Friday, April 25, 2014

Cleaning out the stock tank pond

 
Yuck. Our stock tank pond had really gotten messy! Last night about 2 a.m., I woke up and thought about our water lily, how I needed to bring it up for spring. Last year, I forgot. Poor thing. It really had to work to send up leave and flowers. No wonder it wasn't as showy as in 2012. So this afternoon, I decided TODAY IS THE DAY! 
I scooped out our one lone surviving gambusia (mosquitofish). Poor thing–he's been alone for a while. Then I got to work. James joined me later. 


We scooped out the water using buckets and poured it on our plants. No point wasting it! Then we scrubbed out the inside with old Dobie pads. 


The cinder blocks, which serve as plant pedestals, were gunky, too. 
We put this stock tank pond together in May 2012. Last spring 2013, we didn't do a thing to it. Really, you're suppose to divide and repot your aquatic plants AND clean out your pond once a year. Not me. What I did do was pull and cut off all the roots on the horsetail rush (above) and trim off the dead stems on the lemon bacopa. The water lily needs dividing, but I didn't. Oh, well.

Finally, more than an hour later, we filled up the tank again. It holds about 100 gallons. Then I added a heavy-metal remover to the water (below). I won't put the fish back in the water until tomorrow sometime. 







TA DA!

4 comments:

Rock rose said...

I would say, a job well done. I like you horsetail reed and I think I need to replace my papyrus with this The papyrus did not winter well. I emptied out my tank a month ago because the papyrus had fallen over and the water looked very dark with tannins. I didn't scrub it out or remove the algae from the bricks and stones. I refilled it with rainwater, which had a lot of pollen in it, which now went yellow/green. I worried about this but like magic this week the water started to clear and now I can see to the bottom of the tank. I think all the snails died and I have no fish. Just water lilies, iris etc. Can't wait for the first bloom.

Sheryl Smith-Rodgers said...

We need to replace our arachnis or hornwort, whatever it's called. And I'm going to get more gambusia...my little guy needs friends!

Unknown said...

Sheryl--
interesting post! Who did most of that scrubbing?

Sheryl Smith-Rodgers said...

Both of us! It wasn't too hard to get clean. All in all, the clean-out took 1 1/2 hours.

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