The muddy water in the pond may have two major reasons, both states can coexist.

1.      Clay particles. (Description: Water like coffee with a lot of water or milk coffee.)

Small clay particles do not sink to the bottom due to electric charge. In some areas with specific soil conditions the particles do not sink to the bottom but stay suspended in the water. The proven solution is too add gypsum.

How to calculate the right dosage. If the pond is very big then a test on 10 containers can be conducted with different amount of gypsum. The treatment is not destructive for plants or aquatic creatures so no risk of “overdosing” exist. It will be to obtain the best result for the minimum price. For smaller ponds the dose of 100 g per one cubic meter of water is reasonable dose to start with. Practically if your garden pond is 50 cm deep and has the size of 4mx4m than it is 16m2 and if it would be 1 m deep you would use 1.6kg gypsum but as the deep is only 50 cm you use 0, 8 kg gypsum. The first decisive improvement should be visible after 12 hours.

2.      Ammonia (Description: water green, green-brown)

Such conditions prevail often if the pond contains fish or a lot of organic material falls into the water, like leaves etc. The gypsum will not help. A right bacteria flora has to be established. One can buy a pond starter kit from Amazon. It work well but if you have a fish in the pond the water will never be perfectly clean. If you have capacity you may construct a simple filter. You may need some kind of water pump. Safest would be to acquire small 12 volt pump. No risk of electric shock.  (You should use a thick power cable between the transformer and the pump.) Pond bacteria: description of

Pond kit should contain two set of bacteria Nitrosomonas and Nitrobacter.

In a very simplified way the following processes take place:

I.)              Nitrosomonas bacteria genus transforms ammonia into nitrite.

N. alkalicus
N. hamburgensis
N. vulgaris
N. winogradskyi

II.)            Nitrobacter genus transforms nitrite to nitrate which can be used by plants.

N. aestuarii
N. communis
N. europaea
N. eutropha
N. halophila
N. marina
N. nitrosa
N. oligotropha
N. ureae

Best growing temperature (20 to 30°C)

The optimum for both bacteria groups is different but about 28-30 C should be a compromise. The PH value should be between 6-8.

Unfortunately, the majority the pond bacteria kits available on the market do not specify which bacteria are present in the kit. Lack of information makes the conclusion on the problems with the water improvement difficult.