Our Midwestern Garden Ponds are now deep in winter mode: The water is just above freezing, the pond fish are huddling near the bottom and the plants have all died down. Thank goodness I took the time to winterize the pond in late fall. Now I do not have to worry about my precious pond fish making it through the winter.
The Water Garden has a de-icer floating in it, which will keep a hole in the ice using VERY little electricity (only 100 Watts) and I do not have to worry about a pump clogging up and having to stick my hands into that ice cold water to un-clog it (took the pump in for the winter). There are very few fish in the Water Garden, so the de-icer is all that is needed on that one.
The Koi Pond has a pond pump running, of course. It is a very large, external pond pump though, which does not tend to clog because the intake is way above the bottom and out in the middle of the pond. The pump powers my 45 foot long creek, which adds plenty of oxygen into the pond for my large Koi. No worries about the pump clogging on this pond, either.
The Goldfish pond has a low wattage de-icer, also. It is a very small pond.
Winter in the Mid-West does not show garden ponds at their best, but thanks to the creek running all winter there is movement out there even on the worst days. The open water of the creek also provides much needed drinking water for the birds when everything else around here is frozen.
Right now all the ponds are open (not frozen) because the last couple of days the temps have been above freezing. We did have a little dusting of snow this morning, but it was gone before noon.
I took the opportunity (of the open ponds) to test the nitrite levels in the Koi pond (they were fine) and to add some cold weather beneficial bacteria to the water. I like to do that once a month during the winter to clean up anything (leaves, twigs, etc.) that blew in during the fall and get the pond in as good a shape as possible for spring.
Link for this post goes to a download page for FREE Garden Pond e-books (one of them being "How to Winterize the Pond".
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