to start off with, i bought my house with 2 outdoor ponds already active. i had never kept fish before last may when i got this house and it had 2 beautiful ponds with goldfish in them. by fall i had a full fledged monster pond going in my basement and the rest is history. last fall i was wrapped up with building and upkeep on my new indoor pond and i didnt have a whole lot of interest in my outdoor ponds, i also didnt know the huge mistake i was making by not cutting down and removing all the perennial pond plants and leaves from all my trees. over the winter i read up and learned what i should have done and why. now i currently have 2 nasty looking brown stinking stagnant ponds. i just spent a little time out there this afternoon cleaning out leaves, apples, and dead plants. i also started the pumps up to get the water flowing through the filters to help with the polishing on the water. i got to thinking and i ran inside to grab my ammonia test and sure enough it registered 3.0. i decided not to clean out the rest of the crap and instead let it run as a natural fishless cycle for the ponds. in 3-4 weeks or whenever the filters cycle i will clean it out and move my koi outside to one and throw 50-60 comets into the other one (to breed for feeders) the filters should have plenty of ben. bacteria built up to handle the bio load without a large spike. anyway the moral of the story is, keep your pond cleaned out in the fall or make sure you can find and see the good in anything, even if it is a stankin ass mess.
first fall with the ponds
- Thread starter perfect_prefect
- Start date
Are you going to run both or still thinking or combing?
How nasty was the smell when you fired up the filters?
Isn't the black/brown sludge fun?
How nasty was the smell when you fired up the filters?
Isn't the black/brown sludge fun?
im running both for the time being, a whole truckload of concrete plus all the pvc piping, shower drains, sealant for the concrete, filter media, renting a mini excavator all that costs an arm and a leg so i have to save up. also im planning to lay copper water lines in the concrete to pump hot water through to heat the pond in the winter, shooting for keeping it at about 50 degrees
the whole block stank for a couple hours, but it cleared out, now i just have alot of white foam on the surface, yeah the sludge is a good ole time cleaning.
