"Gaz" wrote in message
om...
Hi,

I want to get new liner for my existing pond and reshape it
completely
after being inspired by Alan Titchmarsh last week. This would mean
draining the pond, putting the frogs, plants and any inhabitants I
find into containers while I rebuild the pond, and then putting the
inhabitants back in. Hopefully this will only take a day but I
suspect
it will take ages for the water to drain or be taken away in
buckets.

When is the best time of year to do this? I just can't decide
because
there never seems to be an less destructive time of year to do it.
In
winter all the frogs are hibernating in the mud, in spring all the
frogspawn is everywhere and aquatic life is beginning to get a
foothold, in summer there is too much aquatic life at stake! Perhaps
autumn is best because everything is slowly dying down but nothing
is
hiberating that early.

Late Autumn. Most things will be going dormant and the plants can be
thinned out. Try to save as much wildlife as you can, but until the
plants get re-established there will inevitably be some wildlife
losses so next summer's aquatic life won't be quite so abundant.
Incidentally, frogs don't normally hibernate sub-merged. They usually
choose dark dank places such as under piles of logs, compost heaps,
leaf litter, etc.

--
ned