Emptying, Cleaning, and Refilling the Pond - It's Done!

[Julles]

Kat mentioned she plans to empty, clean, and refill her shubunkin pond.  I was not going to tear down my pond this year, for the first time ever, but now that I think I have that turtle in there, looks like I have to, and am planning to do that this Friday.

I'm wondering how much stress this puts on the fish.  Nice clean water is great, but there will be the stress of being caught and kept in temporary quarters, and shock from change in water quality and temperature.

How hard is all that on the fish?

[marla]

We clean our pond yearly....yes some stress I'm sure but they take it in stride and all is fine......you should not have anymore then a 5* difference in temperture and if your water quality is now fine then the difference with new water should be the same......make sure your old and new PH is similar, sometimes PH from water especially well water after a large rain, or snow melt can be much lower then it is normally.  Of course if you are on city water remember to use a dechlor.  You can change your water in your holding area with your new water  say 3 times each time taking out a third and adding new, waiting half hour between changes, the same as you would aclimate a new fish to an aquarium.  Adding a small amout of salt (.01%-.02%) to your holding tank is also a good idea for stress, the larger the holding area the better, make sure you use an aerator.  When catching them don't try till your water is quite low, and don't chase them just coax them to the net, much less stressful.

[Julles]

I spent about 5 hours Friday breaking everything down, cleaning, and then refilling the pond.  All the fish survived, although it got a little dicey near the end.  Even though I had good aeration, the fish are larger than last year, and were really using up the oxygen in the temporary pond.  One was on the brink, and I had to toss him into the turtle pond.  Temperature change was great, but he was just happy to have oxygen.

They were doing pretty poorly, and so I had to start putting them into the pond even before it was completly filled.  There was a big temperature difference, about 10*, but the first ones I put in did OK.  Then I rembered Marla's point about mixing the pond water with the water in their temporary tank, and that helped equalize the temperatures more quickly.

I did NOT find any turtle, so am still at a loss to know what caused the wound on my koi.

There was a lot more gunk on the bottom than I had thought, so I'm glad I cleaned it all out.  Also, my old water was clear, but it was stained by leaves and such.  Now with the fresh new water, you can see all the way to the bottom of the 36" deep section.

[marla]

Julles, glad all went well.  Next time you may need to find a larger size holding tank if your fish were lacking O2. When we do our cleaning we use one of those large blow up pools that everyone has now....I picked one up real cheap on clearance ($24) a couple years ago, it gives the fish lots of room to swim making them less stressed also.
 As for the fish with the injury, I had mentioned on another thread that it may have been an ulcer, however never seeing a picture I couldn't be sure.  Ulcers can occurr if the fishes normal defences are compromised by stress, such as colder weather in the winter and less food.   Opportunistic bacteria such as Aeromonas, can be found in water with a high organic content or other diseased fish, this can increase the risk of infection. Ulcers can be caused by damage to the skin from parasites, injuries and/or exposure to high levels of ammonia or nitrite.
If just one fish is affected it is most likely due to a health problem/injury specific to that fish. If several fish are affected it is quite likely that there is an environmental problem, be it water quality or parasites or both, that needs to be address and fixed. Not all fish will end up with ulcers some bacterial infections can cause distended abdomens, and protruding eyes. Ulcers may start as a pin point hemorage from the inside or an infected injury.  Any problems you may have had with decaying matter in your pond and/or water quality should now be better since you changed your water and cleaned the pond.

[Esther]

Now do we stand by for the algae bloom?

[Kat]

Sounds like you were quite busy & I bet you are happy you are done    As suggested, get yourself a larger holding container for your fish & have a portable air pump handy.  With the drought we are having, I keep all of my pond water & pump it into clean empty trash cans that I bought just for this reason.  I'll also hold the fish in the trash cans, but they just goldfish so that may not work for big koi.  When the pond is clean, I pump all the water back in & the fish are not stressed by water changes.  Then I'll top off using dechlor.

[mcp]

Sounds like you were busy doing all that work. Love to see some pictures of your new pond. Keeps us people from North going until spring gets here.

[Ky Kim]

Shhheesh, your were a busy gal.  I would love to see pics of your pond.  It sounds so pretty.