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Prep your pond for winter
The following checklist might help your wet pets survive the winter if they won't be spending the holidays indoors with you. Hopefully you have been monitoring the water temperature and stopped feeding your fish when the average daily temperature dropped to 50 degrees F.
· Is your pond deep enough? If it is not at least 36" deep, you will need to take extraordinary precautions to keep the pond from becoming a giant ice cube filled with frozen fish sticks. Perhaps a pond heater will do the trick. There are now low wattage versions on the market that will be more efficient, thus less costly to operate.
· Get rid of all dead and decaying plant material. The compost pile is a great place for it! Plant material left in the pond over winter will decay and contaminate the pond water. Be sure to trim the foliage off plants that will be spending the winter in the pond depths.
· Plants that can survive the winter outside, such as hardy water lilies, lotus and hardy marginals should be trimmed of most foliage and dropped to the bottom of the pond where they will not freeze. A good way to do this is to place the pot in a rope sling and lower the pot into the depths, leaving a long rope anchored outside the pond. This will make for easy retrieval in the spring when you won't want to go into the frigid water to retrieve the pot.
· Scoop or vacuum the sludge from the pond bottom.
· If your pond water is within 10 degrees F. of the lake water (or your well water), do a partial water change.
· Remove your pumps from the pond but install a small pump or aerating bubbler to keep the water moving. Install it in the top third of the pond. For example, if your pond is 36" deep, place the aerator no deeper than 12". Water at the bottom of the pond is warmer and you don't want to mix the colder surface water with the deeper, warmer water.
· Wash off the pumps and store them over winter in a tub of water to keep the gaskets moist.
· Place netting over the pond to keep leaves and other "flying" debris from getting into the pond. Don't lay the netting directly on the water, fish can get caught in it. Sturdy boards, such as two by fours, can be laid across the pond elevated on pond side rocks, and the netting is then placed on the boards.
· Sit back and congratulate yourself for a job well done and think about how beautiful the pond will be next summer.
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