The permaculture farm I was renting this time last year had 20 odd ducks, but did not have a pond. The owner, Derek Greenwood, is very well known for his permaculture practices and runs tours on the island here of his different properties showing how permaculture techniques can be applied to a wide range of practices from bank and cliff stabilisation to rainforest regeneration. The permaculture mantra of using each resource to its highest value, when applied to the ducks, ultimately meant they ended up as food, but their primary role was insect and weed control in the orchard, which they did with varying degrees of success. A low fence was built around his orchard and the ducks were allowed to free range around the orchard as a flock (we don't have any predators like foxes here). I asked him why he didn't have water for them and his response was that ducks do not need water and when they do have it they stir it up and create such unfavourable conditions that they become a liability instead of a asset. The tanks to provide water were there for them, but instead of filling them with water for the ducks he filled it with soil, placed it near the septic tank, and grew perenial fruit plants like Monstera in it. I had to feed the ducks every night with chicken pellets to supplement what they got from free ranging and to be honest, unless I wanted ducks as pets, I wouldn't use them myself because they weren't particularly effective and they preferred to eat the pellets instead of the weeds and I certainly wouldn't use them in a pond with fish given how dirty these guys were. He chose ducks (Khaki Campbells) instead of chickens because they are not as destructive as chickens. I have since moved house and have my own chickens, and to be honest I would have chickens any day over the ducks. They are cleaner, they are effective insect controlers, they are less picky about which weeds they will eat, lay heaps of eggs, their scratching habits turns over the mulch aruond the place and actually helps to break it down faster, and are less trouble/more hardy. If I had an aquaponics system where I had a pond for the fish and a pond for the ducks and the water flowed from the fish pond to the duck pond to the grow beds and back to the fish... that might be better *shrugs*. Would give a wider range of nutrients for the plants too. You could put yabbies in the bottom of the duck pond to clean up any solid waste that might accumulate and add a little diversity to your system too. Or, if only one pond was an option, maybe instead of fish yabbies alone were used *shrugs* Maybe even have the grow beds raised off the ground and allowing the ducks to free range under the beds to help with insect and weed control.... There are lots of options for ducks that don't involve ponds that are worth while looking at IMO.
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