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POND SIPHONS???


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I was just wondering if anyone uses pond siphons powered by a hose connection? can anyone recommend me a brand please.

Its a pain because I have tree ponds all in ground and when it comes to siphoning its such a hassel! there is only one brand on trademe has anyone used it? thanks

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Most pond pumps are not really set up to handle 'dirty water', and by that I mean clumps and lumps and leaves and stones etc which are unavoidable in a pond. You'd ruin a regular pump unless you had at least a bit of a pre-filter on it to keep solids out.

Also if you're going to take the advice given above and 'stir up' the water, I'd make sure you got the fish out first, pockets of anaerobic bacteria can be unhealthy for the fish from what I've read.

I've used a hose driven siphon (not the one they're selling on TM now). It's better than nothing but they get clogged up pretty quickly from sucking up too much muck and you can waste half your time cleaning the wretched thing out. That said, I haven't found a really good solution yet. Those siphon things might be ok for very frequent small cleaning jobs, but we do one at our rental only 1/year.

We did once hire a sump pump (made sure it was clean), caught the fish after lowering the water level some, then emptied the rest of the pond, repeated hosing and emptying until it was pretty good, then got the rest clean with a scoop. The pond hadn't been cleaned in ages. It went quickly and the results were good, but you end up with 100% water change of course.

In a perfect world, I'd like to devise a coarse pre-filter to run to a pond pump (careful cause some need to be submersed and other's don't) and then run the water to a large tub that would polish the water up again (loads of filter media going from coarse to fine and then running the water back to the pond :) Lots of ides on the web about DIY pond vacs, but the stuff they show is 'cheap as' overseas but quickly adds up to $$$$$ over here :(

I hate wasting water!

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Most pond pumps are not really set up to handle 'dirty water', and by that I mean clumps and lumps and leaves and stones etc which are unavoidable in a pond. You'd ruin a regular pump unless you had at least a bit of a pre-filter on it to keep solids out.

Also if you're going to take the advice given above and 'stir up' the water, I'd make sure you got the fish out first, pockets of anaerobic bacteria can be unhealthy for the fish from what I've read.

I've used a hose driven siphon (not the one they're selling on TM now). It's better than nothing but they get clogged up pretty quickly from sucking up too much muck and you can waste half your time cleaning the wretched thing out. That said, I haven't found a really good solution yet. Those siphon things might be ok for very frequent small cleaning jobs, but we do one at our rental only 1/year.

We did once hire a sump pump (made sure it was clean), caught the fish after lowering the water level some, then emptied the rest of the pond, repeated hosing and emptying until it was pretty good, then got the rest clean with a scoop. The pond hadn't been cleaned in ages. It went quickly and the results were good, but you end up with 100% water change of course.

In a perfect world, I'd like to devise a coarse pre-filter to run to a pond pump (careful cause some need to be submersed and other's don't) and then run the water to a large tub that would polish the water up again (loads of filter media going from coarse to fine and then running the water back to the pond :) Lots of ides on the web about DIY pond vacs, but the stuff they show is 'cheap as' overseas but quickly adds up to $$$$$ over here :(

I hate wasting water!

My plan for this summer with my little pond is just to use a big bucket with a bunch of holes poked in it filled with some filter wool.

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Well, the plants use up the nutrients but there's still a layer of sludge and gunk (leaves etc) down there that gets ugly and smelly and does build up over time, even with heaps of plants (I do run a filter, but it just can't suck EVERYTHING up!)

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