Description: The pond itself is large, something like 10x20 meters, 1.5m deep in places with a shallower area at one end.
It is a natural pond fed with run off from the fields above and exits the far side.
Stocked well with a variety of fish all the way up to about 2lb, with frogs, toads (not seen any newts yet), insects and mostly good vegetation.
We were told that it had completely silted up so was cleared out about 5 years ago by the previous owners, then lined - which you can see coming up to form the banks.
All in all a fantastic, healthy, woodland pond habitat.
The bad vegetation such as brambles and bushes trying to grow out of the edges we're removing slowly and although we have some concerns on them making holes in the liner, they don't seem to present much of an issue at the moment.
However, the water is very murky with plenty of silt being washed in continually which is clearly going to need dealing with.
Also, last summer it did seem to start suffering from an algae bloom - probably in part because of too much nutrients flowing in, this does worry me due to the oxygen levels for fish.
I'm interested primarily in two areas, prevention and recovery of the silt/agae issue, as any major clear out is a good few years down the road.
On the prevention side I'm not sure how to stem the flow of silt and nutrients into the pond.
My focus has been to look at the in and out flows of water and have been considering digging a small pre-pond pool with it's own overflow for when the pond is full, so to take a different route around the pond. Then this pool can hopefully collect most of the silt and be easily dug out as it builds up, while the pond is only fed with water as necessary thus limiting the influx of unwanted items.
There are some technical challenges with this though, as of course the pool will be above the pond, and the area is quite steep.
On the recovery side, I'd like to remove at least some of the floating particles of silt and algae.
My focus here has been on using a generator and water pump to pull the water up into sum kind of filtration system, then back into the pond.
I've considered lots of options from simple canvas or cotton sacks through to more commercial systems which come with hefty price tags.
But none of them have settled down into something workable.
Has anybody here had experience with woodland ponds? any tips would be greatly appreciated.
Sorry for the long post but thought it was worth getting some information in there up front.
Here are a couple of photos -
