Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Fertilization Expanding my existing pond

So I bought a place with about a half acre pond, the people before me just let it go, there weren’t many fish in it just little tiny what I call warmouth, so I added a fountain and cleared the 3 inch layer of moss and recently stocked it, It is only about 8 Cr deep I want to make the pond bigger and my plan was too dig a big hole on one corner leaving a sort of dam in betweeen untill I’m ready to fill in then knocking out the temporary dam to fill the new part of the pond, would this be ok to do? My pond is fed by all of the ditches around me, I’ve got a spillway that goes to the creek for heavy rains, also when do I need to start harvesting fish to keep it from overpopulating and stunting growth, we also feed the fish with fish food from tractor supply

Also this is my first pond and I have lots of other questions, are there any experts out there willing to give advise

You’ll be better off completely draining the pond and let it dry out then cleaning the muck out and digging the bigger part all at the same time. That’s how we just did ours.

How did you drain your pond? And that’s definatly not what I wanted to hear since I recently stocked it, also does your pond have a liner? I’m pretty sure all the soil around me is clay

3” trash pump had it drain in no time. Went out and netted the fish and put them in a large livestock tank with a pump. The pond had a lot of runoff from the field over the years and had filled in quit a bit. So the muck had to come out and we enlarged the pond. No liner just clay.

I expanded mine on mine own. A small 33hp kubota is what I used. I filled it up and used it like a very small dozer. It took me 2 years and about 150 hours. I would have been money ahead to hire it done if you counted my time. It was a labor of love lol. You can read bout mine under POND REDO. The link under at the bottom on my signature line.

Never thought to put them in a large livestock tank with an aerator, how many dump truck loads of muck would that be, mine is about half an acre and the muck is about 4 ft deep or more, and what did you do with all of the muck, how long will the fish live in that tank though, I mean I could probably get it done in a weekend with help but the time it would take for the pond to fill back up,

Well, the fish are the cheap part of this proposition. I don't know that anybody can clear 2 acre/feet of muck in a weekend.

Haha you know one now lol I’ve got lots of help and I work for a company that will let me use whatever equipment I need, realistically I could probably clear my pond in 3 days, depending if I wanna haul the muck off or dump it on my property, I hear once it dries it makes excellent soil, I would assume it would be prettty good topsoil, since I’m wanting to dig my pond out wider I could dig the hole for the addition and leave a gap in between and pump some of the water into that and scoop and throw most of my fish into it untill I get the pond fully drained and the muck cleared out, does that sound like it would work? Also I’m having a problem, I woke up one day and there was this green skim layer on the pond, from what I’ve read it looks like an algae bloom, it’s been very hot and little rain, I think that the phosphorus levels are high, reason being is my pond is fed by the ditches and I’m surrounded by farm fields, anyone know what what the danger zone of phosphorus levels are?