A Gardeners Forum Forums Members History Forum Life 2005 New home has water pond, need help

Hello everyone.

I just moved into a house that has 2 water/fish ponds. I believe the ponds ahve been here for about 8 years. The owner we bought the place from did not have much info and basically just said the he just cleaned the filter and added water from the garden hose. I can tell from the landscaping that 1) The first owners spent a lot of time planning and keeping up the backyard and ponds and 2) the second owner let things run down -- the surronding trees are overgrown, landscaping around ponds overgrown.

So here is my question. Both of the pools appear to have 6-9 inches of mud? sludge? leaves? something at the bottom. Should we drain the pools and get rid of that stuff? or are there ponds that should have direct at the bottom? The books I've picked up all seem to indicate that this is a bad thing, but I'm not sure. Maybe it was by design??

Any reccomendations would be great!! Thanks!!

Welcome to the forum, baybook! I am new to water gardening myself, but this might help you out some...

Dianna

i wouldn't drain them, but i would try to scoop the sludge from the bottom. the good thing is that the sludge will be good in your flower beds as it will mostly be decayed plant matter...

I use a small shop vac to syphon out the sludge in the bottom of my pond once a year. Just be careful not to suck up the fish. I usually remove the foam sleeve inside the shop vac so that if a fish does get sucked up, they simply pop into the sludgey water and when I dump it, I can see them flop onto the ground.

great idea giraffe

I'm a new member and curious as to how your ponds are doing....I recently built a 1200 gal pond and KOI in it and they are doing just fine....learned a lot and if you need info let me know.....

oorah...do you have any pictures of your pond?


Cindy

I will post some pictures. I wish I'd taken some when we moved in.... we've cleared away a lot of the brush...