Re: Help! Advice needed on pump clogging up every week!
#6
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Pican wrote:
Thank you once again for your informative reply. Depending on how long this thread goes on....you will soon come to realise what a dumb dumb woman I am regarding ponds.
There's a difference between stupidity and ignorance. In your case, it's just ignorance, and fortunately, there's a cure for that. Don't feel bad if you feel a bit lost at first. Though they look as simple as an oversized bucket, ponds are actually very complex systems, and there is a great deal to learn. Everyone feels lost at some point, either near the beginning, or after they've built their first pond without doing sufficient research and things have gone horribly wrong.
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The stuff in the bottom of the pond is just thick black muddy stuff that smells horrible!
That's sludge. In a closed system like a garden pond it can become a serious water quality problem, hence you'll want to do something about it.[/quote]
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Last year I bought a pond vac, and unless I was using it wrong..it didn't pick anything up at all, so I decided it was a waste of money and threw it away!!
Was this something that attached to your garden hose or a rather expensive machine with an electric motor? The former type is more or less useless, while the latter actually works.
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Earlier this year I tried skimming a net along the bottom to clear some of the sludge, only to find my pond almost empty the next morning!! This happened two days running, then settled. So you can see, I dont have much success.
The water went out when you disturbed the sludge? How fast does the water go down when you leave the sludge alone?
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All of the fish have been in the pond quite some time, so I don't think they are hiding due to newness. The pond at its deepest point is about 18" and 6" at the shallowest.
That is extremely shallow. What sort of hiding places do your fish have? They might feel a bit more bold if they were never very far away from safety. Many people put flower pots or bits of PVC pipe (usually painted black to make them less visible) in their ponds to act small fortresses for the fish.
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Before I drive you mad, can I just ask one last question please.....if I bought new filters for the filter box do you think that would help with the sludge problem
What sort of filter do you have now, and what media do you ahve in it? New media might help a little, but I don't think it will solve your problem. The problem is that debris (fish waste, fallen leaves, dead algae etc) sinks to the bottom of the pond and stays there. You need to first clean the pond up, and then you need to keep it clean. There are various enzyme and bacteria concoctions meant to dissolve debris so that you can remove it with water changes, but what you really need to do is get the debris out of the water before it decays. Hence a good pond vac. But a "serious" pond will be carefully designed so that any negatively buoyant debris will be pulled through the bottom drain and into the filter. In the long run, you may find that building a proper fish pond takes less effort than maintaining the one you have. This is the conclusion I have come to with my own inherited pond. (Actually, it came with the house.)
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What is confusing me more than anything is that the pond has been fine for two years, its just now I am having problems. I think the pond is probably about 6 years or more old, according to the previous owner.
My guess is that your pond was not in a steady state during those two years, but was slowly accumulating nutrients. It may not have been in very good shape when you acquired it. But it was probably the heat that pushed your ecosystem over the edge. There are many posts from UK ponders this year about unusual algae explosions and fish dying for want of oxygen. Perhaps you could have gone on for several more years without a noticeable problem, but the heat has brought all the flaws in your pond to the fore.