how often do you clean your duck pond?

[Fancie]

I do it weekly but it is about a 4 hour advent, and the water never seems to get as clean as I would like it to. I was thinking maybe if I cleaned it more maybe it wouldn't take so long and maybe I would get better results.

Also do any of you use the water to water the gardens?? this is my first year... I heard duck water is good for gardens.

 

[hypnofrogstevie]

I clean my pond out once every four days. The water has all the duck poo in it which has nutrents for plants. . My plants love it.

 

[cawooduck]

I have a 7' x 9' pond that i drain, clean and refill about every 5 days, sometimes sooner, sometimes later, depending on weather.

I have to drain it no more than every four days in the summer due to algea, if i stay on top of it, its not to bad to deal with, if i let it go its a pain in the butt.

As for the water, i drain it into a field right now, but i am going to rototill the ground where i drain it and put some melons there, might as well make use of the waste water, seems the weeds love it!!

 

[Wifezilla]

I have a 500 gallon pond. I have a large bio filter so I don't clean it. It has been a couple of months and I DO need to suck the sediment out of the bottom. I will put that muck in the garden somewhere

 

[barnwife]

I have a small plastic turtle with a drain at the bottom as my duck pond...its the type that usually has a lid, but I got it free without the lid

I dug a small pit at one end of where I would put it (kinda like a 6" deep 2 ft wide ditch) and placed some larger rocks in it, laid the drain end of the poole over this.

I use this for my 20 ducks and my four geese.

I drain it every day and rinse the muck out. My garned is downhill from the pond water runoff, and it feeds the nearby grapevine I use as a privacy fence, too (without any help from me).

It is a five minute process to drain, rinse, and add more water.

Every month I let it dry for about 3 days or so just to keep the muck smell away, and to deal witht he flies attracted to the smell.

 

[Fancie]

Quote:
what is a good way of sucking the sediment?? I take a old coffe can when the pond is drained near fully. Is there a better way??

 

[Wifezilla]

I was going to try the wet/dry shopvac. Not sure if it will work, but I am going to give it a go. I will let you know how much of a disaster that turns out to be

 

[sweetshoplady]

Wifezilla, where did you get the bio filter? What are the dimensions of your pond?

 

[Wifezilla]

My pond is a pre-formed liner. I made the bio-filter based loosely on the Skippy filter...

http://www.skippysstuff.com/biofiltr.htm
http://www.skippysstuff.com/minime.htm

I took a large plastic decorative pot, ran the 1/2 tubing from the pump in to the bottom, filled it with bio-degradable furnace filter pieces and then put a drain spout near the top.

I tried to grow duck weed in the top open pot, but the stupid snow froze it. I need to buy more

 

[tdgill]

Quote:
what is a good way of sucking the sediment?? I take a old coffe can when the pond is drained near fully. Is there a better way??

i use a gallon milk jug with part of the top (leaving the handle) cut off like a scoup. i should experiment with cutting the thing differently maybe from the bottom to make the scoup...works good for me in my 85 gal. fish pond after i have used the sump pump (that we use on the swimming pool cover in winter to keep water from collecting) and less often i'ved used my WET DRY shop vac. I didn't know i had to take the foam filter off of my vac before I used it for water tho....

i wouldnt be able to scoup the whole pond tho. have to get it out some other way. wonder if a person could design a siphone system somehow