What I would like to know is how to keep the bottom of a medium size fish pond clean? This is a question for Terry also concerning his ponds. Are they concrete bottom or natural soil? If the former, over time a foot of gunk will build up I imagine.
Yes, I have a good pump and filter but this doesn't stop residue from the fish's waste from building up on the bottom. Do you actually need to drain it and scrub about yearly or is there a device you an get to vaccum up the gunk without pumping out?
All these ponds with Koi and other you see at hotels and resorts worldwide are always pristine. There must be a secret about how they achieve that. Pete
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Pete, Mine is cement with decorative small river stones covering the bottom. It doesn't build up any fish, food, or other bio waste due to the fact that I have 5 cleaner fish in there that scavenge the bottom and eat that stuff. They are called Pleco and look like something from the Jurassic era. We bought them at about 5 inches long and now some of them are over a foot long. They have suckers and sit on the bottom and sides eating the waste all the time.
Here's a bunch of them together... (I think the photo is from a Pattaya area fish farm so you should be able to buy them over there)
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Thanks HHF. Yes, I know about those. I bought two awhile back but they were only about 3" long and they died. I guess things were too toxic for their little selves. I'll have to look for a few that are bigger. Pete
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I bought two awhile back but they were only about 3" long and they died.
Wow, I thought those were indestructible. Through both of our die offs (one pump failure and one disease) we didn't lose any Pleco. The oldest one died a couple of days ago (about a foot and a half long) and I did some research and think he/she had just reached the end of his/her lifespan.
My brain is like an Internet browser; 12 tabs are open and 5 of them are not responding, there's a GIF playing in an endless loop,... and where is that annoying music coming from?
From time to time we get these very small pointy shell snails in the water. Impossible to stop. They show up every year from somewhere. They're about half the size of a pea and if you pick one up wrong, the point on the shell will indeed draw blood from your finger. My guess is that those sucker fish vacuumed one or more up and it killed them. Just a guess as the cement pond is more than 2 years old and shouldn't be leaching any toxins now. Pete
Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Source
prcscct wrote:What I would like to know is how to keep the bottom of a medium size fish pond clean? This is a question for Terry also concerning his ponds. Are they concrete bottom or natural soil? If the former, over time a foot of gunk will build up I imagine.
Yes, I have a good pump and filter but this doesn't stop residue from the fish's waste from building up on the bottom. Do you actually need to drain it and scrub about yearly or is there a device you an get to vaccum up the gunk without pumping out?
All these ponds with Koi and other you see at hotels and resorts worldwide are always pristine. There must be a secret about how they achieve that. Pete
Pete
Our ponds are NOT concrete lined - or lined with anything for that matter.
We DO have several varieties of 'pond cleaning fish' - the one being referred to in this current discussion as a "pleco" is otherwise known by Thais as "Pla Joker" or "Pla Tessadban". For more - see http://fish.mongabay.com/species/Hypost ... tomus.html
These fellas are not indigenous to Thailand but have spread far and wide.
We also have the North African Sharptooth Catfish which is also well known for mopping up detritus, together with several varieties of snails and crustacia - all of whom contribute to the clean up process.
Most of the hotel Khoi ponds will have "Pleco" operating in the background somewhere - I know for sure that the Dusit does.
Our own small concrete lined pond which has Khoi and a few other species in it, gets a 3 - 4 times a year drain down and scrub by my lads to get the muck off the bottom - even our own Pleco can't deal with the mess entirely by themselves.
I'll have to look for a few that are bigger. Pete 
