If you live in an area where winter is cold enough to create ice, you will need to bear this in mind when you construct your fish pond. How thick is ice usually in your region? In most cases, a ‘deep end’ of thirty to forty five inches should be ample, but you will have to take advice locally if you do not know the answer. A pet store, a neighbour or the zoo can provide the necessary advice.

The other problem with winter and ice is that a layer of ice prevents poisonous gases escaping and oxygen entering, as it would do in the usual course of events. Therefore, you will have to ensure that there is always a hole in the ice. However, smashing a hole will scare the fish.

There are several ways by which this air hole can be maintained under mild freezing conditions:

Aerator: a bubbler, can be positioned in the pond. It has to be submerged, obviously, and it has to be fairly vigorous, so that the bubbles keep breaking the ice above it. If it is put in water that is too shallow, it can freeze up too, so that is a consideration to be borne in mind.

De-icer: a mild, floating heater. This kind of device does not create enough heat to threaten pond liners, but it is sufficient to keep a small surface area ice free under most weather conditions.

Water pump: a pump pumping water at force through the surface can keep a breathing hole in your pond, but only under fairly mild icy conditions. The pump must be placed in deep water or it could freeze solid.

Hoola-Hoop: if the weather is only mildly icy, a hoola-hoop with a round football floating in its centre can be successful at stopping ice forming within the hoop. The wind keeps the ball moving within the hoop and ice does not get a chance to form.

This hole in the ice is critical. Your fish will be semi-dormant in the winter and you may not see them for months, but they still have to breathe and excrete and the gases that that and the plants give off need to be allowed to escape or they will poison the water and kill your fish.

At this time of the year it is extremely important not to over-feed. Fish build up layers of fat in the summer and live off that fat during their semi-hibernation in the winter, but they do eat occasionally. The only problem for you is that you will not know which days they decide to come up for a bite.

This is where the hoola-hoop can come in useful again. If you only feed within the hoola hoop, you can see how much food has been eaten and how much has been left. Aspire to give no more than they will eat.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on many subjects, but is now involved with water garden pumps. If you are interested in a Solar Powered Pond Pump, please go to our web site now for a great deal.

Fish require an environment that reflects their natural habitat, say, a river. Rivers run into the sea and are regularly renewed by clean rainwater.

This natural process, coupled with the flow of the water over rocks and other obstacles keeps the fish’s environment beneficial to the fish. You cannot do the same, but you can imitate nature. If you fail to do this, your fish will become sick with diseases that a beginner will not recognize and die.

The main item that fish require is clean, oxygenated water. So, how do you manage that? Well, the first thing to realize is that pond fish do not need as much oxygenated water in the winter as in the summer, because fish are semi-dormant in the winter. However, warm water is not capable of holding as much oxygen as cold water, so you genuinely need a good aeration system in the summer.

Therefore, you need to set up some sort of effective fish pond water aeration system. This aeration system will be linked closely with your pond filtration device. The front line apparatus for oxygenating your backyard fish pond water is the pond pump. In fact, you may even need two pond pumps.

Oxygen can be drawn out of your pond water by rotting vegetation and algae, so extricating these will help aerate your pond water. Therefore, you should use a general pond pump that will permit pond debris to pass through its impeller blades. The pump will drive the water to your pond filter in order to remove it.

The water will then return to the pond. If you let it fall from step to step on its way back, the water will be polished and aerated when it arrives home in the pond. Another measure you can take is to install a pond fountain.

However, you will almost certainly need a different pump, because the filtration pump allows pond vegetation debris through, which would clog the jets of the pond fountain. The water from the fountain will oxygenate the pond when it falls back to the surface.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on many topics, but is now involved with water garden pumps. If you are interested in a Solar Powered Pond Pump, please go to our web site now for a special deal.

If your pond is sunk into the earth, your could watch it from above or you could build it above ground and use perspex windows to watch your fish on their own level. Your fish will breed too, so you will have a new, perfect, ecosystem in your own garden.

Select the site of your pond with care. Try to position it on slightly higher ground, so that it is not flooded with all your garden’s rainwater in the course of heavy rains. Beware of putting your pond under a tree or you will always be raking leaves out of the water, which is a real pain. Siting your pond in a location where it is in at least partial shade when the sun is high will also help reduce on algae growth.

However, once the contractor has constructed your pond and you have stocked it, is the time when your work commences. Maybe not work, maybe you will enjoy maintaining your fish and your fish pond. This is not hard and a largish pond will need hardly any maintenance at all, most of it can be mechanized.

One of the first things that you will have to try to do is stop your garden falling into the pond. You do not want surrounding mud slipping into the pond and literally muddying the water. This can be accomplished by lining your pond with a butyl pond liner and lapping the liner up over the lip of the pond by a foot or two.

Then you have to keep that in place. This can be done to suit your taste, but many people put a stone or brick walkway around the pond. If you let this overhang the pond by an inch or two, you will almost completely hide the pond liner.

The majority of people overfeed their fish, because fish outdoor will find a lot of natural food such as flies, larvae and grubs. This surplus food turns into a surplus of nutrients. This super-charged water is a perfect environment for algae, and algae is going to be your permanent enemy. However, you can soak up some of these surplus nutrients with other plants that you like.

Aquatic plants such as lilies really make a pond and they will help aerate the water during the day when the water may be warmer (warm water holds less oxygen than cool water). Plants also give your fish somewhere to hide from predators and strong sunlight, which will reduce stress on your fish as well.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on many subjects, but is now involved with water garden pumps. If you are interested in a Solar Powered Pond Pump, please go to our web site now for a special deal.

There are a few things that you ought to do to ready your backyard fish pond for the winter, because this will help them endure the winter.

The first thing to do is clean up your pond and the surrounding area. Any dead vegetation that finds its way into your pond will have months to rot down and ruin the quality of your pond water, just when your fish are at their most susceptible.

Dredge your pond, aiming to take out at least half of the slush at the bottom, but try to leave any grubs, larvae and insects behind, because they are a good source of protein for your fish.

Scrape the sides of the pond of algae and net it out. You should also take out any plants that are unlikely to make it through the winter. Fix a leaf net over the pond in order to prevent tree leaves from blowing into the pond at a later time when the weather gets rough. If you expect flooding or heavy rain, sandbag the perimeter of the pond to a height of two feet to stop fish being swept away.

When the water temperature drops to 55-60F, reduce feeding to once per day and when it drops to 50F, stop feeding completely. Even if the temperature goes up above 50F for a day or two, do not feed until winter is over. This is because the fish may eat instinctively, but at this temperature food can take four days to digest and could kill your fish.

Clean your filtration system and remove your pumps and fountain from the water. Once you have retrieved your equipment you can scrub and maintain it at your leisure. You do not want it to freeze solid during a frost.

Stock up on your chemicals, medicines, water testing kits and foods now while you have plenty of time, because in essence, you are closing your pond down for the winter.

Turn off all pieces of equipment that supply or recycle water in your pond. Make sure that they are unplugged and unable to be switched on accidentally. If water recyclers get switched on unintentionally, it will disrupt the layers of cold and warmer water in the pond and may stress or even kill your fish.

Check and put in your de-icer. It is very important to maintain a hole in any ice that forms, otherwise the gases and chemicals that emanate from rotting vegetation and fish excrement will build up and the water will not be able to take in oxygen. This is vital or one day the ice will melt and your fish will all float to the top – dead.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on many subjects, but is at present concerned with koi pond kits. If you are interested in a Solar Powered Pond Pump, please go to our web site now for a special deal.

There are items that you should have at hand at all times, but there are others that are not vital and can be waited for for a few days when you discover a need for them. Some of the things suggested below become more important depending on the climate or the seasons prevailing where you live.

Filtration Pump; this is essential, but you can wait twenty-four hours. You need to keep in mind that the quality of your pond water will deteriorate quickly, if your pond filtration pump is out of action. Toxicity levels will escalate in the water and stress levels will build up in your fish. Your fish will become sick fairly rapidly and then they will die.

Pond Filters: this comes into the same category as the filtration pump for precisely the same reasons. However, you can make your own filter using sand, coconut fibres or something similar and then you should never run out.

Dechlorinator: water companies add chemicals like chlorine and fluoride to the water, but fish do not like them. Therefore, you have to eliminate them. This is easily achieved by adding a few capfuls of liquid dechlorinator. Buy a large bottle and it will last all year.

Test Kits: maintaining water quality is the main aim for every fish pond owner, so you have to inspect the water for ammonia and nitrite poisoning every week. This is thought of as vital kit.

Pond Salt and Baking Soda; are the cheapest ways of combatting water toxicity, so it is vital to have plentiful stores of these items at all times.

Bags: one day you may need to transport one of your fish to the vets or take it to a quarantine tank, so you will need to keep a few bags on hand at all times. Make certain that they are large enough to hold your growing koi. These are essential.

Rubber Bands: you will need strong rubber bands to seal off the bags above, so they are indispensable too.

Fish Net: necessary for guiding your fish into the bags and removing fallen leaves.

Bucket: this is better for catching your koi than a net, which has the potential to damage their gills. Essential.

Koi Fish Food: koi ought to be fed every day except in winter, but they can in fact go a couple of weeks without food because they also eat flies, grubs and larvae. It really depends on how large your pond is and whether you have overstocked it.

Leaf Net: in the autumn, it is easier to cast a net over your pond, than drag leaves out of it every day. It saves a lot of time.

Sandbags: a storm or even heavy rainfall can flood your pond, allowing your fish to swim away. Sandbagging the pond before a storm is essential.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on many topics, but is at present concerned with fish pond accessories. If you are interested in a Solar Powered Pond Pump, please go to our web site now for some special deals.

Some types of well are dug out by hand with shovels as they were for thousands of years and others are drilled out with powerful, large rotary drills as are used in the oil industry. Here follows the main types of water well:

A water well that is termed a ‘dug well’ is precisely that: a well that has been dug by hand with a pick and shovel. It is the same type of water well that existed in Biblical times and before and the equipment used to create it has not altered either. The only change is the quality of the tools – it has increased inestimably over the last 2,000 years.

These wells look like the wishing wells famous from farm houses and fairy stories with a bucket wound up and down on a rope by means of a winding-handle. They normally have a small roof to inhibit things from falling into the water also. These wells most often exist in warmer, poorer countries and they are often brought into the 21st Century by the addition of a solar powered water pump.

These water wells are often dressed in stone to stop dust and soil from falling into the water. It also cuts down on long term repairs, because you do not have to keep digging out the well to clear it of soil that has fallen into it.

A much narrower diameter well can be made by drilling. The water well drilling apparatus needed is not intricate, but you will need a strong power source such as a generator, because you may have to drill through rock.

This method of drilling is similar to that used in the oil industry. A drill bit is attached to a pipe which is first hammered into the ground to give it a bite and then rotated like a drill.

You have to keep drilling by adding extra pipes until you hit water. Then the drill is withdrawn from the well and a water channel is inserted instead. A solar pump can be added to this pipe to provide water.

A similar technique of drilling a well utilizes water well drilling equipment that is similar to that used for pile-driving. A point is hammered into the ground by a very heavy weight. Every time the weight falls, the bit rotates a little. It is slow and old-fashioned, but it has worked for hundreds of years and still does.

The drill bit has to be pulled out often to extract the debris. When water has been struck, the water well drilling equipment is pulled out and a pipe is fed down the hole. Once again a pump may be installed to bring up the water. A solar powered pump is the way that most people tend to go.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on many subjects, but is at present involved with water garden pumps. If you are interested in a Solar Powered Pond Pump, please go to our web site now for a special deal.

So, if you keep the water clean, the fish will be glad and almost certainly breed and the plants will be glad and almost certainly propagate and healthy plants will do their own bit to help keep the water decontaminated. However, you have to get the ball rolling, before others can help keep it rolling and your biggest task here is to get the pond’s water filtration system correct from the beginning.

You have to set up two forms of filtration. The first is a simple mechanical filter that blocks algae, dead plants, leaves and faeces as the water is pumped through it and the second filter is a biological filter that mutates unseen waste from your pond.

This creates a nitrogen cycle and the risk here is that the nitrogen will change into ammonia which will kill your fish very quickly. A simple test is the clarity of the water. It should be clear enough for you to see the bottom easily and there should get no floating debris in there. No lumps of sticky weed or clogs of bubbling vegetation.

Overfeeding is a trap that lots of novice pond-owners fall into. You have to feed your fish high quality food, depending on what they are, but do not forget that they will get some wild, fresh meat as well. Insects will fall in and mosquitoes will attempt to breed in there and all will get consumed by your fish, so do not be alarmed if they do not seem to be eating much.

An surplus of shop-bought fish food will cause the water to go cloudy and algae to grow. If you want to raise the proportion of wild game in their diet, put a small night light at the edge of the pool and see how many hundred insects fall into the water to turn into fish food.

Keep an eye on your plants as well as on your fish. If your plants are dying or rotting, take them out and ask an expert the likely cause. It may simply be that they are the wrong type of plants for your pond or it maybe more significant like the pH value of the water. These are problems that are easily remedied, once you are aware of them.

The last thing to be certain of is aeration. Your pond water must contain oxygen just as our air must contain oxygen too. This is also easily done. Buy a good pond pump with a filtered intake and two outlets: one for the mechanical filter and one for a fountain. The water falling back to the pond will be rich in oxygen and you should not have any concerns about the quality of the water in your fish pond.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on many topics, but is now concerned with water garden pumps. If you are interested in a Solar Powered Pond Pump, please go to our web site now for a great deal.

However, fish do not pay bills and most of them do not even care about their kids. Some fish even eat their own children, so how does stress build up in a fish?

Well, stress can build up in a fish for many reasons, but the main one is bad environment, which means water that contains a chemical imbalance or a lack of oxygen. Fish can also get stressed, if it does not have anywhere to hide from predators or the sun.

It is straightforward to give your fish somewhere to hide. You can grow plants in tubs or buy floating lilies and you can also create caves of a sort for the fish to go into. A chemical imbalance can be checked with a kit and corrected by following the instructions that came with that testing kit.

Algae can have a huge effect on the amount of oxygen in your pond’s water. During the day, the algae consumes carbon dioxide and produces oxygen – all well and good – but at night the opposite is true and a mass of algae can draw all the oxygen out of your pond water in no time at all.

So you have to regulate the amount of algae in your pond. And it is no good scraping it off the walls and hoping it will die, because rotting vegetation also consumes oxygen. Excess algae has to be got rid of. A rule of thumb to check whether your pond water contains enough oxygen is to watch your fish. If they are continuously gulping air at the surface, then your pond water is oxygen deficient.

Warm water has less capacity to hold water than cool water. Once water temperature reaches 80F or 25C, then you can be fairly sure that your pond water requires mechanical aeration. A fountain or a waterfall may not be enough, but it could be – it depends on the size of your pond, the number of plants, the number of fish, the surface area of the pond and the quantity of algae.

It is not easy to work out the oxygen content of the water in your pond, but you can keep an eye on the general look of your pond and its contents. Algae is bad news, in general, do you have a lot of it? Are your plants, especially the lilies doing well? Are your fish gasping at the surface? Are they listless or active?

By looking at these indicators you should be able to get a good idea of what is happening in your pond. If you do not have a fountain, get one. Are things any better? If not, install a bubbler. Did that help? If not enough get a better filtration system and let the water run back into your pond via a waterfall. If that does not work, give up and try bee-keeping!

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on many subjects, but is now involved with water garden pumps. If you are interested in a Solar Powered Pond Pump, please go to our web site now for a special deal.

Fish ponds, including koi ponds, come awake in the spring after a winter of semi-dormancy. As soon as the temperature goes above 10C (50F), your fish become more lively and your plants will start growing again. This means that it is a good occasion to do some maintenance – a spring clean – because you will not shock or stress your inactive fish. If you try it any earlier, you will upset your fish in their slumber and any later and you may disturb breeding.

You should take out any leaves that has fallen into the pond and dredge for some of the algae. Then clean your pond filter and turn your filtration system back on, if you switched it off for the winter. Test the water for any chemical imbalance and treat any problems.

You ought to also add a broad spectrum treatment for common fish ailments. Depending on the medication you use, you may have to repeat this procedure a week later or when the temperature increases above a certain degree.

Summer

This is when your pond is in full swing. Your aquatic plants will be thriving as will the algae. You must keep the algae under control, which means trawling, netting and scraping. You will have to clean your pond filter more often as well. Check it daily and keep it working at full power. The cleaner you can keep your koi pond now, the less work you will have to do later.

Aeration of the water is a major concern in the summer, because warm water is able to hold less oxygen than cold water. Therefore, you will need to keep your fountain running and your bubbler bubbling, if you have one.

If you do not have one, think about buying one. You fish and the blooming algae will be competing for the oxygen in the pond water. You can tell if the water is short of oxygen, because the fish will be gasping for air at the surface.

The warm water will not only awaken your fish and your plants, it will also bring parasites to life, so keep a beady eye on your fish’ health and treat anything dubious straight away. Be on the look out for fish rubbing against the sides or each other – scratching themselves, in other words.

Feed frequently. Your fish will have eaten very little in the winter and now they have to replenish their fat for breeding and next winter.

Autumn

Autumn is changeable, but the first half may be like the summer and the second half more like winter. Continue to feed well. As the trees start to lose their leaves, you must eliminate them from your pond water.

Draw the leaves off at least once a day or sling a net over the pond and skim for leaves weekly. If you have any pond plants that will not outlast the winter, either take them indoors or throw them away; you do not want them dying in your pond.

Winter

Life in your pond will slow down as winter progresses. You ought to feed less often, maybe only once a day until the temperature gets to 10C (50F) and then discontinue feeding – your fish will be in semi-hibernation at this point. Remove your filtration pumps and your fountain and switch all electrical equipment off.

Put a pond heater in the water. This is a floating device that keeps a small surface area from freezing. If you allow all your pond to freeze over gases will build up, oxygen will vanish and your fish will die.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on many subjects, but is at present concerned with the fish pond filter. If you are interested in a Solar Powered Pond Pump, please go to our web site now for a special deal.

People think that a fish pond takes lot of looking after, but that is not inevitably the case. The fact is that the larger the fish pond, the less effort you have to put into it. This is because a large pond can create its own ecosystem, whereas a small fish pond requires help.

The ways that you can help a small fish pond be a decent environment for your fish are as follows:

Pond Filters – use a pond filter with a good pump. Do not forget that you could use a solar powered pump. It will save on the environment and on your wallet. You should use a pond filter on a small pond, because the ecosystem cannot cope with all the plant waste of a small ornamental pond on its own. A pond pump will feed the filtration system and a waterfall or fountain if you want.

Your pond filtration system should be left running twenty-four hours a day, but you can not just set it and forget it. Check that the pump is running daily and keep the filter as clean as needed for it to do its job. You may find that you have to clean it two or three times a week in the summer and autumn but only once a week in the winter and spring.

Leaf Netting: stop leaves from clogging up your pond in the autumn. The net should be poised a foot or so above the pond to stop autumn leaves falling into the water and decaying.

Feeding: all fish should be fed fish food, not bread or scraps. Some fish ought to have specific fish food in order to preserve their colour. When you buy your fish, the salesperson should inform you what they eat. In general, the larger the pond the less trouble feeding becomes as they will eat natural food like insects, grubs, larvae and flies.

Fish require less food in the winter when they become semi-dormant and live off the fat reserves that they built up in the warmer months, so feed often in the summer and autumn, but less often in the winter. You must check to see if excess food is left floating on the surface.

Winter: make certain that there is a hole in the ice so that the water can take in oxygen and the fish can feed if they wish to. You can buy a floating de-icer or some people float a round football in a hoola-hoop, which seems to work unless the temperature goes very low.

In fact, the hoola-hoop is a good idea all year round really. If you place the food in the hoop, it remains in one place and you can see if you have given too much. It also makes a nice site to see all the fish feeding in a shoal.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on many subjects, but is currently concerned with water garden pumps. If you are interested in a Solar Powered Pond Pump, please go to our web site right away for some extra special deals.