How do I keep my pond clean?

If it looks like a vacuum cleaner, sucks like a vacuum cleaner, it IS a vacuum cleaner

Its widely believed that you need to clean your pond out in autumn – you can even buy vacuum cleaners for ponds (no, seriously).

But the first thing to do to make sure that your pond is ‘clean’ is to think about keeping the water clean and unpolluted.

This requires following a few simple rules.

Don’t add tapwater in those parts of the country where tapwater has high concentrations of polluting nutrients (most of the south). Use rainwater.

Don’t add soil to the pond.

Don’t add a lot of fishfood (or have another pond for the pet fish).

Don’t add plant compost – it’ll be full of nutrients.

If you want a rooting medium for plants add washed sand.

Actually much of the advise about cleaning out ponds really applies to ponds which are being used to keep pet fish.

Tags: Cleaning out ponds