Hi Lori,

I've just seen your posts so they're new to me.

First, stop bringing fish into the equation so early. The fish can wait.

What do you want from this aquatic feature? You have to ask yourself this. Do you want care free, (you'll never get that)? Do you want to take care of fish? A water (plant) garden? Both? Are you likely going to be "into" crystal clear water? There's a lot to do to get there, but it can be done.

My water gets there very soon after June 1 when my floating and submerged aquatic plants start thriving in the heat.

Your little pond should have probably been netted in the fall to keep the leaves out. Count on doing that next autumn. There are many ways to making "the system" bullet proof from a debris-introduction standpoint.

For now, get a net with a long, telescoping arm. Work the bottom. This will bring-up, stir-up the fine particles of dirt and debris. Maybe some plants overturned and dumped dirt/clay/sand... that might be one reason for the filthy water. Debris will stay afloat for a long, long time... but keep cleaning those filters. Have a nozzle jet spray close by and at the ready. Clean the filters outside the pond area.

Do you have a biological filter. This is a place (basin) were pumped water is usually returned to the pond. It often has a water fall (weir) feature. If you have one, go get some new clean filter media. New material here is important... sometimes media gets blocked, like lava rocks, LR aren't the best media.

BioFilter: Place the filter media at the bottom and top it with some aquatic plants. This will be your bio-filter. A place for beneficial bacteria to collect and help cleanse your water.

Some aquatic gardners add beneficial bacteria to ponds. A bottled product that can be purchased. You may wish to visit a local aquatic store (not just a pet store) but a pond/aquatics store.

Just don't add fish, for now. They just make the water system work harder and you're not ready for them yet.

Test your water in a week as it slowly clears. Test kits are available online or at aquatic centers.

Read up on water gardening. Try the "The Pond Doctor" to start with... there are also how-to-books (softcover) available at the big box stores that I find to be good reference materials.

Good luck!

Yes, it would have been better to wait for the pond to cycle before adding fish. You unknowingly scrubbed away the beneficial algae and bacteria and a pea soup algae bloom is likely to happen.

Ponds are not drinking water, some sludge, some algae is going to happen. Carpet algae on the liner is good, it helps use nutrients that fuel a pea soup algae bloom.

Keep changing the filter floss and add some plants and have patience, water cycling takes time.

I'm sorry but your pond is too small for koi, unless you are going to give them away when they get too big as the previous owner should have but didn't. His koi would not be dead if the pond was big enough and properly filtered.

Goldfish are easier, require less depth, less filtration, don't grow nearly as big and don't tear up plants which help with water quality. Feeders are often half dead when you buy them so don't judge goldfish hardiness by feeders.

Right now we have 6 goldfish and 2 small koi (about 3 inches long). They are beginning to get more active which I'm very happy about. We had 3 but one died today. We went back to the store today and bought a couple more plants. We now have 2 hyacinths, 2 water chestnuts and 2 hornworts. Today we also invested in a better net. The one the previous owner left was not very good so we got a skimmer net so we can scoop out more sludge. They recommended we do another partial water change so tomorrow we're going to attempt that. We've moved most of the fish to a temporary home (a rubbermaid container) until we can stabilize the water. We only managed to catch 5 of the goldfish because once we start stirring up the water, we can't find them. One of the koi keeps teasing me.... Lol. It comes to the surface but then swims away as soon as i get the net. gonna get him tomorrow!! :)

Lori: reading through the various posts that you have made here . . . your pond is somewhere between 588 and 900 gallons. What type of filtration system do you have ? Is it large enough for your pond. A 75 gallon Skippy-type filter would probably be a good filter for you.
Can you add more filter floss to your current system ? sounds like you need more filter floss area than what you have currently.

Jeff

I have a 4000 gallon pond, which I keep relatively clean and have a bio filter system (gravel with bacteria and pipes underneath which a pump draws water from and returns to the pond), but still have some algae floating around as soon as I move in it, and stubborn sludge on the gravel bottom. I read a post on this site about pumping pond water through a makeshift filter using a kitchen garbage can with holes on one side of the bottom and polymatt from Wal-Mart. Has anyone used this method, how big a pond, how big a pump in gph? Thanks.