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Ponds & Aquatic Plants

Yard Flooded, pond cloudy

16 years ago

I am hoping you can help. About two weeks ago we received a significant amount of rain in our area. The neighborÂs retaining wall collapsed and our property was flooded. I have a new (last year) 22,000 gallon pond. With all the rain we got, and the absence of the retaining wall, our yard flooded and a lot of muddy water got into my pond. I think the fish are OK, but the water is still really cloudy. I asked the guy at the local pond store what to do, one said to wait it out, it will eventually settle, then I can vacuum. The other said to add some sort of chemical that will cause all the particles to clump together,

I do not have a bottom drain, and I have turned the filter/falls back on to circulate.

I am considering a partial drain and water change. It has been two weeks and it has only cleared a bit. Any suggestions

Comments (5)

always_outside
16 years ago
Hi indycat:
Sorry to hear about your pond situation. My pond is only 1,000 gallons and I had a major blowup with my sprinkler system irrigation. It burst underground - right next to my new pond - and it leaked water into my pond and created a big flooded mess. This went on overnight and I had no idea it was even happening until I woke up the next morning to see my entire backyard flooded! Thankfully, I was able to get it fixed within a few days. At 1,000 gallons, it took 4 - 5 days to clear up where I could finally see the fish and bottom again. Since your pond is so large, it might take up to a month to clear up. It WILL eventually settle - just give it some time. After mine settled completely, I did partial water changes (20%) about every week with a wet/dry vacuum and it eventually got rid of all the mud at the bottom of the pond. You could probably start doing partial water changes now to get a jumpstart. I just waited it out until I could see that all my pondlife was ok. Good luck.
mgeca
16 years ago
I think koi clay sprinkled around causes the siltation to clump and sink. It is very fine and doesn't add any volume to the material you have. Works great. Maybe someone can confirm this fuzzy memory?
Mike
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"Can you dig drain trenches towards the pond? " No. Here's the situation. Our lot is 4 acres. We have a creek going through our property. Back in the 30's someone put in a dam and created a pond. We bought the house a little under 2 years ago. It's the pond that's overflowing into the yard. The water is flowing across the low spot in the yard, where the veggie garden is, and the down into a wetland area that's also on our property. There is too much water flow to try to pump it anywhere. Aside from the garden, the real problem is all the erosion that has occurred around the dam from this flood and the one this spring. There is a cute little covered bridge on top of the dam. The concrete dam walls are slowly shifting and taking the bridge with it. Fixing this mess is going to cost a ton of money. I think the only viable option is to remove the dam and let it return to a creek like it naturally would be. I'll be sad to lose the pond though, and our street is named after it! Dogwood, I don't know about transplanting. The tomatoes are about 3-4 feet tall. There about 25 plants. I really don't have another space I can prepare right now. The water on the lawn has receded some, though there is still water flowing through the garden. We'll see what it looks like tomorrow. I hope there won't be any more floods this year. I am thinking of converting the whole garden to raised beds for next year.
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All I can tell you is that the particular sort of bio-media you are using has nothing to do with what type, or how much algae you have growing in your pond (ponds?). But I would imagine after 32 year of ponding experience, having 14 ponds at a time, and raising expensive imported koi, you would already know that.
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There's no guarantee about what will happen this fall. Don't believe everything you hear. Supposedly there is more rain during fall when El Nino is in force. The flooding part of it is just pure speculation. As far as I'm concerned the same weather technology that can't seem to reliably forecast the weather 3 days from now certainly can't tell us that much about weather this fall. Hopefully we will at least return to a normal rainfall pattern. A bit more than that would be nice. The aquifers and lakes need filling, so I'll just hope for the best. San Antonio and a lot of certain Hill Country areas are known for flash-floods, the most dangerous kind of flooding. People should find out where the worst floods usually occur and avoid those areas. And then keep in mind that it can on rare occasion happen even in the safest areas. I have held off on planting to some extent after the spring rains stopped. I'm just trying to be cautious and wait until all the heat is over and enough rain happens to be hopeful. We haven't seen any rain other than extremely tiny amounts for quite some time. I long for rain, dream about rain, I get down about not getting it...but 2002? People died...some lost homes or survived really nightmarish flooding. Not something I'd ever want to see happen again.
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Thanks yes we have another smaller pond directly behind our yard and a large pond made when they built our development for this reason I believe. I am not sure how to go about getting approval for the drainage to go directly to that pond..I just got off the phone with a guy who is possibly going to give us some fill for free!! the pumping/draining will need to be figured out. I have seen trucks come and pump flooded parking lots at the school I used to work at and they take it away. What type of company would do something like that?
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tigerfern
16 years ago
The chemical is a flocculant. It does exactly what the guy told you. You put it into your pond, and it will cause the microscopic particles to clump together and sink to the bottom.
indycat
Original Author
16 years ago
Thanks for the responses. I do have some Koi clay, can anyone confirm that this will help the situation? I may be able to add some this weekend
indycat
Original Author
16 years ago
Ok I added some Koi clay a few days and did not notice any difference. Today I am doing a partial water change, if that doesn't yeild some progress, I'll get some of the clumping chemical, as a last resort

Other suggestions are welcome, we do have someone coming tomorrow to reroute future water on our property, regardless of what the neighbors do with their retaining wall

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