I have a 45 foot long 15 feet wide(at widest point) spring-fed pond. It has 8 goldfish in it. I've had wild ducks move in the last 2 summers & spend a week to a month in it with their 10 ducklings. The raccoons play in it regularly. It has an outflow pipe that keeps the water moving. This year, the drought has dropped it 3 inches below the overflow pipe so it's not moving. It smells OK,& doesn't look stagnant, but both my dogs were vomiting all last week after drinking from it & never had that problem before. I fenced off the areas where they could access it, and they've been fine since. The fish seem OK, but I'm afraid it might be contaminated or something. We got enough rain yesterday to bring the level back up to but not through the overflow. Is there something I can put in it to clean it up? Any suggestions?
Pond unhealthy after drought dropped pond level?
- Thread starter gvler
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peter hillman
Let me think for minute....
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With all the animals in and out of the pond something may have died in there.
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If your dogs are vomiting, I'm thinking cyanobacteria or something from surface runoff.
Any algae looking substances if the pond?
Have you done any water tests?
Pictures and more information about water movement, filtration, surface runoff conditions, ect. would help.
Any algae looking substances if the pond?
Have you done any water tests?
Pictures and more information about water movement, filtration, surface runoff conditions, ect. would help.
Actually, 3 turtles died in it last summer. A friend brought them over. The first one was sick already, and I found it upside down and cleaned out (probably by raccoons) in the swamp by the pond. Another floated up this spring as I was dragging all the lakeweed out. (Mostly willow roots, I think). So I got rid of that one. But the 3rd one never came up. My pond is very silty so when i go in (with waders) I sink into the bottom. There's no telling where it is. Do I need to find it and drag it out before it will get clean? By the way, I don't use any fertilizer above the pond, or around it. We're supposed to get an El Nino this winter, and by all the rain we had this summer, I'm expecting it. Do you think that much rain will clean it out? I have underground springs right under the pond in the shallow end, and the overflow is at the other end. Plus I have springs coming in all across the upper side of the pond.
There are clumps of algae in the pond, willow leaves on top, which I skim off regularly. Most runoff above me goes to a concrete swale about 5 feet to the right of the overflow. The pipe goes underground and empties into it. There is no filtration but the springs. They come in one end and go out the other. The ducks keep the pondweed down in the summer. I haven't done any water tests as I'm not sure how to go about it. I will upload pictures, though.
Meyer Jordan
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Is there any way for you to raise the water level back to normal in order to re-institute the flow-through? Well water or municipal water?