Help please.

[roxxanne]

First off, I am in SW PA. I have had my pond for around 10 years. It is small, preformed, figure 8 shaped about 6 ft by 4 ft I think. Most of my 8 fish were as old as my pond they were nice sized, probably around 8 inches nice and fat. I loved them! My pond was starting to look ratty so I decided to refurbish it and make it look nice again. So I redid it. I rebuilt the waterfall and reduced a huge clump of porcupine grass. It looked great!
then a heron found it and ate all of my fish! I am crushed!!!! After about 3 weeks now I noticed that it now has a smell. I was messing around with my pump and noticed I have a snail infestation! Crap!! I never even seen a single snail before. So my questions are, were my fish eating the snails before. {They were common goldfish.} And is this smell from the snails? I am going to empty the pond, clean it out, then run it for awhile before I put any new fish in. I'm going to cover it with a net when I get it all back together, but my concern right now are the snails and the smell. Thanks.

 

[addy1]

The snails are not making it smell, I have tons of snails, I just ignore them. You might have a dead fish or something else. If you empty and clean, don't clean all the good algae off the liner.

 

[roxxanne]

Yeah, I've emptied it before do I'm familiar with the process. Im wondering where these snails suddenly came from. Its almost too much of a coincident that the fish are gone and they appear and the bad smell all at once.

 

[Lisak1]

There are "bad smells" and then there are "BAD SMELLS". Some people think the normal smells you get from a pond - mostly from potted plants in a pond are "bad". It is stinky, but not a sign that anything is wrong. You may have stirred up some pond muck when you removed plants. The smell of something dead is totally different which could mean something is dead in or near the pond. If a heron took all the fish, that doesn't mean it ate all the fish. They will sometimes just stab them and discard them. You may want to check around.

Snails are mostly harmless. I occasionally will have to get them off my lily pads, as they will eat holes in those, but otherwise they don't cause any problems in my pond. And it is possible that your fish were eating them. Or they were concealing themselves in the plants that you removed. In either case, I have found that they tend to show up in masses and then disappear just as quickly.

 

[roxxanne]

I dont have SOME snails, I have millions! They cover everything! And their eggs or egg cases are all over everything. Its really gross. Im thinking that the fish were eating them. Im going to get more fish but not til i get the pond cleaned up. Thanks for the reply!

 

[brc]

For there to be a large, rapid bloom of snails like you're describing, there has to be a large food supply for them...

Maybe there are dead fish still in there, and they're eating that? Most snails eat plants / algae, but some are scavengers.

Alternatively, maybe the fish were eating lots of algae, and without them the snails now have a huge food supply?

 

[roxxanne]

No dead fish. They vanished. There is algae on the sides. Theyre probably eating that.

 

[Mmathis]

I don’t know the answer to your question, but I do know that dead snails (not live ones) produce one of the worst-ever smells! Maybe there are some dead ones in ther.