My name is Sam Bates.
I'm a koi pond specialist
at Grass Roots Pond and Garden,
my family's business.
And today I'm going to be showing you
how we do a deep cleaning on koi ponds.
Koi ponds can get pretty dirty,
and this is for a number of different reasons.
One of which, at least here in Michigan,
where we are from,
we have a lot of deciduous trees
that drop leaves into the pond.
They then break down.
That organic matter can turn the water
either brown,
or sometimes it helps make it green.
This one over here is what we call carpet algae.
It's very, very difficult to get off the bottom
and the sides of the liner,
but it's actually beneficial to a pond
to have the carpet algae.
This typically comes with age.
The carpet algae can get as long as shag carpet,
and also it houses bacteria
and acts as another biological filtration system
within your pond that you didn't even
have to pay for.
When we are removing koi from ponds,
we use what's called a sock net.
It's very silky smooth,
so it's very delicate on the fish,
and it has two open ends,
which makes it easy to hold,
and the fish can't escape.
And also, you can release the fish
through the bottom or the backside of the net,
so the fish really doesn't undergo much stress
during the transportation process.
When we're cleaning koi ponds,
we keep the koi, goldfish, frogs, and such
in separate collapsible containers.
They hold 500 to 600 gallons of water.
It leaves plenty of room for the fish to hang out.
Ponds that are overtaken with algae,
whether it be microscopic algae,
which causes green water,
or string algae,
getting a deep clean to the very bottom
can be a good restart.
This pond here represents what we typically will find
when it comes springtime and time to open up a koi pond.
The water is green. That is the suspended algae.
The ammonia breakdown from any organic matter,
whether that be, sadly,
maybe a fish that passed away,
or it can be tannins in the water,
which leech from leaves, pine cones, sticks,
anything like that,
and these things should be cleaned out
really once a year.
We use this hose connected to typically
a 6,000-gallon-per-hour pump
that we submerge at the bottom of the pond
to remove the water.
Now, where does the water go?
Well, it really depends on where we're at.
Sometimes it goes to their yard,
sometimes it goes out to the road.
It really all just depends.
Some ponds only need to get pumped out once.
Those are the easiest.
And then others, it can be anywhere
from two to a dozen times.
When ponds are full of gravel at the bottom,
you have to rinse in between the gravel,
and you'll often find a lot of mud and debris
that's hidden to your eye,
but we try to remove it just because
it can still affect with water chemistry.
Typically, when cleaning ponds,
we find all sorts of stuff,
but the regular things that we find
are bullfrogs, green frogs, toads,
lots of toads,
and we also find dragonfly larvae, turtles.
In all of this mucky stuff that we find
at the bottom of ponds,
it ranges from really a cocktail of tree leaves,
sorts of needles and sticks,
and mostly fish waste.
And it smells awful.
There's really no other way to put it.
The smell actually varies by pond.
Some barely smell,
and then some make you just want to run away,
but you have to go through it
and you have to get it out.
This pond was so large in surface area,
with a flat bottom,
to where we couldn't rinse everything to one end.
We're using a squeegee to actually remove
all of the excess water and debris
that is stuck in the bottom of the pond
on their carpet algae.
The rock, the liner can be covered in string algae.
If your lawnmower's aiming in the wrong direction
and it's kicking grass clippings into the pond,
or sometimes even sprays like herbicides or pesticides
can raise the ammonia levels in the pond,
and that can cause just a whole world of issues,
causing algae and even killing
some of the pets within the system.
So you get as close as you can
with the right bit on the power washer,
and you remove the algae,
then you rinse it to the bottom.
And then we use a Shop-Vac
to clean up all of the sludge and nasty stuff
that we left at the bottom,
as well as vacuuming out the skimmers
and the filters.
It's important to clean out the bottom
of the filtration system,
because this is where all of the heavy sludge
and fish waste particularly
like to set and stay stagnant.
When refilling ponds after a deep cleaning,
we typically just use the client's garden hose,
and we will run it until we have enough water
for the fish to be released.
We add dechlorinator,
usually right at the beginning,
and we will aerate the pond
to ensure that the dechlorinator
has went thoroughly through the existing water
before we release the fish.
We make sure that the water is splashing into the pond,
opposed to just filling from the bottom
and staying fairly stagnant.
Creating those bubbles helps push that chlorine
out of the system and gas off
to make it healthy for the fish.
This bag of what looks to be dirty water
is actually beneficial bacteria
that helps break down fish waste
and helps with pond clarity
throughout the season.
This is something that we add weekly,
and our clients often ask,
"What is that bag of brown water,
and what's in it?"
All I can tell them is it's bacteria,
because that's my grandfather
and my father's secret recipe for years,
so I can't let you in on that.