You will never get water clarity of 2-3ft when crayfish are common in the pond with several even small-medium catfish in this small pond size of around 20ft X maybe30ft. These two species are very bottom oriented that always disturb sediments in foraging activities. Any sizable number of any fish and feeding them pellets will always create nutrients to grow more plankton that will tend to cloud the water. Nature's rules. Even quite a few just reproducing minnows in this tiny pond will eventually cause turbidity. The Shiner species at low density might not significantly cloud the water. A few sunfish or a couple bass of just one sex so they could not reproduce with very limited pellet feeding OR them eating just the bugs produced within this small pond could produce good water clarity IF done correctly.
Fish feeding and resulting extra manure always adds nutrients to grow plankton that clouds the water. Green water is caused by excess nutrients. Nature's rules. IMO the local fish hatchery is not giving you good ecological information to achieve your specific goals. They do not know,,, what they do not know. Adding alum was just a money making fix to create temporary clearing because the causes of turbidity were not removed. To get noticeable water clarity of 3-4ft in this current type of pond you would need an extensive filtration system similar to that used by koi enthusiasts to eliminate the numerous types of suspended solids. Extensive filtration systems are not feasible in dirt bottom ponds.
Frogs nor tadpoles do not cause turbidity unless the tadpoles are 10s of thousands per acre. They do not know what they do not know.
I will let everything run its course until Spring, the alum fix has made a difference, water clarity is a lot better then when I started . Currently the jar test is just sitting idle, no difference in about 24 hours.. Before the jar test started clearing within the hour. Seems my crayfish trapping has slowed down to about 4-5 every couple hours... Since last night , I have pulled out over 200 crayfish, the last round yielded some pretty large crayfish in the 5-6 inch range... I will re bait tonight and check in AM. All the turtles have been cleared out for now, I am sure new ones will return. I can pull the Channels cats out , I only put them in there based on a recommendation to thin out the crayfish population .
Improvements made is the last couple weeks :
Added fish
Consistent inflow of well water daily, about 300 gallons.
Alum sulfate treatment.
Removed 3 snapping turtles
Trapping of crayfish
