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Ponds & Aquatic Plants

Dirty pond + snails?

15 years ago

Hello,

I've got a friend who consulted me to help clean her pond. The bottom of the pond was full of leaf litter from a nearby oak. After removing the leaves from both the pond and the circulatory stream/waterfall along with some algae all the sediment it kicked up has now settled everywhere on the stones and this along with some residual algae on the stones is making the pond look filthy.

My question is what is the best natural method to clean a pond of this problem as thoroughly as possible? One problem may be that there is a limited ecosystem. Remain calm... but in the past she had run bleach through the pond to keep it clean of algae, as a result there are only a few frogs in there perhaps only surviving as the bleach is slowly filtered out. I quickly scolded her for her actions and it wont be a method used in the future.

This leads me to question 2. I noticed for the first time yesterday that there are hundreds upon hundreds of tiny snails lining the surface stones. Perhaps its that I never noticed but it appears to be a recent development. My initial thought is that this is a healthy development but the number and likely haste with which they appeared makes me concerned it could be an invasion. Any thoughts or action required?

Thank you.

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Comments (2)

aquawise
15 years ago
Is there any kind of filtration system? This would help clean up the sediment along with a good dose of Microblift basic beneficial bacteria to break down and digest all that gunk. Snails are a good sign that things are not all bad. A closed system need three thing to be healthy, Aeration, Filtration and circulation.
natural-sens
Original Author
15 years ago
Yeah it has filtration and circulation (recirculates back to top of a 80' stream). After I cleaned the stream I think de-clogging some areas of debris has increased the flow and thus reduced the water level of the stream. This has caused a smaller water fall and Im thinking it may be wise to dam the waterfall area a bit to get a higher fall and thus more aeration (along with a higher water level throughout the stream).

Is the microblift bacteria available at most landscape centres? Thanks for the help and while were at it- I want to promote an ecosystem and there are already some frogs, the snails and geckos hanging around. What should I add, both plants and animals to encourage a healthy ecosystem to develop. Its zone 7 and has a 100% rocky bottom and banks.

Thank you.
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Years ago I added many hardy Japanese trapdoor snails and Black Ramshorn snails. Did that for a couple of years. The next year? Nothing, nada, nyet. No evidence of the snails I'd added. However, now have lots of the little snails with the small, brown shells but nothing that appears related to what I added. Something about "build it and they will come" comes to mind. When I find these snails out and about I toss them into the pond...the fish like them; they must have a thing for escargot - minus the butter and the garlic! LOL! So I suspect you'll have plenty of snails contributed by Mother Nature soon enough. ---David
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Thanks I knew some of you would know about snails lol. I will check into those two kinds of snails. The Trapdoors sound interesting... That's funny that the fish jump out of the water to eat thier eggs :D I saw some snails that were called Ramshorn or something like that. They had a pretty shell but I don't know if they would eat the plants either. I have no clue what kind we had -they didn't get golf ball size, maybe small marble size. They would get ahold of the little baby fish (fry's?) tail and then just slowly eat them. The fish weren't dead either, because we would see them wiggling trying to get away. There was plenty of algae but they were just evil I guess lol.
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