I came to realize, as my pond became "dusty" after two years, that 120,000 gallons is just a nice sized pool. I already have aerators, fountain, two pumps (for an attached river and filtering), and a sand filter. The filter does a lot, but I wouldn't call it effective. Thus I pledged I would vacuum out the dust and muck and leaves. I thought one pump could do the job through fifty feet of intake hose...it could have but the muck plugged my filters quickly. So now I'm getting a gas powered trash pump, expecting to use my 50 foot hose, and making a suction wand that should not pass gravel larger than the trash pump spec.

If you have a dust problem in your pond, you are probably getting great AERation, but its probably time for some HYDRation!

I did what I said above. A 2" semi-trash pump with addition of 50 foot 1 1/2" pool vacuum hose and a 1 1/2" pvc suction wand with 1/2" suction slot. With ropes tied to each end of the wand we could muck almost all the pond bottom.

Great idea, what did you do with the muck, and how much did you remove?

The pump, at supposedly 150 gpm, pulled the pond down about three or four inches (across 1/10th acre area). Most all the time our discharge was black with muck. Sent the discharge down the face of the damn. I have no idea of how much dry weight muck we removed, but it represents 2 1/2 years of heavy fish load and leaves, well treated with bacteria and enzymes. The only solids pumped was pea gravel, which did not bother the pump.

Nice work. I was picturing (at that size) a dugout pond and was wondering what purpose you found for the muck, but having a dam to dump it down is an easy solution! I just had 600-800yd of muck trucked out at my place, which is an expense I was hoping not to incur, but couldn't escape given the limitations of the area I'm living in.

Do you mind sharing a picture or drawing of the PVC wand? Not sure how you made the 1/2" slot. Vertical? Horizontal? Did you cap the end of the wand or did it suck through the cap?

How did you weight it and use 2 ropes to pull it across the bottom? This setup is important for all of us to understand who may want to do this on our own. It sounds you like you had success and many of us would love to do the same.

I posted pics of what I call my hydro dozer searched for it newer than 15years came up on page 7 shows it and the wand I use couldn't figure out how to get it to this thread

Is this it?




Here is a link to the thread:

http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=412873

I'll look at posting pics and video.