Sitting here going thru old pond posts and ran across this one. Wondering if you ever came up with a plan for your Florida pond. I live in IL but have a vacation home in south Florida on the Gulf side. The house was purchased pre=foreclosure in 2007 for use as a vacation home. Like your house, it was a mess, covered in weeds and filled with junk. It also has a pond in the backyard that was icky. One of the first things we did after closing was drain the pond so we knew what was living in it. It's not a big pond - about 12' x 6' oval shaped and 24" at deepest point and also made of concrete painted sky blue. Lots of leaves, pine needles and tadpoles plus a few mosquito fish which I scooped out and saved. After refilling I put in a pond pump and the tads and fish. We were there for 4 weeks that time before we returned to IL. The pump was removed from the pond before we left FL. Next time we went down, put the pump back in and netted out what debris was in there but water was back to icky. What I did was find water hyacinth plants - can import them to FL and they are not sold in the stores near me. So I found a local guy who had some in his pond. He gave me about 12 large plants for free since he had an overabundance in his pond and was tossing them in his burn pile. It's been over 2 years since I added the hyacinths and pond remains clear even without the pump going. Only filtration is the hyacinths. Pond life is abundant. Neighbor tells me she can hear the toads at night. We only go down to the house a few times a year so when we put the pump with a bubble spray in while we're there, it's only for the sound of the water bubbling. Hyacinths are all over Florida in ponds, swamps, creeks, etc. If you're willing to harvest some yourself, you can get them for free. I would get emough to cover 1/4 of the surface because they will multiply like crazy. When we visit our house, the whole surface is covered so we have to pull out at least half of them and burn them. Hope that helps.

Your "moss" is almost certainly string algae. String algae is found to some degree in almost all ponds. Most ponders cope with it by putting some sort of a filter on the inlet of the pump so the algae doesn't get sucked directly into the pump. This can be a pretty coarse filter, since its only function is to collect the big pieces of algae. It can even be a bucket full of cinders, or gravel, but make sure the gravel doesn't get sucked into the pump. There are some small foam filters that would work, but they would have to be cleaned occasionally. You could even wrap a piece of screen around a small crate.

Dragonfly Larvae will eat smaller fish. Goldfish and Koi are susceptible when young, but get their revenge as adults. I've seen goldfish devour larvae during my spring cleanings. I think Larry is correct about your guppies. Kind of a no win scenario. Add some goldfish and you would no longer see much larvae, but the goldfish would eat the guppies. Dragonflies do eat mosquitoes. They also eat pollinating insects such as bees. Nature requires a balance. The YouTube video below demonstrates what what can happen to small fish. Here is a link that might be useful: Larvae Attack

I'm on my third year of a variation of Gatormom's method and I get great results and save my back all that digging. I actually trim everything in the yard in the last few weeks of August and throw all the trimmings in the area where the veggie garden will be, even big limbs. At that point in the season, it's already got really great grass - better than anywhere else in my yard I'm afraid. I also cycle my composters, spreading the summer's compost all over the bed. I don't even bother to mow down the grass, because I'm about to kill it anyway and I'm going to use the bags of mulch to squish it down. When I buy mulch, I leave the bags on top of all the trimmings and compost for a week. I do this in one-week cycles, buying seven bags of mulch, leaving them there for a week, buying seven more, then using the first seven to prep a portion of the bed. I do this to squish down stuff that otherwise would stick up and let in enough space to let in weeds and such. I spread newspapers under the mulch each time I spread it. I've used cardboard too, but found it actually broke down too quickly compared to newspapers. I know others here have had really different experiences with cardboard versus newspapers, but for me newspapers work best. I lay them pretty thick. (And if you're at all worried, six months after I've put down newspapers, I can't find them anymore. They decompose completely. Same is true for cardboard, but I find they get weedy faster than newspaper does.) In a few weeks with this system, I've got a giant prepared bed for veggies, full of organic stuff, nicely mulched, ready for the baby plants to go in the ground. And that bed is getting better and better each year. As the winter goes on, I also add more compost, so that keeps improving it. This is just about the least work I can think of for my yard - I don't haul the clippings out to the street, just over to the veggie bed and I don't dig up everything. Laying the newspaper under the mulch isn't as easy as just spreading mulch, but it works so much better it's worth the work. And using the bags of mulch to squish down the organic stuff so it doesn't poke through the paper and mulch saves having to cut it up into smaller pieces, plus, being stuck under plastic bags for a week starts the decomposition process nicely. Susannah