[Elaine G]

We have a pond that is looking quite brown and cloudy .
A couple of years ago we paid to have it cleaned out, but it got neglected last year, as did the whole garden, and we can't afford to pay anymore . It's probably not a good time to do that anyway.

I have seen various bio sludge buster type products advertised and wondered if anyone had any experience of them. Do they work, or are they just a waste of money.

Thanks
ELaine

[AlaninCarlisle]

Looking forward to answers on this as I'm just about to start a wild-life pond here

[JayG]

What sort of pond is it - how big, is it planted, does it have fish in it, is it likely to have collected a lot of leaves and other debris?

I've had a quick look at some of the pond cleaning products available and in many cases their manufacturer's claims seem to be a bit ambitious compared with the actual results reported by their customers.

[sunshineband]

I have to say we never found the products to dispose of sludge very effective.

We tackled ours by netting the fish and putting them in deep barrels of pond water, moving any frogs (and there were lots) we came across into the herbage, and then taking out armfuls of overgrown plants, which we laid on the edge on plastic sheeting, so that beasties could get away an cutting back the marginal plants too. Mr S then stood in the middle of the pond and scooped out the sludge with a long handles dustpan, pouring it into old fertiliser buckets. I went through the sludge as I poured it in to make sure anything alive was rescued. Dragonfly larvae were put in a separate tank so they didn't eat everything else!  The sludge was mixed into our compost bins, and also put under the hedge at the back of the garden. There was a lot of it.

As the sludge from the bottom was taken out, the stuff on the next ledge up ran down. After several hours we were filthy, hot and wet. The fish stayed in the barrel overnight and the water was clear enough to put them back in next day. The water from the barrels went back in, and we topped it up with tap water via the hose. No harm done by this, and we could hose the mud off the lily leaves then too before it dried and set.

We also cleaned out the big external filter box which was chock full of hoppers, and that helped the water clear faster.

To avoid disturbing frogs on the way to hibernation, or tadpoles, we did it all in late Summer. WE did leave about three inches of sludge for wildlife to live in

It was worth it... and that was five year ago so this year .... off we shall go again

PS Our pond is 2.5m by 4m in a rough oval shape, has two ledges and is just over a metre deep in the middle.

[8doubles]

As the weather warms you can get algal blooms this happens in fresh and even salt water!

Known as May rot or May weed at sea it can adversely  affect fish and other wildlife until the nutrients are used and the algae dies.

Might be worth waiting to see if it clears by itself .

Gin clear water is a rarity unless spring fed !

[Elaine G]

Hi thanks everyone for your replies, and apologies for not posting a reply earlier due to some IT issues!
As 8doubles suggested, the pond does seem to look a little better now, so we have decided to leave it and attempt a late summer clean out as suggested by sunshineband.
We also have the dilemma now that we might be asked to rehome goldfish 

Thanks
Elaine

[oddjob5]

We have a pond that is 1.5m by 0.5m and .3m deep. We had lots of frogs come and spawn in the spring and the spawn left the pond smelling badly and most of the oxygenating weed died off. The pond basically died. We cleaned the sludge from the bottom, put some new plants in and bought a solar powered air pump that bubbles air up from the bottom of the pond. The pond is smelling much better and seems to be improving.

[8doubles]

We have a pond that is 1.5m by 0.5m and .3m deep. We had lots of frogs come and spawn in the spring and the spawn left the pond smelling badly and most of the oxygenating weed died off. The pond basically died. We cleaned the sludge from the bottom, put some new plants in and bought a solar powered air pump that bubbles air up from the bottom of the pond. The pond is smelling much better and seems to be improving.

A pond that size would handle one or two blobs of spawn maximum !
It may be illegal to do it but the excess spawn needs either relocating to a frogless pond or disposal .

Overcrowding of any animal species including humans always ends with death by disease or in this case deoxegenation !

I used a mains powered air pump which took warm air from a shed and kept a patch of water ice free all winter.

[pepsi100]

I have a 2 raised ponds, the top pond used to over flow into the lower one but since the pump died, I just top up the upper pond and it overflows into the lower one, there are 4 gold fish in the lower one, haven't seen then in a  long time, but nothing grows in the bottom pond, I think they eat it all, but in the upper pond, I get this hair like stuff that just grows there, the water is pretty clear, I clean this green hair like stuff out when there is a fair bit of it, just dump it on the compost  heap

The pond where the gold fish live is pretty murky, they seem healthy enough, well the pellets we give em once a week goes, I have emptied or cleaned it out for at least a year, there is a net over it to keep the herons away and it also keeps the leaves and blossoms from going into it

Even when I had a pump and a tank filter the water always went green, murky, I got fed up cleaning it out, then the pump died and that is how its been for a couple of years now

I suppose I should either get rid of both the fish and the pond, but as it costs me nothing its staying

[8doubles]

I have a 2 raised ponds, the top pond used to over flow into the lower one but since the pump died, I just top up the upper pond and it overflows into the lower one, there are 4 gold fish in the lower one, haven't seen then in a  long time, but nothing grows in the bottom pond, I think they eat it all, but in the upper pond, I get this hair like stuff that just grows there, the water is pretty clear, I clean this green hair like stuff out when there is a fair bit of it, just dump it on the compost  heap

The pond where the gold fish live is pretty murky, they seem healthy enough, well the pellets we give em once a week goes, I have emptied or cleaned it out for at least a year, there is a net over it to keep the herons away and it also keeps the leaves and blossoms from going into it

Even when I had a pump and a tank filter the water always went green, murky, I got fed up cleaning it out, then the pump died and that is how its been for a couple of years now

I suppose I should either get rid of both the fish and the pond, but as it costs me nothing its staying

The blanket weed (algae) in the top pond will be using up nutrients and also shading the water = clear .
Fish in the bottom pond are excreteing nutrients that are growing other types of algae hence the pea soup.
Goldfish will benefit from a change of water now and again especially in summer and autumn to avoid nitrite build up which does the fish no good.
Again an air bubbler would help but a change of water is still needed on small ponds.

[pepsi100]

I removed all the weed from the top pond, put it in the lower pond, not sure if the fish eat it, but it just disappears, still put in the pellets though

The top pond is really clear after the weed was taken out

I changed the water yesterday as well, not a lot of sludge in the lower pond,