New pond with potential problems...

Hello all, just a quick question. I have dug a new pond and it actually holds water fairly decent lol. My concern is it has some black walnut trees around it and the nuts fall into the water. I have heard of the juglone affecting aquatic life. Has anybody had experience with this? And if so is there a fix? Thanks in advance

The simple fix is if it causes problems, cut them down. Until then just be observative.

I guess that would work but I'm not into cutting a bunch of trees down at this point.

"Juglone is only poorly soluble in water and thus does not move very far in the soil."

per this site:

http://www.wvu.edu/~agexten/hortcult/fruits/blkwalnt.htm


I think a factor would be how large your pond is, and how much tree litter / nuts fall into it.

if you have LOTS of flowing water, you may be ok... but something to consider is the Cherokee used to use black-walnut husks to stun/drive fish through their weirs and into nets... It certainly does have an effect. I sympathize with your wishes not to cut down nice trees, they're very good shade trees as well. Your best bet is to get ALOT of water flowing through that thing and then wait to see how the fish tolerate it. You may get no effects, but most likely you'll just have fish that aren't very happy and won't grow/eat well. If the water flowing through the pond is minimal or non-existent then my guess is they won't survive after the first good fall season...

Depending on the shape of your berms, you may be able to get away with just trimming the branches overhanging the ponds and let gravity/runoff take care of the rest...

On our farm, sensitive things will absolutely NOT grow within the drip line of a black walnut tree.

Unfortunately cutting back the tree to help stop nuts falling in isn't an option either. I made a small island in the middle of the pond, only because there is a good size walnut on it and I didn't wanna cut it down. There is at least one more right on the bank too. As far as the water movement goes, it will gain and drain water with each rain but not much more with that. A waterway feeds the pond but it is not uncommon to be dry several times throughout the summer. I'm guessing, like everything else, I will just have to experiment with so e fish and see what happens. Therefore, anyone have suggestions on what kind of fish to experiment with or would it even matter?