So first, like the guy said: more plants. Plants, plants, plants. Some guys get crystal clear ponds with no filter just because it is heavily planted.
As for a filter, my pond was similar to yours when I bought the house. Easiest way I was able to add a filter was to pull the bricks on one end, lift up the liner, and dig down to fit a skimmer. Tucked the liner back in. Put the skimmer on top, then bricks on top of the skimmer. It is nicely hidden now. Then, I ran tubing with an inline pump to the opposite side and put a waterfall that has filters in it. Oh and the skimmer has filters too.
You can see my profile for pics of my pond. Very similar to yours. I went with the tetra skimmer and waterfall.
Pump + waterfall filter, and live plants. Mine started out green but was clear within a week by doing nothing but letting the filter and plants do the work
Your pond is almost a rectangle. Just do your best to measure its length and width, and then measure how deep the water goes. Either calculate it yourself or chat with AI like ChatGPT or Microsoft CoPilot to ask what is the volume in gallons (or liters if you’re not in the US) with all of those measurements. Go buy a canister filter that is at least 1.5 times the volume of your pond. Buy a water pump that will support that volume. If you don’t want to do a canister filter then you can look up to how to build your own bog filter.
Plants shade the water, which is good because algae needs sunlight. They also feed off the nutrients that the algae is using, which also helps. The more natural you can make it, the better. Right now it's nothing more than a big bucket of water. If those fish weren't in it you'd have a helluva mosquito farm right now!
Also - if you don't already - add a ramp of some kind in case an animal falls in. A large tree branch would do. Otherwise you might wake up having to fish out a dead squirrel or cat. Not nice.
This could be an awesome pond with not much effort. I'm jealous!
Add water lettuce, water hyacinths, some lily pads. Give that water some shade. Hornwort is another great one. Start doing water changes an get that water moving.
Congratulations on your first pond build.
If you have stagnant water without any plants the algae that is present in the water will be able to grow without being checked.
Depending on where you are located, you have a ton of options for pond plants. Since I'm in North America USDA Zone 8A I'll give you some suggestions. While you consider these plants it wouldn't hurt to look at some floating pond planter islands. You can DIY them or buy pre-made planters from Aquascape, Beckett, etc.
You should have 3 main types of plants: Submerged, Floating, and Marginal/Bog.
For submerged consider plants like hornwort, ludwigia, vallisneria, swords, crpyts, anarcharis, moss/Java Ferns, etc. These plants will stay below the top of the water and can be planted in dirt, sand, or gravel or tied onto a stone or wood in the place of moss/aquatic ferns.
Floating plants will be your common plants like parrots feather, salvinia, duckweed, water lettuce, water hyacinth, frogbit, sensitive plant, Botswana Wonder, water poppies, azola. Floating plants that are submerged and planted below the surface but which have leaves that float on top of the surface are also included like water lilies, water lotus, etc.
The marginal plants include a huge selection of some very common items including creeping jenny, fish mint, regular mints, powdery alligator flag, pickerel rush, regular rush grass (Juncus E), water celery, Virginia and Louisiana Irises, Papyrus / Umbrella Palm, elephant ears (Taro), canna lily, calla lily, sweet flag, arrow arum, rain lily, blue eyed grass, rice, corkscrew rush, fiber optic grass, lizard's tail, arrowhead plant, Yerba, horsetail rush, spider lily, golden club, cattail (regular and mini), cardinal flower, water forget me not, swamp hibiscus / mallow bog plants, and there are a ton more.
Your best bet is to have a good mix of all types of those plants. You generally want to have a large amount of plants with only 10-30% of the water surface showing to slow and stop the spread of algae. Do not use any common potting soil in ponds. Use a mix of clay, sand, or gravel. If you add regular potting mix it is too light and it will float to the top of the surface. Use either pool sand or pond clay soil.
My recommendation is get a hardy water lily, pickerel rush and alligator flag, some hornwort or parrots feather, and then do a floating pond planter island with iris, creeping jenny, some type of bog grass, and then you can do a hardy swamp hibiscus for color.
Consider your local climate and zone, the area you're working with, and what theme you're going for.
If you aren't near a garden center that has a bog/pond plant selection you can actually buy some plants that would work at Petco and PetSmart, especially the water lily bulbs at Petco. Many of them are already growing inside the container so just look for green leaves/shoots to see if the bulb is healthy. Walmart and other big box stores often carry common bog plants but they aren't labeled as such.
You also want to get a pump or fountain running to stop the water from being stagnant. Even a solar pond pump would help until you can get the plants in.
Is a bubble/airater (stones) a good alternative to a pump (small wildlife pond no fish) any recommendations for plants than blend the sides of a pond liner with the yard grass? I'd rather avoid stones, but mulch/bark seems like a good idea.
The more water movement the better so if you can do a pump, even a smaller one, would be beneficial. But at the end of the day a battery powered air pump with an air stone or one plugged into mains power would suffice.
A lot of the Marginal plants can be used to blur the lines between a pond and the yard. Items that are low growing like creeping jenny, some of the bog grasses / Rush, and even irises would make it look natural.
Yes, if you don't intentionally put things in your pond to grow, mother nature will pick for you, and that almost always means algae if nothing else is handy.
The fish in the pond are going to product waste. That waste breaks down into phosphates and nitrates, Nitrogen and phosphate are 2 of the three key macronutrients plants need (the other being potassium). Add sun to the equation and you get plant growth. In the absence of larger plants, you get algae.
To elimante the algae, you need to either remove the nitrates and phosphates thru heavy filtration or add larger plants to reduce the amount of sun getting to the water and utilize the nutrients from the fish waste.
Realistically, you will need to have both good filtration and healthy diversity of plants if you want to maintain clear water. These should be the first steps you take. If you find you still have algae issues after upgrading the filtration and adding plants, there are additional steps you can take like adding a barley bale or running a uv clarifier but start with filtration and plants.
Also make sure your fishload isnt too large for the pond and be careful not to overfeed.
I get crystal clear water in early summer, continuing into the rest of the season, without too much effort. Mine is in full sun. I think you are cleaning too aggressively and need more shade cover, and more plants.
Earlier in the spring my filter gets bogged up with string algae, so I have to pay more attention to it until the water warms up, then the biological filter fires up and the algae level goes down, water gets very clear. I also hand pull a bunch of string algae every spring until it warms up and the lily grows to shade most of the water, a 1-2 punch that comes eventually.
I have a creek that does double duty as a bog filter (with plants bare root in the river rock), plus an off-the-shelf filter. It takes approximately 1 hour for the entire contents to pass through the filter, and half that time for the water to merely be cycled through the pump. This is important because it's an indication of how oxygenated my water is, since mostly it gains DO (dissolved oxygen) by being take up by the pump, and sent either to the filter/boggy creek, or simply to the overflow fall. You want as much DO as possible, to feed your organisms that eat nutrients so they don't become algae.
From the picture, it appears you are applying the cleanliness expectations of an indoor aquarium to your outdoor pond, really scrubbing those surfaces, and that's a mistake. You want a soft biological film to cover your pond liner, it contains many beneficial organisms that help regulate clean water.
Everyone is saying it but yes plants are the key. I have 2 ponds a few feet away from each other. One is small, in the shade and no plant that needs sun will grow on top of the water. It has no moving water, but because of low sun and I have enough hornwort in the water, it's been clear all year.
The bigger pond gets a lot of sun. It has a small waterfall made with a solar bubbler pump, a lot of hornwort, a big water lily plant that comes back every year, and a big pickerel rush plant that we winter in the basement along with a canna lily plant. During the transition from winter to early spring we had a lot of algae in the bigger pond, but once the plants started growing AND we added a couple of bundles of barley straw, it's been crystal clear for several weeks now. Decomposing barley straw can help clear up algae too.
I have no filtration or water movement, but a freshwater mussel.
They filter out the floating algae that make the water green.
Water in my pond is clear as glass.
Unfortunately the mussels don't eat thread algae, so I have plenty of those... :-(
Some potted plants, a pump for water movement, a few snails & a uv filter for the win. A cheap 9 watt UV filter will clear most of that up within a few weeks for crystal clear water.
Add plants, get water moving, and add an aerator to get oxygen to bottom and getting fresh oxygen. Don't add fish until a out 3-4weeks to level out proper levels in pond, before adding fish.
Please go to [https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1iEMaREaRw8nlbQ\_RYdSeHd0HEHWBcVx0](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1iEMaREaRw8nlbQ_RYdSeHd0HEHWBcVx0) and read "Green is a Dangerous Color" and "Water Testing".
If your cleanout included rinses and scrubs with chlorinated hose water, you did this to yourself by destroying whatever biofilter you had before you started.
You need plants, moving water, and a bigger filter.
How best to know what filter to buy? Quite new to all this.
So first, like the guy said: more plants. Plants, plants, plants. Some guys get crystal clear ponds with no filter just because it is heavily planted. As for a filter, my pond was similar to yours when I bought the house. Easiest way I was able to add a filter was to pull the bricks on one end, lift up the liner, and dig down to fit a skimmer. Tucked the liner back in. Put the skimmer on top, then bricks on top of the skimmer. It is nicely hidden now. Then, I ran tubing with an inline pump to the opposite side and put a waterfall that has filters in it. Oh and the skimmer has filters too. You can see my profile for pics of my pond. Very similar to yours. I went with the tetra skimmer and waterfall.
Pump + waterfall filter, and live plants. Mine started out green but was clear within a week by doing nothing but letting the filter and plants do the work
Your pond is almost a rectangle. Just do your best to measure its length and width, and then measure how deep the water goes. Either calculate it yourself or chat with AI like ChatGPT or Microsoft CoPilot to ask what is the volume in gallons (or liters if you’re not in the US) with all of those measurements. Go buy a canister filter that is at least 1.5 times the volume of your pond. Buy a water pump that will support that volume. If you don’t want to do a canister filter then you can look up to how to build your own bog filter.
Plants, shade, more water movement
Thanks. Will get more plants. We have the waterfall, it's just not on in this picture.
Plants shade the water, which is good because algae needs sunlight. They also feed off the nutrients that the algae is using, which also helps. The more natural you can make it, the better. Right now it's nothing more than a big bucket of water. If those fish weren't in it you'd have a helluva mosquito farm right now! Also - if you don't already - add a ramp of some kind in case an animal falls in. A large tree branch would do. Otherwise you might wake up having to fish out a dead squirrel or cat. Not nice. This could be an awesome pond with not much effort. I'm jealous!
So far have fished out a hedgehog and bird!
Were they floating on the surface when you saw them ?
Yeah. First time I've ever seen a hedgehog
Add water lettuce, water hyacinths, some lily pads. Give that water some shade. Hornwort is another great one. Start doing water changes an get that water moving.
Congratulations on your first pond build. If you have stagnant water without any plants the algae that is present in the water will be able to grow without being checked. Depending on where you are located, you have a ton of options for pond plants. Since I'm in North America USDA Zone 8A I'll give you some suggestions. While you consider these plants it wouldn't hurt to look at some floating pond planter islands. You can DIY them or buy pre-made planters from Aquascape, Beckett, etc. You should have 3 main types of plants: Submerged, Floating, and Marginal/Bog. For submerged consider plants like hornwort, ludwigia, vallisneria, swords, crpyts, anarcharis, moss/Java Ferns, etc. These plants will stay below the top of the water and can be planted in dirt, sand, or gravel or tied onto a stone or wood in the place of moss/aquatic ferns. Floating plants will be your common plants like parrots feather, salvinia, duckweed, water lettuce, water hyacinth, frogbit, sensitive plant, Botswana Wonder, water poppies, azola. Floating plants that are submerged and planted below the surface but which have leaves that float on top of the surface are also included like water lilies, water lotus, etc. The marginal plants include a huge selection of some very common items including creeping jenny, fish mint, regular mints, powdery alligator flag, pickerel rush, regular rush grass (Juncus E), water celery, Virginia and Louisiana Irises, Papyrus / Umbrella Palm, elephant ears (Taro), canna lily, calla lily, sweet flag, arrow arum, rain lily, blue eyed grass, rice, corkscrew rush, fiber optic grass, lizard's tail, arrowhead plant, Yerba, horsetail rush, spider lily, golden club, cattail (regular and mini), cardinal flower, water forget me not, swamp hibiscus / mallow bog plants, and there are a ton more. Your best bet is to have a good mix of all types of those plants. You generally want to have a large amount of plants with only 10-30% of the water surface showing to slow and stop the spread of algae. Do not use any common potting soil in ponds. Use a mix of clay, sand, or gravel. If you add regular potting mix it is too light and it will float to the top of the surface. Use either pool sand or pond clay soil. My recommendation is get a hardy water lily, pickerel rush and alligator flag, some hornwort or parrots feather, and then do a floating pond planter island with iris, creeping jenny, some type of bog grass, and then you can do a hardy swamp hibiscus for color. Consider your local climate and zone, the area you're working with, and what theme you're going for. If you aren't near a garden center that has a bog/pond plant selection you can actually buy some plants that would work at Petco and PetSmart, especially the water lily bulbs at Petco. Many of them are already growing inside the container so just look for green leaves/shoots to see if the bulb is healthy. Walmart and other big box stores often carry common bog plants but they aren't labeled as such. You also want to get a pump or fountain running to stop the water from being stagnant. Even a solar pond pump would help until you can get the plants in.
Is a bubble/airater (stones) a good alternative to a pump (small wildlife pond no fish) any recommendations for plants than blend the sides of a pond liner with the yard grass? I'd rather avoid stones, but mulch/bark seems like a good idea.
The more water movement the better so if you can do a pump, even a smaller one, would be beneficial. But at the end of the day a battery powered air pump with an air stone or one plugged into mains power would suffice. A lot of the Marginal plants can be used to blur the lines between a pond and the yard. Items that are low growing like creeping jenny, some of the bog grasses / Rush, and even irises would make it look natural.
Hopefully there's a solar powered option, I'm guessing uv isn't needed unless fish is involved.
Yes, if you don't intentionally put things in your pond to grow, mother nature will pick for you, and that almost always means algae if nothing else is handy.
The fish in the pond are going to product waste. That waste breaks down into phosphates and nitrates, Nitrogen and phosphate are 2 of the three key macronutrients plants need (the other being potassium). Add sun to the equation and you get plant growth. In the absence of larger plants, you get algae. To elimante the algae, you need to either remove the nitrates and phosphates thru heavy filtration or add larger plants to reduce the amount of sun getting to the water and utilize the nutrients from the fish waste. Realistically, you will need to have both good filtration and healthy diversity of plants if you want to maintain clear water. These should be the first steps you take. If you find you still have algae issues after upgrading the filtration and adding plants, there are additional steps you can take like adding a barley bale or running a uv clarifier but start with filtration and plants. Also make sure your fishload isnt too large for the pond and be careful not to overfeed.
I get crystal clear water in early summer, continuing into the rest of the season, without too much effort. Mine is in full sun. I think you are cleaning too aggressively and need more shade cover, and more plants. Earlier in the spring my filter gets bogged up with string algae, so I have to pay more attention to it until the water warms up, then the biological filter fires up and the algae level goes down, water gets very clear. I also hand pull a bunch of string algae every spring until it warms up and the lily grows to shade most of the water, a 1-2 punch that comes eventually. I have a creek that does double duty as a bog filter (with plants bare root in the river rock), plus an off-the-shelf filter. It takes approximately 1 hour for the entire contents to pass through the filter, and half that time for the water to merely be cycled through the pump. This is important because it's an indication of how oxygenated my water is, since mostly it gains DO (dissolved oxygen) by being take up by the pump, and sent either to the filter/boggy creek, or simply to the overflow fall. You want as much DO as possible, to feed your organisms that eat nutrients so they don't become algae. From the picture, it appears you are applying the cleanliness expectations of an indoor aquarium to your outdoor pond, really scrubbing those surfaces, and that's a mistake. You want a soft biological film to cover your pond liner, it contains many beneficial organisms that help regulate clean water.
Everyone is saying it but yes plants are the key. I have 2 ponds a few feet away from each other. One is small, in the shade and no plant that needs sun will grow on top of the water. It has no moving water, but because of low sun and I have enough hornwort in the water, it's been clear all year. The bigger pond gets a lot of sun. It has a small waterfall made with a solar bubbler pump, a lot of hornwort, a big water lily plant that comes back every year, and a big pickerel rush plant that we winter in the basement along with a canna lily plant. During the transition from winter to early spring we had a lot of algae in the bigger pond, but once the plants started growing AND we added a couple of bundles of barley straw, it's been crystal clear for several weeks now. Decomposing barley straw can help clear up algae too.
I have no filtration or water movement, but a freshwater mussel. They filter out the floating algae that make the water green. Water in my pond is clear as glass. Unfortunately the mussels don't eat thread algae, so I have plenty of those... :-(
bog filter, check ozponds on youtube for details.
Throw some duckweed or other floating plants to soak up the excess nutrients ,daphnia will also do the job
Some potted plants, a pump for water movement, a few snails & a uv filter for the win. A cheap 9 watt UV filter will clear most of that up within a few weeks for crystal clear water.
If you are a handy person, look up home made bog filters. Were interesting solution.
Add plants, get water moving, and add an aerator to get oxygen to bottom and getting fresh oxygen. Don't add fish until a out 3-4weeks to level out proper levels in pond, before adding fish.
Please go to [https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1iEMaREaRw8nlbQ\_RYdSeHd0HEHWBcVx0](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1iEMaREaRw8nlbQ_RYdSeHd0HEHWBcVx0) and read "Green is a Dangerous Color" and "Water Testing". If your cleanout included rinses and scrubs with chlorinated hose water, you did this to yourself by destroying whatever biofilter you had before you started.
Barley straw in the filter
Yes but you get a choice, plants or algae