The ugly side

Welcome to Gross Street.

I promised to share with you the beauty and the blech: today, the blech.

It is vitally important to ensure the bottom of the pond is as free from sludge as possible. The gases from the decomposing material will eventually choke your fish. Yikes! So you have to get in there and scoop. I use a fish net; some use a pond vacuum. Just make sure you get it done. Once completed, you can use a commercially available sludge-remover to help jump-start the process of breaking down the rest. I took the sludge (yup, that pile of muck in the picture above) and dug it into my garden as a cheap, yet smelly, fertilizer. I'm sure I heard my perennials thanking me.

Now. How to deal with the algae that accumulated under the ice over the winter. I hand pulled as much as I could and have my green-stained fingers crossed that the UV light will take care of the rest. I do have some algaecide in case it's very stubborn, but I don't like to stress the fish so shall leave it for a bit. We all know that the best solution for algae is PLANTS! But, it's only April, and new oxygenators etc. are not yet available. When the water level was dropped down, I stuffed my lily pots with fertilizer tabs to get them growing as quickly as possible.

I took the water down 25%, and filled it back up with treated tap water. The pond water, of course, I diverted onto the garden.

It's a busy time of year!