BUTLER COUNTY, Ohio – Aging ponds can get messy with weeds and algae, leaving the pond owner wondering what happened and how to fix it. What was once a beautiful recreation area now has people saying, “Yuck!”

Pond experts Brady Smith, Butler Soil and Water Conservation District rural specialist, and Matt Megois, branch manager of Jones Lake Management’s Miamisburg office, both had suggestions on how to resolve the issue.

“Aging ponds can get messy,” Smith said. “I always compare it to a big sink that never really drains. You have overflow coming off, but in the bottom of the pond there can be sometimes decades worth of sediment or other organic material.”

That material could be dead and decaying algae, plants, other aquatic life, even fish, Smith said. If the pond is in a wooded area, a lot of dead leaves have probably created a mucky mess. Over time, all of that will decrease the depth of the pond.

“It also adds a lot of nutrients to the pond,” Smith said. “That can fuel algal blooms and cause a lot of other issues, and it never really gets better. Usually in smaller ponds the issues are accelerated. If you have a bigger pond, those typically last longer, but over time they all get that muck on the bottom.”

If the pond has a lot of sediment, the owner should check the watershed uphill from the pond. If there is erosion, sometimes just adding a grass buffer around the pond can help stop the erosion; the grass catches the sediment before it can enter the pond.

“Another effective thing I have seen people do is to build a sediment trap,” Smith explained. “A sediment trap can be a smaller pond, like a feeder pond. The water has to enter that pond before it enters your larger pond.”

The sediment trap can also be an artificial wetland with aquatic plants. That will not only stop the sediment, but the plants will be able to collect excess nutrients to prevent them from entering the pond.

“We also recommend aerators for a lot of reasons,” Smith explained. “They can help prevent fish kills by adding oxygen to the water; they can also help create a more active bacterial environment, so hopefully those bacteria will be more active and would be able to digest that muck faster.”

An electric-powered aerator is best, but if the pond is in a remote area, then wind or solar may be the only options. In that situation, Smith said he often recommends solar powered because the technology has gotten so much better.

“The aerator needs to be able to get to the bottom of the pond in the water column,” Smith said. Then it will be able to force air bubbles all the way up from the bottom to the top.

“A lot of people think that a fountain is going to do the same thing that an aerator can do,” he explained. “If you want to see the fountain shooting up, that’s fine, but the fountain is not doing the same job that an aerator would do. The fountain is just cycling the warm water from the top of the pond right back to the top of the pond.”

Both pond experts agreed that too many nutrients are the biggest problem in a mucky, mossy pond. Jones and other lake management companies offer phosphorus reduction agents, which they will apply, or the pond owner can purchase and use. Those companies offer water testing so the owner can figure out how much phosphorus is in their pond.

“Essentially you’re going to try to spread that phosphorus reduction agent throughout the pond,” Megois said. “If they just want to do it themselves, they can buy a bag every once in a while, and it is going to help overall in the pond. That’s a good thing to do even before you have a problem because you are going to have nutrients in the pond, and that product will stay around until it has something to bind to.

“A lot of folks wait until it is too late, until they have a problem instead of being ahead of it,” Megois explained. “If you put some (phosphorus reduction agent) in before you have a problem, you are less likely to have a problem in the future, and if you do, it is going to be less of a headache.”

A problem with people treating their pond themselves is that they don’t read the product label carefully, use way too much, and end up with a fish kill, Megois said.

Also, putting in rip rap or native wetland plants will cut down on erosion, Megois said. Any pond over 10 years old is going to have some sediment from erosion. Those plants will uptake both sediment and nutrients.

“We sell the packages of the plants in the spring, or someone can pay for us to put in a package,” he said. “We have a couple of different species, all plants native to this area.”