Ok, so I have a ton of issues in my barrel pond, and attribute most of the problems to adding plants that were not properly dealt with before adding them to the pond. Yes, there is also decaying matter and algae which is certainly an issue as well. I typically do a thorough clean out of the pond twice a year, and water changes on a regular basis - but never have I had a flatworm or snail problem until now. I'm sure this is because of plants I added to the pond. I had a Japanese Trapdoor snail, which was enough for this pond, I did not want or need all these extra little snails that are in there now, and I'm sure they came in with the plants. Now there are loads of flatworms and it is so disgusting. I also have a lot of tadpoles and pollywogs in the pond, as well as frogs in the garden that will start breeding in a few months. I love having frogs, but the other things (flatworms, snails, copepods) I am not interested in at all and I want to get rid of them. So I plan on doing a separate quarantine for all the plants, and then separating all the tadpoles into a separate container. I want to thoroughly clean the pond out and let it dry out for a couple of days, then restock the pond with the plants after treating them, and add the tadpoles back.
I need some sound advice on how to go about this quarantine, so that a full kill of all planaria, snails, parasites, etc is guaranteed. And then how to guarantee that the plants will be safe to recombine with the tadpoles and frogs. Help please!!!!