Pond Maintenance

HEALTHY POND HEALTHY FISH

When you have a pond, for maximum enjoyment and for the health of the fish and the pond plants you need to maintain your pond.

To keep your pond in tip top condition doesn’t really take a huge amount of time and is fairly easy, but it should be done regular. So lets have a look at what we need to do for our pond maintenance.

Fish

Keep an eye on your fish to check that they are all acting how they should. If one is not feeding how the others are or is swimming funny then it may be suffering from a disease, so you will need to take action so the other fish don’t suffer. So keep a regular check on how your fish are in their environment. Only feed the fish if the temperature is above 10°C and only feed the amount that they can consume in around 10 minutes, this way you will not have uneaten food sinking to the bottom of the pond and rotting, which can harm the fish.

Pond

Check regularly for any debris on the surface of the water and skim the surface with a net to remove any before it sinks. This is especially important if you have any trees near your pond or after after a high wind when anything could have blown into your pond. Leaves can be a problem in autumn.

During the summer you may find the level of the water may reduce due to evaporation. Fill to the normal level before the water gets to low as a small amount of fresh water will not effect the balance of the water.

In the winter if you get ice form on the surface of the pond, it needs to have a hole in it to allow gases that would normally escape from the pond into the atmosphere. The ice will prevent these gases from escaping which will result in poisoning the fish. Do not smash a hole in the ice as this will trauma the fish and could kill them, instead use a saucepan filled with hot water and rest it on the ice to melt a hole in it. Alternatively you could install a pond heater to keep an area of your pond ice free. I will be looking at these soon.

I will continue pond maintenance in the next post.

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