I have been ponding for a long time, and here is my 2 cents. :)

This is a goldfish pond and your current fish load is not that great. Plan to reduce the fish in later years as they will reproduce.

The brown muck is organic debris that mostly is from debris blown in and dropped in the pond. A skimmer would reduce this, but so will vacuuming. The problem is that the pond is bare and the water is still. So your attention is drawn to the muck even though it is not a lot of debris.

Possible solutions include placing the waterfall more in the middle, or tweaking the waterfalls to increase flow or to make the water return push the surface water and create more ripples.

I don't recommend the fishmate pressure filters for what you have. I have one in my shed. Gravity flow DIY filters have been the most reliable filters in my experience. That plus a clean pond bottom- but I don't mean spotless.

Include floating planters, floating plants to increase interest. More lilies and or a lotus in the middle.

Lots of evergreen creepers will definately change the whole look of the pond and waterfalls. So will adding plants or water currents. You won't focus on a perfectly clean pond when the eyes are interested in the plants and such.

Hope this advice helps.

Lisa

Hummmm. I have no idea why I am the first one to respond to this post. That does not look like brown muck. It looks like garden variety (excuse the pun)mud. Have you had any rain since the water was put in the pond? I can't see the edges very well but it looks to me like the edge of the pond is not above the surrounding grade. If that is so there will be dirt washed into the pond every time it rains.
Did anyone mention head, lift or pump capacity to you when they were selling you the mechanicals? If we take an average gallon capacity of your pond, make that 2,500 gallons, you would need a pump or combination of pumps that would produce an output of at least 3,750 gallons before you consider lift or head. Your pumps are only rated at 1400 combined. That would make them seriously under powered if the normal rate would be 1 1/2 times the gallonage of the pond. I will let the guys talk about lift or head. They are much better at it than I am. It sounds like the filters are quite adequate but they do need to be flushed or they will wind up trying to pump mud.
You don't mention where the mechanicals are located. My guess would be behind that screen and under the deck. We could use some idea of what is behind there. I wish I had that kind of hiding place but our city lot is flat as the floodplain it rests on.
I don't think I am too thrilled about the fountain function of the Laguna 2000. If your pond is muddy the water coming out of the fountain would be muddy too. It would be inconvenient to get to the pump in the middle of your pond if it had any problems. Of course you are going to get rid of all the mud so that might not matter at all. Sandy

Oops. Sorry about that, Goodkarma. I had that message box onscreen much longer than I realized. Sandy

Sandy & Lisa, thanks for the replies. First, Sandy, the brown stuff is muck not mud. Drainage from the yard and around the house all drains away from the pond and we've had very hard torrential rains since putting it in and mud isn't a problem (thankfully). This stuff, for lack of a better description, looks almost puffy when viewed up close, it's definitely organic. I think a lot of it is the pine straw (hate that too). After doing a bit of reading, I've decided it's probably dying algae, there is a fair amount of string algae coating the sides but I thought that was part of the natural cycle of a pond albeit as Lisa points out, it needs more vegitation.

Lisa, I agree there is a lot of open surface area there. At present the lilies have started to come on but when I first put them in what I read said put the crown 6-8" under the water so that's where they are and the pads are small and they don't seem to be growing very fast. I think this weekend I will change that and put them all the way on the bottom, 18". The real question is what I do to it to make it right from a mechanical standpoint. We've discussed making it deeper, putting in a skimmer and biofalls filter and of course the more you read the more options you seem to come up with. It's sounding like that may be the best option in the long run. The trick is having a plan for what to buy and execute before doing it so that may be a couple months out. So maybe I need to take a different approach and look at the short term adding some plants.

I also considered just buying larger pumps from Lowes to increase the flow as a temporary solution to control the problem (I've other stuff they could be used for later on), but the current filters say that while rated for 1600 gallons they're only 700gph. I'm assuming this is the UV flow and pushing it more than that would cut down on the effectiveness of the UV, is that really an issue though (short term anyway). Is sure seems to me like it needs more particle filtering.

As to plants, got any suggestions more on numbers to start with & types?

Thanks a bunch

Hey Crazy4bass,

I'm also located in NC, Raleigh to be exact. Where are you located? The reason I ask is that we have a GREAT aquatic plant expert to the south of Raleigh/Garner off Hwy. 42 with tons of knowledge and lots of different healthy water plants to choose from. He was a NC State Aquaculture professor of some sort for years and has a wealth of knowledge and advice on ponding to share. There is also a Water Garden/Koi club in Raleigh who have lots of good advice to share although most of these people are into big ponds with show koi, not goldfish ponds or water gardening. I myself have a smaller, shallower pond and have found that I enjoy the aquatic gardening aspect of ponding as well as the keeping of fish.

The first thing I would try is to add some anacharis to your pond. It is a submersible aquatic plant that does a great job of filtering the water. I buy pots of it from the water garden guy (I have ten pots for a pond with about 1700 gallons at most. Another good filtering plant is water hyacinth which is a floating plant. Just buy 2-3 pieces of water hyacinth, however, as it will grow like mad in NC and you will be culling it out on a weekly basis before long! These will also oxygenate your pond. Frank Schwarz, the water garden expert I referred to above, suggests 65% plant coverage for the surface of your pond, no more and not much less. You can achieve this with the water hyacinths and your lilies as they fill out this summer. Other plants I've had great luck with include thalia and something else that looks like flowering wild onions which I have in pots in my pond. What kind of sun exposure do you get on your pond? What is the maximum depth? Do you have a bottom drain?

I reread your post and see that you answered the depth question in your original post so please ignore that question. Are you performing weekly 10% water changes? Also, I would try to solve your problems with natural solutions (i.e. plants, filtration, and water changes) instead of adding chemicals to your pond and leave that as a very last resort. I had lots of trouble last spring with my new pond with a huge algae bloom but after my pond balanced itself, I had none of these issues this year.

Zoenipp,

I'm in Albemarle, not really close to Raliegh. Thanks for the plant advice, I'll have to find a nursery around here that handles this stuff, there's gotta be one. We did have a string algae bloom over the winer but I got most of that cleared up, but as I said there is a fine coating on the sides of the pond. Very similar to the green bloom you see right after setting it up the first time. I'll get some plants and get them in there, vacuum and flush it for now until I figure out exactly what I want to do with it regarding depth,filter, pump, etc. Thanks -james

If you have a blanket of algae growing on the sides of your pond, that is a GOOD thing and indicates healthy water for your fish and plants. Also, as your plants grow, they compete with the algae for nutrients and floating algae shouldn't be much of a concern (although string algae is always an issue in winter with dormants plants and cool water temps).

Crazy4bass,
I also had this problem when my pond was first set up. It was really irritating, and when fish swam by, the muck would rise and float around in the water like brown dust. It eventually went away after several water changes (about 10-15%) and adding some plants, bacteria, etc. I don't have this problem anymore and water is crystal clear w/o any of this sediment/muck. I think the key is to be patient and do partial water changes and stock up on plants for now. It will suddenly just disappear after your pond comes into balance with bacteria and all the other good stuff.