Help! Duck pond

[Angiebaby162]

Hey y’all, I have 3 mallards and decided their little swimming pool was not enough. I did research and dug out a pond, added a liner and planted a ton of excellent plants that would clean the water and be safe for them to eat! It was beautiful. I let it sit for week so the plants could establish their roots and good bacteria could build up. Poor ducks were staring at it!!! Yea well, not even an hour later after letting them have at it, all of my plants were ripped out and eaten by the ducks and the 15 chickens.... So I added a filter. We all know that didn’t work. It kept getting clogged. After a full clean out of the entire pond, (which of course was super gross) I did some rigging on the filter to make sure the big stuff won’t get it and that seems to be working ok. However, now I have zero good bacteria to clean out the muck and bottom. I have another pond with fish, so I have some pond starter, can I add the pond starter to the duck pond???? I don’t want to risk the ducks, but I also don’t want to do another full clean out of the duck pond in a few days. I just ordered some natural pond cleaner that is supposedly good for cleaning the muck, but it won’t be here for TWO WEEKS!!!!

 

[EverythingDucks]

Welcome to BYC!

We got a koi pond last may and have had lots of problems too. I would get some pond plants that they don't eat, so long as there safe, and that will help keep it cleaner. Maybe they'll stay busy with lots of duckweed. For us, we put up some hardware wire type material by the filter to keep fish and larger things out. To be honest we're still new to figuring things out but I hope this helps. I don't know about the starter but maybe someone else here will

 

[Ratchnick]

Bacterial based products should be Ok for your ducks.

 

[Angiebaby162]

I was thinking if it’s safe for fish that it should be safe for ducks, but ya never know

 

[DuckyDonna]

I think it might be easier to go back to the kiddie pool? they are going to eat everything you try to plant.