Can I clean my pond myself?

G_M

You need to decide if you want a sterile, clean, clear water pond, or a natural wildlife pond.

If you have frogs, and they've produced frogspawn, then lucky you! But if you clean it, the frogs will disappear, the frogspawn will hatch/die and you be left with a pond of Evian water.

Your choice!

For a balanced wildlife pond

* put in a bunch of barley straw - this will control blanket weed if you have it
* skim the surface with a pond net (leave what you take out beside the pond for 24 hours so the critters can crawl back)
* make sure there's some oxygenating plants in there

You'll get hundreds of baby frogs, but most will die/get eaten so don't worry - you won't be taken over by them!

Get yourself a book on maintaining a pond.

Personally I would strip out the pump and filter and take them to the dump.......

Davesnave

G_M wrote: »

Personally I would strip out the pump and filter and take them to the dump.......

:T

But this is MSE!!

Sell them on Gumtree. :cool:

Jonesya

Is it urgent?

You'd normally do pond maintenance in the autumn. I'd be tempted to see how the water clears up once the growing season starts, let the frogspawn hatch and leave, perhaps give some of the plants a trim during summer, then decide what's required when autumn arrives.

Do you feed the fish - often? A lot?

no1catman

When I moved house back in 2008 - much to my delight there was a pond - bit too formal - surrounded by patio - but a nice size 10.5ft x 7.5ft x 2.5ft (max).
In 2012 I had landscaping work done e.g. at least 24 railway sleepers, pergola, and a pond clean.
Last year I got through about three or four pumps, cleaning out the filter every month.
Another event happened, which forced the decision - had the same people in again.
Heavy duty pump - hose was about three inch diameter to pump out the water, weed was taken out, together with marginal potted plants, and the fish. The fish were put into a large container - guessestimate about 500 litres.
Down to the bottom, muck and silt scooped out (used a snow shovel) - great for the garden. Once, all done started refilling.
I attached some of the weed to a basket that went in on the bottom, and marginal plants were positioned. With the water building up fish were counted back in - forty-five.
The dozen frogs and newts in a bucket were rehoused elsewhere in a 'wildlife' pond.
The pump went on, the new filter (the old one got broken) works beyond expectations - great water-flow.


The whole process took about six hours. I doubt if anyone could do that by themselves without more stress both to themselves and the fish.


OP depends when in the country you live, the people I used - ponds4u - cover South-East Wales, I know there's another specialist in Gloucester, and in the South-West. But no point IMHO asking 'gardeners' google search pond maintenance in your area.


Another option, is a vacuum cleaner like device, water is sucked in and the muck is collected in a bag, empty start again until clear - costs about £99.00 from aquatic centres (incidentally inquire there they may be able to recommend someone to do a 'clean'.
HTHs
Good-luck.

kinger101

Yes, agreed with what others suggest above. Leave any maintenance until the autumn. You'll be glad of the frogs once the slugs appear.

Bear in mind that having a nice clear pond makes fishing that much easier for any hungry heron (or even cats) that might visit your garden.

AnotherJoe

Andrew_Ryan_89 wrote: »

Another quick question guys. The frogs have spawned an incalculable amount of eggs. How many of these will actually hatch and grow into full sized frogs?

On average, less than one.

cyclonebri1

I keep a good sized pond, it's fitted with a good sized pump and is over filtered. In 5 years I've never needed to clean the pond itself in-spite of buying an expensive Pondovac pond cleaner 5 years ago.

All the gunge is drawn straight to the filter and that is all that needs cleaning out a couple of times per year.
It does however have a 4" bottom drain so is probably more sophisticated than yours.


For the best advice on all things pond rather than just Koi, check out a website called Pondlife it's the best site for general pondkeepers as yourself.

here you are:

http://www.pondlife.me.uk/

Davesnave

AnotherJoe wrote: »

On average, less than one.

Full sized frogs will be few, but < 1 implies some of mine were very old indeed, considering that their mating number was usually > 100!

Then there were the toads and newts....

AnotherJoe

Davesnave wrote: »

Full sized frogs will be few, but < 1 implies some of mine were very old indeed, considering that their mating number was usually > 100!

Indeed they will be, full sized will be at least 3 years old.

Look at it this way. There is a mummy frog and a daddy frog.

If they have, on average, more than 2 similar aged frogs over their lifetime, then by the magic of compounding, in a very short relative time the earth would be metres deep in frogs.

Since it isn't, then by definition, over their lifetime each pair of adult frogs only leaves 2 adult frogs as descendants, to maintain a steady population*. So in each year, fewer than one tadpole will grow to become an adult.

QED


* and in reality frog populations are decreasing

Davesnave

AnotherJoe wrote: »

Indeed they will be, full sized will be at least 3 years old.

Look at it this way. There is a mummy frog and a daddy frog.

If they have, on average, more than 2 similar aged frogs over their lifetime, then by the magic of compounding, in a very short relative time the earth would be metres deep in frogs.

Since it isn't, then by definition, over their lifetime each pair of adult frogs only leaves 2 adult frogs as descendants, to maintain a steady population*. So in each year, fewer than one tadpole will grow to become an adult.

QED


* and in reality frog populations are decreasing

I understand compounding; I used to teach it at a basic level.

However, your answer implied that only one frog would survive from the "incalculable number of eggs" in the pond, from an unknown number of frogs.

So the answer we can agree upon is "somewhat less than one frog for every frog that mated there," assuming numbers are decreasing.