Thanks for the response azponder. I'm sorry that my first post wasn't very specific. I'll try to answer your questions as best I can...

I live in Zone 7, Maryland. My pond is pretty small, my estimation is 6 feet by 6 feet and i guess 1 foot deep. I have 11 golfish and 3 koi fish in there. No plants. I have a biological filter I'm told, which sucks water from the bottom, goes through a bag of pellets/stones in a filter, and pumps back into the pond. I'm looking for a very low maintenance pond that is basically clear. My wife just bought a couple of plants from the pet store that I assume we just throw on top of the water. They came prepackaged for ponds.

The algae isn't that bad, definitely not anything I can scoop. I moved into the house last October, and run the filter 24 hours a day. At the time I moved in, to up until a few weeks ago, I could see the bottom of my pond. However, after adding that Tetrapond algae control and the change in weather, its been cloudy and I can't see my fish unless they are on top. I cleaned the filter about once every two weeks in the fall and everything was great. Turned off the filter during the ice and winter, and restarted it in early March.

My wife really wants me to change the water and to clean the bottom of the liner, as it looks pretty gross.

I'll start by taking your advice on adding more plants. Should cleaning the liner and replacing most of the water be avoided completely? It would seem like a logical way to "restart" fresh and clear.

I just read a bunch of articles online, and most say to avoid chemicals such as bleach, so i'll definitely avoid that. Most say to just power wash the liner with a garden hose and brush the gunk off with towels, etc....

Hmmm you got a few things happening to conspire against you and you can tackle it from a few different angles. Let's start with the hurdles you have first.

The first one is the time of year for algae blooms to happen. The water warms and the algae are faster to "wake up" then your bacteria colonies in your filter. You might want to wait a month and see if your filter just needs to wake up and deal with the algae, since you haven't seen a spring with it yet. Toss in some bacteria (from any big box store) to help wake it up.

Second...is the size of your pond and the koi. You gotta find them a new home or dig your pond deeper. Your pond isn't big enough for one full grown koi let alone 3 :( They need deep water and lots of room as they get bigger (full grown is 24"). Goldfish will self regulate their size to their tank but koi will still grow until their own waste or stress kills them. If your pond was 3 feet deep a 6x6 pond would house maybe 2 koi.

A second issue with the koi is the amount of waste they produce vs the goldfish. They are dirty little beasts compared to goldfish. In short they poop and pee a ton. This is going to put a whole lot of nutrients in to the water. Given the number of fish you would need a really decent bio filter and pump to handle the fish load. However, keep in mind that with the right filter and pump, stores keep huge amounts of fish together (far more than you have). So if you reeeeally want to keep the fish then you can make it bigger and upgrade filtration.

The last issue is that the 1 foot depth means that the water is going to heat up very fast which algae like. It will also cool fast, which your fish won't like. It won't kill them but will stress them. I am surprised it didn't freeze out your fish over the winter. I would say though that when the koi get big, they won't last. Also, lilie like 1 foot or more to really thrive (which is what you probably bought from the store).

Hope this helps

yeah, it definitely helps. perhaps i have the wrong estimation of my water depth. actually, i guess i'm pretty sure of it. it's probably more like 2.5 to 3.5 feet deep. my fish are very small as well, my guess is the smallest around 5 inches, and the largest about 8 inches...

perhaps i just need to be patient and wait to see what develops in the coming weeks, as this is the first warm weather i've seen yet. i haven't even tried to add a plant.

would cleaning the liner or exchanging half the water be harmful in your opinion, or just unnecessary. would like to get rid of most of the gunk that settled on the bottom at the very least, but i've read that it's wise to leave the green algae on the side walls alone.

thanks again azponder...

You could try vacuuming the gunk off the bottom with a shop vac or pool vac. I've done mine with the shop vac, it takes me a while cuz ours is small & it seems I haven't vacuumed more than 30 seconds before it needs emptying but it's worth it to me .... not that you can tell a few weeks later.

I thought about that missa7, but aren't those rather expensive, like around $90 and up? I wouldnt mind using some elbow grease and cleaning the liner myself if people do it like once a year or so. However, if the norm is to clean the gunk much more often than that, like monthly, it probably makes sense to invest in a vacuum.

Hi Patient77! Welcome to ponding and the ponding forum! Sounds like you've got a nice little set up, and with a bit of tweaking, something you will really enjoy. :-)

Congrats on your new home and your new pond! The others have given you really good advice.
I would take a yard stick and measure your ponds depth. You'll need to know what it is at it's deepest, and what the average depth is. Not knowing this could make for some very bad results when trying to calculate water additives and fish load. AZponder pretty much covered it, and the others when they said the load is too full. I would guess even 15 goldies is far too much to handle (depending on their variety) for a 500g pond.

You say your water is murky... is it green murky, brown murky, cloudy like you dumped in a gallon of milk?

My regular pond maintenance consists of netting leaves and debris - sometimes daily (like in the fall), sometimes weekly. I try to keep as much out of it in the first place before it settles to the bottom to break down. In the fall, I dredge the bottom with a net. This makes the water nasty, but it's important to get out as much as I can before winter. In winter, I do nothing. The pump and filter come inside, the fish go to sleep, and the pond collects dirt and debris for three months straight. And in the Spring, I drain it and clean the bottom thoroughly (but not wipe it out), and replace the water.

I really reccommend reading and learning as much as you can about manmade aquatic habitats, and what makes them work.

awesome advice destany.... exactly what i was looking for.

"And in the Spring, I drain it and clean the bottom thoroughly (but not wipe it out), and replace the water."

I wasn't sure if people actually did this or not, because I got conflicting stories. How do you clean the bottom thoroughly without wiping it out? Just with a garden hose and spraying it out? I'm unclear as to how you clean the bottom thoroughly and would love an explanation of your process. Second, when you say replace the water, do you mean 100% new tap water? Or do you replace like half the water and keep half that have algae, bacteria, etc?

All of the advice here has been awesome, would love a little more clarification on your drain, cleaning, and replacing process.

Thanks again.

Not a problem! I just scoop out the sludge by hand, and that's all. I save as much water back as I can to try and ease the shock of the fish by blasting crisp clean water into their home. Until the other day, I had 2 55 gallon barrels that were used solely for pond work. I'd use the hose from the pump to fill these, and drain the rest into the woods, via hose and syphon method. But I do wind up replacing a lot of it. The key is to keep the fish in the 55g drums until the water has had a chance to clear itself of chlorine (making sure they have enough surface air in their holding pen is very important), usually I keep them there for a week. I've only got the two fish, so it's not difficult.

Bare in mind, my pond sits directly under an oak tree, so my sludge accumulation may be faster than yours. Depending on how much debris winds up in your pond, you may not need to do this each Spring.

Patient77, all you want to do is get rid of the detrius. The leaves, plant parts, fish poop, muck. You are NOT trying to get the liner clean. Even if you did, in a matter of a few days to a few weeks, you would not be able to see it under the good algea in a healthy pond. Your moniker is VERY appropriate for this hobby....as it involves patience! Algea blooms are normal for many ponds at this time of year, particularly if you had to add water with in the last week or so. (And each time you add afterward). Adding water introduces several things including clorine and chloramines if from a city tap, and fish are not good with those compounds. Many people say they would NOT change more than 30% of their water at anytime with fish involved.

What you want to do is get the loose stuff off the bottom and hide the rest with plants, (and some say rocks, some say no way!), but the the plants are a critical part of clear water for most everyone. (except specific/exclusively Koi people) Get some anacharis, hornwart and/or cabomba, and you won't see the liner for long, though the water clarity and quality will improve greatly. Also, make sure no run off or gutters have been routed into your pond. Control anything you can that goes in there. Leaves, pollen, dust, tree seeds and flower parts are all only marginally controllable, so, they accumulate, and every now and then you clean out the big stuff, and let your filter system handle the small stuff. Clean your filter lightly, but regularly, and you'll be fine.

Good luck, and patience. Keep reading and you'll develop the ponding style YOU want to adapt for yourself. Also keep in mind that you have decided to steward the lives of your fish, so you have made a commitment to learn what they need, and what they don't. I never heard of a healthy fish that needed chemicals in their water. So try to avoid chemicals as much as possible.

Have Fun!
-TT

I ditto tiller and others. Good advice from all so far. The only thing I would add about chemicals...is that there is one bottle of stuff you really should have, and that is a water treatment for Chlorine and Chlorimines.

Chlorine is not that bad if you add less than 10-20% of your total amount at once. The fish can get Gill Burn if they play in the hose spray so put the hose in a area they can't get to. The chlorine will hurt your bacteria colonies in your bio filter but won't wipe em out. After a day or two contact with the air will dissipate the chlorine (it will go faster if you have an airator or waterfall).

Chlorimines though are baaaad. They will never leave your pond without being treated with an additive. You can call your water company and see if they use chlorimines. If they do, then you need to get in the habit of using a neutralizer every water change. If they don't then you can get away without, unless you notice your plants being hurt by chlorine when you change the water.

"Bad stuff" on the bottom are organic compounds like leaves, fish poop, dead fish etc. As it decomposes it will create a layer of mud called "muck". It's black and smells bad. If your pond ever has a sewer odor that's a sure sign that your muck has run amok and the fish are in danger. When this happens oxygen levels drop and you start getting brown algae and your water will look like rootbeer. Anaerobic bacteria start to go to work in the oxygen free environment. This is a fish death sentence.

You should regularly scoop out the majority of the muck leaving as little as possible on the bottom after it settles back down. "Regularly" depends on your pond. More trees, dust, pollen, weaker filter etc mean you need to clean it up more or less than others. There is no rule about how often to clean.

To clean out muck, you just need to scoop it out. You can do that by hand, with a bucket or shop vac. One thing I like is this little attachment that goes on the end of a garden hose. The flow of the hose water creates venturi suction that pushes the muck into a little nylon bag. Keep in mind that with any of these options you will stir up the muck and it will take a day or so to see improvement. If you do it regularly, the stirred up muck isn't a problem for the fish. But if you have a deep layer of it you might want to do what destany said above, and move the fish into a container for a bit (filled with pond water!) as all those bad compounds will be spiked during the clean.

If your depth is closer to 3 feet I would still think about either getting rid of the goldfish (donate them to a pet store or other ponder) or the koi. With either 3 koi or 11 goldfish you have about the right fishload. But with both, you have about double what you will need in a year or so when they get big. If you are dead set on keeping all of them, you need to plan on losing some to stress or plan on getting a heavy duty biofilter and/or doing regular muck sweeping.

Set up a temperory TT filter to strain out the "color" in the water. I used panty hose and quilt batting. The algae will color the QB so you will know it is working.

{{gwi:191439}}

thank you all so very much for the comprehensive advice. i realize that this new hobby is gonna be a lot more work and research than i originally expected. i have a better understanding of what i need to do and owe it all to you guys. will keep you updated with the progress.

thanks...

But once you work out the kinks, it's no more work than weeding a vegetable garden over the summer, mine alot less work. And I enjoy it SOOOO much more!

You may have alot to do this spring, but it doesn't have to be weekly drudgery. :)

Sheepco is right. With the right filtration, fish load and plant coverage the pond takes care of itself for most of the year. Just some start up, shut down and occasionally trimming and fertilizing is all you should need to do. Getting your pond to that "auto pilot" state takes some experimenting though. Which is of course, half the fun.

geez, was i waaayyy off. it turns out my pond is only 6 ft X 5 ft X 1.5 ft making it an estimated 337 gallon pond. sounds like the previous owner had WAY too many fish for this size pond. i appreciate all the help i've gotten from you guys, thanks again. gonna clean up the muck on the bottom soon by hand, change about 30 pct of the water, and add a few plants. i'll let you guys know how it works out.

My 1st pond is a 300ga stock tank 5.5'x5.5'x28"deep. I have six 4"fish, 1 dwarf water lily, 5 or 6 submerged oxygentors, and 6 potted marginals that hang on the sides. I usually have a few floaters like water hyacynth, azolla. I run a 600gph pump through a 1/2 whiskey barrel DIY skippy type filter. I clean the pre-filter on the submerged pump every week in the spring (10 minutes), then about every 3-4 weeks summer and fall. I never clean my skippy, but do drain it for winter. I trim dead or dying plant stuff weekly (5 minutes) and net out leaves in the fall (a few minutes each day).

Each fall I climb in the pond, lift anything potted and trim 'em back. Then I scoop out all the crud in the bottom, and then set all the plants on the bottom for the winter. (30 to 60 minutes). Each spring, I climb in (with waiters on) lift the plants, divide those that need it, scoop the muck out of the bottom, and set the plants about. Set up the skippy again...Maybe 2 or 3 hours.

I have never had to drain and clean out, but my ponds are only 2 and 3 years old.

I have since added a 275ga liner pond, and this spring am add a 60gs veggie filter and a 100 stock tank for more water plants!

Hope this helps in the long term!

i just bit the bullet and bought a pond vacuum. much more reasonably priced than i expected. i probably won't clean the liner other than using this, and do a 30 pct water change....