Maintenance

After a long day of pond cleaning, I thought I would make a few comments while its still fresh in my mind.

First, unless you really, really want to, don't put rock in the bottom of your pond. It really is a maintenance nightmare. Some say that this rock will act as your biological filter, unless you have a lot of gph moving through your pond it won't. Everything that dies or floats to the bottom of your pond will turn to unhealthy anaerobic material. Than you have to take all that rock out to really clean your pond. Secondly, all that pretty rock you just paid for, is covered in algae and looks the same as the liner you covered.

Second, keep ALL plants in a pot. Just like the liner, that pot will be covered in algae and blend in soon enough. I just spent two hours pulling iris and cat tails out of sulfur smelling muck. If it had been potted, it would have taken ten minutes. Lilies and marginals can jump pots, but a knife and repotting can take care of that in a few minutes per plant.

Third, don't put out you hyacinth and other tropicals yet. I'm in the midwest with a week of freezing nights in the forcast, even though it was almost 80 today. Don't be fooled by the warm weather early, you'll have to buy your plants twice. And as far as tropical lilies, make sure the water is conistently around 70 degrees, it won't do much of anything until the water temperature raises.

Of course all of these suggestions are regionally based, and there are different points of view, especially with rocked ponds. Each region and individual pond has its own ecosystems, ask around and see what works best for ponders around you. I do quite a few maintenance jobs a season, so I have first hand experience with these things, and I would gladly clean three un-rocked and only pottend ponds than one rocked pond with unpotted plants. Something to think about.