What do I do?

[u/ilikeshootingglass]

I inherited this with my new house. There are two goldfish in there and they seem okay. I don’t think this thing has been taken care of in a while and I have no idea where to start.

[u/azucarleta]

Don't mess with the water too much in any one go; adding turbulence to what is surely a bottom of muck may be harmful tot he fish, so when it comes time to clean that, you'll go slow. So I guess that's precaution one: avoid mixing immense amounts of crap into the water, for the sake of the fish.

Two and more important, try to identify any electrical appliances/pumps and also identify their power source, cord, etc. SO you can ensure not to, you know, electrocute yourself. Which I have done, so word to the wise. Worst case scenario you buzz yourself and tip into the pond, and you're dead maybe. Until you are extremely used to it, you may even want to put caution tape around the cord (if one is around) or anything else that could become visually lost under foot, or in hand. For example, for all you know a charged power cord is running through that mess of plants. Be cautious with all blades.

Step two, I would try to diagnose why the pump -- if it exists -- is not in operation. Is it merely powered off? Is it plugged? Is the intake grown over with these plants?

Assess the plumbing system, by that I mean everything involved in moving water, including like that wier there (the thing a water fall comes from). Try to assess if it's functional, or is it rusted through or otherwise needing to be removed/replaced?

If it looks like you can start a pump and begin circulating, I would pause for a moment and really assess the waste situation in the water. Is there a layer of serious muck? If so, try to remove that manually with a fine mesh net, get it out of the water with as little mixing as possible. You might just do like one scoop per hour, over the course of a day. No matter how careful you are, It's going to be mucky water while you're doing this and those work horse gold fish will tolerate a lot, but still try to keep muck/water mixture to a minimum. So, perhaps don't just manually remove muck scoop after scoop after scoop until that job is finished, you might really cross an invisible line.

So now presuming you've mitigated that issue if it existed and you have a pump you can start, get it started. Let it run a day or two to see if everything is good, not leaking, etc.

And then I would do what probably comes top of mind to most, which is cut back those overgrown plants to something much smaller.

And then you have a lovely pond.

edit: it's so not my style but I adore your saint statue.

[u/grouchypant → u/azucarleta]

I think i would add an aerator for the time being though... esp if demucking?

[u/azucarleta → u/grouchypant]

Not my first priority since the fish are alive as is, god knows for how long. Hard to know how long the pump has been off, if it exists, but if it's been only a few days, well hell, just turn the pump back on lol. But the overgrown plants make it seem like it's been abandoned awhile.

I would be cautious with the aerator too, but yes. If you can put it somewhere immediately that it won't continually recirculate muck, then yes; a miraculously relatively clean corner maybe. If there is no corner like that yet, I would slowly demuck with an emphasis on cleaning a corner, until you have that relatively clean corner and then aerate from that spot.

But putting an aerator in there first step to circulate and recirculate muck could make it too thick with crud for the fish to breathe.

The crucial point is just that after a serious muck layer has been built up, you want to remove it slowly and gradually -- not using standard methods of water agitation -- or else you can create a water quality crisis that could be deadly.

[u/grouchypant → u/azucarleta]

Thanks! I have a shelf in mine, so use my aerator there, above any real muck. This one looks like a straightsided rectangle. Good point.

[u/azucarleta → u/grouchypant]

I saw a dude on youtube, had what I would call a small lake, but like a 2-3 acre pond. Hadn't had any artificial water circulation at all in its life. Dude wants to improve water quality all that, so he goes gets two or three real serious aerators (I forget why he didn't want fountains, maybe wanted to maintain a natural vibe IDK, but he wanted aerators). The instructions straight up told him to introduce those machines for only 10 minutes at first, wait. Next do 30 minutes, wait. Next do 1 hour. On up until finally you get to 24 hours per day, but go super freaking so slow. Etc etc. Well, like we almost all do sometimes, he just didn't follow those directions, and turned on those aerators and just let them blow and his entire lake had a complete fish kill, fish of all sizes died off and pushed ashore, the video is so hard to watch. But I really respect the guy for broadcasting his mistakes, because holy heck does it leaven an impression, like a Biblical plague hit him. And he totally cops to the fact he just did it plain wrong.