Hello, I am looking for advice on whether I should completely empty my pond this Spring and give it a good cleaning (I have not done so in years) or just scoop out leaves and debris and let the filter do its things to clear the water. The pond is 20 x 12 - so pretty big. We live in MA so lots of fallen leaves and colder water now. My fish are very happy (just gold fish) and multiply like crazy. I know there is something to be said for keeping those "good bugs" in your water and on your liner as they help with keeping the eco-system of your pond working. I do have to split my lilies and would like to "overhaul" the rock placement around the edges and rebuild my waterfall....so I thought maybe a good time for a thorough cleaning??? Time to clean or no.....Any thoughts?
To Completely Empty and Clean or Not....That is the Question
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sissy
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You clean it you are starting over .Get a swimming pool net .Plus you can stress out fish which leaves them open to diseases .Plus saving al the pond water if you do decide to do it would help greatly
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i do rapidly clean mud from bottom once in year bcz i let the leaves fall all year i dont mind so just to keep balance i do refresh the pond yearly then all year i dont need to clean , but i keep all the other things un touched and wet to keep bacteria alive . if u rent suction pump then that wil do the job without draining all water
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Welcome cmacgowan and welcome to the forum 
Your pond is lovely!
If you have work to do on the pond, with the rocks and waterfall, I'd just lower the water leaving the fish in the pond. As @sissy said, you can use a pool net to net out the debris and if you net the pond in the Fall, you'll have less leaves in the pond.
Your pond is lovely! If you have work to do on the pond, with the rocks and waterfall, I'd just lower the water leaving the fish in the pond. As @sissy said, you can use a pool net to net out the debris and if you net the pond in the Fall, you'll have less leaves in the pond.
Since you want to divide plants and arrange rocks I'd empty the pond. Normally I just vacuum because emptying is a lot more work and hard on fish..
The good things in water...well, not exactly. Depends on the kind of pond. Wildlife ponds, yeah, love all the critters and life. Water Garden, probably more not so nice stuff in the water than nice stuff. Plenty of beneficial bacteria inside pipes, hoses, rocks and suck to liner, etc... Even power washing isn't going to remove it all. Using soap and bleach wouldn't be good and also not needed. No matter what there's going to be a whole new system so expect lots of changes in water for awhile. Watch ammonia levels if you want, but I doubt you'll have issues.
The good things in water...well, not exactly. Depends on the kind of pond. Wildlife ponds, yeah, love all the critters and life. Water Garden, probably more not so nice stuff in the water than nice stuff. Plenty of beneficial bacteria inside pipes, hoses, rocks and suck to liner, etc... Even power washing isn't going to remove it all. Using soap and bleach wouldn't be good and also not needed. No matter what there's going to be a whole new system so expect lots of changes in water for awhile. Watch ammonia levels if you want, but I doubt you'll have issues.
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Welcome to our group!
I would just net out the stuff, pull the lilies up to divide. If you do decide to empty, make sure you have a nice big holding area for the fish
I can never empty ours and refill, we have very acidic well water, it would kill off all of the fish.
I would just net out the stuff, pull the lilies up to divide. If you do decide to empty, make sure you have a nice big holding area for the fish
I can never empty ours and refill, we have very acidic well water, it would kill off all of the fish.
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bacteria will survive if i keep rocks and walls wet from shower but drain the water ?
callingcolleen1
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I would net the excess waste off pond bottom and do part water change. Nothing too drastic or fish will stress out too much. Clean filters and enure good water flow. Do small water change weekly if it's really bad, until every thing looks good.
sissy
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You never mentioned if you have city water or well water and if well water has it been tested .Like addy said it may be more work and hard on the fish
Mmmmmm, all of them? Nope. Some percentage? Yep. Does it matter if kept wet or not? Not really. Does any of this bacteria stuff matter at all? Not really.
This whole bacteria thing is way, way over done on the web. It is out of control crazy.
The bacteria in question, ammonia and nitrite converters, exist right now on your hand, on your phone, your house, the soil and in the air. It's completely alive and living the good life. The internet mob "experts" would have you believe keeping these creatures alive requires a biology degree.
Here's where the wheels fall off...In extremely high fish load ponds conversion of ammonia is very important. They need a lot of these bacteria in a dense area to convert the massive amount of ammonia their fish produce. If they lose like 75% of the critters they have to rebuild the colony when the pond starts back up. That can take a few days which means that have to deal with the ammonia other ways which is a pain. So they use techniques to try and maintain these colonies and create colonies before adding fish.
Internet yahoos read that and not being super bright or interested and wanting to appear as experts spend their day scaring the crap out of people telling them to do this and that.
Keeping bacteria wet is just one of the many myths. These critters are so small that the concept of wet and dry start to lose meaning. There simply is no way for anyone to predict what percentage would be lost to spraying with water or saved. For sure spraying with ammonia in the water would increase numbers...a lot. And when the ammonia went away their numbers would fall. They don't need water in the same way a fish does. They survive everywhere.
In Water Gardens and most Koi ponds, bacteria play very little part in ammonia conversion. Algae does most. It is only in super clean high fish load ponds and tanks where bacteria is used as a primary ammonia control.
This is all super, super easy. Measure ammonia when starting up a pond. The bacteria, from the air, only need a few days to multiply enough to handle virtually all Water Garden fish loads. Most people will never even measure any ammonia.
These internet myths scare potential pond owners away from the hobby. That's not good for the hobby and that's not good for us. More ponds means less likely your state will ban Koi and Goldfish. More ponds mean products can be cheaper. It's in all our best interest to try and purge at least part of this huge list of myths. We should be trying to make ponds easier to keep...not trying to make it seem impossible.
Or not.
Amen. Amen. Amen.
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Two of the best things you can do to keep your pond clean is a bottom drain and a surface skimmer. Since your talking about a possible complete rebuild, both are worth considering. The surface skimmer is going to collect most of the leaves and floating debris, that would eventually sink to the bottom and decay, while the bottom drain takes debris on the bottom to the filters.
We should be clear that a bottom drain includes more than just a bottom drain. To work and be effective requires a few other systems like a large enough pump and a filter that can remove the debris. The cost of a complete system, and the cost to run, can far exceed most people's budget or desire for complexity. For virtually all people thinking about getting a pond if you want to convince them not to just start talking about bottom drains.
Vacuuming is a much cheaper, less complex, less stressful alternative.
Paying a company to empty and clean a pond once a year is by far the most common solution and viable for many people. That is why Aquascape is by far the biggest builder of ponds. They understand people.
There are more options than just a bottom drain.
Vacuuming is a much cheaper, less complex, less stressful alternative.
Paying a company to empty and clean a pond once a year is by far the most common solution and viable for many people. That is why Aquascape is by far the biggest builder of ponds. They understand people.
There are more options than just a bottom drain.
Agreed. If anyone had told me that I needed a bottom drain and all the associated paraphernalia, I would had said "thanks but no thanks". Heck, I don't even have a skimmer... or a filter for that matter! And my pond is clean, clean, clean. I spent 10 minutes "cleaning" it this weekend - three passes with the net and the debris is all gone.
Well said. I could not agree more. I have kept fish tanks for a long time and ponds for the past few.....The start up Ammonia spike thing has been overblown from my personal experience. Rarely have I registered a spike after a startup. I was always worried, bought test kits, monitored waiting to see a spike. Rarely has one registered. With that said I decided to clean my pond this Spring. I drained, used a shop vac to clean the bottom and refilled. A day later I put my 3 medium goldfish back in after the chlorine was gone. That was two weeks ago and the fish have been fine since. In that time we have had drastic changes in weather, rain and even hail and all three are doing great. While I have done startup both ways (Drain/Clean as well as Netting) I think it is a personal preference if the chore is not a lot (My pond is small at a few hundred gallons).