I started my pond up on weds of last week and we had a heavy rain on thursday.Some mud ran into the pond from my dirty pile that removed on yesterday.Will the mud settle and will the water clear eventually?I can see down about 8 inches but that is it.The water coming out of the water fall is crystal clear as i placed a cup to check.My filter is a doc 55 gal drum with poultry fence as the media.
How long does it take for the pond water to clear
- Thread starter pumpdogs
- Start date
The problem with mud is the fines, they are hard to either filter or settle out. You might want to get some quilt batting from a fabric store and use a pump to circulate your pond through it for a few days.
it all depends on how many gallons your pond is.my pond is around 1000 gallons.
when i open my pond for the season i do a half water change and i vacuemm
the bottom. and it clears up around 5 days with the uv light.
and like dr dave said get the fines out of yoru pond
when i open my pond for the season i do a half water change and i vacuemm
the bottom. and it clears up around 5 days with the uv light.
and like dr dave said get the fines out of yoru pond
The "fines" I assume is clay or silt. Clay and silt is in the 1 micron range. For comparison a single cell algae is in the 25 micron range and bacteria in the 1/4 to 1/2 micron range. So it depends on the type of clay you have and how much movement in there is in the water. Stirred up clay will never settle. Algae canl chunk onto it over time and together settle but algae can have trouble growing in clay filled water.
Clay is way too fine to filter with quilt batting. Some will of course settle in the batting and anything else but it won't clear the water. You'd have to use a sub 1 micron drinking water filter, and it would take a lot of them, like hundreds of dollars.
UV filters have no effect on clay. Clay is a mineral. UV only effects living things, algae, bacteria, Grandma, etc... The number of gallons in the pond also has no effect on clay settling. Depth has an indirect effect if seeing the bottom is the goal.
Your poultry fence filter is for the ammonia conversion cycle and will not remove clay. Some may settle in the drum like the batting but no more than anywhere else.
If you dip the glass into the pond it will also appear clear. There's no difference in the water coming out of the falls and the water in the pond as far as clay goes.
Muddy water is kind of normal in new ponds. A lot of dirt tracked into the pond during the build, on rocks, etc... If this mud did run into the pond from rain, heavy or not, that issue would have to be corrected first before any clearing can take place long term.
So at start up a pond it is filled a bit, washed down, and the muddy water pumped out. That is repeated until basically clear. If you want fast results this is the only method that works no matter where the mud came from.
Or you can wait and see what happens. Maybe it will settle enough for your taste. Goldfish and Koi will actually like the clay better than clear but generally they don't get a vote.
Clay is way too fine to filter with quilt batting. Some will of course settle in the batting and anything else but it won't clear the water. You'd have to use a sub 1 micron drinking water filter, and it would take a lot of them, like hundreds of dollars.
UV filters have no effect on clay. Clay is a mineral. UV only effects living things, algae, bacteria, Grandma, etc... The number of gallons in the pond also has no effect on clay settling. Depth has an indirect effect if seeing the bottom is the goal.
Your poultry fence filter is for the ammonia conversion cycle and will not remove clay. Some may settle in the drum like the batting but no more than anywhere else.
If you dip the glass into the pond it will also appear clear. There's no difference in the water coming out of the falls and the water in the pond as far as clay goes.
Muddy water is kind of normal in new ponds. A lot of dirt tracked into the pond during the build, on rocks, etc... If this mud did run into the pond from rain, heavy or not, that issue would have to be corrected first before any clearing can take place long term.
So at start up a pond it is filled a bit, washed down, and the muddy water pumped out. That is repeated until basically clear. If you want fast results this is the only method that works no matter where the mud came from.
Or you can wait and see what happens. Maybe it will settle enough for your taste. Goldfish and Koi will actually like the clay better than clear but generally they don't get a vote.
koidaddy
karps house of koi
Listen to what Dr Dave says. Make yourself some kind of fines filter that runs periodically to clear them.
Here is one! My water is a brownish color. Stuff is settling on the liner, and appears to have a greenish tint to it. I don't remember with a new liner (as if has been 5 years) if this is normal. Am I growing the green stuff that goes on your liner, or could this be something else? Inside all of my pumps and filters I bought these filter strips for heat registers, so it is fine filtered. The stuff that comes out appears to be brown. I have also been mopping, yes mopping, my pond to break this up so that my filters can pick this stuff up. I will get a pic and post later.
If your water is tinted, then activated charcoal can be used to clear it up. That said, if it is silt, like Waterbug said, you will need a very fine filter to remove it.
That is why I bought those register filters. It is so coldy brown looking, I can't even see my fishies 
What is getting me is that, when I rub it off with my hand, it is greenish looking, but in the filters it is brown.I am scrubbing it and using, in essence, a furnace filter in all of my filters on top of the ones I have. I am thionking of the active charcoal, but ho would you contain it? Put it in a little filter bag or something?
What is getting me is that, when I rub it off with my hand, it is greenish looking, but in the filters it is brown.I am scrubbing it and using, in essence, a furnace filter in all of my filters on top of the ones I have. I am thionking of the active charcoal, but ho would you contain it? Put it in a little filter bag or something?
Put it in a nylon sock and place it where water is flowing.
Furnace filters in the water filtering world would be considered extremely coarse.
Generally when someone says brown water the first guess is tannin, like tea. But it is pretty much impossible to guess from a description because some people will call muddy water brown or even algae. And it is impossible to explain all the different things and almost always it is a combination of items. There are different methods to reduce each of these items so unfortunately, if you just kind of guess you kind spend a lot of time and money and only be frustrated. Worst, you'll never want to use that filter method again even though it could work on a different thing.
The best way to learn what you have is to talk to anyone locally who can see your water, even a photo isn't good enough, or you can see their pond and start learning what all the possible things are. You can also create experiments and add local materials to a jar of water and see the effect of the known cause. For example tannins can come from some leaves and bark. Mixing your soil in water will tell you the color.
You can also set up a small tank and filter and test to see if the water is cleared. For example the cost for the activated charcoal needed to clear 10 gals of water is much less than 1500. You do have to be careful when checking clarity to look through as much water as you can. Something like a yard ale glass works great. And compare it side by side to water from the pond. A glass of water from even a cloudy pond will look clear so this is kind of important.
When you say brown and then green and you can feel it in your hand that sounds like a macro algae, some people call it slime and other things. Spring would be a time for that to grow but not really common. But that would be unrelated to cloudy water. Could be a combination of things or I just didn't understand the description or guessed wrong.
People can give you different ideas on things to research but really a person has to be on site to make a good guess.
In general I would say ponds go through more changes and faster changes in the spring than any other time. Could be in a couple weeks you'll have different issues and the current will be gone by doing nothing. So that is something else to consider.
Generally when someone says brown water the first guess is tannin, like tea. But it is pretty much impossible to guess from a description because some people will call muddy water brown or even algae. And it is impossible to explain all the different things and almost always it is a combination of items. There are different methods to reduce each of these items so unfortunately, if you just kind of guess you kind spend a lot of time and money and only be frustrated. Worst, you'll never want to use that filter method again even though it could work on a different thing.
The best way to learn what you have is to talk to anyone locally who can see your water, even a photo isn't good enough, or you can see their pond and start learning what all the possible things are. You can also create experiments and add local materials to a jar of water and see the effect of the known cause. For example tannins can come from some leaves and bark. Mixing your soil in water will tell you the color.
You can also set up a small tank and filter and test to see if the water is cleared. For example the cost for the activated charcoal needed to clear 10 gals of water is much less than 1500. You do have to be careful when checking clarity to look through as much water as you can. Something like a yard ale glass works great. And compare it side by side to water from the pond. A glass of water from even a cloudy pond will look clear so this is kind of important.
When you say brown and then green and you can feel it in your hand that sounds like a macro algae, some people call it slime and other things. Spring would be a time for that to grow but not really common. But that would be unrelated to cloudy water. Could be a combination of things or I just didn't understand the description or guessed wrong.
People can give you different ideas on things to research but really a person has to be on site to make a good guess.
In general I would say ponds go through more changes and faster changes in the spring than any other time. Could be in a couple weeks you'll have different issues and the current will be gone by doing nothing. So that is something else to consider.
Thanks. Will try
I have only had my pond since 4-2011. Im having the same problem as you were describing. Did you find anything to fix it? If so what was it? Fish seem to be happy, just cant see them unless they surface. Any help is greatly appreciated.
Welcome to the Forum!
Please post a better location in your user CP and make an Introduction on the proper thread.
Please post a better location in your user CP and make an Introduction on the proper thread.
years ago I made a filter out of an orange grove tub using several different layers of different size rocks. the water ran thru the rocks and then into the pond, and I also had a line of water running into a plant bog. My pond was clear. The second pond I made I tried to remember how I did the rocks and guess got it wrong because my pond is always green about 5 yrs now. Does anyone know what I am talking about and what did I do wrong? Also first pond NEVER cleaned rocks but second pond clean the rocks every 2-3 weeks.