise it would have just oozed back into the pond. If you could see how much muck was in that little 3/8 acre pond, you can then realize a few gallons of magic elixir will do absolutely nothing to get rid of it.




1. Regarding overall pond longevity, bubblers are usually best situated near/along the deepest water, but in sufficient numbers and power to circulate the whole water column. The point is to destratify, to mix, the water column. If you break up stratification, oxygen dissolved from the atmosphere across the surface of the pond should then be mixed throughout. If your diffuser plates are only in shallow water, you’re leaving the deep water to stratify, lose oxygen (that may release excessive phosphorus to the water column and may put you at risk of a summer fish kill), and may be facilitating the accumulation of much in the deep water, losing important volume. I don’t know how many you have or how your deep water lies trough the pond’s area, but two or three diffuser plates along the deep water is probably appropriate.



Enough circulation to turn over the pond’s volume twice each day would be excellent. The pond will mix naturally in the fall, so I ordinarily recommend you shut down the aeration system in the fall (no need to spend energy to artificially mix a pond that is mixed naturally). If you consistently ice over, you can repurpose the diffusers (moving them back to shallow water) to erode a hole in the ice). That only has use if you’re worried about prolonged ice cover and winter kill of fish.



2. I am skeptical of beneficial bacteria/muck treatments at present. Related products almost certainly don't do any harm and may in fact do some good, but I'm not at all convinced that they justify their expense from the perspective of longevity of pond function in whole.



Those products tend to be proprietary concoctions of facultative bacteria, some substance (enzymes or micronutrients) to promote their growth, or some combination of the above. Those "beneficial" bacteria do indeed consume muck/organic material. However, those bacteria need oxygenated conditions to be effective. Without oxygen, they’re not efficient; with oxygen, some related bacterial assemblage will be present along a pond's sediment and active anyhow. Because those products aren’t labeled as having any kind of pesticide effect, they aren't regulated; most makers don’t publish their ingredients—keep the ingredients as trade secrets—and so the ingredients can't be researched individually.



I search related literature periodically; I still cannot find any professional, peer-reviewed articles that support or refute the notion that these products substantially enhance a pond's water quality or slow the pond-aging process in whole. Thus, I'm skeptical regarding whether or not adding a jug of formula or handful of pellets to a volume of water the size of a large pond can make a pond-scale difference. However, some formulae may have useful localized effects (e.g., aggressive application around a dock or swimming area). Also, aggressive short-term treatment may “jump start” a depauperate bacterial assemblage, at least in the short term. Again, without peer-reviewed literature or controlled experimentation, it’s all just speculation.



Creating healthy habitat for beneficial bacteria by keeping dissolved oxygen circulating along the sediment throughout deep water (as with diffuser aeration) seems to me to have much greater potential to increase their populations and effectiveness. It’s usually recommended that bacteria treatments be made in conjunction with aeration; in such an application, it’s difficult to know how much recovery can be attributed to aeration alone. Thus, on pond scale, a properly designed bottom-aeration system seems to me a much better initial investment.



Of course, such bacteria have no effect whatsoever on inorganic sediment. If accumulated sediment is low in organic content and substantial enough to impede pond function, some form of physical dredging would absolutely be needed to regain it. Even with a fair amount of organic matter, if your accumulation is excessive, it might be time to bite the bullet and plan for a dredging operation.



I did pull up a satellite image of the address you sent. I saw several good sized ponds near there and am not certain which is yours. Most of them (the furthest north and east in particular) were forested enough to be concerning regarding their longevity. Trees to the west and south of a pond tend to speed up the aging process (to the east and north are less concerning and may even be beneficial). If there’s enough tree cover and input of leaf litter, you just won’t be able to keep up with biological degradation of the resultant muck. Once again, periodic dredging becomes the only way to maintain pond function.



3. Again, slowing its accumulation by effectively aerating deep water is the best bet for overall longevity. However, you may have a situation where you won’t be able to keep up with the input of leaves. Unfortunately, periodic dredging may be needed.



Do stay in touch. My classroom duties end when I post grades on Friday, and I should be much more available to these types of discussions after then.



Be well out there.



Best,





The Ohio State University

As willy says, the greatest muck removal tool available for pond managers ... is the bulldozer!

I think the "severity" of that solution indicates the importance of utilizing best practices to prevent and mitigate muck formation in our ponds.

It was almost like he was talking to me. The previous owners loved trees and the number of pine trees that line the pond are a killer. I am starting to think that I may have to take the bulldozer approach.
The dam seems to be in good shape so I’m wondering if it would be better to drain the pond with a pump vs cutting the dam to empty it prior to dozing it. I have a the pump.

I would hate to try and rebuild a dam and think that it wouldn’t leak.

I didn't have much of a dam as mine is a hole. I pumped it out with a 2" trash pump that my excavator guy gave me to use. It took over a week! The excavator guy got in there and cleaned out half the pond, and said he would be back early the next day which was Friday. As you can guess, we had a localized rain event that knocked down giant oak trees and dumped 6" of rain filling the pond to overflow. I went out and got a 3" pump and used that as much as I could, but we didn't have 250' of flat hose to reach the ditch, so back to the 2" pump. 10 days later he got back in there and finished. We didn't get anymore than 8' deep because we had water coming in from the bottom. Pond filled to 6' deep in a few days with no rain at all. It is my third, and the forth pond that has been built on my street. No one can get more than 8' because the water comes in like a fire hose not to mention it pretty much rains, or snows here every day. One of those benefits of living in the middle of the rain/snowbelt of Lake Erie. We laugh at winters that don't produce at least 10 feet of snow. 20" of rain so far this spring and more coming this week!

I am tinkering around with the pond behind my house, adding aeration stirring it up with the boat and removing as much organics as possible to see how that goes. With the weather we’ve been having, it will be late Summer before I have a chance to draw pond 2 down and have it cleaned. Pond 1 has a bentonit bottom and my preference would be to not have equipment in there if I can reduce the muck as mentioned. Will be more work for sure. Labor of love so to speak. I have pond 1 mapped out with 16’ being the deepest and I did not appear to have nearly as much muck there as in the shallows. I figured that to be pretty much standard. I will map out pond 2 prior to starting any work in the water. I have 10 to 15 good sized pines that will be turned into lumber soon. They could be 30 plus years old and are major contributors to the muck and must go. They look beautiful, lining the the backside of the water however I prefer ponds over trees. Once the trees are gone, I will look into getting the water out.
Lots to do!

Sounds like you are doing lots of excellent work!

Even if you can't make Pond 1 "perfect", I am sure the fish will be happy with you just making it better.

Also, my farm has a lot of acres that are still tallgrass prairie. My tallest species are big bluestem, little bluestem, and switch grass. They are very efficient at straining out the leaves from my neighbors trees before they reach my ponds.

Any chance you could create a tall grass buffer zone between a couple of your pines and the ponds to save a few trees? Personally, I love the look of trees around ponds - especially if the trees will behave and keep their litter away from the ponds!