The bulldozer and front end loader got finished and now what once was a 40
ft small tree lined wet garbage dump (sort of a pond) is now a 40 foot in
diameter mud puddle with an average depth of about 3 feet. I don't think
the water is *too* polluted because as the thing got cleared out the
landscape people found a bunch of frogs, turtles, and at least two
cottonmouth snakes, one being about 5 feet long. That was a little
exciting for me, but the guy on the bulldozer didn't seem too impressed,
and he made rather short work of the snake with his bulldozer blade. I
guess those folks are quite used to running into snakes. Anyway, I looked
at pumps and filters for large ponds and found that about the largest I
could find was for about a 5000 gal pond, and it seems mine is a bit larger
than that. I don't have any illusions about having crystal clear water
flowing in the pond, but it seems to me that constantly moving the water
through some sort of filter would eventually change it from being just a
mud puddle into something a little more eye appealing. Would circulating
the water through a series of "settling tanks" (coarse gravel, fine gravel,
then something like sand) be of any use? Are there plants that I can ring
my mud puddle with that would help? I live in northern Florida, so brutal
winters are not exactly a problem but I also don't want to go down in
history as the guy who planted something like kudzu around his pond, only
to have it escape and become a serious pest. Also, do those "barley ball"
and other "pond treatments" I see advertised do any good?

Galen Hekhuis NpD, JFR, GWA
We are the CroMagnon of the future