Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations Best way to kill off my pond.

So I am in the process of redoing my pond see this thread for more info and a more pictures.
http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=384861#Post384861

So currently this is the water level of my pond or close to it atleast.


I want to make sure all the fish in it are gone as the pond had Crappie in it before and I want to make sure they are gone before hopefully stocking next year. Whats the cheapest way to kill them off with no adverse effects afterwards and how do I go about figuring how much water i might have left in there?

Also if anyone has any ideas what the block structure with the capped pipe in the middle might be I am all ears!

Could it be an old well site?

Pat W

Read through this thread and it covers killing remaining fish in the low pool during a draining process.
http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=390711#Post390711

This thread also has information about using hydrated lime.
http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=30520&Number=390818#Post390818


Block structure with the capped pipe is probably an old outlet structure where the piping deteriorated and they just capped the pipe.

Blue72

What is the location in relation to the dam?

What is the water depth at full pool? It does not look very deep; maybe 8 to 10ft?

Bill I assume you are talking about the structure depth and I would guess it to be 10 feet under when the pond is full. The pond itself is around 16 feet deep and is about 12 foot down in the picture.

Here is another picture looking at it from the east side. The previous picture was from the south standing on the damn.

If you plan on killing it with hydrated lime you will need to remove more water and to a final depth of around 12" or less.

It sure doesn't look like full pool would be anywhere near 16 feet deep....

If it were my pond, I would go with 300 pounds of Hydrated Lime (Calcium Hydroxide) to kill all that is left. 200 pounds in the water, and the other 100 sprinkled over all the wet muck filled area. The lime should turn your water crystal clear shortly after a lethal pH is reached.

I agree with Bill....box structure looks like an old concrete block overflow spillway box that was lowered and capped.

Title = "Best way to kill off my pond"

My experience is this happens whenever I try to make it better! --- usually accompanied by "guess I shouldn't have tried that!!!

Bill that is going to be tuff to do because of how muddy the banks are and the water temp being to cold for me to wade around without waders.

Rainman the pictures are deceiving, I maybe off by a foot or so but I guarantee it is 15' at minimum. If you follow the link at the top you can get a little better sense of the depth in some of the pictures in it with the trackhoe.

So I think the water that's left is probably 40x100 with an average depth of 2 feet. 300 lbs would do it? Also what's the reasoning for putting on the mud?

So if this were either of your ponds what would you do about this structure? My idea is to fill it with concrete and use it to put a aerator on but I am not sure how to go about getting concrete out to it as it is 70' or so from the bank..

Can you post a picture of that with you standing in the same spot now, after a lot of the muck was removed?

Cement that far away will either take a boat and many, many 5 gallon buckets of cement poured in it once water levels allow you to float a boat to it but before it's submerged, or a concrete pumping truck - they have some pretty long booms on them. But I have no idea if the ground will support a pumper and a cement truck next to it.

If you had Crappie in your pond, you may well have had bullhead also. BH can survive in the muck and mud. Any untreated wet area may let something survive.

If you have an area 40 x 100, 2' deep, I'd bump up the Hydrated lime to 500# in the water left and whatever it takes to sprinkle onto the surrounding wet areas (covered similar to heavy powdered sugar on French toast).

With winter coming on, why not wait till the ground freezes to fill the box with concrete, or get some waders ?

esshup are you wanting another picture from the damn looking north?

I am familiar with boom trucks from work and I dont think its possible to reach out there because there is nowhere to set them up where they can get outriggers out, let alone the cost of one of them.

I guess I am going to have to get my waders out and see if I can get out to it and take a look. Bad part is I have no idea how deep it is inside the structure either but it obviously leaks as the water level inside goes up and down with that of the pond outside of it.

Rainman on the bullhead I think that is highly unlikely as the water was about as clear as I have ever seen pondwater before I drained it. I dont have a disc to measure it but you could see your feet easily when swimming. I will get my range finder out and try to get a better measurement than a guesstimate on the remaining water this weekend as getting home before dark is getting to be a challenge.

I like the idea of the frozen ground but I wouldnt be able to poor concrete below freezing would I?

Cecil and I have used boards, plywood and ladders to place over recently drained pond banks to walk on the soft mud. Another option is to get a backhoe in there and have him scrape mud off down to firm dirt for a walkway down toward the cement structure or any other place where you want access to the water level. Then you could pump more water out. Lowering the water level like you're doing is a very good time to do some pond basin remodeling.

A picture exactly from this spot, with the same camera angle, but after the muck was removed.

If you bring in a track or back hoe, you could simply dig up the current structure and back fill it with compacted clay.

As Bill commented, it is an excellent time to renovate, plus digging some low spots would allow you to pump out all the remaining water while condensing the fish into tight, easily managed channels.

esshup that picture will not have changed much at all. The pond is deep enough at that end that I am not digging it out there due to costs involved plus the muck is only a few inches deep at this end as there is no inflow of water at the south end of the pond. Admittedly I got in a little over my head on the cost side. of this operation for cleaning out the north end of the pond where up to 8' of silt was removed in areas.

On pumping, currently the siphon is removed to allow equipment to operate and has become a bit of a challenge to get going at 300' in length and would need at least another 30' to get to the area that would leave me with 1' of water or less.

A rental trash pump would make short work of the remaining water to a lower pool so killing would be cheaper and more effective.

Personally, I'd consider making a portable walkway, with a 55-gal drum at the end as a wheel and for floatation. I'd fashion the walkway's main beams out of offset-staggered 2x6x10s, bolted together (they may be used for other projects afterwards).
Position the beams and roller-drum with the ends of the beams resting on the edge of the structure and laterially stablized with staked guy-ropes; then span the beams with wooden pallets to form a walkable surface.
Then, carry bags of concrete (one-per-trip) and dump the bags, paper and all, into the structure's interior. The bags will set and harden once they become saturated. If desired, alternate between still-intact bags and loose material from an opened bag so the loose material can fill in the gaps and form a better seal.
No guarantees with this approach, but it would seemingly lessen the task of transporting concrete to the structure in waders.

Now that is an intersting idea!!!

Oddly enough, try snow shoes on the mud. The cheap ones with flat plastic sheeting in the frame. I used them just after pond construction to get around in the clay mud and they worked very well. Without them I got pretty worried a few times that I would never get back out of the pond hole.

As for concrete, add some large stones so you dont need so much. Get one of those low topped mixing buckets from Home Depot which you can mix a whole bag at once if not more. Put some holes in the rim and put a rope loop for pulling on it. Toss in a dry bag, put on your snow shoes and drag it down into the basin like a sled. Just make sure to get out of the way when it tries to pass you by. Add water and mix down below.

I used ones very similar to these.
http://www.amazon.com/MTN-Adult-Woman-Sn...ords=snow+shoes

Our creative members have some great ideas that they are very willing to share. This is a great site for pond management.

Kelly Duffy....El Genious-O

Over the weekend I made an attempt at killing off the pond with hydrated lime. I pumped the pond down as far as I could in the time frame I had of decent weather and then put in 1050lbs of hydrated lime. Immediately I had tadpoles on top of the water by the thousands and a dozen or so small crappie - 2-3 inch(this years hatch?) and 3 larger crappie - 1lbish. So my question is how do I know that I wiped the slate clean? Also does water temperature have an effect on this process? As my water temps are near freezing as the pond has frozen over several times already. Average water depth would be somewhere around 2 foot I would guess. it was around 4 out in the middle with everything with in 10 foot of the bank being under a foot and slowly tapering down.