Dirty water

[Donna F]

Hi everyone,

I have backyard pond. It is about 7500 gallons and 9 years old. I have many goldfish and a couple of Koi.
I put a large tarp down as a liner when I started. It is filled with well water. I have never tested the water. The fish seem to thrive no matter how bad the water looks. I wonder if that may be part of my problem. My fish population exploded last year and lot of them made it thru the winter. I guess I need to take some out, but I don't want to if I don't have to.

I have used a lot of DIY and trial and error. It's been a lot of work and frustration, but I love it.
This year, my challenge is dirty water. I have a massive layer of nasty, slimy, stinky black gunk on the bottom and apparently I stirred things up moving my lily pad early this year. Last year the water was clear most of the time. It hasn't been this bad since I set up my current filter system a few years ago.


This pic was taken a few weeks ago. The water was cloudy then, but it's much worse now. Now the water in the aquarium is so dirty you can't see thru it.


I have added sludge remover to try to settle the mess. I have added a skimmer filter and a large home-made filter in addition to the one filter I already had. I'm pretty sure adding extra pumps has kept the water stirred up and made it look dirtier, but since the goal is to clean it out, I didn't worry too much about that.
This is what the white filter material from the skimmer looked like after 12 hours:

I am cleaning filters as often as possible. I back-flow clean the one I can every other day or so and try to wash all the filter materials on the weekends. But I can't keep up.

Maybe it's helping, but, if so, it's an unbearably slow process.
I started looking into some kind of sludge pump. I found this on Amazon. I don't know anything about them and would like some advise about if this is a waste of my money.

Anyone have any suggestions about what I should do short of draining the pond to clean it and start over?

Thanks
Donna

 

[mrsclem]

Hi Donna, get a cheap swimming pool net and start scooping the muck from the bottom of the pond a little at a time. If the layer is thick, there could be some nasty stuff so go slow. Do you have any idea of how many fish you have? You may be reaching an overstocked level and fish could start dying, especially with the current water conditions. Some members here have pond vacs so hopefully someone will post their comments about using one. BTW- beautiful pond! Welcome to GPF!

 

[j.w]

@Donna F Yep you may have to actually get into the pond to scoop out all that muck. A good strong net is good. I do that but I do it once in awhile so it does not build up and I have a long handled net so I don't have to go in. Yours is so built up tho that it would be hard for you to lift it out from above maybe. You don't really need a pond vacuum as long as you do the netting out once in awhile. I also put a small pump on the bottom of my pond w/a hose attached to it so it will pump the dirty water out onto my grass while I also run the garden hose from my well water in to refresh the water when cleaning my pond w/the net as it stirs up muck. I do have a filter laying on the bottom of my pond hooked to my waterfall. The filter sucks up a lot of the crud but not all of it. It's just a simple filter kind of like this setup but goes to my falls:

I made my net using the frame of an old net and used fiberglass screen door material from Lowes or H-depot. The frame just fits on tight holding the screen door material on.

I made it the net deeper so it was more scoopable then the one that was on there before

 

[Mmathis]

Hello and welcome! I, too, use a pool skimmer net to remove leaves and as much bottom-crud as I can, as needed. I also have an OASE Pond-o-vac that I use a couple times a year — it pulls out that gunk from the bottom. I have a DIY Skippy filter and a small bog that work great for bio-filtration, but not so good for mechanical filtration. My pond is 6 years old, and this spring I have had the least amt. of crud that I have ever had — and my water is the clearest (and algae-free) than it’s ever been at this time of year. The only difference I can see is — the amt. of plants that have taken over the bottom of the pond. There is a forest of Anacharis down there — it’s taken a few years to grow this massive, but I think it’s contributing to the reduction of bottom-crud — it’s using the “crud” as a growth media.

Here’s a picture I took yesterday. For the end of May — my water has never been this clear! You can see the Anacharis forest!

 

[Donna F]

Scooping is what I have done in the past. It is hard to do from the side and the water is way too dirty for me to step in it. I can let the water out and walk around in the shallow end - that helps.
Early this year when I was cleaning, I let the water level get very low and scooped out a lot of trash. I didn't get it all, but a lot of what is left is too fine for the net. It's like soupy mud that flows right thru the net. I stirred a lot of that up when I was scooping. That's when the water quality got really bad.
That's why I thought I would need a vac to get it out.
I like the filter set up. I would have to clean it several times a day tho. lol.
I have a pump surrounded by filter material inside a plastic storage container to help filter it out. It is helping I guess. The filter is getting dirty.
Didn't think about it until I saw your diagram, but I need to put holes near the bottom of that so that it is getting water from the bottom. Right now it is coming in thru the top of the box - about half the depth of the water. It's a real pain to clean tho and it needs it often.
The skimmer filter I just bought was supposed to be the final piece to the puzzle of maintaining. I was counting on that helping to remove a lot of trash before it sinks to the bottom, adding to the mess. I have a lot of trees and bushes. I can't keep up with it in the fall. I guess I waited too long.
I'm going to buy the vac and try it.