cleaning up a pond

[DrakeMaiden]

Go ahead and laugh DrakeMaiden. I still haven't checked to see if I have any fish left! Shelley is WAY too smart for a duck. The scary part is I have babies hatching and I am pretty sure some are hers. I think they are going to try and take over....

OK!

I can only laugh NOW, because what happened to me is that I had a glazed pot that I was growing duckweed in for feeding my ducks and a frog actually managed to lay some eggs in there without my knowledge and they actually hatched, which I was excited about until the day that the ducks broke in and left nothing but a muddy mess behind.

My guess is that you have no fish left.

But back to the OT . . .

I think the reason you want to limit tree/brush cover to the pond is you want to limit the amount of deciduous leaves that will fall into it in the fall, because they add more nutrients.

Also ducks and other waterfowl probably won't eat the algae and if they did, it could potentially make them very sick!

So long as you have the rights to this pond and your county does not consider it "critical habitat" then it seems to me that duckweed is a good way to farm your pond (make it productive in terms of feeding your other animals). However, I also understand that if you want to keep it natural, then you will want to be very careful about pond plant choice and go with native choices. If you want to do the latter, forget right now about keeping waterfowl on the pond! They will destroy anything you plant.

 

[patandchickens]

The only thing I disagree with is cutting back trees. If you get aerators, the oxygen is taken care of. You NEED shade to help keep that algae down. If trimming the trees means more sunlight on the surface, you are just promoting more algae.

On a 1 acre pond, I can't imagine trees can possibly shade a meaningful percentage of the water surface.

And the better wind exposure you have, the less you are reliant on the sizing and placement (and continuous operation) of your fountains.

Wind blowing across the surface really makes a BIG difference in keeping ponds/lakes from stratifying, you might not think so but it does, especially in larger ones.

Pat