I just finished that job today. I picked up a small 35 gallon circular pre-molded pond from Home Depot. I've used this multiple times. Just remember to place a net over the top. I've had fish jump out. Craig

Okay, once I made my pond substantially larger last year I had the obligatory algae bloom and then Clear Clear water. That was until I had an early autumn here in the midwest and a maple tree filled my pond with leaves (prior to me netting the pond). Since that time I've only had tea-colored water (!!!), and it has confounded me! I've cleared the leaves from the pond long ago but I still have tea colored water, it is now almost June of the following year. The Professor has pointed out that a nearby mulched garden bed could be fouling my water. It's a long shot but maybe. I'm working on curing that now by introducing a larger rock-lined edge around the pond. But I'm interested in some things that Sandy has said in another post about anerobic bacteria / die off of good bacteria / sulphur smell and lack of oxygen. It has made me think of this above posting by Watershaper talking about flocculent (sp)-- I think I know what this (flocculent) is but I'll have to do more research-- and activated carbon, as well as oxygenation. My setup is a 2800 gal pond focusing on aquatic plants, I have about 8 large marginals, and 8 hardy water lilies. I have a large Savio skimmer and an Atlantic Bio-Falls. The plants in the bio-falls are starting to root now. The other plants are doing so-so; larger ones have gotten fertilized with Highland Rim tabs for the first time this spring ( I didn't do this last year), but smaller plants seem to struggle. Of my overall 2800 gals most of this is in the lower pool, where I have the water lilies. The depth is about 34 inches with several shelves. I have a wide but short height falls between the upper and lower pools, only about six inches of falls by 40 inches wide (weir). The upper pool is approximately 200 gals. This is where I've put most of the marginals, the depth is only about 18 inches (deepest) with about 12" the norm. I have everything in pots in sandy-clay soil with pebbles or sand tops. I have the bio-falls up stream from the upper pool and about a five foot quick descending stream between them. It is lined with rounded cobbles. I have been fighting string algae all winter and spring. Again, I've been fighting STRING ALGAE ALL WINTER & SPRING! While I've gotten a hold of it in the lower (larger) pool, the stuff is still forming anew in the upper pool around the plants and rocks of the stream... this is coming right off the bio-falls! I haven't been able to figure this out. Why would the water coming off the vegetative filtration be the most prone to develop the algae?! I'VE ADDED SOME HYDROGEN PEROXIDE TO THE MORE STILL WATERS AND IT SEEMS TO KILL THE ALGAE, AT LEAST IT CLUMPS AND I CAN SCOOP IT OUT IN A DAY OR TWO. But why would my bio-falls and stream bed coming off the falls be so prone to algae just when the vegetative filter is starting to really grow? This should be the exact opposite, should it not! :( Next, I actually have two pumps in my Savio skimmer basin. One I have going to the Bio-Falls and the other I have going to a pipe with cut out holes that discharges just under the weir of the bio-falls to create a rapids effect. Both pumps are Laguna 3500 gph (I would estimate a 12 foot head, so they what, discharge about like a 2800 gph pump). Okay, so that's the setup. A few fish, 12 to 15. Mainly Fancy Goldfish of medium size, less than four inches. I test the water chemistry almost weekly. Here it is, without fail: pH: 8.5 ( I no longer try adjusting pH down ) KH: 9.25 degrees or 166ppm ( I buffer with Baking Soda as needed) GH: 3 to 5 degrees Nitrite: Nitrate: (hard to read the scale but no more than this) CO2: (not sure if the chart the Tetra Pond Test Kit gives is good for ponds because it says for aquariums on the CO2 sheet, but given the pH and KH it would be 0.8mg/lf Water Temp.: fluctuating this spring between 64 F and 73 F. The above results were from yesterday (almost any day) at 73 F in the late afternoon. So... Okay, I've had the "rapids-creating pump" off for a few days just to save electricity dollars. But I turn it on today after a good 2 weeks off. I get a huge plum of fine muck like sediment discharged thru my rapids pipe and into my stream & upper pool and there is a very strong sulphur smell that lingers for about 4 or 5 minutes, it makes me think of Sandy's previous post about anerobic bacteria creating the smell and killing the beneficial bacteria. Would this account for why my bio-falls is not "eating-up" my excess nutrients that cause my string algae (occurring IN and close to the falls)??? I have a lot of fine sediment on the bottom of my pond. It is only about quarter of an inch deep sediment but it seems to be stirred-up quickly by any kind of movement. Is this causing my water to be tea-colored? It's so fine. If I move the net into the lily pool to remove string algae I get a cloud of fine, brown debris. I believe this is what my second pump, when I turned it on for the rapids, sucked up the pipe to the cloud and stink-up (sulphur) my stream bed. So Watershaper says use a flocculent. I haven't goggled "flocculant" yet but I imagine it is something to bind particulate together. Okay. Might work. He also says add "activated carbon" which I believe is a form of charcoal. Where do you get this? I mean besides the pond store that sells it like gold? What else am I missing? Professor? Oh I know, I want to ask about Oxygen that's dispersed in the water. I believe the pond gets an oxygen boost from three sources in my pools. First I have the falls from the vegetative bio-filter, this is the Atlantic Bio-Falls; then I get oxygen (I think) from the rapids of the steep stream; then, I believe I get oxygen from the 6 inch falls located between the small upper pool and lily pond pool. My question is this: how does oxygen travel in a larger pool of water? If my lower pool is roughly 2400 gal. and all of the turbulence is on the west side, is the far east side of that lower pool being oxygentated? I wonder. Sandy indicated that she cleared water by adding a bubbler to smaller pools. Can it be that with one or two 2800 to 3500 gph pumps in this roughly 3000 gal pond that I'm still not getting enough oxygen to make things balance??? What you say?

I have a 14 x 12 x 3' deep pond that has river rocks in the bottom. We live in the woods and net the pond each August to keep most of the leaves out. Some still get in and get trapped between the rocks. My pond is full of bull frogs, I also have fish and my fish breed and those babies are tiny, I have given up on draining and cleaning that way. I purchased a product that breaks up the organic matter and either use my pond vac or just stir up the water so that the filter can do it's job. My pond vac has a mesh sock that you put over the nozzle to prevent gravel, baby fish, tadpoles or snails from being sucked up into it. Also a heavy plant load in the pond can really help with the excess nutrients that cause the algae blooms.

I do use a product that removes sludge from the bottom of the pond. It appears to have worked well. It is called Natural Pond cleaner, which puts back good bacteria when applied. The sellers of these products depend on users seeing an improvement. But of course there's no actual way to tell by looking. If the pond is doing well owners attribute the goodness to whatever they did, like add a bottle of something. Human nature and a pretty good selling scheme. It is possible the product added the tannins, but I doubt it would color the entire pond...or the upper pool only...or whatever is going on. We had this same brown color last year, for a month, but when the green algae appeared on the rocks edges, the brown water went completely away. That is what I need. All things are possible...but since we have no idea what this brown color is there certainly isn't any way to draw the conclusion that some algae removed the brown. There are a lot of scenarios that could explain it. Is there such as thing as brown algae? I do not see any residual on the rocks. There are brown algae species but none that I would call tea brown. The brown kinds are generally macro type, like plants. I could do a water change again, maybe 20% but I am not sure if that would help. See, now to me that's really interesting. You call this tea brown...but it only appears in the upper pool. No comment on doing the color test, no explanation on how two connected pools can have different colored water. But you doubt a water change would effect water color. That leads me to think you know something you're not wanting to comment on. But you would like help on fixing the problem. Fascinating. thanks for the feedback. A little clarification. The PH is about 9.0. I added baking soda last night, it did reduce the PH to around the 8.0 mark. Baking soda in water has a pH of around 9 to 8.3. Adding baking soda would not reduce pH from 9 to 8. Other things, like GH is what interacts with baking soda to get a 8.3 pH. But most people don't mess with GH since the chemicals are scary sounding and 9 pH is fine. What likely happened is the pH in each test just happen to be different. Different time of day, different depth, different location, difficult to tell the difference in colors, etc. pH tests are very hard to get right and confuse a lot of people into doing harmful things to the pond. Adding baking soda isn't normally harmful unless ammonia is present but I'm sure you tested ammonia first and found it to be 0. I suggest to people who don't really want to know too much about pH that it would be way better for the pond and fish if they threw out their pH test kit and just use a KH test. KH is how you determine how much baking soda to use. pH test result just cause way more harm than good. Unless of course a person is studying how pH works. I assume the 9 pH is what was called "high" in the first post. It's up to each pond keeper to determine what pH they want. I for example wouldn't call 9 high in a Water Garden or Koi Pond. Many pretty serious fish keepers allow pH to be around 9. Not perfect, but fine. At any rate I wish you good luck with whatever is going on.