Just joined, 1/2 acre pond

[Steve Karlin]

I just joined the forum. We live in Wisconsin and bought a house 10 years ago with a 1/2 acre pond fro 5 to 18 feet deep in various places. It has no inlet or outlet, so we fill it with rainwater and snow melt primarily, and in dry times pump in water from our well. We run an aerator in two deep locations in the pond about 15 hours every day. This has been done historically as well. The pond originally had big algae problems as the 2-3/4 acre lot has LOTS of trees and the previous owner didn't keep the leaves picked up in the fall. The leaves blew in, decayed, fed the algae, and there you go.

We keep the leaves cleaned up, and over a period of 4 years the algae issue became a totally manageable, quaint issue, and the water cleared up in general to make fish viewing very easy, even from a distance.

The pond had 9 koi, plus blue gill and black bass. I say had because a severe winter in 2007-2008 killed all the fish. We replanted a bunch of koi and gold fish only last year.

I joined this forum to get advice on the following issue: Last spring after the big freeze, the water quality wa, as usual, very good and clear. About August, the water began holding minor silt particles suspended, which it is still doing. It never did that before. Fish are fine, but we can't see them well.

I took the PH level just on a lark. Well water in is about 7.3 due to the limestone formations underground here. The POND, however, tested at over 7.6. I have no historical data to compare it to, but thought maybe accumulated alkalinity over time may be allowing the suspension of the dirt particles.

Any water chemists out there with any ideas? Thanks a lot.

 

[newday3000]

Your PH is just about perfect so wouldn't worry about PH. PH has nothing to do with suspended dirt. Dirt will settle out over time. Clay will not. I have had clay suspension before and days of sitting water didn't make a difference. Water clearity products at pond stores at like a Coagulant to attach to the clay particles and making them heavy enough to fall out of suspension to the bottom of the pond.

I found these products only improved clarity by 10-15%, so I think they are a waste of money.

You will need the equivlant of a micron filter to take the suspended clay out of the water, it seems many people use quilt batting in a filter to take out suspended stuff. If the particles are too small (which clay suspension typically is), this may not work.

I would hook up to a pump an whole home water filter (cheap) and come with 1 - 30 micron changable cartridges, which you will need to change often if using 1 or 5 micron filters.

Here's a picture of my tank filter but it's easily hooked up inline to a pond pump which you will need if you don't filter this huge pond.

http://s559.photobucket.com/albums/ss34/newday3000/polishfilter/