Got the Pond Killed Off today - 04/02/16 01:08 AM
First Off I what to than the number of you here that have coached me through this, both in the threads and in PMs.
So here is a description of what I did over the last month or so off and on. Not sure that I did everything by the book, but I got it done. There may be better methods but this worked.
I drained the pond down from about 5 feet deep to about 6". This was done with 3" pvc schedule 40 pipe held together with rubber connectors. Once assembled I capped the two ends, filled the siphon at the T on top of the dam with a 55 gal bucket. Once filled I screwed the cap back on the T, removed the capped end in the pond, then the cap below the dam. The water came rushing out below the dam, like a dream. I started the siphon in the afternoon, came back the next morning and the siphon had stopped. A small CC had gotten stuck in the pipe and broke the siphon. I made a wire mesh box to put over the inlet and started the siphon again. It ran overnight and pulled the pond down to 6".
More than a month went by before I got the chance to kill off the fish with hydrated lime. Got that done today.
Today I rented a 3" trash pump, bought 10 50# bags of hydrated Lime type s from Mendards, along with goggles, dust mask. and some disposable gloves.
Set up the trash pump with the inlet inside a 55 gal drum that I put on its side so the water would flow into the mouth of the drum and help pull the hydrated lime into the drum and inlet of the pump hose. I got a couple of bag in and the fish started to come to the surface. In fact there were so many small crappie that they plugged up my hose inlet. So I clean out the fish from the trash pump inlet hose, and then put the wire mesh box I had used on the siphon to keep the fish out of the hose. I got the remaining 8 bags into the pond. There were fish flopping all around the pond for a while, maybe an hour. My SIL pulled out several big fish.
The only bass we saw, but it was several lbs.
The four big fish we found, CC, Drum, Bass and a big Crappie
The water cleared up a lot, so you could see the dead fish on the bottom.
Where we had thought that there were tons of small bullhead there were many more small crappie. There were the 4 big fish in the picture 4-5 medium sized CC, a dozen good sized Bullheads, a few small bluegill, a small drum, and that was about it. We had no idea that there were that many small crappie in there. We had only caught a few.
So here is a description of what I did over the last month or so off and on. Not sure that I did everything by the book, but I got it done. There may be better methods but this worked.
I drained the pond down from about 5 feet deep to about 6". This was done with 3" pvc schedule 40 pipe held together with rubber connectors. Once assembled I capped the two ends, filled the siphon at the T on top of the dam with a 55 gal bucket. Once filled I screwed the cap back on the T, removed the capped end in the pond, then the cap below the dam. The water came rushing out below the dam, like a dream. I started the siphon in the afternoon, came back the next morning and the siphon had stopped. A small CC had gotten stuck in the pipe and broke the siphon. I made a wire mesh box to put over the inlet and started the siphon again. It ran overnight and pulled the pond down to 6".
More than a month went by before I got the chance to kill off the fish with hydrated lime. Got that done today.
Today I rented a 3" trash pump, bought 10 50# bags of hydrated Lime type s from Mendards, along with goggles, dust mask. and some disposable gloves.
Set up the trash pump with the inlet inside a 55 gal drum that I put on its side so the water would flow into the mouth of the drum and help pull the hydrated lime into the drum and inlet of the pump hose. I got a couple of bag in and the fish started to come to the surface. In fact there were so many small crappie that they plugged up my hose inlet. So I clean out the fish from the trash pump inlet hose, and then put the wire mesh box I had used on the siphon to keep the fish out of the hose. I got the remaining 8 bags into the pond. There were fish flopping all around the pond for a while, maybe an hour. My SIL pulled out several big fish.
The only bass we saw, but it was several lbs.
The four big fish we found, CC, Drum, Bass and a big Crappie
The water cleared up a lot, so you could see the dead fish on the bottom.
Where we had thought that there were tons of small bullhead there were many more small crappie. There were the 4 big fish in the picture 4-5 medium sized CC, a dozen good sized Bullheads, a few small bluegill, a small drum, and that was about it. We had no idea that there were that many small crappie in there. We had only caught a few.