Water Gardens

I’ve tried hard to come up with things that people can do for their ponds that get them the most bang for their buck, simple tasks that can be done in just a few minutes of spare time or, at most, less than a full afternoon, with big yields in terms of overall pond health.

The bubbles rising from your aerator not only circulate the water, but also break up the surface tension as they break the surface. This has a few beneficial effects. First, it prevents some water-walking insects from taking advantage of your pond. The most important of these, of course, is mosquitos, which can otherwise use your pond to lay eggs.

…when your water does ice over, you definitely don’t want to break it by hitting the ice. Here’s why:
Water is extremely resistant to mechanical compression. When you push on water, it doesn’t squeeze down, but moves and transmits that force to somewhere else, pushing against whatever is containing it

Even in winter, partial water changes can help to provide healthier, less polluted water for your be-finned friends. Do this very carefully, though, changing water much less aggressively than you would in warmer times. Slower winter metabolisms potentially means that your pond recovers from water changes less quickly.

Once you’ve got the majority of the weeds out of the pond, though, you can go on to the second part of your attack, which will keep the duckweed from taking over again.

…sludge and buildup that needs to be vacuumed out, and if you can get it out of there before the water warms up to let the rot and anaerobic bacteria really get revved up, you can save yourself a TON of troubles throughout the rest of the year