How to Spring Clean Your Pond
Spring is nature’s most exciting season. With flowers blooming and plants and animals coming to life, it’s time to get back out into your garden and uncover that quiet pond. Ideally, you should clean out your pond before the water goes above 12 degrees Celcius because this is when life in it begins to grow and change. There are three main tips on how to give your pond a great new start this spring.
Drain the Water
After disconnecting all of the plumbing apparatus and moving your fish safely out into a separate pool or container, you should drain your pond of its old water with a pump kit. You can use some of this water for the fish in the separate pool so that they don’t have such a dramatic change in environment.
Clean Out the Pond and Filters
Rinse out your empty pool with a hosepipe or pressure washer. Don’t remove all of the algae on the rocks though as they will provide beneficial bacteria to help maintain the ecosystem in the pond when you put new water in. Keep the water pump at the bottom of the pond so that it can channel out all of the remaining debris that you wash off when you clean the sides of your pond from top to bottom. You can also take this chance to trim any shrubs or plants inside your pond as the water is cleaned out. With your pipe washer you should also rinse out pond filters or any waterfall boxes that you have.
Refill Your Pond
Measure the volume of your pond through a water meter and make sure the water in your home is not being used by any other source while you are filling the pond. Most water, particularly in the city, contains chlorine. This isn’t suitable for fish so be sure to dechlorinate the water before you move your fish into their new home. Slowly acclimatise your fish to the new water by adding a bit of the pond water to separate buckets and placing the buckets with the fish into the pond.
Give your fish around fifteen minutes to get used to the new pond and then you can add pond salt or beneficial bacteria to the water to give them that extra boost. Now your pond is set for the rest of the year with a beautiful new lease of life that you and your family can enjoy.