Nice going! (I really like ebay - found badly needed items there that
existed nowhere else). If your filter has a filter pad just thoroughly
swish it around in a bucket of your pond water. You can do this as many
times as you like - just replace the dirty water with fresh pond water. I
use lava rock and those I just empty onto a tarp and pour pond water over
them to get the built up much off. I then put them into a bucket with pond
water that I stir and pour out. I rinse out the bucket the pump and rock go
into - replaced the now rinsed off pump, add rock and return to pond. I do
this once a year whether it wants it or not.

If your kiddie pond is the type that has collapsible sides and your dogs
have free run, I would place some kind of barrier around the sides
(chairs?). If you are gutsy... You can take a garden hose where one end is
on the top of the pond water and the other end is at a lower level in the
temp pond (fill hose with clean water first, close ends if you can -suck on
the end where you want the water to go to get the flow going -- I know how
to do this - describing it is another issue). This way you get the cleaner
top water and don't stir things up.

Donna

"wibble" wrote in message
...

I have just got a 3ft deep paddling pool off of ebay and will transfer
the pond water into it - luckily in the UK we dont have raccoons, but
knowing my two collies they will have a go at jumping in the paddling
pool. That will give the koi something to think about. I think the
water quality is more down to the debris - once the pond floor gets
agitated - all the muck rises up. I have had a go at water vacuums but
they just dont get rid of enough. Good tip about using pond water to
clean the filter - thanks. Silly question - when cleaning the filter
how do you keep some of the microbes - do you basically only do a
partial clean (never cleaned one before) so that you leave some of the
filter pads, muck untouched.




--
wibble