News, Views, Reviews, Photos

First Full Fish Pond Clean Of 2018

ByKevin Simon

Feb 9, 2018


As the temperatures at the beginning of the year are too cold to do full service / clean out of fish ponds with fish. This is because while temperatures on a normal day are below about 4 degrees Celsius, fish are more down at the bottom of your pond this is because the temperature is warmer the deeper the water and over the winter period they are more dormant. So if doing a full service when temperatures are low the shock of taking the fish out into temporary vats isn’t that good for their health. But with this pond as there are no fish, as unfortunately over the years the customer has suffered fish loss because of herons from a local heron farm. This clean out could be done while temperatures are low and to be honest the day they job was done temperatures didn’t hit above 5 degrees, so was a bit nippy, but no mater what the weather I always get the job done.

The job for this pond was to fully clean and cut back the plants and aswell repair a hole in the liner. The pond hadn’t been fully cleaned in a good few years, though the owner had tried to keep the baskets under control. Unfortunately because of the hole in the liner which was about 4inchs below the water level and over the years the lillies had grown to high, so the main problem with this pond was moss that had grown along the lower water level over all of the plants and especially on the shelf level.

As usual the good water was pumped out into a temporary vat, The water was good quality and reasonably clear. Once I got as much good water out as possible, which left around 6″ of water at the deepest point. It was then time to get the plants out, the lilies that were in baskets had completely grown wild half the pond was taken up by the root system. These had to be cut down into manageable sections to get them out. The other side of the pond was mainly irises. again these had grown large. Once they all plants were out it was time to start to get the rest of the dirty water and debris out and then pressure washed. The sides of the pond had a shelf with plants that had completely grown around. this then was cut back into sections. As the customer wanted the edge to look bit more natural and to cover the black liner I had used 4 bags of pea gravel and used the existing large pebbles to make the shelf edge a bit more appealing.

When the the pond had been fully cleaned and tidied, had to deal with the plants, I was surprised that most of the baskets were still ok, so just a job of cutting around the baskets to keep as much of the stems / flowers systems. 6 baskets of lilies went back in, this does seem a lot though this is because this pond has no pump or filtration system, so no water flow so the more coverage of plants the less algae will grow, so clearer water.

Unfortunately on day was getting too cold to patch the hole in the liner this was then done a few days later, just had to drop water level an inch or two, then using a butyl patch applied around the area, and was good to go. also there was nearly 20 bags of excess plant material that needed taken away to be disposed of.

As this was done in late January, it would be nice to see this in the coming moths and that’s when all the plants will start to grow and flower, I will have to get another photo when more in bloom. This pond will now be cleaned out each year so that keep on top of the excess plant growth as you would be amazed how quick and large plants will grow.

So if your pond weather you have fish in or not and would like a full service or even just advise get in contact with me and would be happy to help.



*Information in this article is either wrote by myself Kevin Simon or from a archive of articles my father wrote for previous pond and pool services newsletters (PPS), and now supplied by KS Pond Services. A Midland based fish pond servicing company for more details on the services that we can supply please get in touch [HERE](www.kspondservices.co.uk)*

By Kevin Simon

I run this blog & also self employed cleaning out fish ponds, but due to spinal problems not able to do as much, now started a youtube channel showing my converted Peugeot Partner micro camper also as interest in photography so now vlog about the trips and of course Lego figures out in the wild photos.

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