Muck on bottom of water garden! Help!
I have had my water garden for 15 years. It has a waterfall and many plants. I have to thin out the plants every year. I have many large oak trees in the area which cause the pond to collect leaves on the bottom. I have noticed that the rocks have shifted toward the middle of the pond, exposing the liner on the sides.
How do I add more rock? Do I have to clean out all the mucky leaves before I add the rock?
Any other advice?
Related Discussions
Suggested Project Book
Here's how to clean it, you got this!
What a great video! I'm getting really old and that much effort is beyond me now, but suggest hiring a service to clean the pond out throughly once. Then after that throw a plastic mesh screen over it in the fall to catch the leaves to stop the build up in the bottom. Depending on the size of your pond, large size garage or house door mesh screens are available cheaply on the internet. To make the water safe for the fish right away, there are inexpensive chemicals you can purchase to kill the chlorine or the other antiseptic your water service uses to make the water safe. ( city water untreated in this way will kill your fish! I've done it and I know!) Use both if you don't feel like researching that. Or just leave the fish out for a week or so until the water clears of infused antiseptics.
I have a 150 gallon pond with a waterfall, cheap plastic filter and 4 large goldfish. Had it for years. All I do is use the waterfall pump to drain it down to one inch of water, clean the filter and use a deck brush to scrub the sides. I drain it in early spring and again just before snowfall. Done in an hour. I also add an algaecide in spring. Pond water and aquarium water is excellent fertilizer.