Today we're gonna talk about pond clean outs,
filter media, and aquaponics.
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The first question is from a Dennis, I think it's a J,
Dennis J III, maybe?
YouTube.
Thanks for the question.
His question is related to a pond that he's had for 13 years,
it's never been cleaned.
He has some crud that's building on the bottom of it and he had
a professional pond company come out and say, hey, we can spruce this up.
We wanna drain it and get it clean.
And quite frankly, Dennis is a little scared.
It's good to be scared right now, at this point, it really is.
A 13 year old pond that seems to be running good with some little bit of
crud on the bottom.
I'm always nervous about cleaning out a pond like this because
let's hope, you have some 13 or 15 year old Koi in there.
Maybe, you bought some fish at some point, threw them in there,
they were already a couple of years old, and
you have some older fish in there at this point.
So I would be nervous about it if they've never gone through that
experience, and you say you have a level of crud on the bottom.
I don't know what we're talking, is it an inch, is it four inches,
six inches?
A level of crud would make me nervous and
I'm glad that it made you nervous.
Cuz this is something I want you to address at the right of the season
too, you're not gonna want to do this in the middle of the summer.
You're not gonna want to do this going into Winter.
In Georgia, you're gonna want to do it in the Springtime if ever.
And Spring's also a dangerous time of the year where
a lot of parasites could be coming up,
and if you get mixing up in all that crud, it could backfire on you.
I would be really cautious if you've never done any big water changes
on this pond, to check on the pH and see what level of pH it is.
Because if the pH has dropped quite a bit, but the fish have stabilized
in there, just like people in LA are living in the smog perfectly well.
But if you came to the LA smog you would probably feel it a little bit.
So the fish are probably in that position right now.
You see what I'm saying?
So, the way I would go about this pond that's 13 years old,
that’s never been drained, and might I add, you for
the viewers that are watching, the pond is only 2,000 gallons.
So it's not a really big pond.
I would suggest that you do some large bacteria doses to the pond,
beneficial bacteria does to try and eat on that crud.
I would invest in a decent pond vacuum and
I would try and vacuum out some of that crud a little bit.
And make sure you have a good plant load in the pond.
That's one thing that I want to throw in there,
because if you have a really heavy plant load in there,
that's helping keep everything balanced.
A lot of times,
I've seen professionals go into a pond like this that's 13 years old,
really well-established, everything seems okay, but,
they want to spruce it up.
If they thin back the plants too hard, that's a big part of that
ecosystem, and if you thin out those plants too hard,
it could backfire on you as well.
So my recommendation, let me just get to that is,
do some water changes, vacuum out some of the crud on the bottom,
do some heavy doses of beneficial bacteria, test the pH,
test the ammonia, do some testing on it.
It's hard to fix 13 years of neglect in 1 clean out.
It could be worse, right?
So why don't you just start doing some good maintenance on there,
and then let's work up to doing a spring cleaning possibly next year.
If you work on the pond really well this season,
you'll probably be in a position where you can do that water change
without having very much risk.
Great question.
All right, I'm going to move on to EvaJean28 off of YouTube.
And she has a question about filtration media and
this question is coming off of our patio pond series.
It's a really really great series for us, and we get a lot of great
feedback and questions on the patio pond, where we did a dual level
above ground pond, where we pump the water into the top, into the bottom.
We had this bog filter filled with gravel,
and she wants to know if she can put some bio balls or
some sponge material inside the gravel and maybe make it better.
And I'm going to tell you no,
I would just stick with the gravel in there, the gravel is designed at
that level and that depth and that's probably the best you can get.
A piece of gravel, well managed and maintained,
smooth cobble, is going to be better then a bio ball.
I'm really not a big fan of bio balls in any of my systems.
The simple answer is no, just use that gravel in the bog filter,
it's really designed that way, been using it that way for decades and
decades, before I was even doing it, they were doing it.
So that's a really great way to go.
I'm gonna get onto the last question of the day from a DS Coy,
he wants to know about aquaponics in a pond system.
I think this is a great question because, aquaponics is becoming
very popular, about sustainability, with the drought in California and
so on, aquaponics is becoming more and more looked at.
If you're gonna do aquaponics in your Koi pond, it's tricky.
Let me get something clear, you have aquaponics, aquaculture, and
hydroponics.
Three different specific things.
Hydroponics is running water through roots and
putting nutrients in the water, and that's all you're doing.
You have aquaculture, where you're just doing fish for food,
growing up, say, tilapia.
And then you have aquaponics, which is a combination of the two,
and that's when you're raising fish and
you're raising vegetables in one system.
And so that's what we're talking about with aquaponics.
In a Koi pond, if you're doing aquaponics, here's the drawback.
You have Winter, so when you're going into Winter,
the fish are slowing down, you're not feeding them as much, and
the fish are providing the nutrients for the vegetables to grow.
So, depending on where you're at, where you're located, in California,
there's a lot of vegetables we can grow most of the season.
Lot of herbs that we can grow year round and
if you're not feeding the fish during those times of year,
the herbs and those vegetables are gonna slow down in the Winter time.
So as long as you're prepared for
that in the summer time you could probably grow
a lot of different lettuce, you can grow tomatoes in your biofilters and
all kinds of stuff like that, so it's a good little mix.
If you're doing an outdoor pond, you just have to kind of really watch
the weather and watch the seasons and
grow the specific plants at the certain time of the year.
So my question of the day I'm gonna end it with today is I want
to know are you into aquaponics?
What kind of vegetables have you grown in your pond?
Give me some weird examples of some vegetables and herbs that you
may have grown in your stream or maybe in a floating basket.
Maybe, some kind of contraption that you made.
Why don't you share it with us?
We're gonna get a kick out of that because aquaponics is getting ready
to take off on a flight,
an S-curve, everyone's gonna be getting into it real soon.
So, tell me what you're doing and if you want me to answer your questions
on Ask the Pond Digger, you know how to do it.
#asktheponddigger, put it on the social media platforms,
I'll do my best to answer right here on the show.
Thanks for watching.
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