This has been a crazy year in most of the country from flooding to wide spread drought. As our ponds got smaller due to lack of rain, seeping and evaporation the chance for fish kills raised tremendously. Even large lakes had fish kills during these trying times.
Here at WhatPond the ponds did drop down a great deal and the concern was water temp getting to warm from the excessive warm spells we had. But the oxygen levels for the fish were no concern as both ponds have proper aeration.
What should we do to prepare the pond for winter: Once the water temp cools down to 50-55 degrees and you have bottom diffused aeration there are two options, one is to simply shut it down. The second option is to move one diffuser to half the total depth of the pond and shut down the other diffusers if you have more than one. Clean or change the air filter to be ready for spring.
The reason we do this is to safe guard from cooling the pond too much which could harm the fish and the second is to keep a hole in the ice for the toxic gasses to escape. If you have a dock, keep it from heaving in the ice or need open water for your waterfowl aeration is the way to go. No worries about beneficial bacteria’s since they die off when the water temp gets this cold.
Weeding or cut back the pond plants / pond weeds to keep the dyeing stems and leaves from falling into the pond, decaying and creating muck and nutrients for next year. What about submerged weeds? We should do the same with them as well, cut as much out as you can and remove from the pond using the Pond Weed Cutter and Pond Rake or we can cut the submerged weeds with our Lake Mower, shoot us an email if interested in this service.
Also think about next spring when the ice melts off we want to be ready with Pond Dye to start blocking the sunlight. And
be ready with our beneficial bacteria’s so we can combat the nutrient and muck as soon as we can for the season.
Every year more nutrients enter the pond during all 4 seasons but adding natural products will help combat these new guys and reduce them for the next season. Each year our pond continue to improve, with aeration and adding natural beneficial bacteria’s.
