About William Lambert Expertise I can answer any questions relating to outdoor ponds, water gardens, pond plants, pond supply, Koi Fish, pond fish, pond installation, Koi fish health, and pond health issues.
Experience I have designed, built, and serviced, outdoor koi ponds for over 20 years. I own a retail and online pond store. I have sold pond supplies for over 10 years. I have studied Koi fish and pond life for over 20 years. I have taken countless classes and read numerous educational books on pond life, koi fish, and ponds.
Publications I co-wrote a small guide to Koi in 1993, titled "The Art of Koi". The guide is no longer in distribution and was for the most part a mail-order item.
Education/Credentials I am mostly self trained in the area of outdoor ponds and have used my 20 years in the field as a enormous learning curve. I am very savvy when it comes to anything that has to do with ponds and koi fish.
Expert: William Lambert Date: 7/11/2008 Subject: my pond
Question I have a man-made pond approx. 30 x 100 ft. with water from 2 ft to 12 ft deep. It's fed by an overflow of an adjacent brook thru a rock dam and has no outlet, and also has about 200 goldfish and one coi. The problem is that the water smells like an open cess pool. We recently placed a pump in it to circulate the water, but it doesn't seem to alleviate the smell. Is my pond dying??? Thanks
Answer I have a few large ponds and one almost the same size with about 200 gold fish, 20 koi, and lots of other life like frogs, tadpoles, snakes, and newts. My pond runs very smooth and is very healthy.
I have an outlet. I made a skimmer like system outlet. So my pond is fed clean water constantly. I think it is important to have some sort of filtration or an outlet. If fish die and life dies and settles in the pond it will decay and smell like death (really bad odor).
My pond is gravity fed by a spring fed creek, I dug a ditch or trench from my ponds far side wall (near the other side of the spring/creek I pull my water from) and buried a PVC pipe to let water out. So I have the same equal amount of water coming in as going out. The water flow is important and keeps it from being stagnate.
If I were in your shoes I build something like this and drain the pond low, and try to clean out some decay then let your new system do the work from then on. Adding a large carp to the pond helped me with some bottom of the pond clean-up. I mean a large common carp found in lakes. Hope this help a little.
