Spring has Sprung 2016

spring pond 2016

Spring has arrived at the ponds and seems like an early spring with the ice coming off around the second week of March. Good in some ways and bad in others.

Good because we can now see our ponds, the water and what we need to get done before the ponds come to life again. One note is this year it seemed the water was not as clear as it has been in the past springs with longer winters. So with that said we do have our pond dye in. Another sort of abnormal March is the lack of rain/snow, the surface of the ground had dried up enough that on windy days we had dust blowing around from the driveway.

Just thinking and hoping we don’t have a dry year this year and we have put our summer pipe back on to raise the pond level up to the bottom of the deck. Just a recap of last fall and lowering the pond level for winter in the previous article. This year we are doing something different due to the danger of last years lowering. We’ll show the new setup this coming fall.

spring pond burning 2016

Here in Erie, Pa. we are still a little cool to get the aeration system up and running but I think within a week some of the ponds will be ready to get started again. In fact we just installed a new system in a pond this weekend. and lining up more as the weather gets a little warmer.

Last year I put the tough effort of removing cattails by the roots in our little pond which is in another article titled Cattail Removal Options. I put too much time into the little pond I didn’t get to clean up the big pond as much as I would have liked but took care of that in the dry weather we had by burning the dead weeds and plants around the edge of the pond. This removes a large mass of dead plant and keeps it from from ending up in the pond which will create more problems with nutrients in the pond and eventually muck on the bottom of the pond.

If you can’t get to the plants to remove the mass of dead stuff and now way to burn it or cut it out. The last option is to simply ad our Muck and Sludge Remover in those areas where the most amount of the plants are. If you leaves filing your pond, the treatment would be to treat along the shoreline with the muck and sludge remover.

spring pond after burned 2016

The images posted here are just showing the before and after of burning the dead weeds and plants around the pond. The weather worked out great for dead stuff being dry enough, a light breeze and wet ground around the pond so the flames didn’t spread. I was a little concerned about the perch laying their eggs but he water was still a little too cool for that to happen. Usually around 55 degrees is when the perch lay their eggs and a good time to get the aeration systems up and running.

Please remember whether you are starting a new aeration system or have had it shut off all winter you’ll want to run it a little for the first day, an hour or two, then 4 -6 hours the second and and keep doubling the time each day until you are at 24/7. This helps to push out any accumulated toxic gasses from the winter build up or what has been laying in the pond for years. If the aeration system is fired up and and left to run 24/7 right off the bat it could saturate the pond with toxic gasses and suffocate the fish resulting in a fish kill.

If you need help in sizing an aeration system or choosing the correct product for your pond please use the contact page to get in touch with us.