I've got about a 2 acre pond that was built last April and filled up in May of the same year. My water is still muddy. I've done the 5 gallon bucket test and after a few days the water is clear and all the sediment has sank to the bottom. I don't have cows on my place and with it being a new pond there shouldn't be any trash fish causing the problem. So I'm thinking that my problem is due to limited grasses on the damn and surround banks and wind/waves just keep the silt stirred up. Has anyone had any similar issues/problems? If it is due to lack of vegetation does adding alum. or gypsum solve this problem?

Old Timers use to put old round bales of hay in ponds to take care of muddy water. I would agree planting vegetation around the edges wouldn't hurt

Planting grasses on the pond and along the ponds edge will help. They are a good seed companies that supply erosions mixes. Careful putting hay bales in ponds. if the pond is already stocked with fish it can cause oxygen to be used up in the water. Resulting in stressed fish or a possible fish kill on hot windless days. There a variety of aquatic plants that might help, if at all possible stay from cattails. Not knowing the soil type, cattails can be a problem over time. good luck


Native American Seed
https://www.seedsource.com/catalog/
Tuner seed
https://www.turnerseed.com/grass-seed2.html
Bamert seed
https://www.bamertseed.com/

Sounds like your water hardness is already acceptable if the sediment is settling in the buckets within 24 or so hours. Wouldn't hurt to have an Extension agent test alkalinity and hardness if you don't already have those numbers. 20 mg/L of hardness is generally considered the minimum level for good fishing ponds with 50 mg/L or more being preferred. I think you're on the right track that soil erosion from wave action or runoff is behind it. Adding alum or gypsum in this case would only clear the water at the time of treatment with the wave action/erosion muddying it right back up on the next windy day or storm. (unless you find that your hardness is below 20 mg/L, then alum/gypsum would help the water clear faster and persist longer)

Getting something growing on that shoreline should be a priority. Not just for keeping the water clean but for maintaining the integrity of the bank slopes. The county Extension agent would probably be a good resource on what grasses would grow well in your area too. You might also look into coir logs. They're coconut-based bio-degradable erosion control structures that you could lay along the bank, stake them down, and even plant seedlings into to give the plants a stable base to grow from. Bulrush is one of the highest rated species for soil/shoreline stability that grows well just about everywhere in the south. I wouldn't suggest planting it around the entire pond unless you like that look, but particularly along the shore that gets the most wave action to armor it against erosion. The rest of the pond should be fine with normal grasses growing down to the edge of the water. There are other shoreline emergent plants like arrowhead, water willow, smartweed, for example, that also provide wave dissipation and soil stability but not to the level that bulrush can. Just keep in mind that introducing plants means keeping them under control. If you don't want to mess with that, then probably a layer of geotextile mat covered with rip rap along the windiest bank would be the best route.

Hopefully some of the other pond professionals on the site will chime in with their ideas on this.

All, thanks for the great info! I think I’ll start with trying to plant a good grass mix and putting down some erosion control for the time being.

Guess that makes me an "oldtimer" cause I've been doing just that for about 40 years....works for me!