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The thing that stands out to me most of all, as a passionate pond guy, was how we could go into one pasture and see a pristine, beautiful, clear pond with a few trees around it and then go less than a quarter-mile and see a pond the same color as chocolate milk with an orange tint. There were some ponds on that property that I swear looked exactly like the barren red dirt that surrounded it.

Phosphorus is a nutrient required for life by all the organisms in and around your pond or lake. In most freshwater environments, phosphorus is the limiting nutrient, which means it’s usually the nutrient in shortest supply. But, in other parts of the country, phosphorus can be over-abundant. It’s this keystone-like characteristic that makes phosphorus so influential in your pond and so important in pond management. Fertilizer treatments in ponds with low P can triple the number of fish and one pound of phosphorus is enough to produce up to 500 pounds of algae. Whether you want a gin-clear swimming pond or a monster bass honey hole, phosphorus plays an important role in your pond.

What happens when a pond starts to fill in with surrounding sediment? Upstream dirt begins to move downhill and stops as soon as it gets to our pond. Over time, sometimes slowly or sometimes quickly, water starts to disappear, replaced by added shoreline, reduced depth, and wetland plants pop up everywhere. Small trees and brush appear, and the area that used to be water is no more.

As we are all aware, pond management is not always as simple as we’d like it to be, but it’s the complexities and problems that make the challenge of pond management so fulfilling. There are certainly management aspects with which we could be more familiar to help us gain more answers than questions. In this segment of Pond Boss we’re going to cover basics of water quality, and in this first installment, the focus is on your pond’s pH.

Bob Lusk Editor From Pond Boss Magazine gives us some common mistakes that he has came across in his 40 year career. ten minutes of reading may save you a bottle of Tylenol.