Clearing out a pond!

standbyme40

Hi

I am a headteacher and we have a pond in our woodland garden. However, it is full of leaves and needs clearing. We can’t find a company willing to do this. Does anybody have any advice for how we can do this safely and not risk damaging any wildlife we may have in there? For example if we used a bucket with holes to gather up leaves and release water would that work? We could then put the leaves next to the pond in case anything needs to climb back in. We do often get lots of frogs but I’m not sure what’s in it right now!
Any advice is appreciated. 

Many thanks
Phil. 

pansyface

If there are no fish in it, the best thing you can really do is leave it alone. Cold weather will rot the leaves and turn them into food for the beasties in there. 

If you really must clear something out of it, do it in very small stages. Maybe suspend a garden sieve over the water on a rigged-up tripod. Put some of the  leaves (enough to just cover the bottom) into the sieve and leave it to drain. Things that can wriggle will fall back into the water. After an hour or so, empty the sieve and repeat.

fidgetbones

My pond really silted up, so much that we thought nothing could live in it, so it had to have a ten year clear out.  We did this back in May. As well as six newts, there were over 100 frogs . We put these in buckets , and ended up bailing the pond out with a bucket.  Using a net regularly will clear some leaves, but depending on how deep it is, that is not always successful. 

standbyme40

Wow! The leaves are almost to the top of the pond so I do think we need to clear out at least the top half. We can try this with a sieve and see how we get on!

SueAtoo

Depending on where in the country you are, it may be a bit late/cold for clearing out as some things may already be hibernating. Perhaps just scooping out a netful or forkful or two every couple of days, leaving the little heaps on the side to allow things to wriggle back in.