Silty sediment throughout pond

[AnthonyT]

I have a 4 year old, well established 3,000 gal pond(See photo). All natural, no chems ever and normally have a uv light but the bulb burnt out this winter and i never replaced it cause the water has been crystal clear. The Ph has been perfect(7-7.5) and the fish, frogs, snails seem to be doing well.
Issue is late last year and again starting a few weeks ago, is that I have a fine silty sediment along the bottom of my upper two waterfalls and the silt collects around the roots of my water plants and on the horizontal surfaces of some rocks.
Also, not sure if its related, I get these green "mats" of algae(see photo) growing along the upper two water falls, and along the edges and hanging down the falls. These "mats" are loaded with the silty stuff. If i pick up one of these mats clouds of silt drift away into the pond. It isnt string algae, I have had that in the past(thank God that's cleared up) but not sure if its a good thing, bad thing or what.
Anybody have any experience like this??
One last thing-I have little worms living in the mats and in the silt.(see photo)
I never was able to upload photos this simply before, hope they work.
Thanks
Anthony

 

[stroppy]

the worms are fine probably midge larva or something ... what you call mats looks like string algae or also known as blanket weed that you can just pull out if it gets too bad how often do you clean your filters ... looks like a build up of sludge like stuff thats not making it too your pump, maybe a bit more water movement would get it out of there, i used an air pump with a couple of air stones that helped move the water more ... lovely pond

 

[j.w]

Beautiful pond! Looks like string algae to me. You can use Barley straw or clay kitty litter. I use both in my pond. Check out this link from the net on it:

http://www.gardenban...ring-algae.html

 

[addy1]

That looks like the mat algae I had growing at the base of my arizona waterfall. I usually just left it unless it got to be too much. It helped filter the water. It was a very pretty green in brown arizona lol.

your pond is very pretty, looks great.

 

[taherrmann4]

Nice looking pond, and great waterfall. I get the same string algae on my waterfalls, if it gets too bad I just pull it out.

 

[addy1]

ok ok ok I give (still think it looks like mat algae) but will go with you two STRING! lol

 

[whiskey]

hi guys ....whos stringing who .....here.

 

[DrCase]

The silt is settling in the dead spots
With a little well placed current you can send it to the pump

 

[j.w]

I think mat and string are the same aren't they? Just the string stuff all matted up..............anybody?

 

[addy1]

I got this stuff that was clumped solid green algae, no stringy ness to it. When I pulled it off it looked like the picture above. I called it mat algae, it looked like a mat.

 

[taherrmann4]

Maybe it starts out as string and as it grows it becomes a mat. Much like a piece of thread becomes a blanket when it is sewn together???

 

[addy1]

nah the stuff I had was a totally different look then string, actually pretty. Think clumped, bumpy surface.

 

[adavisus]

The little worm looks rather more like a leech, the sort of thing that can hop in on the back of a duck, turtle or frog from a local bog

Silts and sediments are by and large benign, though they might in volume mask decaying stuff that might cause water quality problems under Winter ice

Regards, andy
http://www.flickr.com/photos/21940871@N06/
http://swglist.wordpress.com/

 

[AnthonyT]

All,
Thanks for the experienced responses and nice comments on my pond. Addy1, I think i need to go with your description of this being mat algae. It really is a totally different structural composition than string algae. Someone said it is actually beautiful, and i agree. I don't mind manually removing it a few times in the summer, my bigger concern was the silty sediment that it was filtering.

So here is my next question but first a description of my pond: I have a pondmaster 5000 skimmer box on the shallow end with only a large holed removable catch basin as a filter. When designing, i figured i only needed it to catch leaves, twigs, sometimes fish, etc and it returns about 6"below the surface on the deep end and gives good circular motion to the water and the surface clear of debris.

Then I also have a bottom drain and that leads up and out to an external pump that has a filter basket in the prime pot to catch debris from entering pump. Then the water goes to an Emperor Bio Pro 6,000 g biological filter and then up to the top weir and down the two falls. Clear water and good Ph.

Ao you think I should have designed a pre filter to catch the sediment?
B:Would the UV light help with the sediment issue?
C:if you answered yes to the first question how would I retrofit another filter into my design?
D:should I forget all this nonsense and live with some sediment and stop looking for perfection?

Thanks guys, looking forward to your thoughts!
Anthony

 

[addy1]

the uv light does not take care of sediment, just algae

You could put in a settlement tank to help remove the sediment, or just a filter with quilt batting, ac mats, to catch the fine stuff. Or even a bag of quilt batting to catch the stuff in the water flow, stream, water fall etc.

A pond vac would take care of the sediment, if you want to go that way, every now and then just vac it out.