Is the plant shelf under the liner? I think I see an 'inside' row of rocks. Is the planting shelf dirt on top of the liner between the inside row of rocks and the outside edge of the pond? Is the floating stuff on the water from the dirt? Just trying to get clarification.

If there is dirt in the pond it will probably continue to be a problem. Usually you would plant in clay soil in pots in a small man made pond. The fish would also make a mess rooting around in a lot of dirt.

c2g,
Is you pond really shallow? I mean really shallow?
You aren't going to have even a pump to circulate the water to prevent bugs from overtaking your yard?
Do you have neighbors that live relatively close to you?
It looks like you do from the pic.

What is the purpose of the pond? Is it for plants like a bog? The peat moss in the bog keeps it from smelling. So I don't know how you will keep your water from smelling stagnate. Even the potted in clay plants in my pond smell stinky when I pull them out to re-pot and they are on a very small scale in relation to the pond. Do you know someone with a pond like this?

To have a pond that you can enjoy get rid of all the dirt and clay. This may require a complete cleanout at this point. If you must have something to plant in on your shelf use pea gravel. You can plant directly into the gravel and or sink pots into the pea gravel.
You also should add a pump and filter system at the very least. I would accomplish this with a skimmer and bio falls filter.
Sorry

Unlike clay or sand, garden dirt has high percentage of organic material that decomposes and without the proper circulation and aeration (which supports "good" bacteria) will start smelling bad and attracting mosquitos. There are such things as clay lined and natural ponds, but even those do require some circulation/ water turnover whether thats through use of a pump - or a more natural way (spring fed). If its small enough you could just periodically drain out a portion and refill.

Good luck - I like the looks of it, its a nice shape with the shelves- and I sure do understand your wanting something quieter more natural looking without a lot of water movement (kinda wish I'd gone in that direction) but still there are the basic fundamentals that have to be applied.

Come back c2g. I am really curious about your pond and want to know about it. I have 5 little ponds and one bigger one and a bog/fairy garden. If you have experienced this pond in someone's yard and it had great vegetation or something else that made it great I would love to know about it. Maybe there would be a number 7 on a smaller scale in my yard. Please come back and give us more information.

Also, the poster that said use gravel had a good suggestion. You could top dress the gravels with prettier rocks, bigger and different sizes to look like a river bottom.

hi,

I recently did the same ting. I just replaced and properly leveled my pond, before all my problems started i had decided to have a totally organic and natural pond and placed only a little leveling sand and a lot of river people along the bottom, and always had a crystal clear pond, but chose a couple of wrong plants that were very invasive, so I removed them, then some guy who claimed to have 20 yrs experience in raising fish said that it would be a bad set up for breeding fish due to all the bacteria that the people hold. so I removed all the pebbles and he came and emptied the pond and suggested that i pot my pot all my plants but use the same pebbles? I had fish breeding like crazy in there and they were happy and healthy! But i wanted to be able to sell some one day and figured it would be best to remove the stone and rinse them before repotting my plants in them. Meanwhile I had some other ongoing overflow issues with the pond and felt it was just better to start over with the new liner. And decided to go back to my pebble bottom, only I as in midst of a family crisis and it took the guys 5 days which i had agreed to n the contract, so lost track of what was going on with my fish that I had in 2 large round buckets and found a couple floating, so of course I did a quick water clean out and did not want to keep them in there for any longer even though my pond was still quite murky, the water tests all showed either perfect, (ammonia) and or normal values, so i went to put my pebbles and put the plants in there top soil and all and placed lots of more pebbles on top of the plants and soil, with the thought, that as I do with my spotted lotus that are not in the pond, whenever I rinsed the potted outdoor plants out with water, it would run clear and stay clear! but my pond has yet to do that. i added a clearing agent 2 x's and its only been 32 hours with the pump running continuously! Am I going to have to mt the pond yet again, or try vacuuming the top soil out, or give it a week to see if it clears on its own?

I think things will be OK with what ever you do as long as you give it some time, like weeks. It is certainly good to cover dirt with pebbles. While too late most here would suggest that you not put pebbles in the bottom of the pond simply to make any cleaning easier but otherwise it is not an issue. You didn't indicate any filtering; that would speed things up.

yes a good filtration at the top of my waterfall and a skimmer at the opposite side. raining a lot last few days so thats not helping. I'm also thinking of a way to flush it using a drain pipe where i want the water to stop and then attaching a drip line around my garden area might help

well its slow looking a little less murky, but.. decided to go out and buy a pump with a float that will basically alway keep the water level the same, so that i can actually flush my pond out without worries of the overflow washing away and sand or plants that i have put around my pond, and bought a few extra fittings that will allow me to attach a long drip hose and water everything around the pond at the same time! think this may work to quickly clear up the pond water as well, thanks for all the support!, good community!