Derek wrote Have we finally put this argument to rest?

Are you kidding? ;-)

For the Original Poster -
If you google for 'rocks in the pond' and 'rec.ponds' you will
get 8,270 responses. Let's say we've had heated discussions
about this ; -)

I have a 3,000 gallon pond. Every spring if I can round
up the husband and teenagers I should clean out the pond.
There will be about an inch of muck on the bottom. Two inches
if it has been two years, three inches... you get the picture.

The teenagers get in there with shovels and shovel the muck
into a wheel barrow and off it goes to fertilize the trees. You
can imagine trying to get the stuff out if the bottom was covered
in rocks.

Now some ponders, smarter and wiser than us, put in skimmers to
keep most of the stuff from settling to the bottom, they cover their
ponds with nets during the fall and winter to keep the leaves out,
they put in bottom drains,
they use shop vacs to clean the bottom of the pond. All this makes
it a whole lot easier to clean the pond.

Ponds that have been rocked are usually cleaned with a power
washer, the mucky water pumped out, powered washed, pumped
out, repeat. Some are cleaned with shop vacs.

Most of these ponds are 800, 1000 gallons or bigger. A small pond
of 160 gallons *might* be doable. Might be. We have ponders with
veggie filters, a seperate plant filled container that they use for
filtering
that have tried rocks in the bottom. They usually don't last the first
cleaning.


kathy