Your murky water is most likely caused by dirt and other tiny particles in your water. A filter should remove it. Charcoal removes chemicals from the water. Products like Microbe lift add living bacteria to the water. The bacteria eats unwanted things and helps balance the pond. Bacteria should exist naturally in an established pond. A biofilter provides a growing surface for bacteria to grow and exposes pond water to the bacteria when its pumped through the filter container.

I apologize for the length of this post in advance. As has been mentioned above your high pH is most likely the result of the algae bloom that you are experiencing. Typically -again, as inferred above - algae consume carbon dioxide during the day causing the pH to increase and produce carbon dioxide (along with the bacteria and other things in your pond) during the night lowering the pH in some cases as much as 1.5 pH units (a factor of over 30x the hydrogen ion concentration!). Where I live we have to shut down the biofilters during the winter and essentially start the pond and filter up each spring. When this begins I will typically get a bit of suspended algae then a fair amount of stringy, slimy algae. Yet when I turn on the pumps (I usually wait until the water temp is above 45 or so since the biofilter and associated nitrifiers wont do much of anything below that temperature) the floating, stringy algae as well as the suspended algae are essentially gone within 72 hours. Even the algae on many of the rocks is either absent or drastically reduced. I try to use and do things that fall under the category of "do no harm". I have barley straw in the waterfall housing - not that I particularly believe that barley straw works just that at moderate application rates it doesnt appear to harm anything. Click here for article about barley straw I add salt to get the salinity level (not the same as measuring the sodium concentration) up to about 0.05%-0.1%. I do this because there are some non-scientific reports indicating that salt will suppress string algae growth. More importantly I do this to increase slime coat production of the fish until their immune systems can catch up with the other "bugs" in the pond - typically above about 55 degrees or so. If necessary I will add hydrogen peroxide to the tune of 1-2 pints per 1000 gallons (some folks add hydrogen peroxide at the rate of 1-2 pints per 100 gallons - using 3% store stuff). Both salt and hydrogen peroxide are, again, fairly benign in that all of the plants, frogs, toads, fish, etc. tolerate relatively wide variations in dose regardless of temperature and other factors. So if you dont know the exact pond volume or you happen to spill a bit too much...not a problem. Again, this fits in with "do no harm". Click here for Excel spreadsheet to calculate hydrogen peroxide doses -see bottom tab on spreadsheet In addition to all of this I will sometimes add daphnia once the water temperature hits 65 or above. These are highly efficient algae eating bugs, fish eat them, some fish fanciers actually grow them to feed them to their fish. The following is a web article, non-scientific publication on daphnia for algae control. Click here for web article on use of daphnia for algae control The other thing I do is add sodium bicarbonate to provide alkalinity and protect the pond from the potential of a pH crash. And it is at this point I wanted to clarify what alkalinity is and is not doing for you. You may just wish to skip what follows. If not, then you may want to open the jpeg graph/image in another window. If, after this, you wish more information please drop me an e-mail and I can explain the chemistry in much more detail or alternatively send me your phone number (if you are in North America!) and Im willing to call and chat with you, if you would like. Please dont ask me to call you just so you can give me a hard time I have others who are willing to do that for you! :-)) Alkalinity in our ponds is predominately the result of the bicarbonate ion. There are many other potential buffering systems out there but this is the only one of any significance in a natural system. The red line in the diagram represents what happens as you add your KH solution to your vial you start at some beginning pH (in this diagram Ive started at ~8.3 where the blue line passes through the red line) and as you add drop by drop the pH in the vial changes until you get a color change. This occurs at a pH of approximately 4.5. You calculate your alkalinity by counting the drops and then multiplying by 17.9 (the conversion factor to convert to ppm). Essentially what you have done is measured the amount of acid added to the vial - the horizontal distance from the vertical, blue line to where the pH changes to 4.5. So what? Notice that there are regions in the curve, where if you could record the actual pH as you added the drops, that the pH doesnt change too much - indicated by those ovals around pH 6.3 and 10.3. These are the points of maximum buffering intensity. Also notice that the pH drops fairly dramatically in the pH ranges of 8.3 (very important!) as well as around 4.5. These steep, vertical regions are ranges where there is minimal buffering of pH swings. In the pond described above the pH is as high as 9.5 (just visually move the blue line to the left a bit). When you add sodium bicarbonate it will not drop the pH much, but more importantly it cannot protect your pond very well from pH swings in the pH 7.7 to 8.7 region. Adding sodium bicarbonate will move the whole red line to the right (adds alkalinity) but you will still have this same region permitting pH swings to occur. Please do not think that I am saying not to add sodium bicarb (good, old Arm & Hammer). But to really control the pH swings you need to go after the algae. You need alkalinity in your pond to eliminate or protect against a pH crash. Again I apologize for this long post. Hope it is of some help. David

I built a 500ish gallon pond this past spring. Had the same grayish water in the beginning-partially due to heavy rain splashing in dirt (mulch or gravel will stop that.) Combination of settling and mechanical filtering with a mini skippy filter stuffed with polyester pillow stuffing cleared the water in less than a week. I then used a shop vac with bristle fitting to get the dirt off the bottom. The pond looked good for about a week until warming temps set off an algal bloom turning the water to pea soup. I stopped feeding the 5 goldfish, got more plants both in pond and in skippy, washed the polyester stuffing again, and waited. Couple of weeks later, my water was crystal clear-most of the clearing occuring in the last few days. I didn't add any chemicals (not even barley straw) because I found in my indoor aquarium they were tricky to use and could even complicate problems. I did monitor the pond's pH-keeping it around 7.2-7.4. Algae seem to outcompete plants at higher pHs. I'm lucky that I can access my acidic well water before and after softening and can adjust pH by mixing the two water sources. Pond water continues to be clear and fish are healthy.

I think you are doing all you can - soak deeply to dilute and flush the chemical down into the soil lower than the root zones of your plants. Cross your fingers - and let us know how it turns out.