Is it brown with sediment (cloudy)?

Cara, I guess that's what you would call it. It gets darker every day, can hardly see the bottom and I just drained and vacuumed the entire thing about 1 week ago.

Have you tried one of the water clarifiers? They causes the sediment to clump together so it will be more likely to be caught by your filter. My pond takes run off and it works really well for me to clear the particulates from the water.

could you tell me where I would find that or if you don't mine, a brand name or two? I do have a barley bale but have heard good and bad about them too.

I just found a place and what you are talking about. thanks for your help Cara. bt

If your water turned brown in such a short time, I suspect your plants are potted in a peat based soil. That is a stain, not a particulate. A water clairifier will have no effect. The breakdown of barley straw produces hydrogen peroxide which might be good for string algae but won't do much for tannin stained water.

You can get Activated Carbon (not charcoal) at most pet stores and at plant stores that carry lots of supplies for African Violets. Natural, rather than compressed works best so far as I can see. Since I have a lot of oak trees in the yard and lots of leaves wind up in the pond, and because I don't always re-pot new plants into clay as I should, I use a half-gallon carton for 1000 gallons of water each year. To refresh it, just mash it up a little to expose a new surface.

5 of the plants are submerged plants and one floating plan t. I have one water lily in pea gravel---seems to be doing okay, and 3 water lilies that I bought are potted when bought all ready to just lay in the pond., I must tell you that I just recently put the plants in the pond and the water was already turning brown. I'm thinking it may be easier to fill the hole with dirt and surrender. just what I don't want to do.

5 of the plants are submerged plants and one floating plan t. I have one water lily in pea gravel---seems to be doing okay, and 3 water lilies that I bought are potted when bought all ready to just lay in the pond., I must tell you that I just recently put the plants in the pond and the water was already turning brown. I'm thinking it may be easier to fill the hole with dirt and surrender. just what I don't want to do.

Does the pond take any run off? What kind of filter are you using?

No run off. I only have a Sunterra pump/filter but I got a 1200gpm in a 900 pond. Was hoping it would handle any problems. I put the pump in a plastic container and surround it with pieces of furnace filters an pack plastic pan scrubbers around everything. Sure catches a lot of gunk but I don't know.

brownthumbia,
My little pond is extremely small, but I had the same problem you did. I went to my local Aquarium and pond store and asked questions.
The lady there was very knowledgable about ponds, she told me to think of the dead leaves and soil in plant pots as a tea bag. She said you can add charcoal, but til you take the tea bag out of the water, it will still be brown.
I came home and cleaned as many leaves as I could from the pond, then potted all my plants in nothing but small stones and put them back into the pond.
Then I used the charcoal, (I bought the "Foam" kind, worked best for my biofilter), and in 2 days, the pond was no longer brown.
Now it is green, LOL! But it's not brown.
SO, go to your local pond or Aquarium store and ask about what type of charcoal you should buy. They will know, and you have to know how many gallons.
Most people usually put it in their filters.
Good Luck.
Now I can start working on the green......

If your filter material is sitting in the pond it is not removing anything from the water. It is just concentrating debris in one place to break down faster due to water action and will then be redistributed by the pump. It will just break up into smaller and smaller pieces.

Filtration systems need to remove the debris from the water, trap it and allow the cleaned water to return to the pond. Your system is simply stirring dirty water.

Well I don't know if my idea will make sense or even work but what if I would hook up my sump pump that I use to drain the pond, run it through a tall kitchen waste paper basket full of quilt batting and holes in the bottom ? Do you think that would be somewhat like another one I saw here at one time?

That might be a temporary fix in an emergency but a sump pump is not designed to work 24/7.

The hole should not be on the bottom but in the side close to the bottom and the container should be outside of the pond sitting on the edge if you are using a gravity feed with the water running through the batting from top to bottom. It will work, it just doesn't look anything but temporary. I would use an outlet pipe at least the diameter of the pipe or tube from the pump or you could have an overflow problem. The pipe can be extended over the side of the pond to prevent water loss. If you are going to all that trouble, I'd do a Skippy for the waterfall effect and more efficient filtration. Their design is an upflow.

There is another type of filter that can be submerged but it must be completely enclosed and isolated from the water in the pond. The problem is that it would require frequent cleaning and is normally for very small ponds. The story is that it was invented by a small boy. I made one of those for a 100 gallon pond from a Tupperware canister. I had to clean it once a week minimum with only a couple of small goldfish and some mosquito fish and that started from a clean pond. but it was cheap and easy for demo purposes.

If you don't want a Skippy, there are other DIY filters shown on the internet. Just do a search for pond filter design or DIY pond filters. The Skippy site is Skippysstuff. Despite the never clean claim, I've never come across anyone who never cleaned their Skippy filter. I clean mine at the beginning of the season and at the end of the season. Too much debris and too much fishy food. To restart the bio activity, I just toss a piece of the old batting in under the new batting. No store bought microbes needed.

Here is a link that might be useful: The Skippysstuff site

I have a pondmaster 1000 submersible filter... it works quite well for me, but my pond is also tiny.