Pond Cleaning Starts

Cleaning day arrives. All the plants are removed, the filter is pulled away from the pond and one pump is pushing water from the pond into the yard. The pond is about 750 gallons so draining takes a one and a half hours. At the half way point I took this picture of the Goldfish swimming around in their shrinking pond. I imagine they wonder what the heck is going on. We assure them they'll have a nice clean pond when it is completed. As the water level dropped, I was able to capture the fish and move them to the Rubbermaid cistern. The census was 56 Goldfish, 9 Red Spotted Newts and 6 frogs. Surprisingly there wasn't a Bullfrog this time.