My pond is probably about 12feet by 5, varying depths up to about 3feet in the centre. It is a pond-liner surrounded by patio stones.
There are a small amount of goldfish, which i hope to remove, and a lot of weed with a large lily. The pond seems very healthy at the moment, it is full of dragonfly and damselfly larvae, leeches, small crustaceans, a few surviving frog tadpoles, and for the first time in years a couple of newts.
The trouble is is is getting very silted up, to the point where the central 'trench' is probably only foot deep at the most. In previous clean-ups i have removed everything from the pond and completely cleared it out before refilling and putting a small amount of the week back in, however, this is obviously catastrophic to the life in there which although it always recovers I can't help feeling terrible about everything that dies.
This year I have the plan of using a small drill powered pump and hose to suck the silt from the bottom over a period of a few days, if i can just clear the majority of the silt i will be happy as i also intend to remove the fish, and surrounding trees have been removed which should mean that less leaves etc get blown into the pond. Hopefully this will mean a lower rate of silting in the future...
So, thats the background out of the way, now when should i do it? Should i do it now and risk loads of small critters getting sucked through the pump as the pond is full of them, or should i wait until autumn or spring when there is less life overall in the pond but then of course some may be hiding from the cold in the silt.
Basically, i want to get rid of the silt with the least possible impact on the dragonfly larvae, shrimps and particularly newts, not bothered about the leeches as there are millions of them!
Any and all advice on how to go about this job would be appreciated!
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