Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Renovating a Pond or Lake? Draining small pond

JHAP, you have a way with words.

I wish I was on vacation! I didn't have PC access all weekend and then took Monday off from work so I didn't have it yesterday either. Should be getting it back shortly. I have it on my phone, but can't do the photobucket thing (at least I don't think so) from that.

I'm very interested in your project too Loretta. I'm planning on a small beach at the pond I'm building right now. What are you using for the "floor"? Pea gravel, sand? Are you dedicating the entire pond to swimming?

Thanks Omaha, been catching heat for not playing the photobucket game. I have been overwhelmed with countervandalism duties but will try to write some captions for operation muck pond draining.

No Loretta, I'm AARP. But still strong as an ox. Just don't feeling like diddling around with that. Well, here are those promised photos after much unhappiness.

Photo #1 is after a few days. The Pond Frog work truck in the background.

Photo #2 is yours truly, old man pond frog. In my very nice Herter's titanium chest waders, which I trashed on this job wading through over my waist muck. The pipe behind me is a fountain. The tip of my hand would be underwater. I am standing on a 1940's golf driving tee platform.

Photo #3 is not one but two trash pumps. We used a total of 5 pumps on this job. They have very long hard suction hoses and I have strainers on those, and inside 5 gallon buckets to keep the muck out. I had to keep walking the pumps down and putting them on boards. Once in awhile one would sink and tip over. This is a younger guy not in shape like me. He got his fatass stuck in the not so deep muck. We had to throw him a line and pull him out. I wanted to leave him there for my own amusement but his whining was driving me crazy.

Photo #4, I still laugh at that to this day. Good shot of the trash or sump pump set ups. Have a good time Loretta. I really enjoyed your comments.

Photo #5 Here is the old platform out of water. We had two guys netting fish and sliding them across with a tub that had a rope going both ways. You just could not walk through that muck. I had taken my waders off by then and was in charge of saving fish on shore.

Photo #6 Here I am with a 6 lber. Work gloves and a cigar. We saved almost every single fish in this pond.

Photo #7 Here's another nice fish. We had rigged up lights because it was Summer and we did not want all of the fish dying. This job was a total fiasco.

Photo #8 Pretty much end of show. At the very end after our photographer left crawdads were crawling out of a puddle. There was a complete kill off.

Photo #9. We still took this down another two feet. The muck was so saturated we could have gone below that but that Summer heat just wasted everything. The five gallon buckets were covered with leeches. And the place that guy got stuck was the spillway or far end. This is what results from 30 years of hand feeding ducks.

I always get the no one else will do that job jobs. I wish I had not done this one. I had cuts all around my calves and could not walk for days. I have done a lot of pond work in my time and I have never seen this much accumulated muck. It was almost topping my chest waders in the worst parts and I am a 6 foot guy. Enjoy Loretta. Now you know how and what you will be doing.

What a fiasco, great pictures. I'm glad you finally got them posted. That guy looked REALLY stuck! What did you use to remove the muck? I want to take my pond back down to the original clay so I'm going to let the muck dry out most of the summer. Do you have any current pictures of the pond? How's it doing now?

I doubt that I'll have anything but clay on the bottom but I'm considering stones and fabric around the edges. I would like to learn more about slope and if my rocks will stay put or eventually slide in.

Tomorrow I'm going to take out the sump pump to check it out and look at my supplies, see what I'm lacking and form a plan. I've gotten stuck in muck before and I'm going to do my best to try and keep out of it.

I almost got stuck myself, but it was way above my waist. You could not move forward very well, you had to lift one foot high into the less dense muck and move it forward. Yes, he was stuck bad.

"Hey guys I'm stuck!"

No your not get your fatass out of there and quit goofing off.

"No, I'm serious I can't move."

We are going to lunch, and you have obviously had too many of those. See you when we get back.

"Quit ----ing playing around. It isn't funny."

It's not funny, it's hilarious. I see a swarm of crawdads coming up behind you.

"No, man, I'm serious, get me out of here."

Wait for the backhoe, I don't think we have a strong enough rope.

"Oh man, I'm going to piss my pants."

Hold on, smells pretty bad already.



Well the plan was to dry it off and take it out in layers. But the customer just lost it when the smell hit and the amount of muck. It's a retirement community and that would have reeked for weeks. And hauling it would have been maybe 15 transfer loads at $100 an hour.

So we just filled it back up. Since we killed everything off and exposed so much muck that was previously under some bottom crust it overloaded and caused a toxic blue green algae bloom. Killed a bunch of ducks, they would not even enter the water. CA F and G came and said avian botulism. Can't see how when the ducks were caoted with that algae and would not get in the water in the middle of Summer. So we hit it with algaecide heavy and then reintroduced a bunch of beneficial bacteria.

I planted bluegill, gambusia and goldfish plus some turtles back in. Then a family of 5 otters came for a visit and I think cleaned out most everything. I planted lilies and the ducks ate them all. I planted water hyancinth to clean up the water and the ducks ate them also. I have some after photos but nothing from this year. Must be 100,000 gambusia in there. Maybe a million.

I doubt your pond has much more than a foot of muck if that. Never seen a pond this bad, not even close, ever. And it had zero soil runoff, all water coming from residential streets. If you wanted to take it off a backhoe would be best or a small loader. But you only take out semi dry layer and stay on hard edge. Put that in a field and disk it in.

If there was a flagpole by this pond I would raise a white one.