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Message: [QUOTE="zemlin, post: 94286, member: 3806"] If this is a rerun of an oft-asked question, please feel free to link to a similar topic. I dug around some, but without success. I have a smallish above-ground pond - maybe 600 gallons - rubber lined - a few dozen goldfish live there along with a couple of bull frogs.. Central Indiana, so the winter isn't too bad here. Wintering the pond hasn't been an issue in the past. Last year we dropped in a little dirt-ball in a bag that grew into a few lily pads. It had quite a root mass by spring, but a quick visit from a Muskrat took care of the roots. This year the lily pads went nuts, and we've had lovely blooms all summer/fall. The deepest area of the pond is where they are rooted - maybe 40" of water at the most. We also have some cat tails that have broken through the walls of their pot in that area of the pond. I love having all the thriving plants in the pond - the water quality seems to be the best we've ever had, and there were survivors from the spawn this year. I'm not sure about the best way to handle the accumulated root mass and associated muck in the pond. I think it will be fine for the winter, and probably a great place for the frogs to try to winter. Frogs have had limited success wintering in our pond, but we've never had much of a place for them to hide. I think I need to do something with it before next summer, however, as if we get the same sort of accumulation and growth next year, our pond will be 1/3 full of roots and muck and so full of lily pads the fish will have no place to swim. Here's my thought - cut back the lilies and cat tails when they start to die back. Let it all be until spring. We stop feeding the fish and keep a heater in the water to keep a hole open in the ice. We run the main pump all winter to keep things moving. A smaller pump for a waterfall gets shut off in the coldest months as the waterfall ices over and water can start running out of the pond. We only get a few inches of ice. In the spring, once the frogs have come out (fingers crossed), pull out the plants, cut back much of the root mass, clean out much of the muck (but not all), and drop the plants back in for another growing season. Does this sound like a reasonable plan? [/QUOTE]

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