Water Gardening: unsuccessful pond clean-out :(, 0 by earthwormlover

earthwormlover wrote:
I am so bummed out about our pond clean-out. Mother's Day, we took every last drop of water out of our 600 or so gallon pond, scrubbed down the sides, scrubbed the rocks and sides of the plant pots, repotted a few plants and rearranged everything. This is our fourth summer with our pond and it's had algae problems and a certain pea soup quality to the water from too much organic matter collected that first year when we were greenhorns and let too many leaves fall in. We had never cleaned it this well, so we were pretty excited. Yesterday, I went out to check on it and lo and behold, there is a layer of sediment on every single surface. I thought one of the plants had actually tipped over. So, I got in and felt around the cloudy water to find all the pots where they belong. As instructed, we used heavy clay garden soil in our pots, same as before, with a layer of gravel over the top to keep the soil in place. I did punch a couple of air holes in the side of one container. That's the only thing I did differently from the last time I repotted plants. Yet, it's never leaked this much clay into the water.
My question is this....will this sediment filter out of the water or are we just out of luck? Is this normal, has anyone else experienced this? I can hardly stand the idea of draining all the water again, but after all that work, it's depressing to look at it the way it is now! If we drain it and put more in, is the same thing going to happen again?
Thanks for any expertise anyone can offer.