"Roz Cawley" wrote in message
...
I was thrilled when I had a new wildlife pond and bog garden installed a
couple of weeks ago - but not so thrilled to see that the landscape
gardener had lined the pond with the subsoil that he had excavated from
"the hole" - because our subsoil happens to be horrible, yellow clay,
unlike the better, though sandy topsoil that he buried/left in a heap at
the side of the garden :-((.

Two weeks later, and the pond water still has a murky, yellow cloudiness
- which I assume is the suspension of fine clay particles still floating
around in it.

Questions - will it finally settle more (am I just being impatient?), or
am I doomed to cloudy water unless I drain the pond, scrape out the clay
and add another layer of larger particle topsoil?

To avoid this, is there any sort of flocculent that I can add to the
water to help to clear it - or will even that only be a temporary
measure?

Help, please - what can I do to get the reasonably clear water that I
was hoping to see by now?? I don't expect miracles, and I know that the
oxygenators and surface cover need to become established before I get a
decent mini eco system operating there - but the murk that I look at
each time I work there is horrible - and at the moment, I am very
disappointed.
--

Roz Cawley
Autumn Cottage Diary http://www.autumncottage.co.uk

Roz,

your choice to go with a pond lined with soil/clay instead of a
plastic/butyl liner will increase the time before the pond stabilises.

Our butyl lined pond stabilised in about a week (I was expecting months) and
our plantings in special pond compost in baskets quickly established.

We also 'blagged' some weed and some small goldfish from a friend to get the
bio population up quickly.

Depends what you regard as a 'wildlife' pond.

We have a variety of plants, dragonflies, newts, frogs, as well as several
generations of fish.

By now there is a rich tilth in the pond, as plant leaves die in the autumn
and leaves from trees drift in (not to forget what goldfish do after
eating).

It will soon be time to remove some of the silt - all ponds gradually fill
up over the years and need cleaning out.

Until recently we have not fed the fish because when we tried they were not
interested. Presumably there was enough natural food in the pond to keep
them happy. Recently they have started taking food, which makes us think the
pond is now slightly over stocked.

You seem unhappy that there is not topsoil at the bottom of your pond.
Be glad.
Topsoil would make your problems much worse and is not advisable for lining
a pond.
Stacking the topsoil removed when digging the pond seems a sensible thing to
do - you can now use it elsewhere in the garden.
Sounds as though you had a good landscape gardener.

Get plenty of plants in there and the pond will soon settle down.
The plants will also conceal the yellow water.
As with borders, you can always thin them out later.

Once it is a little more stable a few fish would be good.
They keep the mosquito larvae down as well as being interesting to watch.

Finally - two weeks???? - if it upsets you, look away.
Most biological systems take a while to stabilise.
You wouldn't expect a lawn to grow from seed and establish in two weeks.
You wouldn't expect fruit trees, grape vines, food crops, anything to be
fully mature two weeks after your initial planting.
This is like complaining that a climbing rose still hasn't completely
concealed your pergola in two weeks :-)

If you wanted a pond to be clear after two weeks you should have had a
plastic/butyl liner, filled it with tap water, then put some ready potted
plants from an aquatic centre in there.
You would then have had something that looked like an established pond very
quickly but which would then take a while to establish a true ecosystem.

You should treat this like a new border - ignore the fact that the shrubs
and bedding plants look lost in the great expanse of bare newly turned soil
and visualise how it will look once they have established and grown.

HTH
Dave R