Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations New Pond - Year 2 coming up. Advice?

It's easiest to do when the water is the lowest. Here's what I did with my pond. Drained it down (3" trash pump) until all the fish were in the deep end. Made a dam out of dirt. Dug the shallow end deeper and enlarged it. (had to run the trash pump almost continually due to the groundwater) Broke the dam, all the fish and the water rushed into the now deepest part of the pond, then I cleaned out the part of the pond where the fish were. I also enlarged the pond from roughly 1/3 ac to over an acre.

The water that the fish were staying in during renovations was pretty muddy. I kept an aerator going in there, and put in 40-50 pounds of FHM because they were all going to be crowded into the area for a few months. I think the aeration and the FHM helped them survive without any significant morts. Visibility in the water was less than 6" due to the turbidity. I didn't feed them other than the FHM that I put in. I only lost one 9" BG and 2 smaller ones.