Lessons learned from this winter's extreme cold

[morewater]

Thanks Dave, I think I'm looking for one that I can attach an external filter to.
The ones over in the UK are 220v, we have 110v here.
The 10 meter cord is nice though.

Mitch, if it's just for the winter, don't bother with the high-end, high-price, specifically-for-ponds stuff. You can get what you want from any bigbox store, or on-line at Princess Auto or something.

-17C with the wind chill here today. Ah....Spring.....yeah, right.

 

[MitchM]

Thanks morewater, I'll look into that.

 

[morewater]

I don't know if Princess Auto is in AB, Mitch. I can tell you, however, that they have an absolutely excellent return policy with no hassles.

 

[JenH]

I would strongly suggest that you keep your pond running with a good filter and a pump. Running water best gets rid of build up gases. I do not keep all my big summer pumps running, but as a rule of thumb, I cut the flow down for winter to about half of normal. Then I use a heater for extreme cold, and place the heater where the water moves well, to better heat the pond evenly. I would not trust a pond breather for my extreme cold, and a pond breather will not filter the water proper over the winter.
This method has worked for me for over 22 years now. I know lots of people over the years that tried a aerator or blubber here, and sadly that has failed at some point here in Medicine Hat. I would never trust a rinky dinky little pond breather either, not for my big koi or my extreme cold. If I lived down south, quite frankly I would still keep my ponds running and water filtered, as that is the best way to keep koi healthy and alive. plus the water is crystal clear all the time with my method.

I've been doing it this way to and this year we hit records in cold and snow and so far I've pulled 6 dead koi and 11 dead frogs . Of course it's been all my big pretty koi too that didn't make it.

Colleen, don't you have a bog set up too, like mine? I was lookin at that pond breather. After I pulled the first two that died out I bought a pond heater, but had to return it. It was the smallest I could find, but it kept tripping our GCFI outlet.

 

[Mmathis]

LESSON: get a pond breather http://www.amazon.com/8PB-Breather-Heated-Aerator-Watts/dp/B000HHM9U0

Interesting -- have never heard of this (but then, water rarely freezes here, either). How does it work? Does the tube act like a snorkel?

 

[callingcolleen1]

Jen, Nobody has a setup like mine. I have three connecting ponds that all flow together all year, and half of the middle pond is the bog! I have a very large yellow flag root ball that is well over 22 years old that big sedge is not potted in any soil, it is a large naturally floating clump and that yellow flag gets to almost six feet tall. Those heaters all require a bigger thicker cord rated for super heavy duty, and all heaters trip normal GFI circuits so I run a big cord into the basement window down the stairs and have it on a separate bigger GFI circuit, and it works good like that.

Mitch I use three different pumps all winter, and they connect to three double sized underwater filters. I have whatever pumps where cheap and on sale at the time that I needed them. I have everything from Laguna, to Pondmaster and Nursery Pro. Never use the silly small filters that come with the pumps, just put them away and forget about those small filters. The bottom pond has a smaller Laguna, and I use that for the winter to pump water to middle pond, then in the middle pond there is two bigger pumps that run all year, one is a Pondmaster, and the other is a old bigger Laguna pump that has been running non stop for the last 7 years or so if I remember correct. Those two pumps run water to the top pond all winter. If you use a good pre-pump filter then you get much more life out of the pump too.

 

[addy1]

Interesting -- have never heard of this (but then, water rarely freezes here, either). How does it work? Does the tube act like a snorkel?

I really don't know, mitch in canada is using them this winter. We are waiting with held breath to see how well his ponds did (if they ever unfreeze) with them.

They look like a tube that has a small heater below that circulates the water, just enough to keep a hole open in the ice.

 

[Catfishnut]

I have learned many lessons due to the weather here and elsewhere this winter. Lessons that I didn't realize I would need to know about.

Being a procrastinator was really a plus for me. Actually, I was not procrastinating, I simply had higher priorities and therefore constructing my pond this year was out of the question. However, if I had jumped in and spent money and gone ahead with my pond construction, I would have been quite sorry with the results as the weather would have wreaked havoc on my pond setup had I designed it and built it without certain criteria in mind.

Since I must build above ground due to river flooding concerns, I am also going to be at the mercy of the cold temperatures and won't have the insulating factor of the earth and soil down deep.

I will have to ensure that I design plenty of insulation and artificial heat sources into my pond system in order to avoid broken pipes, failed pumps and dead fish. I had initially planned for such things, but because of the exteme and long lived cold periods we experienced here this winter, I have to take a second look at all my designs.

Instead of designing to specs for a 0 to +10 degree (F) minimum weather period, I will have to design for -20 to -10 degree (F) period to ensure the proper safety measures.

Gordy

 

[jmajid]

lesson learned the hard way:
Be absolutely sure of upcoming weather... just because you THINK spring is here and you had 2 weeks of above 50 to 75 degF weather does NOT mean you wont get below freezing weather lasting enough days to kill some of your newly introduced fish.

 

[addy1]

lesson learned the hard way:
Be absolutely sure of upcoming weather... just because you THINK spring is here and you had 2 weeks of above 50 to 75 degF weather does NOT mean you wont get below freezing weather lasting enough days to kill some of your newly introduced fish.

Darn sorry you lost them. I have some small shubunkins in the house waiting for the pond to warm up.

 

[Lisak1]

I'm with RobAmy... our fish survived the winter in great shape. However I'm not sure I could handle another winter like the one we just experienced. Excuse me - no past tense. We woke up to snow this morning!

We chose this year as the first year to try running the pump all winter, which means the water was filtered through the bog all winter, too. The result so far has been great. Our typical start up stirs up silt in the bog, stream and pool which clouds the pond for a few hours - none of that this year. The algae growth is remarkably higher than normal for this time of year, which is amazing. Even in that extreme cold, nature finds a way. So we learned that our pond will sustain even the most extreme winter with out a hitch, which is a very good lesson indeed. We were worried about the decision initially and had we had even a HINT of what was coming, I'm sure we would have shut everything down.

The lesson that we fear we learned the hard way is that some of our shrubs do NOT like the extreme cold and especially the extreme wind chills. Lots of brown, dead looking foliage right now. Let's hope the warm spring days will show signs of greening up, or we may have lots of re-planting to do! I had burlap in the garage ready to wrap some of our newer plantings but thought I had plenty of time before the snow came - ha! We had snow cover from the end of November until about two weeks ago. That burlap was nice and warm in my garage though!

 

[Nepen]

My pond first winter and the coldest winter at that..

My lessons
1. use the air stone! I did not use an air stone at first and my water freeze, only about half to an inch thick, but I thought it'd melt faster than it was so my pond was cover with ice for little while before my attmep to open a hole in the ice...then my lesson goes to #2

2. Do not use hammer to open the hole in the ice... I couldve killed my fish, but luckily they are all ok... I will not do it again though, stupid me.

3. I could run the pump all winter in the milder winter, this year the winter cycle few days to a week, for a few days we have 70~ and the next we have 20~, going on like this for 2 months now. the fish must be very confuse... have to think of a better way to handling temperature swing... may be dig a little deeper since my pond is all above ground, but I dont know if i'll have time this year, too many thing to do too little time.

With all that, my fish came out ok, all of them, well, one is missing in November, dont know what happened to it but the rest of them are fine, even the new one I just added to the pond a couple weeks ago.

I last saw my fish on 2 days ago when it was in the 70s for a few days.. today we are back in the 30s for 2 days and the temp will be back up YEY!

 

[Nepen]

lesson learned the hard way:
Be absolutely sure of upcoming weather... just because you THINK spring is here and you had 2 weeks of above 50 to 75 degF weather does NOT mean you wont get below freezing weather lasting enough days to kill some of your newly introduced fish.

I did that too, against the recomendations I got from here. After 2 weeks of swining temperatures (70s to 20s), the fish is still fine though, I saw him 2 days ago swiming with other fish. i'll keep my finger cross for him until we get out of this crazy weather.

 

[Fishylove]

Omg! Pecan you're feeding already?! Im soo gealous! Its snowing here AGAIN today!
I am soo done with winter!
I did not aerate because i was afraid with the temps being so low for so long, it WOULD cool down the lower levels to a dangerous level. Actually the ice has only been gone a short while. I did loose after the thaw a 8in koi, but so far thats all. Interestingly, it was a doitsu.. curious if that had something to do with it. ...hmm.

 

[addy1]

I am going to try the pond breather next year..............if our test pond i.e. mitch's pond does ok with them in his extreme cold up there.