My single inground pond looks like this every summer; despite scooping out as many floating leaves as possible throughout the season, there are always a fair number of leaves....mostly maple and oak...littering the bottom and they always give the water that steeped-tea appearance. It's not cloudy, just stained orange-brown. I know the tannins are harmless and even have their benefits, but...I hate that look.
So, last fall, I had problems catching all the fish out of the pond using traps, nets, etc. and eventually took the PITA option of draining the pond and going in after them. And since I was already covered in mud and sweat from head to foot, I figured that once the fish were out....and what fun that was!...I scooped and bailed and netted and otherwise removed vast amounts of accumulated bottom muck, all the while thinking how nice it would be to have clear, colourless water in there for a change. I pumped it literally dry, and when I finished it contained only rocks, some years-old driftwood and only a couple percentage points of the amount of sludge it had previously held. Success!
All winter I blew snow onto the pond, so that come spring it was, as usual, practically a ski hill. All that wonderful snowmelt water, clear as a bottle of the finest vodka, filled the pond up in spring. At the beginning of this month, I installed a few handfuls of Giant Duckweed, Hornwort, Guppy Grass, etc. and of course the Cattails and other natives came back in full force. The Goldfish glowed like lightbulbs suspended in fresh air. It was delightful.
That was four weeks ago. We've had a fair bit of rain, which rinses the lawn thoroughly into the pond. The water is now just as orange as it always had been in the past.
Did I mention that I hate that look?
Crap.
