I have a concrete pond in the yard, it's pretty deep, from 3½ feet to 4 feet. It's also about 17 feet long on one side. It has a couple of lights built into the wall and one of the bulbs burned out. Unfortunately, the lights are very close to the bottom so I have to drain the pond down to less than a foot to change the bulbs. This usually means I feel I have to clean out all the mulm and repot everything. It took us 3 days to get it all done. Also, a papyrus plant and an arrowhead had completely outgrown their concrete pots and were trying to take over the pond.
I should have taken a before pic but this is from last September, even then the papyrus and the arrowhead were overpowering.
The first day, before we took the water level down, we managed to drag the concrete pot plus the huge papyrus to the side and hoist it over the rim. I was in the pond and my partner was on the edge, she put a strap around it when I got it over there and that's when I got out and decided to take a picture
Then we both pulled and hauled and we got it up on the rim. Concrete pot + hugely overgrown papyrus + water = lots of huffing and puffing and too many comments about why I had let it go this long.
The overgrown arrowhead in another concrete pot was smaller and a bit easier. Once they were out of the pond I was amazed at how far up and out of the pot they had grown. I suppose that 2 years is a little long to leave them alone. I do get in and cut off dead leaves but the root mass... it was not pretty.
I got the spare pump in and started pumping the water down, I sent most of it to the raised bed of bananas but when that flooded, I had to quit for the day.
The next day I was going to go and buy new bulbs for the lights and some more heavy jungle dirt for repotting. Except, I forgot that it was the last day of Carnaval and everything was closed. Instead, we started vacuuming with the wet/dry vac. That was really time consuming as we had to try not to vacuum up any of the fish, each load had to be hand dumped and it took two people to keep the hose from collapsing. The mulm on the bottom was pretty thick in some areas. I use a small rake all year to pull out dead leaves and mulm but there are areas I can't reach with the rake. Anyway, most of the day I was standing in the water and then climbing out to help dump the vacuum. Luckily, it was in the high 80°'s F. The water was about 75°F.
Finally, on Wednesday, I got the new bulbs and we got them installed. I separated out a very small piece of papyrus and another of the arrowhead and repotted them. I fertilized all the lilies and gave my favorite (Foxfire) new dirt and fertilizer. Then we refilled the pond and turned the pump back on. It was pretty cloudy for a couple of days.
I had hoped that the weather would stay cooler but no such luck. We've been in the 90°'s all week under blue skies. Because I have replaced about 80% of the water, I'm hoping I don't get an algae bloom. As of today though, the water is very clear. I didn't drain the biological filter which I hope will keep the pond from recycling.
The papyrus is already sending up a new shoot.
Best of all, the Mollies and the Angel Fish seem happy and healthy.
