Let’s admit one thing. Fish are hardy creatures and in a sense, they’re designed to tolerate a lot of extremes in weather conditions. The one thing they can’t handle is being frozen solid.
You might laugh a bit at that last statement, unless of course you’ve found your favorite koi or goldie in that unfortunate state of being.
The truth is, winter is an awfully harsh time for a lot of wildlife and if your pond is deep enough, say, 3 or 4 feet or deeper, in most cases, fish will winter below the ice just fine. But in many backyard ponds with less depth, having a pond heater in the water is the surest way to keep everyone in good shape.
Obviously you don’t want the pond to freeze solid from top to bottom, and in deeper ponds they usually won’t. It’s the shallower one’s that you have to watch out for.
Also what might even be more critical is keeping an area of water open on the surface. It doesn’t take much, but doing so will allow the exchange of gases leaving the pond, and oxygen coming in from above. A surface based, floating heater works well for this while a submerged, bottom dwelling heater will tend to keep more of the pond from icing up.
In this week’s video I’ll talk about one of the most affordable and useful little heaters we’ve found and you can use these in ponds, stock watering tanks, or anyplace where you want to keep the water from freezing up. It’s a great useful winter tool and works well with small aerators to keep your fish save from the deep freeze.
For more information on pond heaters and a zone map one which one might work best for your area visit our pond heater page. And just as a reminder we have additional fall pond care products listed here.
As always if you have other winter tips you’d like to share, please do so in the comments section below.
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