Dear All,

I've just found this forum and I'm wondering if someone can help me?

We have a pond in our garden which we inherited from the previous people who owned the house. Anyway, it's always been a bit murkey - no blanked weed, but quite dark water. I've cleaned it out the last 2 autumns but it gets the same way again. Someone's told me if you keep cleaning it out, it will keep going green and you need to leave it for a bit.

Anyway, it's quite small - about 1.5m x 0.7m. We also inherited 3 goldfish and some toads. Anyway, every spring the toads lay their spawn, quite a lot of it, yet I never see any tadpoles. I wondered if they were being eaten by the fish so this year I fished some out and put it in a bowl next to the pond. Again, no tadpoles.

Anyway, I'm wondering what to do with the pond. I have no electricity to the garden so a pump is not practical. Also, it's a bit small for one, I think. So we've bought some oxygenating plants (not in a pot - the stuff that just sits in the water), some surface floating plants (which I keep buying and always die) and a pot of watercress and a marginal. I've also planted a large plant next to the pond to shield it from some sun.

Every year I buy water snails and freshwater mussels to keep it clean, but they die quite quickly. I last week bought some daphnia as well. Although tadpoles, snails, etc don't seem happy in there, the fish are very healthy, as are the toads. They're just not producing any new toads.

Anyway, I've gone on enough now. I'd like to let ecology take over - get the right plants, snails, daphnia, insects, etc, but I don't know where to start. My local aquatic centres aren't very helpful.

Any advice would be much appreciated. I live in north Kent (England) if anyone wants to recommend an aquatic centre...

Thanks in advance,

Neil