Help! Pond needs to be cleaned

[RobAmy]

So how does this thing work? Doesn't it suck water with all the junk at the bottom? does it return the clean water back to pond? I don't want to have to refill my pond if my eater is good. My pond is always Crystal clear but the muck and algae that covers the bottom bothers me. I want the rocks to be squeaky clean also.

The vac has a mesh bag that you can attach to the discharge hose so the muck stays in the bag and your water goes back to the pond. You will have to empty the bag often if you have a lot of muck.

 

[RobAmy]

I would love to use a vac, but do not want to hurt my tads, snails, dragon fly larvae, wish they made a critter friendly vac.

I agree that is a downside of the vac. Mine has a attachment that you can adjust for the finer debris 1/4 opening and very close to the bottom. Works great not saying I have never sucked up something live but never obvious. The full open end will suck up everything in its path maybe even the liner

 

[j.w]

This is what some here are using and it's cheaper than the actual stuff w/ a pond name company on it. Addy uses it here and says it does well and does not hurt her fish or frogs.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Sodium-Perc...NG-/201050965700?ssPageName=ADME:L:OC:US:3160

Here is some info I copied to learn more about it off another forum:
Sodium Percarbonate Sodium percarbonate can be purchased (without the fancy "use me in your pond" packaging) for 1/10th the price. Just google it. I buy it from a soap making supplier. Same stuff that's sold as waterfall and rock cleaner - and also will clean algae off your patio, roof, etc. And yes, it's perfectly safe - breaks down into hydrogen peroxide and soda ash when it comes in contact with water. I do not expect the percarbonate to have a noticeable effect on a mature biofilter. Reduce the application rate for situations where there is less for the sodium percarbonate to control, probably to a few tablespoons per 1000 gallons per week instead of the 2 pounds per 1000 gallons per week I used to clean up my dirty water garden ponds here at the end of winter and the start of spring. The stringy algae dies and in about a day starts breaking loose. You gotta net out the dead algae at this point or it will plug whatever your mechanical filter system may be. But it has a quite different character than live stringy algae and is much easier to net and remove from the pond. The sodium carbonate will become entangled in the stringy algae then start to hydrolyze making a high concentration of hydrogen peroxide at the strings of algae, and then the algae dies. This takes a few hours, and you will see "bubbling action" from the action of the hydrogen peroxide on the stringy algae. I did not bother using a spoon, I just poured the sodium percarbonate straight from the 2 pound jar onto the stringy algae from above. Worked for me in these two "water garden" ponds, deeper ponds may need a different solids distribution technique. The sodium percarbonate does not immediately dissolve, that is a good thing since you want it to hydrolyze and make the hydrogen peroxide on the stringy algae itself. You will see the pond water start to clear of the "clouds" of stringy algae by the second day as you remove the dead algae. Also, any dead crud on the botton floats to the top to be easily netted out of the pond. A good thing, IMO. The filters were on, and had been on all Winter, and are oversized for the load, in both of the ponds where I have been using sodium percarbonate to clean the pond and kill the algae. Certainly sodium percarbonate should NOT be used in a pond with no circulation or filter system. I don't like the stringy algae. It is ugly, and makes a pond ugly, and the purpose of the pond is to be something lovely and relaxing in my yard. So out will come the sodium percarbonate if I have a serious string algae problem. Sodium percarbonate clears up the brown color in tanins in the water. So, YES, it does that. The LC50 (dose at which 50% of the fish die if the dose remains active for two days and has nothing to react it away) of sodium percarbonate is 0.6 pounds per 1000 gallons. If there is something there like stringy algae or bottom yuck in the pond the hydrogen peroxide will be all gone in a few hours, so I indeed dosed my dirty water garden ponds with an initial dose of a pound per 1000 gallons, then used another pound per 1000 gallons the rest of the week to complete the cleanup. Don't use a pound per 1000 gallons in a relatively clean pond, it would be too much. If the brown color isn't gone, there is still stuff to consume the sodium percarbonate and its reaction product hydrogen peroxide. Koiphen post on Sodium Percarbonate: http://www.koiphen.com/forums/showthread.php?53618-Sodium-percarbonate-uses-in-fish-ponds

 

[sissy]

says it is a denture cleaner also .Your fish put there teeth in jars along side the pond at night JW

 

[addy1]

I used some of it, to remove the excess winter leaves and debris, did not feel like netting the bottom and sorting out the snails tads bugs. It worked great, I did a test, put a little amount on a few of the thousands of tads I have, they did not even notice it, no snails died the fish did well.
You need to keep air going or water flowing, and not dump tons in at once. I did an area at a time of the bottom, like 1/4 of the big pond bottom at a time. The 1000 gallon stock tank I did the whole tank, used around 1/2 lb for that tank.

The stuff just floats, up use a fine weave net, I used my swimming pool leaf net. Have a place to dump it, it floats up within seconds and keeps coming.

 

[snoozer]

I have the Oase 3 also which I like and friends I have loaned it to like it also. I have sucked up some tadpoles but I run the discharge into a low area and every few cycles of the vac, i turn it off and go check the puddle and scoop the tadpoles up and put them back in the pond. I frog took a ride through and seemed to be ok.

 

[addy1]

That is interesting, one reason I never wanted a vac is because of damage to the pond critters. Maybe I will try one, but right now I am able to net the pond which is not that hard and not that much work. But as we age gracefully it might come to that time in life.

 

[snoozer]

I am not to old to keep the pond clean or I should say most days I don't feel too old anyway. The thought of hauling rocks to build a new pond near the patio is making me think twice.

 

[sissy]

been there done that ,moved 6 truckloads total of rocks onto a hill and to the drainage ditch along side my driveway .Then moved lots of retaining wall block and concrete block and i feel older than I am .Also feel shorter Seems us ponders can always do the work anyway ,we got sore we complain but then we smile and say hey I did it and we forget the pain .At least until we decide we need to tweak everything .

 

[snoozer]

Do you have a skid loader or something? My son borrowed one to move the 120 yards of dirt we got.when we did the pond. We built a berm for the header pond, stream and waterfall so we could see it from the house. This time it would be me and my trusty wheelbarrow.

 

[Lisak1]

We use sodium percarbonate in our pond as well - I buy it from a soap making supply store online for about 1/10 the price of the pond specific packaging. It takes care of the string algae on the waterfall (shut down the falls, sprinkle it on, wait 20 or so minutes and then restart). It can take up to 24 hours but the rocks will be sparkly clean after that. I also use it to lift debris from the bottom of the pond - sprinkle it over the surface, as it sinks and reacts with the water (it turns to hydrogen peroxide and soda ash when it comes in contact with water) it causes the debris to float up from the bottom. It will literally come rolling up from the bottom - pretty cool! Then it's scoop scoop scoop.

I also go around the edges and sprinkle it on the algae that likes to grow in and around my plants - it won't hurt the plants, but I am careful to get as little as possible on the plants and I do make sure to rinse it off. I suppose it could burn if you just left it there, plus I want it all to get in the pond.

You do need to be prepared to with your net when you apply sodium percarbonate - you don't want to have all that dead algae and debris floating in the pond. The first time I did it this spring I filled my net about 25 times. The second time it was about 5 times. (We clean the pond in the fall, but we don't net it so we get lots of leaves... from where I don't know. Not a deciduous tree within a one block radius!)

 

[sissy]

I saw it on ebay and was artound14 dollars for 5 lbs

 

[sissy]

Is it the same as sodium carbonate like the arm and hammer washing soda or does it have to say percarbonate

 

[sissy]

It says it should not come in contact with skin so not understanding how it can be fish safe

 

[sissy]

It talks about food grade 35 % peroxide as unstable and has to be shipped under hazmat code ,unbelievable ,peroxide who would have knew