Mucking out verses proper pond filtration
Hello & welcome, I suspect you have never had to muck out a pond before. If not thats great your a lucky guy. I have done it twice on my 250 gal pond & once on a 1000 gal pond. It is a gross experience. It stinks, theres strange little critters crawling around in the muck, multi colored muck red stains etc indicating severe anerobic conditions (poison). It was a very uncomfortable position to be in i was nervous that that my own health could be affected, what fish? My pond had rock in bottom the other had none, niether had a bottom drain to remove the muck. A friend of mine has a 750 gal AS type pond with a skimmer & bio falls. Filter pads are the only mech. & they clog weekly. The bottom of pond is full of muck. She is frustrated to no end because she does not want to go through the hassle of mucking it out. Its a major process because the pond has to be drained, the fish caught & removed to temporary holding, & remove all the plants. Now time becomes a factor the plants will only last a couple of days & the fish that depends on temp holding conditions. When i mucked out the 1000 gal i hired 2 laborers we started saturday morning & finished sunday afternoon, fish & plants back in pond. I was beat, the laborers didnt understand the objective i constantly had to lead them around by hand, frustration That was my last muck out & i will never do that again. I am currently building a 2500 gal watergarden w/ goldfish pond using koi style filtration. Bottom drain, skimmer, settlement chamber, mech, & aerated bio. I call it koi style but really to me its the proper way to filter any pond, that is if you want to enjoy the pond. It takes alot of work, more than i realized, but from what ive read & seen here on Koiphen I think its worth it. How hard & how long does it take to flip some valves & discharge the waste ?
John :palmtree2
" always the hard way "