Christmas Gardening – pond care

When temperatures plummet, you may need to step up your winter pond care to ward off winter damage. Frigid temperatures may make it more difficult for you to keep an area of your pond ice-free, but the health and survival of your pond fish depend upon it.

If you are responding to a frozen pond emergency, you'll need to first thaw a shallow section of your pond. To do this, use boiling water contained in bags or containers to melt the ice – a favourite trick is to boil a saucepan of water and set it on the ice with a string tied to the handle, this them melts its way slowly through the ice and if you can’t stay and keep your eyes on it, you can always rescue the pan by pulling it out by the string! Never the ice to break it, the shockwave it sends through the water can kill your fish.

Microscopic aquatic plants continue producing oxygen as long as light penetrates the ice – giving fish something to breath, but snow over ice prevents light penetration, making this process cease. And if oxygen production stops, the effect of the decomposition of vegetation and fish waste can pollute the water to the extent that fish will suffocate. Snow removal, from at least half your pond surface, will help reduce the likelihood of this happening. Use a broom or rake to pull the snow off the ice.

During severe winter storms, power outages often result – if you have electrical systems in your pond you need to think about how you will power pumps, filters etc if this happens because reliance on pumps means fish can deplete the available oxygen in a relatively short time.

Christmas gardening pond photograph by GirlReporter, used under a creative commons attribution licence