While I was cleaning out my goldfish's tubs, my hubby did some of the cleaning in his koi's ponds. Soon it'll be this time of year again where leaves fall, and some of it will end up in our ponds. Not to mention uneaten food and whatever not falls naturally in it. If you don't have a bottom drain or rarely ever check out what and how much is down there, I'd take a second look. The same goes for pond bottoms with lots of rocks in them - stuff can fall inbetween and just sits there, falling apart.

Decaying material is a harbor for nasty bacteria, and it can do some havoc to your fish's health. And even though our pond's bottoms are all bare with hardly any plants in it, stuff collects. The koi ponds have bottom drains now, but they also are right under a bunch of huge pine trees, and the surface needs skimming every single day.

If you have some unexplained bacterial issues going on, go have a look at your pond and litterally go "to the bottom" of this....

Good post Andrea, I did a vacuum/water change on my 2000 gallon pond yesterday. The water is crystal clear to the bottom and I didn't think I had much on the bottom, but I was surprised at how much gunk I sucked up with the vacuum.... ! The gunk is down there, even if you can't see it....

I think this post should be pinned, because I think that most people jsut don't think to check the bottom when cleaning or changing the water. Also, it is a place for vermin like snakes bugs and things that might eat your fish or fry. My grandmother had nearly all of her young koi (about 4-6 inches each) eaten by a snake, and if you live close to a lake, you may even end up with things liek cottonmouths (veeery poisonous). That is an extreme case, but you never know. Good luck to all you people with dirty bottoms lol !!

I like watching bottoms.

Ooh...ouch...Yeah, I think tomorrow I'm taking my gravel vac out and tackling the pond. It has pale rocks on the bottom, but they look muddy brown now. The water is filthy too.

Daniel, everytime I see your username now I want some tofu.

Andrea, what kind of pond vacuum do you use? I have a lot of customers asking me at work and I'd like to recommend one to them.

Jen, I haven't found a vac that I like just yet. Since hubby installed the bottom drains on the new ponds, it is basically so much easier to get that stuff out from the bottom. He did the pond floor at an angle, with the drain being at the lowest point in the middle of the pond. Everything automatically ends up there. Plus, if you have the output of the filters right, they creature a "tornado" effect, and stuff ends up in the center of the pond where the drain is. All you have to do is place the filters in a way that the water flow of the output ends up alongside the pond walls, not smack in the center.

Every now and then, we use the pond nets with the long handles and clean up the bottom of the pond. But there usually isn't much unless there was a rain storm, which blows a lot of leaves and pine needles into the ponds.

For my goldfish rubbermaid ponds, I simply use my filter pump to clean out any debris. The rubbermaids aren't that dep, only about 2 feet at the most, and without any rocks. I just skim along the bottom where I can see debris, with the pump, which is connected to a house, and carries the debris right out of the pond into the lawn.


Darn, Daniel - very funny!

My family and I have had ponds for over a decade.

While over the years we've had issues with dirtywater/algae (as everyone does) from time to time, only once we had a dirty bottom.
The difference for us was not having tench.
At the moment when the suns out, I can see the manufacture batch no. on the liner of our pond on the bottom. (some 4ft down).
(And the last full cleanout was May last year)

Tench are bottom feeders and love mud/dirty bottoms. So they keep it cycled/slowly moving that it doesn't settle and gets caught by my pump/filter.
You don't have to have the green variety as the golden tench is more easily available these days (especially online).

(and tench aren't as bad as koi for just stirring up the mud for the fun of it)

How do you gravel vac when the pond is lower than the bucket? There's no faucet near by to warrant the use of a python :<

Oh, and if you live in Florida, watch out for Banded Water Snakes. They aren't venomous, but they have a taste for goldfish.

I bought a pond vacuum by Pontec from Amazon.com. It is a greate vacuum. It does not need running water. It has long vacuum attachments to reach pretty deep pond. There is a discharge hose from which all the gunks come out. My only problem was discharge hose was not long enough. But I was kinda scared to use it since I could not see very deep in my pond because of algae bloom. I was afraid I was going to suck in some fishies. It is very powerful and effective. A bit expensive but total is less than 175$. Here is the link: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000ZZWDO6 It is currently unavailable but you maybe able to find it somewhere else too.