Well when it comes time that a natural pond has to get cleaned its
called dredgeing........They will silt up in time, if they are not
constructed right with proper breaks for inflowing water to alow silt
to settle out, and even then they stil will silt up.

The way I clean mine or at least sanitize it to get rid of a lot of
organic material like rotted leaves pine straw etc is to dose it 2x
back to back every spring and 1 time in late fall about mid November
with potassium permanganate. If not, come spring you are subject to
all kinds of nasty things happening.......Since I started doing the 3
treatments with PP I have yet to get any fungal or bacterial problems
which is pretty common in most all ponds in the deep south especially
natural ones.........I took the advice of the University of FL in
prophylactic treating my pond and it been good.

On 14 Oct 2005 12:31:55 -0700, "Mike C"
wrote:

===I typically have cleaned out my 3 yr old pond in the spring, fall and
===once in the summer. I no longer have any tree near my pond and haven't
===cleaned it out since spring. There does not appear to be a lot of
===debris in there other than the typical. Does it really need to be
===cleaned out before winter?
===
===I cover it with a pool cover (leaving room for air to enter/exit) and
===heat it to keep it from freezing. I am just thinking that a natural
===pond never gets cleaned out and if mine looks fairly clean, is there a
===need. Yes, I am being lazy. I also don't like stressing my Koi which
===inveitably happens.


==============================================
Put some color in your cheeks...garden naked!
"The original frugal ponder"
~~~~ }((((o ~~~~~~ }{{{{o ~~~~~~~ }(((((o