Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Corrective stocking Liming a bucket stocked pond or starting over?

The unasked question is what kind of a fishery do you want to have in 3-5 years?

If you want a BG/LMB fishery, then unless there are lots of common carp, and some flathead catfish in there, I'd not worry too much about it.

Regarding draining.

It all depends on how fast the water is coming in, and how many gallons of water you need to get out. (i.e. how deep it is and how steep the sides are)

One acre of water, one foot deep is 325,851 gallons. A 3" pump moves around 16,000 GPH. That's 380,000 gallons per day. So, without any more water coming into your pond, it will take 9 days to drop it 12".

A 6" trash pump will move 1,600 GPM, or 2,304,000 gallons per day. It would take running that pump a little over 31 hours to drop the pond 12".

Sunbelt Rentals (I know they are are around Indianapolis, but I don't know if they are near you) has trash pumps to rent up to 16" dia. I have no idea how much water those things will move, nor what the rental cost is, but I sure wouldn't want to be standing anywhere near the discharge end of one!!!