A Question I Have Been Wondering For A While

[comocrayfish5]

i really want a goldfish pond but i know i will never get one. but every time a see pond i winder 'how do you clean one of those?' you cant really syphon the water out so how do you clean a pond?

thanks

 

[CezzaXV]

i really want a goldfish pond but i know i will never get one. but every time a see pond i winder 'how do you clean one of those?' you cant really syphon the water out so how do you clean a pond?

thanks

Hopefully someone with more knowledge will chip in, but we've had a fish pond in our garden for years, long before I knew anything about fish and got my tank. We never really clean it and all the fish seem to be okay.

I dont know the facts and this is just speculation really, but maybe the bacteria that occur in the wild that turn nitrate into nitrogen gas which we can't grow in our tanks are able to grow in ponds? I know they grow in places where there are no oxygen. I guess most ponds would be deep enough that there could be a no/low oxygen layer at the bottom. Does anyone here know?

 

[fluttermoth]

Ponds do need cleaning; they accumulate muck on the bottom, just like a tank would.

There are a few ways of doing it. On some sites you can syphon with a long piece of hose (we could do this in my mum's old house). Or there are pond 'vacuums' that work a bit like the powered gravel cleaners but on a larger scale. You can hook all the gunk out with a net, or, every year or two, you can catch all the fish and empty the whole thing.

 

[comocrayfish5]

well if i ever got one the fish would come out during the winter so it could be cleaned then. do you just clean it once a year or more?

 

[fluttermoth]

Once a year is enough.

 

[comocrayfish5]

huh it is so wierd seeming that i clean my tanks like every 2 weeks

 

[Sam-Baker]

depends on the type of pond. Generally for silt and leaves on the bottom you would use a pond vacuum which is basically a wet and dry vac but much more powerful. Only a select few do what they say they do though! surface cleaning is done by a skimmer net or by having a skimmer box built into the pond edge which sucks in the ponds surface water and debris. filtration comes in 2 categories gravity and pressurised. Personally i hate pressuired filters because they only work as mechanical filtration and will keep water clear but 99% of the time dont keep it healthy. You then move on to gravity fed filters which are usually much more sophisticated. I run a nexus eazy pod on my koi pond and that keeps the water crystal. With ponds there is more enthasis on biological filtration than there is in aquariums because of the volumes of waste in comparison. + the needs of fish such as koi. Bacteria that basically eat ammonia and cause the nitrification cycle (which contrary to belief takes 12 weeks not 3). These bacteria need aerobic conditions (oxygen riched conditions) and plenty of food in order to survive. Chlorine will kill them and they will also die if their environment gets too dirty. The bacteria simply will not survive if they are in anaerobic conditions. You only need so much mechanical filtration, there is a point where it becomes pointless if you have too much because the media before it has already caught the particles and it has nothing to catch however you can never have too much biological filtration as aslong as you have fish and plants there will always be food for the bacteria to convert.

 

[comocrayfish5]

Wow thanks for all the info! If I ever got a pond it would be one of the preformed ones

 

[Sam-Baker]

Safer because they are less likely to puncture and easier to install but they do limit what you can keep. Koi carp need a minimum of 4ft deep to last bad winters and to grow to the right shape and build. Good luck for when you do it and dont rush takes a long time to plan it and done hesitate to ask questions

Wow thanks for all the info! If I ever got a pond it would be one of the preformed ones

 

[comocrayfish5]

Safer because they are less likely to puncture and easier to install but they do limit what you can keep. Koi carp need a minimum of 4ft deep to last bad winters and to grow to the right shape and build. Good luck for when you do it and dont rush takes a long time to plan it and done hesitate to ask questions

Wow thanks for all the info! If I ever got a pond it would be one of the preformed ones

the fish would bome in during the winter, and this is just a dream not what i am doing

 

[Sam-Baker]

hahaha its good to dream mate, got me far enough

Safer because they are less likely to puncture and easier to install but they do limit what you can keep. Koi carp need a minimum of 4ft deep to last bad winters and to grow to the right shape and build. Good luck for when you do it and dont rush takes a long time to plan it and done hesitate to ask questions

Wow thanks for all the info! If I ever got a pond it would be one of the preformed ones

the fish would bome in during the winter, and this is just a dream not what i am doing