Swell UK Pond Vacuum Cleaner and Sludge Vac for Garden Fish Ponds. Includes Three Nozzles

We have two ponds! Well, one Blagdon Half Moon Pool, and the other a small pre-formed "wild Life" pond. The pool is overstocked with fish but is beautifully clear, and the water quality mostly good. The pond has only eight gold fish but is muddy and very cloudy, caused by using the wrong type of pond soil when planting out pots of pond plants, but the water quality checks out as good. I had been thinking of clearing out the pond back to basics, at some risk to the fish, dreading having to do the same with the pool, since we would most certainly loose some fish. My wife stumbled across the Swell Compact Sludge Vac | Pond Vacuum Cleaner when she was trawling through Amazon the other day. Well, we've had stuff from Swell, which turns out to be Pontec manufacture, several times now, and it's all been good quality and reasonably effective. This pond vac is no exception! It is excellent! Problem solved at a couple of passes of the nozzle, so to speak. Everything you need, apart from a container for the dirty water/sludge is provided. We didn't want to take too much water out of either the pond or the pool, since we do a partial water change with the pool every week. The Compact sludge vac helped us by changing the water AND clearing sludge at the same time. The machine works in what at first seems a rather strange way in that it has a twenty second on/off cycle - THANK GOODNESS! It sucks for twenty seconds, and then pauses for twenty seconds, as it empties the container of sludge and dirty water, which gives us lesser beings time to fill one, not two, but three two gallon buckets with the outpouring sludge/dirty water. We found that two cycles in both the pond and the pool emptied out enough water for our weekly water change, and with the second pause we had time to switch the vac off. In our garden we do need two of us for this process, but since we work together anyway this was no problem (Boss had the job of taking the sludgy water up the garden to water her plants, whilst I looked after the vac and refilling the pond and pool - by gravity from our nearby water butt - a very good arrangement!!!). Just a brief update to help preserve marital harmony - well it works for me! We have replaced the emptying buckets with a large plastic dust bin for receiving the waist water - much less hassle! But there is more. Carrying buckets and water cans full of sludgy water up our garden (which is up hill anyway) has been replaced by an: Amazon Brand - Umi 400W Submersible Pump for Clean Dirty Water 8000 LPH, Drain Water from Garden Pond Pool Hot Tub Flooded Cellar, with Float Switch costing £50.00 What a difference! We connected a half inch garden hose to the outlet of the pump, and this hose takes the dirty water right up to the top of our garden with just enough output not to flatten the plants, but to give them a lovely drink of fishy sludge water - they appear to love it! No more staggering up the garden with two gallon buckets of sludgy water - marvelous!!! Just a tip. If like me you don't use a non return valve on the hose you will find that you may have to prime the dirty water pump by laying it on it's side in the next full dustbin to let the air out - works OK after that! Well, what more can I say? If you have a similar problem with your pool/pond, and who hasn't, you could do a lot worse than looking at this Swell Compact Sludge Vac | Pond Vacuum Cleaner | Efficient Pond Cleaning | Three Nozzles. Well worth the eighty nine odd pound investment. Well done Pontec and Swell!

This pond vac works well straight out of the box. There is a reasonable length of electrical cable and suction hose but the outflow hose is rather short. It sucks for about 25 seconds until the reservoir is full and then automatically empties the reservoir through the outflow hose before sucking again. If you make sure to turn it off at the end of an emptying cycle it can be quickly cleaned with a hose befor storing it away for next time. This makes the whole procedure very easy and I will therefore use it several times a year rather than completely emptying the pond every five years or so, which I hate doing. I wish that I had thought to buy one of these years ago!

Worked well as a hover for the work shop but not for cleaning out the pond. Read all the reviews and some one had cut the filter so the ring could go under the lid. This works well as the vacuum is maintained. The pond is extremely clean. Had to attach a 43 m adapter to fix a 2 inch hose to reach the drain. Works extremely well. I like the start stop system as it gives me time to stop cleaning and allow it to vent out as it’s quick and powerful Tried to ask chat bot for another filter so I can use it as a hover but it doesn’t seem to understand me

I have a small pond, and found the sludge buster easy to use and more than enough power to suck all the sludge up, I used the nozzle with a brush on the end which was excellent. Be careful of the nozzle that you can pull a cover up to the edge of leave it in the back position. In the back position it has sharp edges at the front that can rip your pond liner. Bad design!

This is a good product if you are 'happy' to eject the dirty water/debris/sludge on to your garden or other location - i.e. not return the water to the pond. I wasn't as I thought that was just a waste of water and there are already too many unsustainable activities going on. I thought I could buy/construct an additional filter to catch the debris/sludge before returning the water. In reality for my use I'm talking about algae and some light weed - nothing major. That was more difficult than it might sound. The pump ejects 25l of waste in one big surge, every 30 seconds or so - so a filter mechanism has to be able to hold and process that. In addition the waste pipe a heavy and needs well securing to stop it wafting round the floor/patio/garden. I'm sure it can be done - but not by me (not easily anyway). So - the product didn't do what I needed/wanted - but it was very good at sucking the stuff up in the first place. Then came the disappointing bit. The supplier refused to accept a return because the item was used and therefore not resalable. It had been used once and I had thoroughly cleaned it - although I accept it would have needed a new foam filter (literally a simple square piece of foam). It probably could have been sold as 'new' or 'nearly new', certainly as 'refurbished' (and I was happy to accept a reduced refund to pay for any refurb work). But - it was all too much for the supplier so they refused. I'll now try and sell it privately. What I'm now going to do is source a lower power pump/filter unit designed to return clean water to the pond, marry it together with a simple nozzle/brush and use it as an external vacuum type set-up

It is a good quality product in my view. The way it works on wet function is excellent. The suck pause and drain action prevents blockages. I used it on my pond and it even picked up large pebbles which had gone in over time. Personally I am very pleased with it.

Amazing! First time using today and am delighted. I have a Blagdon free standing pond. This vac took minutes to clear two very sludgy pumps. I cleaned walls, viewing windows and base with no effort. It stops every minute but that time was needed to move plants so it never felt like I was hanging around. I found the whole process relaxing, easy on my back and am delighted how great the pond looks. I will use this regularly to do the pumps as it really was so easy. Straightforward to clean up afterwards. Very pleased. Used again to clean pump sponges. Makes light work of it. Rinsed it all through from water butt. Drip drying ready for next time.

Only just bought cleans pond well but dont expect miracles for only one use it will take a few goes mine had lot of alge would recommend