cashb
You will never get them all without either completely draining your pond or poisoning everything in it (like over chorinating), then starting all over.
As a challenge and learning experience, I tried netting and building traps and such to rid my pond. I even kept count as I removed them to see how well I did. When I got up to 1700, I realized the only way was to completly drain it. Even that presented challenges. Here is what I did to make sure I got them all.
- Prepared 55 drums for the water to be saved with 85 gallon liners from HD.
- When I ran out of drums I emptied all my trash cans and used them as well.
- Then I tied a nylon sock over the hose used to pump the water out to ensure no little ones got through.
- As I got down below where I could pump, I removed to the remaining good and bad fish.
- I used a "bailing method" to remove the last of the water, sand and mud.
- Finally a sponge to dry the liner.
- Then I removed all the plants and trimmed the root systems which were getting pretty gnarly, sprayed them with a garden hose to make sure no hitchikers were in them, then placed them in open tubs filled with chlorniated tap water.
- Next, I had to make sure the filters didn't harbor any hideaways, so I made sure they had chlorinated tap water run through them for enough time for the chlorine to do the work.
- Once I had cleaned everything, I disposed of the old nylon sock and got a fresh one. I added the water saved back into the pond through this new sock. I have a 650 gallon pond and only could save 350 gallons.
- Once I had the filters going again, with socks over the outlets, I added the Koi by lifting them by hand, one at a time, to ensure no hitchikers came with them.
- Now that my large containers were available, I filled them with chlorinated tap water and placed each plant, totally submerged for 3 hours. Another attempt to make sure any survivors would succumb to the chorine.
- I carefully arranged the plants, this time with my new netting scheme in mind.
- 2 days later the fires came and the pond filled with ash and leaves from up to 80 MPH gusts of wind.
The fish are happy and the mosquito fish are gone. I expect when it warms up, I will once again see fry that are wanted. :goldfish:
The story could go on but this answers a question that many of you must have about how to rid your ponds of unwanted fish. I will never listen to the county again about how we should come and get these free helpful fish for our ponds.
Fortunately, we don't have a mosquito problem here and my water is never still. Sorry for the long post, first time on this Forum with a list, so I guess we'll see how this goes.