To rock or not to rock

[Lisak1]

You should have seen the volume of black sludge that we vacuumed out.

I've seen this mentioned more than once by other ponders and always wonder - how deep is/was your gravel? The layer of gravel on the bottom should just cover the liner. There's literally nowhere for "black sludge" to build up in the gravel at the bottom of my pond.

 

[Corgi Mom]

@Corgi Mom: What do you think the contributing factors were to all the algae you were getting. Do you have lots of fish? What kind of filtration are you running? Pond in full sun? Lots of leaf fall?

I have a skimmer box and filter and a lava rock biological filter. I didn’t always have a lot of fish but the pond is in full sun. Lots of leaves in fall. I skimmed out what I could but I also left sone in. This year I’m going to clean the bottom much more aggressively. I probably still wouldn’t add gravel because it’s just not worth it to me. I do have some gravel on my top ledge and I can see how much debris gets trapped under it. As someone else said after 2 weeks algae covers the liner. I will see how much of a difference this makes come spring.

 

[Corgi Mom]

I've seen this mentioned more than once by other ponders and always wonder - how deep is/was your gravel? The layer of gravel on the bottom should just cover the liner. There's literally nowhere for "black sludge" to build up in the gravel at the bottom of my pond.

The pond installers dumped ALOT of gravel in the pond. You could not see the liner at all. Probably a few inches at the bottom. And I mean all over the pond.

 

[brokensword]

The pond installers dumped ALOT of gravel in the pond. You could not see the liner at all. Probably a few inches at the bottom. And I mean all over the pond.

maybe their ideas was to have you hire them back every year for a pond cleanout, hey? Bad bad pond installers; take 'em to the woodshed, yessirree!

 

[Lisak1]

You could not see the liner at all. Probably a few inches at the bottom.

Therein lies the problem. When people say "gravel bottom pond" you really have to quantify what you mean. That's just too much space for stuff to build up. My gravel is so shallow that the fish can shift it around and expose liner if they're feeing feisty.

 

[GBBUDD]

MINE is not that thin but it's not far off the entire bottom is covered but not so they can roll a rock around if they remove a rock from the bottom yes there's a good chance you may see liner