I manage a summer camp facility that has a small swimming pond 120' X
240', with a maximum depth of about 10 ft. I calculate this to be
about 5 acre feet or about a million and a half gallons. We are
located in the San Bernardino Mountains, at about 6000 ft. elevation.
We have snow for about 4 or five months, and had a complete, thin ice
cover for a few weeks last winter, with some ice along the shoreline
for 3 months. I am looking for any suggestions to make the pond more
appealing.

My predecessor had been using copper sulfate in the spring as an
algaecide, and then mechanically removing the floating filament
macrophytes that would grow along the shores by the late summer. There
is a floating fountain and no emergent plants. Unfortunately our
equestrian center is directly upstream of the pond.

My current plan is to dig a small (10' X 20 ‘) inlet at the site of
greatest runoff entry and plant some sort of hearty emergent plants
like tule or sedge. I also want to plant aqautic vegetation along the
perimeter of the pond away from the swimming beach. We have a large
number of very small fish, which I suspect are mosquito larvae
predators, added by the previous maintenance staff.

I plan to add some snails and other fish, and feel that whatever
biodiversity I can manage should be beneficial to the balance in the
pond. I would like some suggestions for plant and animal species for
this area as well as any other hints on pond management. This is my
first effort at pond management, but as I really enjoy swimming in the
pond myself, I have a strong personal interest in its water quality.


Thanks
Nesdon Booth

An excellent resource for what you have
planned is:
EARTH PONDS SOURCEBOOK
by Tim Matson.

This book is written for ponds the size you
are talking about and the attendant management
of them.
Sounds like a great facility!

kathy :-)

if there is any chance of the horse manure seeping into the pond it wont be very
friendly for fish, and I wonder that it can pass coliform tests for swimming in
either. Ingrid

(Nesdon) wrote:
Unfortunately our
equestrian center is directly upstream of the pond.



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EROSPAM (Ka30P) wrote in message ...
An excellent resource for what you have
planned is:
EARTH PONDS SOURCEBOOK
by Tim Matson.

This book is written for ponds the size you
are talking about and the attendant management
of them.
Sounds like a great facility!

kathy :-)

Thanks, I have ordered that book along with a couple of others of
others, and look forward to reading them.

Nesdon

EROSPAM (Ka30P) wrote in message ...
An excellent resource for what you have
planned is:
EARTH PONDS SOURCEBOOK
by Tim Matson.

This book is written for ponds the size you
are talking about and the attendant management
of them.
Sounds like a great facility!

kathy :-)

Thanks, I have ordered that book along with a couple of others of
others, and look forward to reading them.

Nesdon

if there is any chance of the horse manure seeping into the pond it wont be very
friendly for fish, and I wonder that it can pass coliform tests for swimming in
either. Ingrid

We are required by the health department to have the water tested
weekly, and our results have always been very low: MPN/100ml 2 fecal
coliform and the highest total coliform was 50. They said they don't
even require retests until we get 250 of fecal, and really don't
worry until it gets over 1000, so we seem to be in pretty good shape.

The reason I want to dig a bog lagoon is specifically to filter
whatever runoff we may get. This is southern california, and we don't
get much rain, and what we do get often falls as snow at this
elevation and during the season when there are no horses here.

My main concern is the eutrophication of the water from this runoff
which supports the algae blooms and makes the water "yucky". It drove
me crazy that they demanded that I remove all the larger floating
plants as they judged them yucky as well, knowing that they were
competing eith the algae.

I am hoping that if I use larger emergent plants, that the perimeter
area where they grow will be judged as not-pond, but more as part of
the adjacent field, and therefore non-yucky. Someone mentioned that
garter snakes like to live in the rushes (which indeed they do) and my
boss became concerned that the kids will then be afraid of the snakes.
Someone else mentioned that the bible refers to sedges amd rushes as
somehow wicked, and that some people may be uncomfortable with that.
So unless its all cement and chlorine, I will never please them all.

Thanks for the advice,
Nesdon

if there is any chance of the horse manure seeping into the pond it wont be very
friendly for fish, and I wonder that it can pass coliform tests for swimming in
either. Ingrid

We are required by the health department to have the water tested
weekly, and our results have always been very low: MPN/100ml 2 fecal
coliform and the highest total coliform was 50. They said they don't
even require retests until we get 250 of fecal, and really don't
worry until it gets over 1000, so we seem to be in pretty good shape.

The reason I want to dig a bog lagoon is specifically to filter
whatever runoff we may get. This is southern california, and we don't
get much rain, and what we do get often falls as snow at this
elevation and during the season when there are no horses here.

My main concern is the eutrophication of the water from this runoff
which supports the algae blooms and makes the water "yucky". It drove
me crazy that they demanded that I remove all the larger floating
plants as they judged them yucky as well, knowing that they were
competing eith the algae.

I am hoping that if I use larger emergent plants, that the perimeter
area where they grow will be judged as not-pond, but more as part of
the adjacent field, and therefore non-yucky. Someone mentioned that
garter snakes like to live in the rushes (which indeed they do) and my
boss became concerned that the kids will then be afraid of the snakes.
Someone else mentioned that the bible refers to sedges amd rushes as
somehow wicked, and that some people may be uncomfortable with that.
So unless its all cement and chlorine, I will never please them all.

Thanks for the advice,
Nesdon