Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations Drain a pond?

I have a small 1/2 acre farm pond. It had a large number of bullheads in it. We have pulled a couple hundred out of it.

I have tried to stock some bluegill and bass in it 18 months ago. But I am yet to see a bass and the bluegill are pretty stunted.

The bullheads keep the water very muddy.

Was thinking about siphoning the water out of it over the dam. It may take several weeks, but there are no cattle in the pasture and the spring rain will fill in back up.

I should be able to get rid of all the bullheads and restock it this summer.

Any other thoughts or is that a decent plan?

setternut,
Welcome to Pond Boss...Tons of info and good helpful folks here. Hang tight, somebody be comin' round soon to help you with your issue.

Thanks I can use some advice on this.

Sounds like a good plan to me. Too many times I have seen folks try to combat the bullheads, spending time and money, and eventually give in to starting all over.

One question is, how did they get in there to begin with. Is there any possibility of them coming from water above, or below. Don't underestimate their ability to travel. If they can get in one of those ways, then you might be better off leaving the water and learning to manage them on a regular basis. If they got stocked, make sure it don't happen again! Check every single fish that goes in. Do not rely upon a batch of FHM to be "pure". Check everything.

Talk to Rainman or Esshup about making sure everything is killed off before it begins filling up again. Have everything on hand ready to do it, so you don't have to keep draining it. With time/effort, you could do research here on the forum on how to do it.

Also, you want to take the time now to devise a solid stocking plan. What are your goals? A balanced pond to yank a meal out once in a while? A trophy BG pond? Other? ... All are managed differently right from the start with the stocking of fish and the habitat/structure that is in the pond.

If it is drained, might be a good time to dredge some of the sludge out and take a look at that habitat? Prep for a dock? Prepare spawning sites? etc...

It's a journey... one that most likely will never be completed.... Everchanging....be sure to keep it fun!!!!!

Welcome to PBF Setternut,

In addition to what FnC said....

How many LMB and BG did you stock? If the LMB disappeared and the BG are small, you may have a water quality problem(s). IME bullheads can live in some really bad water. Have you ever had the water tested? While the pond is drained, it might also be a good time to address any water quality issue as well.

Agreed with what is said. Determine (if you can) how the bullheads got there in the first place. Determine your goals for the pond, and how much time you want to spend managing the fish population. That will also help you determine what fish species you will stock.

Once the pond is drained, that alone won't kill all the bullheads. You will need to treat the water, mud and any teeny tiny puddles with either rotenone if you have an applicators license (or know someone who does) or hydrated lime.

Bullheads can survive for a surprisingly long time in wet mud. I've heard of teeny BG surviving in footprints filled with water in mud and they are a LOT more fragile than bullheads.

The easiest way to kill the pond is to drain it down so there's still a couple of feet of water in it. Then kill it. If you use hydrated lime, get yourself some pH test strips like they use for a swimming pool. Raise the pH with the hydrated lime to 11.5 or so. That should be high enough to kill any fish in there.

If you drain it down all the way, it's a PITA to get around in all the mud to treat everything and every little puddle. With a couple of feet of water in the bottom of the pond, it's easy to get a small boat in there to move around.

Thanks for the input.

I bought the farm this pond is on about 3 years ago. The pond is in the pasture and is fed by rain water run off. I am pretty sure that the previous owner put them in the pond. He like to fish for Flathead and I suspect it was his bait box. We have caught a few stunted CC, crappie, and a small sunfish or two. But hundreds of 5" BH.

Water quality I am sure is a problem. It is very muddy water. Maybe see a couple inches below the surface once the ice comes off.

I would like to have a pond that would hold good sized fish. I like to fly fish and in KS that means big BG and some LMB.

At some point I will build a bigger pond that is outside the pasture. But this one will have to do for now. I spend a lot of time on quail habitat and training and working birddogs. So the pond will be down on the list for getting my time and money. Will spend some, but I will spend some time on it.

I figured that once I have most of the water out I could see if there is any structure in the pond, and add what is needed.

So to drain it I was going to take some 3/4" hoses and siphon the water over the dam. As long as I have the water down by early April, and kill off what is in there, I will not miss the heavy thunderstorms that will fill it back up.

Then stock it early summer.

Thoughts?

Northern pike eat BH. You might try stocking a few northerns in there as big as you can get, so that the bass don't eat them right away. NP might get the BH population under control, and they could provide you with some of the big fish you're looking for.

Setternut, 3/4" siphons would take months, even with no rain/runoff to overcome. I would suggest building an auto-start siphon out of 4" PVC, and once drained/killed, you could install the siphon permanently to help remove anoxic water when it would drain. A 4" siphon will lower the pond in a couple to a few days.

Nuking your pond with Hydrated Lime and building a siphon are certainly some things that can be done on your own, but there will need to be lot of research and learning to do it correctly and economically. Neither of these tasks would be ones you'll want to do twice....

Ditto with what Rainman said about a 3/4" siphon. Go with a 4" and use it like he described at a later date.

I work at a plant that makes hose, I could lay 4 or 5 of the 3/4" scrap hoses at no cost.

In KS for the next couple months, we will not have a hard enough rain to put significant water into the pond.

I will look to see how much it would take for a pvc siphon.

How deep in the pond do I put the pvc pipe if I plan to leave it as you discribed?

Just food for thought...if I did the math right, you will need around 29 of the 3/4 inch hoses to equal the cross sectional area of a 4 inch.

I had a friend suggest electro shocking the pond to remove th BH.
Is that a realistic option. I have access to equipment and college age cheep labor

Electroshocking will remove some of the BH, maybe 20-50%, but definitely not all. Main variables are pond depth, experience of operators, time of day, water hardness, and number of times electroshocked. Dewatering or reducing the depth of the pond then using rotenone, high doses of hydrated lime, or anhydrous ammonia are much better ways to eliminate the BH.

I would not rely on electroshocking to get all the fish.

Like Bill said, dewatering and sterilizing is the only way.

Just an idea on the siphon. Or at least this is what I did last fall and it seemed to work well. 2 inch inlet on a trash pump, 2inch outlet also. I used 2 inch black irrigation pipe from menards. Wasn't too bad on the wallet since i only need 100 ft of outlet. I started the trash pump and once it was pushing water out the end over the dam I turned it off. The water siphoned right through the pump and everything. Once I hit a dry spot I just adjusted the inlet and restarted pump for a few minutes. It took about 2 weeks to empty it. It was a little under 1/2 acre probably and 6 ft deep. If you have larger pipe it would even be quicker, buy I liked the idea that I could just leave the pump in place. When I was planning this I always figured I would have to place the outlet pipe in water quickly before the siphon stopped but there was no need to even unhook the pipe from the pump. I had a homemade filter on the inlet that I made out of PVC. It was shaped like a "T". The entire process was much easier than I thought it would be. Now all that being said, I can not really use it for anything else like Rainman's idea. I have actually thought about putting a permanent siphon in to help remove bottom water. That might be a project before I call it finished. If there is such a thing as finished. I have done a lot of pumping and messing with pumps due to this leaky pond and I have to agree that a 3/4 hose will take you forever, even if you have multiple hoses. When I was using the two inch, the water was coming out with incredible force. You can not get that with 3/4 inch.

Well sometimes I am to smart by half on these things and get to do some extra work.

The trash pump is a good idea.

4", schedule 40 PVC will move about 8 times the water volume as 2" poly, and would cost about $150-$200 for everything needed for a 100' run.

Yeah if I would have used the 4 inch it probably would have been a few days not almost two weeks. Probably almost could sit and watch it go down. :)Thats a lot of water moving.

Thanks for the replies.
Time is not a big factor as long as I have it pulled down by the end of March.

Been out of town but I would guess that there is 2"s of ice on it right now.


If I put cattle back in the pasture, what is the best way to protect the pipe?

An Update.

Got a 3" siphon going tonight. It was running strong, and had pulled down the pond about 1/2" in about an hour. So I will head down and take a look at it tomorrow night. I would guess that it should be pretty well drained by the end of the week.

I didn't put a screen of any type over the end of the siphon pipe. A CC got sucked in and broke the siphon the first night.

Today I restarted the siphon and put some screen loosely over the end to keep bigger items out.

The pond was put in during the early 80s, and is badly silted in.
But it is just on old cattle pond, so what would you expect.

If the siphon keeps running all night, I would guess that there will only be about a foot or two of water left in the pond by late day tomorrow.

Setternut, if the screen fails, I would suggest putting a Tee'd section of PVC on the inlet (5' tube on each side of the tee with ends capped) side with dozens of 1" holes drilled in it. This will keep pressure low on the individual holes and eliminate clogging.

While you have it drained, consider getting in there with heavy equipment to de-silt it. You might be surprised about how much depth you've lost to in fill.

I have pond drained down as far as I can get it without more pipe. I am not totally sure how much actual water depth it left in the pond. I would guess less than a foot of water over top of 3' of muddy silt. It is shallow enough that I can see the wake on the surface from the fish still in the pond. But the siphon worked great.

It would be nice to clean out some of the silt, but I would rather spend the money on putting in a new pond that would not be in the cattle pasture.

So I guess I need to learn how much hydrate lime I need and find where to get it. Or should I use something else to kill off the bullheads?