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Old 05-07-2013, 09:46 AM
abbeygardener abbeygardener is offline
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First recorded activity by GardenBanter: Apr 2013
Posts: 4
Default How to Clean Our Pond?

Hello. We have a very green and a dirty garden pond (photos attached) with four goldfish which we are planning to clean and are wondering if anyone can confirm whether what we want to do is sensible. The pond is about a metre by half a metre. It has a pump which hopefully aerates it, but to our knowledge there is no water filter attached. The goldfish seem happy and active though, and it hosts a frog too. The water is very green and also looks like it contains solid particles. We have tried TetraPond AquaRem to make it clearer with only partial success. We’ve not had the house long so I don’t know much of the pond’s history, but I don’t think there are any plants in it, apart from all the algae – though I can’t be certain as it’s too green to see the bottom. Just to make life harder, the water really needs topping up, but we have no good rainwater to put in. We have water butts, but the water in them is dark coloured and seems to have lots of insects swimming in it so I don’t think we can use it.

So the plan is this: We intend to remove the water and scrub the surfaces, removing the algae. And we will add a couple of oxygenating plants.
Since we have no rainwater, and I’ve gathered from reading online that tap water is not ideal, I assume we somehow need to clean the existing water. I’m thinking of doing that by simply pouring it through an old chemistry style filter funnel and filter paper. Seems a bit unconventional but fitting a proper water filter system is beyond our budget and we can’t think of a better idea. We’ll then top up with some tapwater, with Tetrapond Aquasafe added to remove the chorine. I suspect that means the new pond will be about 2/3 original water, 1/3 tapwater.

Does this seem sensible or is anything we should be doing differently?

Thanks.
Attached Thumbnails
How to Clean Our Pond?-pond1.jpg   How to Clean Our Pond?-pond2.jpg