Good morning, and welcome. I’m Mark, the Pond Guy.<\/p>\n
I started playing in ponds about 30 years ago. The first pond we built was in 1989 at my mom and dad’s house\u2014they’re actually outside the tent right now. So, hi Mom and Dad!<\/p>\n
I got my love of gardening from my mom. She loved gardening in the backyard, and that’s where I started tinkering around.<\/p>\n
I was originally on my way to Penn State studying aerospace engineering, but I changed directions and studied landscape architecture at West Virginia University. In the middle of all that, I started playing around with landscaping, and eventually it became more than just a part-time job. It became a full-time job.<\/p>\n
Today, we have Splash Supply Company, which is our retail and wholesale side of the business. We also have a company called The Garden’s Edge, which is our installation side.<\/p>\n
So today, I play in the mud for a living all over the East Coast. We have wholesale customers in Long Island, Washington, D.C., Poughkeepsie, New York, and throughout the Northeast.<\/p>\n
My day-to-day job is running around keeping our crews in shape and designing projects all over the place. My wife, Becky, handles the retail and wholesale operations. And I generally create chaos wherever I go.<\/p>\n
They allow me to stop by the store about twice a month to talk to you guys and share some of the knowledge we’ve learned over the years.<\/p>\n
That’s really how I view today. I’m taking a little time to share all the dumb things I did early on so you guys don’t have to repeat them.<\/p>\n
We’ve created this whole series of classes for exactly that reason. Like I said, I’ve been doing this for about 30 years, and every single time I do a talk, I learn something new. That’s my goal\u2014to learn something new and hopefully have you guys learn something new as well.<\/p>\n
I don’t have a PowerPoint presentation, and we’re not scheduled to get through this in rapid-fire style. If you have questions, feel free to raise your hand and interrupt.<\/p>\n
If you’re thinking of a question, chances are the person next to you is thinking the same thing. And if you formulate the question for them, that would be very helpful to them as well.<\/p>\n
One question I get is, “Where do I get the cheapest pond liner?”<\/p>\n
Well, you can buy a piece of plastic that’ll last about six months.<\/p>\n
If you use the material we use, we’re going to use a 45-mil, fish-safe EPDM rubber liner that actually has a lifetime warranty from the manufacturer.<\/p>\n
We have an entire tractor-trailer load and a half of rubber liner out back in all different sizes\u2014from 10-by-10 all the way up to 100-by-150.<\/p>\n
We can custom-cut pretty much any size you need.<\/p>\n
The goal today is simply to answer any questions you have about a pond you already own or a pond you’re thinking about building.<\/p>\n
The emphasis today is basically spring cleaning.<\/p>\n
I’m assuming most everybody in the room has a pond. You’ve got the pond, and now you’re asking, “What do I do to take care of it?”<\/p>\n
We’ll touch a little bit on our ecosystem ponds and how we construct them. For the most part, we’re going to talk about what to expect after you construct a typical pond.<\/p>\n
This is our second class of the season. The first class walked through, step by step, how we build our ponds. We call that Pond Design and Installation.<\/p>\n
Today’s class is Spring Pond Care.<\/p>\n
Our next class is going to be more hands-on. We’re going to have rocks and rubber up front and talk about waterfall construction and how we build our waterfalls.<\/p>\n
Then we’ll have Natural Ponds and Lakes, where we’ll talk about large ponds and acre-sized lakes. When we design and build those, we’re actually using the same ecosystem philosophy we use to design our five-by-five ponds. It’s the same basic concept, just a different animal.<\/p>\n
Then we’ll have a pond plants class. By then, our plants will be in full bloom and lush. That’s always a fun class because we get dirty splitting plants and talking about the different plants you can use.<\/p>\n
Then in September, we’ll talk about fall pond care.<\/p>\n
All of our classes are free, so please come and spread the word.<\/p>\n
We also collect food for a local food bank as part of our effort to give back to the York area. Our goal is to collect 1,200 pounds of food for the year.<\/p>\n
And you don’t have to wait for a special event. Every time you come to Splash, bring a can of food.<\/p>\n
In addition to our classes, we have pond parties. If you’ve never been to one, you can ask your neighbors who have.<\/p>\n
There’s live music, a little bit of food, some light hors d’oeuvres, and just hanging out in the garden during the summertime. They’re held every third Thursday through the summer.<\/p>\n
I built this garden as a place for me to come and relax and enjoy it, and I want to share it with you guys.<\/p>\n
So, enough commercials about how much fun we have here. Let’s talk about ponds.<\/p>\n
You’ll see the ecosystem pond graphic in your booklet.<\/p>\n
How many people’s ponds look like that, where you have a skimmer and a BioFalls setup? That’s a typical Splash ecosystem pond.<\/p>\n
Before we started building ponds like this, the biggest difference was that we would put our pump at the very bottom of the pond instead of in the skimmer.<\/p>\n
When it comes to the functioning of the system, I view the skimmer as doing about 90% of the filtration<\/strong>.<\/p>\n The skimmer is designed to do 90% of the work for you.<\/p>\n If you don’t have a skimmer, you actually have to get into the pond and get the muck and debris out of the bottom all the time.<\/p>\n A skimmer does that for you 24\/7, 365 days a year.<\/p>\n The skimmer is a great physical filter for the pond, and if you don’t have one, I would encourage you to consider one.<\/p>\n Today’s talk is going to cover spring cleaning and that little bit of extra work you have to do in the spring. But if you have a skimmer, that really eliminates a lot of work. Not 100% of it, but it eliminates a lot of it.<\/p>\n The biggest evolution with the skimmer for us came in 1995 or 1996. Aquascape started mass-producing this skimmer unit, and it really revolutionized ponds for us.<\/p>\n It allowed us to recognize that ponds can be very low-maintenance and easy to own because they don’t have to be a lot of work.<\/p>\n Today, there are probably six or seven major manufacturers of skimmers out there. We’ve even had people come in, study our skimmer, go home, and make their own out of a garbage can\u2014which is awesome.<\/p>\n On large lakes, we’ll actually custom-build skimmers on the side of the pond.<\/p>\n The idea of the skimmer is that you’re physically getting debris out of the pond before it clogs your pump or settles to the bottom.<\/p>\n The technology for pond skimmers came from the swimming pool industry.<\/p>\n If you’re looking at building a pond from scratch, I said the skimmer is about 90% of the filtration.<\/p>\n The other part is biological filtration.<\/p>\n With the physical filter, we’re physically removing leaves, twigs, sticks, pollen, and other debris.<\/p>\n Pollen is huge. In a few weeks, the spring flowers are going to start opening, and pollen is going to be all over your car.<\/p>\n That pollen also gets into your pond.<\/p>\n If you don’t have a skimmer removing it from the surface, that pollen contains nutrients that enter the pond system.<\/p>\n With the skimmer, it gets skimmed right off the surface.<\/p>\n So if the skimmer is physical filtration and that’s 90% of the system, the other 10% is your biological filter and your plants.<\/p>\n The biological filter is basically a hidden filter in our systems, full of filter mats, lava rock, bio balls, bio ribbon, bio blocks, and all kinds of nooks and crannies where beneficial bacteria and enzymes can grow.<\/p>\n I call it a little bacteria house.<\/p>\n They’re sitting in there having their bacteria party.<\/p>\n Along comes clean water that has no debris in it, but it has high ammonia from fish waste or organic debris breaking down in the pond.<\/p>\n The first type of bacteria loves ammonia and consumes it.<\/p>\n If the ammonia is gone, your fish are happy.<\/p>\n High ammonia levels can kill fish.<\/p>\n So the very first thing we want to do is get rid of ammonia from the water system, and the easiest way to do that is with beneficial bacteria and enzymes.<\/p>\n The bacteria live on all those nooks and crannies in the biological filter, and they’re consuming the ammonia.<\/p>\n The byproduct of that process is nitrites.<\/p>\n If you’ve ever seen a pond where the fish seem happy but the water is pea-soup green, there’s a reason for that.<\/p>\n When ammonia gets converted into nitrites, if the cycle stops there, those excess nitrites remain in the water.<\/p>\n Single-cell algae feeds on those nitrites, which can lead to green water.<\/p>\n In our systems, if you see our ponds, they’re crystal clear.<\/p>\n We’re not doing much other than putting a large biological filter on the pond to grow enough of the right bacteria.<\/p>\n If the biological filter is big enough, and there’s enough room for that additional type of beneficial bacteria, that bacteria consumes the nitrites.<\/p>\n In essence, we’re starving the green-water algae.<\/p>\n That’s why our ponds are crystal clear. It’s not because we’re dumping chemicals into them or using UV filters. We simply grow enough bacteria.<\/p>\n So, to review:<\/p>\n It’s Mother Nature. There’s nothing magical about it other than having the right-sized biological filter.<\/p>\n The last stage of the process is nitrates.<\/p>\n If you’ve ever seen a pond with happy, healthy fish, crystal-clear water, but string algae everywhere or scummy algae on the surface, the reason you’re getting that stringy algae is excess nitrates produced by your biological filter.<\/p>\n If I stop by a pond and see happy fish, crystal-clear water, string algae, and a little fuzziness on the rocks, that’s actually a happy pond to me.<\/p>\n That’s totally normal.<\/p>\n But I always get the pushback:<\/p>\n “Mark, that’s fine, but I don’t want to see this stringy, fuzzy algae anywhere.”<\/p>\n We’ve built projects at restaurants and hotels where that’s exactly what they tell us.<\/p>\n My first line of defense is plants\u2014more plants.<\/strong><\/p>\n Nitrates are plant fertilizer.<\/p>\n If you buy lawn fertilizer at Lowe’s and spread it on your lawn, one of the ingredients is nitrates.<\/p>\n So if you look at our ponds during the season and the irises are blooming, the lilies are blooming, and all the different plants are looking lush, they’re using those nitrates.<\/p>\n My first line of defense against stringy, fuzzy algae is to add more plants.<\/p>\n Different plants consume different nutrients.<\/p>\n A plant with a round leaf is going to take out a different nutrient than a plant with a tall, spiky leaf like an iris.<\/p>\n A pink flower is going to take out a different nutrient than a white flower.<\/p>\n A plant that blooms from June through September is going to take out different nutrients than something like marsh marigold, which starts blooming now and finishes around May.<\/p>\n So varieties of plants don’t just look awesome in the pond\u2014they serve a role.<\/p>\n They suck out nutrients, essentially trying to starve the stringy, fuzzy algae.<\/p>\n It’s not uncommon to see a lot of algae this time of year because our plants haven’t had a chance to get going.<\/p>\n As the plants wake up, they’re going to start sucking nutrients out of the system, and the algae should start to reduce on its own.<\/p>\n In a newer pond with freshly planted plants, those plants aren’t really part of the system yet. They’re still small.<\/p>\n The bigger the plants get, the more nutrients they can take out.<\/p>\n I always view a pond like a wine that’s aging. It’s better with age.<\/p>\n String algae can show up at different times depending on the pond.<\/p>\n Some ponds get it in the spring. Some get it in the fall when the plants start going dormant. Some people even get string algae in the dead of winter under the ice.<\/p>\n Every pond is a little different.<\/p>\n A little bit of string algae is totally normal.<\/p>\n People sometimes ask whether there’s a natural organism they can add to the pond that will eat string algae during the winter.<\/p>\n In my experience, not really.<\/p>\n It’s just part of the seasonal cycle of owning a pond. You’re going to get string algae levels that come up and go down throughout the season.<\/p>\n If you’ve maxed out your plants and still have too much string algae\u2014or you have a party coming up and want the pond to look great\u2014we do have some products available.<\/p>\n One is SAB. It used to be called String Algae Buster, but the name was changed because of labeling laws and EPA requirements.<\/p>\n Another product is EcoBlast.<\/p>\n Both are contact algaecides.<\/p>\n If you have a little fuzziness on the rocks, you follow the label instructions and apply it directly to the algae. When it contacts the cell wall of the string algae, it bursts the cell and kills it.<\/p>\n The reason this isn’t my first line of defense is simple:<\/p>\n You just killed all that algae, but where did it go?<\/p>\n It’s now dead algae sitting in the bottom of the pond, becoming nutrients for next week’s algae.<\/p>\n So this week you’re buying a bottle this big, next week a bottle this big, and eventually you’re spending more on algaecides than anything else.<\/p>\n It’s also not the most natural approach.<\/p>\n I view these products as a polish after you’ve maxed out all your plants.<\/p>\n They’re fantastic for cleaning things up before a party or event.<\/p>\n If you own a hospital or restaurant and absolutely don’t want to see algae, there are also electronic devices such as the IonGen.<\/p>\n It uses two probes that go into the water and releases a small amount of ions, creating a water condition that string algae doesn’t like.<\/p>\n Again, that’s not my first line of defense.<\/p>\n I want plants, plants, plants. I want the whole ecosystem working first, and then we can use something like that as a polish.<\/p>\n Another thing people ask about is barley.<\/p>\n When we first started using barley, the theory came from observations in England. Someone noticed that ponds in the middle of cornfields had a lot of algae, while the barley field next door didn’t.<\/p>\n People started throwing barley bales into ponds.<\/p>\n Some people saw results, but our experience was that it was effective maybe 10% of the time.<\/p>\n More often than not, it actually made the problem worse.<\/p>\n Remember, the whole point of the skimmer is to get organic debris out of the pond. Then we’re throwing a huge barley bale into the pond.<\/p>\n So the barley itself can become another source of organic material.<\/p>\n The industry eventually started processing barley into pellets.<\/p>\n That improved things somewhat, but even then, only about 20% of people in our experience thought it worked.<\/p>\n Now we sell a barley extract\u2014the liquid portion containing what does the work.<\/p>\n Even with that, in my experience, it’s about 50\/50.<\/p>\n Half the people say it has no effect or makes the problem worse, and half say it actually works.<\/p>\n So barley is another weapon in the arsenal, but I haven’t found a consistent pattern that tells me exactly which ponds it will work in.<\/p>\n We also sell pond dye.<\/p>\n Our most popular is Black Diamond, which is a very dark blue, almost black.<\/p>\n We also have Pond Tint, which makes the pond more brownish.<\/p>\n These products are sunlight inhibitors. They reduce the amount of sunlight entering the pond, which can have an effect on algae.<\/p>\n Personally, I don’t want to darken my water. I want my water crystal clear so I can see the bottom.<\/p>\n If you have plenty of physical filtration from the skimmer and you’re doing a good job with the biological filter, pond dye isn’t going to provide much benefit in my experience.<\/p>\n A question that comes up is what these treatments do to frogs, tadpoles, dragonfly larvae, and other aquatic life.<\/p>\n Most of the time we’re talking about fish, but everything else that makes up the ecosystem matters too.<\/p>\n If we’re physically filtering, biologically filtering, and not adding anything other than beneficial bacteria products, your fish are going to be happy, your frogs are going to be happy, and your tadpoles are going to be happy.<\/p>\n Anytime you start interfering with the natural process, I worry about how happy those other organisms are going to be.<\/p>\n We recently had dragonfly larvae in our pond. In our lily tank, we saw a whirligig beetle.<\/p>\n These animals are fascinating.<\/p>\n That’s half the fun of having a pond\u2014the ecosystem that develops around it.<\/p>\n If you have a skimmer, it’s doing about 90% of the filtration.<\/p>\n If you don’t have a dedicated biological filter, you still have biological filtration happening in the pond.<\/p>\n Every square inch, every nook and cranny of your pond supports beneficial bacteria.<\/p>\n The role of the biological filter is to concentrate that bacteria in one location so you can grow enough of it.<\/p>\n We see a lot of other brands’ biological filters come through the store when we’re doing renovations.<\/p>\n The biggest issue I see is that the physical size of those filters simply isn’t large enough to grow enough bacteria to handle the fish population.<\/p>\n That’s one of the biggest things I see.<\/p>\n If you’re on a budget and can’t afford to do everything at once, my recommendation is to do the skimming filtration first and then add more biological filtration later.<\/p>\n At least the skimmer will be getting 90% of that stuff out.<\/p>\n If you install biological filtration without a skimmer, all that debris is going to clog the biological filter.<\/p>\n Is it too early to plant?<\/p>\n It’s never too early to plant.<\/p>\n However, if you come to Splash too early in the season, you might buy a pot that looks like it has nothing but dirt in it and wonder what you paid for.<\/p>\n If you go into our greenhouse, the plants are starting to push.<\/p>\n In another two or three weeks, depending on the temperature, the selection on the plant tables will start looking awesome.<\/p>\n Within a month, we’ll probably have around 250 different varieties of plants available.<\/p>\n The same question comes up with fish.<\/p>\n I think it’s too early to add fish until the water temperatures are right.<\/p>\n What we’re looking for is for the temperature in the fish tanks to be about the same as the outside pond temperature.<\/p>\n We’re looking for around 55\u201360\u00b0F<\/strong>.<\/p>\n If your pond is consistently around 55\u201360\u00b0F, you’re probably okay.<\/p>\n What we don’t want to do is take a fish that’s been sitting in 60\u00b0F water and throw it into 30\u00b0F water. That’s extremely stressful for the fish.<\/p>\n People often ask whether they need to replace the bio balls.<\/p>\n Our typical biological filter has a swirl chamber on the bottom, filter mats, and then either lava rock or bio balls above the mats.<\/p>\n The outside shell of the biological filter is a lifetime component. You shouldn’t have to replace it.<\/p>\n Depending on the style of filter mat, you typically get about three to five years out of them.<\/p>\n The way you determine whether they’re ready to be replaced is by checking them in the spring.<\/p>\n We tell you never to mess with the biological filter unnecessarily, but in the spring you can pull the mats up briefly and rinse them.<\/p>\n During the winter, debris can build up.<\/p>\n When you pull them out, look for signs that they’re falling apart or shrinking.<\/p>\n If the mats shrink, water can sneak around the edges instead of flowing through them. When that happens, you’re not getting the biological filtration you’re supposed to be getting.<\/p>\n Typically, every three to five years you’ll start to see them shrink, become very thin, or fall apart when you touch them.<\/p>\n That’s when you replace them.<\/p>\n Bio balls should never need to be replaced. They’re made from solid, heavy-duty plastic.<\/p>\n We used to use lava rock more consistently. Today we typically use bio balls, although I find lava rock just as effective.<\/p>\n Personally, I don’t see any reason to replace bio balls or lava rock.<\/p>\n When we build a pond from scratch, the biological filters are factory fresh. There isn’t really bacteria in them yet.<\/p>\n We use a starter bacteria.<\/p>\n It’s a fast-acting bacteria. Once we put it into the skimmer, the skimmer pump circulates it through the biological filter, and the bacteria starts growing quickly.<\/p>\n After a spring cleanout, starter bacteria should go in right away.<\/p>\n Anytime you clean the biological filter, you’re destroying some of the bacteria we’ve spent all this time building up.<\/p>\n That’s why we recommend not touching the biological filter except about once a year.<\/p>\n Pull the mats up, gently rinse them, and put them back.<\/p>\n Once you fire the pond system back up, add your pond starter bacteria.<\/p>\n That gives the system a quick start.<\/p>\n A common question is why a waterfall that used to flow beautifully has turned into more of a trickle.<\/p>\n Sometimes the answer is simply that you haven’t done the spring cleaning.<\/p>\n If you’ve left the pond running all winter, there can still be a lot of debris.<\/p>\n That’s a great lead-in to why we do a spring cleanout.<\/p>\n The skimmer does about 90% of the pond’s filtration.<\/p>\n Some people shut their ponds off during winter. When you shut the pond off, you’re also shutting off your physical filter, so leaves and debris start to build up.<\/p>\n Even if you leave the skimmer running, there’s a lot more debris blowing around in late fall and winter.<\/p>\n Sometimes there’s simply more debris than the skimmer can keep up with.<\/p>\n We built a pond for a church near a large cornfield, and all winter long we had to clean corncobs out of the pond because there was simply too much debris for the skimmer to handle.<\/p>\n Fall and winter can be very tough on a pond.<\/p>\n During a spring cleanout, we want to go in and take a look at the pond.<\/p>\n If you’ve ignored your pond over the winter, debris may have built up more than normal.<\/p>\n Remember, we’re trying to mimic nature.<\/p>\n In nature, it snows in the mountains. The snow melts, streams and rivers fill up, and they flush all that debris downstream.<\/p>\n That’s the concept we’re trying to mimic with a spring cleanout.<\/p>\n We want to flush out all the major debris.<\/p>\n We have customers whose pond systems we’ve built to be the lowest-maintenance pond systems in the world.<\/p>\n They’re so meticulous that every time they get a leaf in the pond, they’re out there with tweezers getting it out.<\/p>\n If you’re that meticulous, that’s awesome.<\/p>\n But you probably don’t need a cleanout every year.<\/p>\n Some of these customers are so meticulous that you can count the gravel, and some even have the gravel numbered on the bottom.<\/p>\n If you’re that kind of person, you probably shouldn’t have a pond.<\/p>\n But I say that a lot.<\/p>\n Everybody needs a pond.<\/p>\n If you’re extremely meticulous, though, you probably don’t have a huge amount of organic debris to worry about in the spring.<\/p>\n So, do you have to do a cleanout every year?<\/p>\n No, I wouldn’t say you do.<\/p>\n But I would recommend doing a cleanout every three to five years<\/strong>, regardless.<\/p>\n Even if there’s never a piece of debris on the bottom, do a cleanout.<\/p>\n We’re not only flushing out the big debris. We’re also flushing out micronutrients that are starting to build up.<\/p>\n This is a very low-maintenance pond system. The skimmer is physically filtering about 90% of the pond, and the biological filter handles the rest.<\/p>\n But you can’t completely ignore it.<\/p>\n It is a closed system with living creatures in it.<\/p>\n We want to mimic nature as much as possible.<\/p>\n The big first purpose of the spring cleanout is to flush it out.<\/p>\n When we come out to clean your pond\u2014or if you’re doing it yourself\u2014the first thing we’ll do is set up a temporary tank next to the pond.<\/p>\n We’re going to save somewhere around 50\u201370% of the water, depending on the pond.<\/p>\n Ideally, we’re saving about half.<\/p>\n We pump your pond water into the temporary tank.<\/p>\n Usually, that water is pretty clean and clear.<\/p>\n Then we catch the fish and gently move them into the temporary tank.<\/p>\n We’ll put an aerator in there to keep the oxygen going, and we’ll put a net over the top so the fish don’t jump out.<\/p>\n Fish are basically thinking, “Wait, I’m not in my pond. I want to get back to my pond!”<\/p>\n So they want to jump.<\/p>\n Once we’ve pumped about half the water out of the pond, we’ll take a pump and pump out the remaining water.<\/p>\n You can use your skimmer pump if you’re doing this yourself and don’t have another pump.<\/p>\n A low-profile pump is ideal because it can get down very close to the bottom.<\/p>\n We’ll pump the remaining water out.<\/p>\n We’re also going to take the pond water we’re pumping out and use it like a fire hose.<\/p>\n We’ll go up and down the stream and spray into all the nooks and crannies around the rocks.<\/p>\n The goal is not<\/strong> to pressure-wash the surface of the rocks.<\/p>\n The goal is to get the muck and debris that’s built up behind the rocks and in the rock and gravel.<\/p>\n If this is all rock and gravel, we’re doing a volume wash through it.<\/p>\n The rock and gravel move around, and the muck that’s built up between everything flows down the stream and into the bottom of the pond.<\/p>\n When we’re done washing the stream and waterfall area, the pond water is going to be pretty mucky.<\/p>\n Then we move to the first shelf in the pond and do the same thing.<\/p>\n The pond water gets progressively muckier.<\/p>\n Eventually, we’ll discharge that high-nutrient pond water into the landscape.<\/p>\n If you want to green up your grass, that’s a great way to do it.<\/p>\n You don’t need to go to Lowe’s and buy nitrate fertilizer. Use your pond water around your grass or plants.<\/p>\n We continue cleaning until the pond is completely drained and the major debris is gone.<\/p>\n We recently did a pond cleanout where it had been about ten years since the last cleaning.<\/p>\n The house had been empty for a couple of years, and there were so many leaves that we couldn’t even get the pond pump into the water.<\/p>\n It floated on the surface of the leaves.<\/p>\n We had to use five-gallon buckets and pond gloves and remove the muck one bucket at a time until we could finally see the rock and gravel underneath.<\/p>\n The pond was actually well constructed. It had simply been neglected for two or three years.<\/p>\n Using the existing pond water to flush the pond is preferable to pressure-washing it with fresh water.<\/p>\n We don’t want to use a pressure washer to scrape the surface of the stone and remove all the fine biofilm.<\/p>\n When we do that, we’re destroying the ecosystem of the pond.<\/p>\n We don’t want to destroy the entire ecosystem.<\/p>\n We just want to remove the macro debris.<\/p>\n A garden hose is fine, but I love using the pond water because it’s already part of the pond ecosystem.<\/p>\n The biggest thing is volume.<\/p>\n A garden hose is only three-quarter-inch, so you’re not moving much water.<\/p>\n On our crews, we’re using three-inch hose.<\/p>\n The pump we’re using is around 14,000 gallons per hour, which moves a tremendous amount of water very quickly.<\/p>\n But a smaller setup is sufficient for most ponds.<\/p>\n You don’t have to obsess over rinsing and rinsing again.<\/p>\n Let the pond pump the remaining water out.<\/p>\n As you’re finishing, use the garden hose to slowly dilute the remaining muck until the bottom of the pond is clean.<\/p>\n No.<\/p>\n We’re not removing all the rocks from the bottom.<\/p>\n We’re shifting and moving the gravel around with the volume of water and straightening things as we go.<\/p>\n It’s also a great opportunity to correct things that moved over the winter.<\/p>\n Maybe a rock shifted during the freeze-thaw cycle.<\/p>\n Maybe a light popped out.<\/p>\n Maybe a cable that was buried underneath the gravel has become exposed.<\/p>\n This is the opportunity to reposition rocks, replace lights, and rebury exposed cables.<\/p>\n If you have potted plants in the pond, you don’t need to scrub the biofilm off the outside of the pots.<\/p>\n I actually like that biofilm.<\/p>\n But if you look at our typical pond design, we don’t have potted plants.<\/p>\n We plant directly into plant pockets.<\/p>\n One of the things I love about a spring cleanout is that I don’t have to lift my plants out of the pond and put them back in.<\/p>\n They’re planted directly into plant pockets.<\/p>\n If you have a lily planted in a plant pocket and it got too big the previous year, you can reach underneath the gravel, grab the rhizome, and break off the part that’s growing beyond the original plant pocket.<\/p>\n Now you’re back to the original plant pocket.<\/p>\n You also have a lily rhizome you can save, sell, or use in another pond.<\/p>\n In my opinion, plant pockets make plant maintenance much easier than constantly raising and lowering pots.<\/p>\n A plant pocket can be as shallow as about two inches.<\/p>\n When you’re digging the pond, you create a small indentation in the soil and push the liner down into it.<\/p>\n Then the soil from the plant fills the pocket.<\/p>\n On larger ponds, we can create much larger plant pockets.<\/p>\n For example, a plant pocket might be five feet by two feet and completely filled with soil. Then we can bare-root plants directly into it.<\/p>\n We’re doing a pond at a new hospital that’s around 90 feet long by 20 feet wide, and we’re creating large plant pockets there.<\/p>\n I think we’re going to have around 100 different lilies.<\/p>\n Some will be grouped together to mimic Monet’s mix of lilies.<\/p>\n I want the entire shelf packed with lilies.<\/p>\n On a larger pond, we use larger plant pockets. On a smaller pond, we use smaller plant pockets.<\/p>\n Once everything is flushed out, we’re ready to inspect the pond.<\/p>\n We rearrange and adjust the rocks.<\/p>\n We check the lighting system.<\/p>\n Maybe a light needs to be replaced.<\/p>\n Maybe you didn’t have a fish cave when you originally built the pond.<\/p>\n Now is the time to add one.<\/p>\n Maybe you didn’t have a skimmer.<\/p>\n Now is the time to add one, while the water level is low.<\/p>\n Once everything looks good, we’re ready to refill the pond.<\/p>\n First, we’ll take the pond water we saved in the temporary tank and pump it back into the pond.<\/p>\n Then we’ll gently transfer the fish back.<\/p>\n They’re still in the same water they’ve been in, so we’re keeping their stress level as low as possible.<\/p>\n Then we’ll put the garden hose into the pond and fill the remaining 30\u201350%.<\/p>\n If you’re on York water, you need to be aware of chlorine and chloramines.<\/p>\n Chlorine and chloramines can be poisonous to fish even at low levels.<\/p>\n Municipal water systems can also spike chlorine levels when they need to flush a line.<\/p>\n That’s why it’s very important to remove chlorine and chloramines when you’re adding municipal water to your pond.<\/p>\n Pond detoxifier gets rid of chlorine and chloramines.<\/p>\n When you do a water change, dose with pond detoxifier.<\/p>\n You should also keep a bottle on hand at all times.<\/p>\n If you own a pond long enough, eventually you’ll forget and leave the garden hose running.<\/p>\n If you leave it running overnight and do more than a 50% water change, you could kill your fish.<\/p>\n I speak from personal experience. I’ve done it, and it’s not fun.<\/p>\n If you have pond detoxifier on hand, you can instantly dechlorinate the water and save your fish.<\/p>\n One other thing: if you’re on York water, we recommend doubling the dosage rate because we’ve seen chlorine levels spike beyond the capacity of the regular dosage.<\/p>\n Technically, chlorine can off-gas.<\/p>\n But the bigger concern for fish is chloramine.<\/p>\n Chloramine doesn’t off-gas the same way chlorine does. It remains in the water longer.<\/p>\n Aeration and waterfalls can help with chlorine, but they won’t remove chloramines.<\/p>\n That’s why using a proper pond detoxifier is important.<\/p>\n Before you refill the pond\u2014or, if you’re listening to me now, before you drain it again\u2014don’t forget about fertilizer tablets.<\/p>\n Our lilies love fertilizer.<\/p>\n The more fertilizer you give them, the more leaves and flowers they’re going to produce.<\/p>\n A lot of marginal plants don’t need fertilizer, though.<\/p>\n Be careful what you fertilize.<\/p>\n If you fertilize an iris, it’s going to get very leggy and too large. An iris doesn’t need much help.<\/p>\n A lily, on the other hand, benefits from fertilizer.<\/p>\n When the pond is drained down, grab a fertilizer tablet and push it directly into the soil in the plant pocket.<\/p>\n If the plant is still in a container, push the tablet directly into the soil in the container.<\/p>\n That’ll get your lilies off to a great start.<\/p>\n Once the pond is filled back up, the fish are happy to have their clean pond back.<\/p>\n Then you get the question:<\/p>\n “When do I start feeding them?”<\/p>\n Get a thermometer and check the water temperature.<\/p>\n Again, 55\u201360\u00b0F<\/strong> is the magic range.<\/p>\n At 55\u201360\u00b0F, the fish’s metabolism is starting to come back to life, and the beneficial bacteria is starting to become active again.<\/p>\n You can start introducing a spring or fall formula.<\/p>\n The biggest difference between summer high-growth food and spring\/fall formulas is that spring and fall formulas move through the fish’s system more quickly.<\/p>\n They’re not as high in protein.<\/p>\n We don’t want a heavy, high-protein food sitting in the fish’s gut when the water is 50\u201355\u00b0F because they can’t process it properly.<\/p>\n Fish don’t have stomachs like we do.<\/p>\n The food can sit there and potentially cause problems.<\/p>\n So we want to start with food that moves through their system quickly and gradually introduces food back into their diet.<\/p>\n Cheerios are another great treat for fish.<\/p>\n Our Koi Crunchies are also fantastic and are high in vitamin C.<\/p>\n Another thing to remember about fish coming out of winter is that bacteria and other pathogens can start becoming active again.<\/p>\n The fish are still relatively inactive because they haven’t been eating much.<\/p>\n Then you can have a day when the water is 60\u00b0F and the next day it’s 20\u00b0F.<\/p>\n Those temperature swings are stressful.<\/p>\n That’s why many people start the spring season with a probiotic food.<\/p>\n The fish are slowly getting acclimated, and the probiotic food helps support their metabolism and immune system.<\/p>\n We use probiotic food when we start feeding our fish outside in the spring.<\/p>\n It gives them an extra boost to help them deal with the stress of the season.<\/p>\n Believe it or not, not every pond fish absolutely needs to be fed.<\/p>\n Some customers have never fed their goldfish.<\/p>\n In a small pond with goldfish, there can be enough natural food in all the nooks and crannies for them to survive.<\/p>\n If you have koi, that’s different.<\/p>\n Koi need supplemental food.<\/p>\n Do you have to feed them every day?<\/p>\n No.<\/p>\n If you go away for a week, you don’t have to worry about finding someone to feed them every single day.<\/p>\n Koi do need supplemental nutrients, but they don’t necessarily need to be fed every single day.<\/p>\n After the spring season, you can move into high-growth and high-color formulas to help bring out the colors and encourage growth.<\/p>\n But to start the season, cold-water or probiotic food is a great option.<\/p>\n Beneficial bacteria products have expiration dates because they contain live, active bacteria.<\/p>\n If you have some left over from last year, use it before buying new.<\/p>\n Check the expiration date.<\/p>\n It should generally have a shelf life of around two years, but use the date on the product as your guide.<\/p>\n The fresher the bacteria, the better.<\/p>\n After adding starter bacteria to get the biological filter going, the next step is maintaining that bacteria population.<\/p>\n We recommend adding a small amount of beneficial bacteria consistently every week.<\/p>\n Our bacteria bottles have pump tops, and the dosage is one pump per 100 gallons.<\/p>\n So if you have a 1,000-gallon pond, you’re adding about ten pumps once a week.<\/p>\n That’s a great way to make sure you’re continually adding fresh bacteria.<\/p>\n The fresher and more frequently you add it, the better.<\/p>\n A few years ago, Aquascape introduced an automatic dosing unit.<\/p>\n Instead of manually adding ten pumps once a week, the dosing system automatically adds tiny amounts throughout the day.<\/p>\n I haven’t done the exact math, but it’s essentially thousands of tiny micro-doses every day.<\/p>\n So there’s always a little bit of fresh bacteria being added.<\/p>\n Most people using the dosing system use the Maintain product, which contains beneficial bacteria along with other ingredients.<\/p>\n It’s an easy way to automate the process.<\/p>\n You could go out and add ten pumps once a week, but why do that when you can automate it?<\/p>\n Again, check the expiration date on the product.<\/p>\n If it’s two years old or has frozen, I would consider it no longer useful.<\/p>\n If you have an old product you don’t want to waste, I would simply add it to the pond and then get a fresh bag.<\/p>\n I personally love listening to my waterfall all winter.<\/p>\n At my house, the main waterfall is right outside my bedroom window.<\/p>\n Even in the dead of winter, I’ll have the window cracked open because I want to hear the waterfall.<\/p>\n My wife will say, “Shut that!”<\/p>\n And I’ll say, “No, I can’t hear the waterfall.”<\/p>\n We used to have about 70% of our customers leave everything running through the winter.<\/p>\n The problem is that we’ve had some really cold winters in recent years.<\/p>\n People were having to add water and drag the garden hose out in the middle of winter, sometimes several times.<\/p>\n That gets old.<\/p>\n For that reason, more people have decided to shut their ponds down around Thanksgiving.<\/p>\n That way, they don’t have to worry about the pond while they’re traveling or away for an extended period.<\/p>\n If you shut the pond down, the biggest thing we’re concerned about is gas exchange<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Fish go down into their fish caves during the winter.<\/p>\n They’re not quite dormant and not quite hibernating. They enter a state called torpor, which is basically similar to hibernation.<\/p>\n They’re still alive and breathing.<\/p>\n They’re still producing waste gases.<\/p>\n If the surface of the pond completely freezes over, those gases can’t escape and the fish can suffocate.<\/p>\n A lot of people come in during the winter asking for a heater or de-icer.<\/p>\n A heater by itself doesn’t necessarily disturb the water surface enough to get the bad gases out.<\/p>\n If you put in a large enough aerator, the bubbles disturb the water surface and keep an opening in the ice.<\/p>\n So I always recommend an aerator.<\/p>\n If you have a heater, that’s fine too.<\/p>\n But don’t rely on the heater alone.<\/p>\n I also don’t want to put the aerator directly on the bottom of the pond because I want the fish to have a relatively undisturbed area of water down there.<\/p>\n Usually, we place it around 8\u201310 inches deep.<\/p>\n That’s enough to keep a hole open in the surface and allow gas exchange.<\/p>\n We’re actually starting to install aerators for year-round use.<\/p>\n Your fish can never have too much oxygen.<\/p>\n The beneficial bacteria process also requires oxygen.<\/p>\n Your waterfall provides oxygen, but supplemental aeration is a great thing.<\/p>\n If your pump dies, Murphy’s law says it’s going to happen on the hottest day of the year\u2014or the coldest.<\/p>\n Hot water holds less oxygen.<\/p>\n If your waterfall pump stops working during the summer, having a supplemental aerator gives you a great backup source of oxygen.<\/p>\n You can absolutely mix different types of fish.<\/p>\n In our tanks, we have koi, shubunkins, comets, and other goldfish.<\/p>\n We also have catfish.<\/p>\n In season, we have a pond shark. He’s not technically a shark. He’s very docile and more of an algae eater, but his tall fin makes him look pretty intimidating.<\/p>\n For large lakes, we use fish such as black bass, bluegill, catfish, minnows, and others.<\/p>\n Orfe are another option. They’re cool, carrot-colored fish that are great when they school together.<\/p>\n The biggest piece of advice if you’re mixing different types of fish is to make sure they’re all about the same size.<\/p>\n I’ve seen large orfe eat smaller koi, and I’ve seen large catfish eat other fish.<\/p>\n My personal pond is all koi. I don’t have goldfish or other types of fish.<\/p>\n I like koi babies.<\/p>\n If I had goldfish, catfish, or orfe in there, I wouldn’t get as many koi babies.<\/p>\n If you’re in a situation where you’re getting too many koi babies every year, adding a few orfe can help reduce that population.<\/p>\n But have fun with it.<\/p>\n If your waterfall flow has slowed down, there’s a good chance something is clogging the pump.<\/p>\n During your spring cleanout, pull the pond pump out of the skimmer and rinse all the components.<\/p>\n The pumps come apart pretty easily.<\/p>\n Take the cage off the pump, then use a screwdriver or your finger to reach around the volute and clean everything out.<\/p>\n You may have a leaf or two stuck on the impeller, and that can reduce your water flow.<\/p>\n If you pull that debris out, you’ll often see the flow return to normal.<\/p>\n Someone asked about purchasing a UV filter.<\/p>\n Do you see a UV filter on our ecosystem pond diagram?<\/p>\n It’s a trick question.<\/p>\n We do sell UV filters, and we make money selling UV bulbs and replacement bulbs.<\/p>\n But in our experience, if you have an ecosystem pond with good skimming filtration and a properly sized biological filter, you don’t need a UV.<\/p>\n A UV is an excellent device.<\/p>\n If I were in Europe and had a pond without these filtration systems and wanted to clear up green water, I’d use a UV filter.<\/p>\n As the water passes through the UV, the light damages the single-cell algae, and the water comes out clear.<\/p>\n So if you have a green pond in full sun without the proper filtration, a UV can look like it’s doing an amazing job\u2014because it is.<\/p>\n But in our experience, it becomes redundant in an ecosystem pond.<\/p>\n We’ve installed ecosystem ponds for about 30 years, and we’ve never felt that a UV filter was necessary.<\/p>\n So when someone asks about a UV, I’ll say, “Yep, that’s a fast solution. But here’s a permanent solution.”<\/p>\n If you beef up your other filtration, you may be able to reduce the problem without relying on a UV.<\/p>\n Pine needles can be a problem, especially when they’re difficult to remove.<\/p>\n Hemlock needles are even worse because they’re so small and can get into everything.<\/p>\n That’s one of the purposes of the spring cleanout: to get as much of that debris out as physically possible.<\/p>\n One way I test whether a skimmer is doing its job is to throw a pine needle into the far corner of the pond.<\/p>\n If the skimmer is doing its job, that pine needle should eventually work its way toward the skimmer.<\/p>\n If it goes to the bottom instead, I need to improve the skimming system.<\/p>\n That could mean a bigger pump, a larger skimmer, or another adjustment.<\/p>\n Our skimmers are designed to handle pine needles, hemlock needles, leaves, twigs, sticks, pollen, and other debris.<\/p>\n But the system has to be properly sized.<\/p>\n Trees can create both benefits and challenges.<\/p>\n We have a customer with a beautiful pond and a birch tree about ten feet away.<\/p>\n Based on my experience with that particular pond, I’m convinced that plants can actually sense flowing water.<\/p>\n The tree roots are on one side of the rubber liner while the water is on the other, yet the roots have grown up and over the liner to get a drink.<\/p>\n It’s not simply moisture in the soil because there isn’t moisture on that side of the liner.<\/p>\n Birch trees can be very thirsty and consume a lot of water.<\/p>\n The beauty of having that tree outweighs the negative for me, but you do need to be aware of what trees are doing around your pond.<\/p>\n At the same time, a tree is also part of the ecosystem.<\/p>\n A birch tree is probably pulling nutrients out of the system that something else isn’t.<\/p>\n So aside from the amount of water it consumes, it may actually be beneficial to the ecosystem.<\/p>\n Remember, the purpose of the spring cleanout is to physically get in there once a year and remove the muck and debris.<\/p>\n If you have pine needles that aren’t all being removed, or you don’t have a skimmer and have muck building up on the bottom, sludge cleaner can help.<\/p>\n Sludge cleaner is an anaerobic beneficial bacteria.<\/p>\n The starter bacteria and Maintain products are aerobic bacteria\u2014they live in oxygen-rich environments such as the biological filter.<\/p>\n Sludge cleaner is designed for anaerobic zones where there isn’t much oxygen, such as behind rocks where sludge and organic material build up.<\/p>\n If you add the proper amount to a 1,000-gallon pond, it works in those anaerobic areas to break down organic muck.<\/p>\n It helps convert that organic material into simpler compounds and water, making it disappear.<\/p>\n It’s a fantastic product.<\/p>\n Like our other beneficial bacteria products, it’s very difficult to overdose in a way that harms the fish.<\/p>\n Someone mentioned concerns about algaecides hurting fish.<\/p>\n That’s why I don’t talk about algaecides as much.<\/p>\n Your beneficial bacteria products are your friend.<\/p>\n So if you decide you’re not going to do a pond cleanout this year, try sludge cleaner and see if it helps.<\/p>\n If you don’t have a skimmer, sludge cleaner can also be your friend throughout the year.<\/p>\n Thank you guys for coming.<\/p>\n If you have to go, please feel free to sneak out.<\/p>\n I’ll be here for as long as you want.<\/p>\n Thanks again, and hopefully you learned something today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Spring Pond Care Introduction Good morning, and welcome. I’m Mark, the Pond Guy. I started playing in ponds about 30 years ago. The first pond we built was in 1989 at my mom and dad’s house\u2014they’re actually outside the tent right now. So, hi Mom and Dad! I got my love of gardening from my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/team.splashsupplyco.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/team.splashsupplyco.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/team.splashsupplyco.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/team.splashsupplyco.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/team.splashsupplyco.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=70"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/team.splashsupplyco.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72,"href":"https:\/\/team.splashsupplyco.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70\/revisions\/72"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/team.splashsupplyco.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=70"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/team.splashsupplyco.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=70"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/team.splashsupplyco.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=70"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Physical Filtration vs. Biological Filtration<\/h2>\n
Biological Filtration<\/h1>\n
Ammonia, Nitrites and Green Water<\/h2>\n
\n
Understanding Nitrates and String Algae<\/h1>\n
Spring Algae<\/h2>\n
Should You Add Organisms to Eat String Algae?<\/h1>\n
Algaecides<\/h1>\n
Barley for Algae Control<\/h1>\n
Pond Dye<\/h1>\n
Pond Treatments and Aquatic Life<\/h2>\n
Sizing Your Biological Filter<\/h1>\n
Pond Plants in Spring<\/h1>\n
Adding Fish in Spring<\/h1>\n
Maintaining the Biological Filter<\/h1>\n
Inoculating the Biological Filter<\/h1>\n
Why Waterfall Flow Slows Down<\/h1>\n
Why We Do a Spring Cleanout<\/h1>\n
Step-by-Step Spring Cleanout<\/h1>\n
Volume Washing the Pond<\/h2>\n
Why Use Pond Water to Clean the Pond?<\/h1>\n
Do You Remove All the Rocks?<\/h1>\n
Cleaning Plants During a Spring Cleanout<\/h1>\n
Maintaining Plant Pockets<\/h1>\n
Final Inspection Before Refilling<\/h1>\n
Refilling the Pond<\/h1>\n
Dechlorinating Municipal Water<\/h2>\n
Does Chlorine Off-Gas?<\/h2>\n
Fertilizing Water Lilies<\/h1>\n
Feeding Fish in Spring<\/h1>\n
Fish Health in Spring<\/h1>\n
Do Fish Need to Be Fed?<\/h1>\n
Beneficial Bacteria: How Long Does It Last?<\/h1>\n
Adding Beneficial Bacteria Regularly<\/h1>\n
Automatic Dosing<\/h2>\n
Winter Pond Care<\/h1>\n
If You Shut the Pond Down for Winter<\/h1>\n
Aerators and De-Icers<\/h1>\n
Year-Round Aeration<\/h1>\n
Mixing Different Types of Fish<\/h1>\n
Troubleshooting Low Water Flow<\/h1>\n
Do You Need a UV Filter?<\/h1>\n
Pine Needles and Organic Debris<\/h1>\n
Trees Around Ponds<\/h1>\n
Sludge Cleaner<\/h1>\n
Closing<\/h1>\n