several over wintering questions

[callingcolleen1]

Pecan, love your new look! Ha ha ha

I have never bother with water changes, I figure I add enough all year to keep the pond fresh and balanced. If you have lots of fish in a small pond it may be necessary, but I top my pond off lots and that seems to work good for me for many years.

 

[dieselplower]

Pecan, love your new look! Ha ha ha

I have never bother with water changes, I figure I add enough all year to keep the pond fresh and balanced. If you have lots of fish in a small pond it may be necessary, but I top my pond off lots and that seems to work good for me for many years.

If it's not broke, dont fix it, right?

One thing I do wonder though is that when water evaporates, does it take nitrates etc with it or does that get left behind? I assume it gets left behind. So the only way to really reduce things like nitrate with water is to do a water change? I guess it can also be gassed off in a trickle tower or absorbed by lots of plants but I just dont know how much of a load can be taken care of that way.

 

[pecan]

If it's not broke, dont fix it, right?

One thing I do wonder though is that when water evaporates, does it take nitrates etc with it or does that get left behind? I assume it gets left behind. So the only way to really reduce things like nitrate with water is to do a water change? I guess it can also be gassed off in a trickle tower or absorbed by lots of plants but I just dont know how much of a load can be taken care of that way.

There is a local pond shop owner who did his master thesis on just that evaporation of water in the high desert and what remains. He came over and took a look at my pond one day and told me yes in fact all the bad stuff is left behind. Since we live in the high desert with a huge amount of sunny days and no moisture in the air it is something high desert ponders must deal with. He actually developed and is working on patenting a product he calls "water sweetener" for high desert ponds to help dissipate the high volumes of nastiness that are left behind due to the evaporation.

Note this was my uneducated take on the conversation LOL

 

[haver79]

Haver79 your pond looks really good! You did a outstanding job and the rocks in and all around pond look just fabulous!

I think you should be fine with a bubble and heater when very cold. I see many others in zone 5 make out very well doing just that.

I am sick of winter and wish I lived in a warmer zone, but another cold Canadian winter is coming! There are others even further north than me in even colder weather keeping fish outdoors. I like to keep most of the main pumps working as that keeps all three connecting ponds running together. (no waterfall or skippy to worry about) I also use a big 1500 watt Heater when very cold, and I place the heater by the flowing water coming out of the top pond, that way the ponds get heated more evenly.

Thanks Colleen
I wouldn't mind winter as much if it were a little shorter. It is long enough here let alone where you are.

Hubby has a couple floating deicers we used to use for the horses. Gotta check them out and see what kind of wattage they are.
I assume you have to be careful that they are not resting next to the liner??

 

[callingcolleen1]

I keep the big heater away from the liner, and in the middle of the middle pond. I don't know why my ponds seem to do good by just toping off the ponds. Things seem to work and I believe that the benificial bacteria will convert the nitrites to nitrates, read that somewhere long time ago, and then the plants can obsorb the nitrates before they become harmful. You need to have a well established pond with lots going on, plus I do have an overflow that takes water out when it rains hard too. During the winter I do top up the pond a lot, water evaportes, and then there is water displacement caused by excess ice build up. The odd time I forget that I am topping up the pond and then the water overflows for a while out the bottom pond too.

I am sure some water escapes here and there behind the water ways, that is possible too, whatever the reason, things seem to work out good for me with no water changes for years. Now I would not get away with that in a small pond, or in my fish tanks either.

The only time my ponds ever got a good water changes was about four years ago, I re-dug out the bottom pond and had to replaced the water in that pond cause I made it bigger. Then about six or seven years before that, I remade the middle pond and that was another big water change too. Then about 15 years back I re-dug out the top pond and made that bigger too. Before that, about 18 years ago, there were other changes too, too far back to remember anymore. In the 23 years of having ponds, the only major water changes were when one of the connecting ponds were re-dug or made larger. I don't know why it works, maybe I add more than I think, but for some reason things seem to do well, and my two oldest koi are about 24 years old now.

 

[JohnHuff]

One thing I do wonder though is that when water evaporates, does it take nitrates etc with it or does that get left behind? I assume it gets left behind. So the only way to really reduce things like nitrate with water is to do a water change? I guess it can also be gassed off in a trickle tower or absorbed by lots of plants but I just dont know how much of a load can be taken care of that way.

When water evaporates, it leaves salts behind. That's how you get fresh water from sea water and that's why rain is fresh water.

In distillation, what happens when you impart energy to a solution (heating it), the water molecules gain enough energy to break free of it's bonds and escapes into the air. But nitrate is a gigantic thing with a molecular weight of 62 and it's more tightly bound by ionic forces and the heavier mass so that it isn't going to be floating up into the air any time soon.

Now that I think about it, nitrates should not be able to "gas off", at least I've never heard of solutions gassing off ions any more than salt water can gas off sodium chloride. The only way that nitrogen would be able to leave a solution would be as elemental nitrogen or ammonia and I'm thinking the only way that can happen is by chemical reaction or a physiological process.

 

[callingcolleen1]

Yes, like I read many years ago in an old pond book that some benificial bacteria convert the nitrites to nitrates..... that would be ammonia nitrate, now you have a plant fertilizer, maybe the reason my big yellow flag grows taller than anyone else's (grows to over six feet)

Then during a heavy thunderstorm we get a good flush out of the pond too.

 

[callingcolleen1]

If I remember correct, Laguna Pond Clean is a bacteria that does that, convert nitrites to nitrates too. I have used lots of that in past years, plus this stuff that was designed to clean "outdoor shit houses", it is all natural and was made by a guy not too far from here, in the Cypress Hills Alberta, called "SHAC", it takes the stinky human waste in shitters and converts it into something nicer that does not stink. That stuff works really good in a pond full of waste too. Now they also have the same product with a pond label for ponds too (SHAC Ponds). I am not sure what it is, but inside the bottle the liquid is black and you pour it into the pond, used lots in the past.....