My mailman Lou asked why I keep a kiddie pool full of brown water, and now my goldfish pond is finally clear after 8 months | Backyard Ponds Water Gardens

Barbara Lane · 2026-10-11T10:45:05.084926+00:00

So Lou has been walking his route past my house in Council Bluffs for like 6 years now, and last Tuesday he finally asked me straight up why there's a kiddie pool full of what he called "swamp tea" sitting next to my shed. I got kind of embarrassed because honestly it WAS gross, it was the water I'd been pulling out of my goldfish pond during water changes, just sitting there turning brown. He said his brother in Des Moines does the same thing but dumps it on his flower beds instead of letting it sit. That got me thinking, because I'd been fighting green water in my 400 gallon pond since last spring, tried barley straw, tried a UV thing that cost me $70, nothing worked for more than a week. Turns out I had way too many fish and was feeding them twice a day like a dummy, so the water was just loaded with junk the filter couldn't keep up with. I cut feeding down to once a day and started dumping that brown change water on my tomato plants, which also fixed my sad tomatoes. My water has been clear for 3 weeks now, first time since I built the thing. So my question is, how often do you all feed your fish in summer, because I feel like I was way off?

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My mailman Lou asked why I keep a kiddie pool full of brown water, and now my goldfish pond is finally clear after 8 months | Backyard Ponds Water Gardens - Vivisector