Glug,
I know you have lived in bad frog houses. Your cousin, the newt often is the first inhabitant in mud bottom dead ponds. How do you make a good frog house? PonDoc has very easy methods to restore a pond. I have touched on each of these methods in previous blogs so will link them to each subject.
River Run Rock Shore: This provides habitat for thousands of pond animals and makes a place for a Pond Engine to plant sedge.
Plant Shore: You will have the engine to run the ponds physics. It provides a planting space for water plants that cool the water and allow the pond to respire. You should plant trees and shrubs too.
Deciduous Log: Split and plant grass in a dead “sweet wood” log that is allowed to rot at pond edge in the air. This is habitat for invertebrates. Their primary diet is algae and you might attract a turtle.
Diffused Air: Provide bottom diffused aeration with bacteria and cellulose barley straw substrate. Aeration replaces the natural flora at the shore so the pond can respire while the plants mature.
Fish: Plant disease free fish.
Crayfish: Transplant crayfish. Either buy or catch local crayfish. Do not use exotic crayfish.
Bird Houses: Build bird houses and feeding platforms including nectar stations.
A Chair: Provide people ecology because this pond is for you: Install a dock, tables and chairs
“PonDoc what do I do first?” The pond needs all of these to function. This is the minimum to create a closed system so my answer is “All of them”. However, if performed in the winter, most ponds will awake in the spring restored and healthy. You cannot expect a homeostatic balance to establish immediately. Within three years the pond will mature.
Gluggy, isn’t this what you want? Your pond can be a great frog house for you and the relatives. Even newts find a home here. Take it from the PonDoc, some heavy carbon cycle, nitrogen cycle, hydraulics and physics are involved with a fair amount of biology. What this humble doctor found was a good pond requires everything and it is right around us. You have to walk it to the pond closing the system.
PonDoc from the pond