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Pond Cleaning Pond cleaning. Must I? If the bottom of your pond is covered in silt and general debris what can you do? Well you can siphon it out, but that only works if you have somewhere lower to siphon to or a raised pond that you can siphon from, you can of course drain the pond but that is not always such a good idea, so what else can you do? The answer is a pond vacuum. They are available in several types lets us look at them Hand operated Basically they are like a big bicycle pump you have to keep pulling a "handle" Each time you do it draws water / debris up and out through an outlet, They are good but can be some what tiring on the arms, also it is possible to suck a small but sharp stone near the edge of the vacuum, this may split the very thin plastic that is the main body, rendering your vacuum useless (Voice of experience) Pros: cheap, very good Cons: easily split, handle easily bends, labour intensive. Hose operated These are connected to your garden hose the idea is that by forcing water through a small jet at the end a venturi effect is created and any debris is sucked up and away to waste Pros: cheap Cons: can not pick up much, also you are putting neat tap water directly into your pond which is not recomended. Pond Vacuum These work vaguely like a "wet n dry" household vacuum cleaner, but wait, you can't use a household wet n dry vacuum cleaner for a pond for the simple reason it will fill up in 5 -20 seconds then that's it, you have to manually empty it. Pond vacuums will stop when full, then via a discharge hose will automatically empty them selves then you can carry on, this is good but you have to wait while it empties. A new innovation from Oase is the pond-o-vac 3, it has 2 chambers, as one chamber fills, the other one empties, so you can carry on vacuuming continuously Pros: Very good, especially the Oase pond -o-vac 3 cons: Very, very expensive You may also like our pond maintenance page
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