Clean the Small Pond

Today I decided to clean the small pond and count the wildlife living there. Remember in the spring on June 18th, we had a major fish kill in the small pond so we scrubbed it from top to bottom. We then repopulated the small pond with 30 gold fish born about 4 weeks earlier. It is great to report that 28 of those fish are still swimming in the small pond and now 4 months later they are up to 4 inches long. You can see some of the beautiful fish in the picture though it doesn't do them justice. In addition to the fish, we disturbed 7 medium size frogs and at the bottom was a giant bullfrog that had already begun his hibernation. I didn't want to bother him too much so we left about and inch of old water in the bottom. This is a large population of wildlife for a 90 gallon pond.

The large pond still looks good although I did have to turn on the ultraviolet filter a couple of days after cleaning to reduce the green algae that was attracted to the clean water. The nights have been pretty cold since the cleaning so the fish are not very active and are not eating much food at all. Still no dead fish so my concern that the shock of the cleaning the pond would be too much for some was unnecessary. We have about another month before the real cold starts to enter our area.