cloudy pond

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Hello, I have a small pond used for fishing and swimming. It is about two years old, and is spring fed. It is still rather cloudy. I assumed it would have cleared up by now. It isn't a muddy look, it is more a murky silty look. The spring feed is a very slow trickle, so it isn't stirring things up on the bottom.

Any suggestions on fixing this problem? Thanks in advance for any help! Ed

-- Ed Daniels (deeps@mindspring.com), April 16, 2002

Answers

Can you see the cloudiness in a bucket of water? Say a white (ex- food) plastic bucket? If so, experiment. Get a small amount of cement (say about a teaspoonful), mix it to a very thin liquid slurry, then stir that into your bucket, and see if the water clears after 24 hours. Try the same thing with lime. Either of these will cause suspended super-fine clay particles to flocculate, and then they can settle. Try the same thing with nothing, just to make sure that any settling wouldn't have happened anyway.

Depends on what fish you have and how they feed too. Carp are notorious for muddying water. They troll along the bottom, sucking in whatever's there, straining out anything edible, and spitting out the leftover mud.

-- Don Armstrong (darmst@yahoo.com.au), April 16, 2002.


Ask your local AG Extention Agent. Will probably recommend copper sulfate.

-- Dennis Enyart (cowboy405@yahoo.com), April 18, 2002.

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