Pond Cleaning

I have been waiting for the perfect combination of time, warm weather, and rain in the forecast to clean my water pond but the likely hood of that occurring seems remote so I cleaned it after work yesterday.

The water was cold and when my right shoe was sucked off by the mud it wasn't long before my foot became numb. My neighbor, who recently separated from his family (or rather they separated themselves from him) offered his help except that he was afraid he might get his shoes muddy.

The job entails draining a 2,000 gallon pond, catching fish and transferring them to a second pond, moving about 500 rocks and 50 water plants, pulling the liner out and cleaning it.

This time I had two sections of carpet (about 10 x 12 each) to place under the liner. The carpet will help protect the liner plus next time I have to clean the pond, I won't have to deal with so much mud.

I did get the carpet in the hole and the liner reinstalled but placing the pond plants back into the pond and lining the pond with the rocks will have to wait for another day.

I drained the contents of my rain barrels into the pond and left the drain hoses draped into the pond liner and the rain barrel valves open in anticipation of the rains today and tomorrow. Forecast calls for heavy rains today saying we might get up to two inches.

I know it is seems to be asking a lot for two inches of rain to fill a 4 foot deep hole but considering much of the water running off the roof of the house will drain into the pond via the rain barrels and one can see that two inches of rain might be sufficient as the rain barrels add an additional 1,300 square feet of surface to the 196 square feet of pond surface. The last hard rain added a thousand gallons of water to my pond which would have been a good thing except I was letting it get low on purpose.

My fish are getting huge. The four Koi are about two years old, give a week or two and the largest two have to weigh five or six pounds. They will really enjoy the extra depth of the pond this year. Last year it was only 2 feet deep at the deepest part and eighteen inches at the shallow end. This year the pond will be five feet deep at the deep end and three feet at the shallow end while most of the pond will be at about four feet deep.

My pump is plenty big enough to handle the water flow but I need a better filtration system. Hopefully I can find the right plans and come up with the money to build a good system this year.

The waterfall mound has filled in nicely and should be a beautiful sight this year. I'll post some pictures of the water pond and the fish when everything is in full bloom.