David Lock

Probably never been cleaned before.

Outlet pipe is almost certainly connected by pushing onto male end with circlip holding it in place. Once casing is cleaner you should see a clip or screw holding two sides of the casing together. You can then remove casing, hose it down, and replace. No need to remove pump from pond side but do turn power off! Do not drop screw into pond

Give the missus her toothbrush back and use a proper scrubbing brush

David

An0n0m0us

Thanks David. I couldn't find any clips on the housing, I cleaned off all the crud so didn't miss them. Also I turned it off to clean it so it wasn't running dry, was that the wrong thing to do as you've said don't turn it off?

Yeah an old tooth brush was all I had at the time, it actually worked quite well as it was small enough to get into the grooves on the casing. It's still belting out water so hoping by tomorrow the water will be back to being crystal clear.

On another note I fed the fish today and decided each time they scoffed the food to put more in to see when they stopped feeding to guage how much to feed them. Erm they just kept eating it to the point I thought that was enough for one day. It was like feeding Labradors, no amount is enough! Is it because they haven't been fed all Winter or is it time now the water is 12 degrees to swap to the Spring/Summer food and stop feeding them the wheatgerm food?

David Lock

Power OFF.

Where did I say don't turn it off? If I said that, sorry my mistake.

david

An0n0m0us

David, sorry my mistake I misread what was typed! I switched it off anyway so all good. I think it's going to need another clean soon as the output has gone down slightly from all the crud it's cleaned out the water from pulling it out the pond to clean it. I've noticed a load of leaves and sediment on the bottom of the pond now the water is clear again which means every time I disturb anything in the pond that all gets kicked up into the pump.

Is it worth getting treatments that claim to clean sediment from ponds, it's stuff I saw when buying the blanket answer? Or am I going to have to get the net scraped along the bottom of the pond and try to get as much up as I can?

David Lock

Just get a reasonably robust kid's fishing net with a fine mesh. Gently scrape along bottom and rake up muck. If you want to pay more get a better net from your aquatic place.

You can get pond hoovers to suck up sludge but not worth it IMHO.

An option is to lower the pump down the side of the pond and fix it so it is just above bottom and not resting in a layer of bottom sludge.

David

An0n0m0us

OK cheers. I've got a net left by the previous owner so will scrape out as much as I can. Back to muddy water for a few days again!

An0n0m0us

The sun was out this afternoon so decided to spend a bit of time sorting out a lot of the mess. Gave the pump another clean, scraped as much off the bottom of the pond that I could get up although with the water black I couldn't see where to scrape and I have moved the plant basket that was at the front of the pond to the back out the way as it was annoying me. The flow of water round the pond was pushing all the fish food over the basket where the fish couldn't get to it.

I also cleaned all the crap out of the basket and ripped off all the dead stuff. I found a whacking great dragonfly larvae in the basket, evil looking thing.

I was tempted to just throw the basket and be done with it before I cleaned it up:



I will see if it grows back though over the Summer.

And once I was finished I think it looks better and i'm happier that the flow of water goes round without obstruction now so hopefully the food won't get caught somewhere the fish can't get it.



Now, do I get some Shubunkins or leave the Koi to themselves.

An0n0m0us

The water is crystal clear already this morning so pump is obviously doing it's job. I called up the LFS and they have a huge stock of Shubunkins now in from 4" to 12" in size from £3.99 each to £39.99 each. Must resist!

Will adding them to the pond affect the Koi growing?