Spring Clean & Maintenance
Why Clean?
- Organic build up can cause many problems
- Leaf debris
- Dead or dying plants from last year
- Over abundance of fish
- Overgrown Plants
Decide on cleaning or not
- Some ponds have elements that create the need for cleaning every year, such as:
- To many fish
- Not enough plant life
- Located in area were a lot of leaves, pollen, dust can collect
- Using a UV System
- Fish or water quality problems over last few months
- Small Ponds
- Others Pond setups can go two or more years without cleaning, such as:
- Ponds with well established ecosystem
- Ponds with high end bio filters/skimmers
- Well maintained ponds
- Larger ponds (2500 and up)
Steps of cleaning a Pond
- First collect all needed materials for the job
- Buckets
- Net (two if possible)
- Cooler
- Power Washer
- Brooms
- Shop Vac
- Beneficial Bacteria
- Stress Reducer/De-Chlorinator
- Pump & Hose
- Fertilizer (tabs)
- Drain the pond into a container to where the pond water level is around 2-4 inches deep, saving as much original water as possible.
- Remove any potted plants you would like to repot or work with
- Start catching fish and locate them in a safe place (e.g. the conatiner used for the pond water)
- Put an air pump or water pump so they do not die
- Start by washing down the pond with your garden hose, and remove excess dirt and silt
- Once the majority of the scum and silt is removed, start spraying or brushing excess string algae.
- You may find that a lot more silt will start to accumulate in the bottom which will need to be removed.
- Don't not try to scrub the pond clean, this will cause more damage than not cleaning at all.
- Once the excess silt, debris, rocks, and other unwanted stuff is remove you can start to fill the pond.
- While filling the pond with water, start to add your bacteria's, stress reducers, de-chlorinators, etc.
- While filling, if any potted plants were removed, you can put them back in the pond.
- After about 1/2 the pond has been filled, you can then start to slowly put the fish back into the pond.
- Once pond is almost full plug in pump and filter to circulate water.
- For the first week or so, the pond may have slightly off colored water, this is because the pond is try to cycle itself back to its normal water conditions.