What to do with my pond fish now Winter is on it's way ?

[BADGER.BRAD]

Hello All,

What do you do with your pond fish in the winter ? I would normally leave them in the pond not feed them and let them get on with it but last year with the really heavy prolonged frosts I lost most of my fish ( Gold Fish). I now have a filter which outlet feeds into the pond causing some movement of the surface which wasn't there last year but am unsure whether to bring them in to our out house or just put in a small pond heater ( I have a power point up there from the filter/pump). The pond has other visitors frogs birds and the occasional fox. The pond is approx 500 litres.

Any thought appreciated.

 

[leyton condor]

We moved into a house just over a year ago which had a pond. We are no experts but the advice we were given was feed in summer, don't feed in winter and keep the pump running, this stopped the water freezing over completely last winter. So far we have only lost one fish out of about a hundred. If you need more fish you are welcome to some of ours.

 

[MattHB]

As above, don't feed, pump on. If your pond has nowhere that is less then 36 inches deep then you're likely to loose your fish no matter how hardy they are. Only at that depth are they protected from the cold.

 

[XmisterIS]

What about pouring loads of orange squash and gelatin into it and turning it into a giant jelly?

I'll get me spoon coat ...

 

[rich p]

Mine have always survived at a max depth of 24" without a filter.

 

[Norm]

If your fish are dying, your pond isn't deep enough. 24" should be ok, 36" will be fine, and it doesn't have to be that depth all over.

Our pond (and we dug this to be a "natural" pond) is about 3m long and 2m wide, some of it around the edges we only went down about 10cm to give a natural margin but there's a 75cm deep bit at one end, under some trees, and the frogs and newts seem happy enough.

 

[threebikesmcginty]

All our fish get eaten by the sodding herons in the winter.

If you can catch a heron they're lovely spit-roasted with the added bonus that they have their own built-in spit.

 

[wakou]

If you can catch a heron they're lovely spit-roasted with the added bonus that they have their own built-in spit.

 

[Mr Celine]

We gave up keeping fish in the garden pond as a prolonged cold snap always killed them. They also used to eat all the tadpoles so now we have frogs and newts instead.

What killed the fish was not the temperature but the build up of poisonous gases (eg methane) under the ice. If you can keep even a small hole in the ice clear then the gas can escape. This may be possible in Englandshire but up here a week of -5 during the day and -10 at night rapidly covers the pond in a 150mm layer of solid ice.

 

[BADGER.BRAD]

Last Year when the pond had thawed out some what I took the ice of the top and measured it at a foot thick The pond is 38 inch's deep at its deepest ranging to next to nothing at the edges. It had a football and a couple of tennis balls on it. I think it was the lack of an openning to allow it to breath that caused the damage. Which must of happened before the pond got to it's worst as there were many fish deep in the ice! It was frozen for at least 3 weeks In one go.I do live in a high and very exposed position.

I too have suffered a Heron but my dogs got to it first! I now have a very thin black net over the surface with plenty of little gaps for the frogs, the only problem I now have is my kitten now thinks it can walk on water, It's in for a shock come summer

 

[lukesdad]

Baked Carp mmm

 

[Asa Post]

What do you do with your pond fish in the winter ? I would normally leave them in the pond not feed them and let them get on with it but last year with the really heavy prolonged frosts I lost most of my fish ( Gold Fish). I now have a filter which outlet feeds into the pond causing some movement of the surface which wasn't there last year but am unsure whether to bring them in to our out house or just put in a small pond heater ( I have a power point up there from the filter/pump). The pond has other visitors frogs birds and the occasional fox. The pond is approx 500 litres.

Any thought appreciated.

I had similar problems a few years ago in my 2000 litre pond, and installed one of these pond heaters.
I was delighted by how well it worked. Low running costs. An ice-free hole about a foot in diameter all winter long, no matter what the weather threw at it. No fish lost.
They do seem to be a lot more expensive nowadays, but that's life, I suppose.

 

[mr_cellophane]

110 gallons isn't likely to be that deep. Mine is 800 gallons and 4 foot deep in the centre. I never lost a healthy fish in the winter.
Stop feeding protein based food when the air temperature drops below 10c and switch to wheatgerm or winter feed (or nothing they won't stave to death). Fish can't digest food so well at cold temperatures. They will keep eating, it will ferment inside them and they will blow up - literally.
Keep the filter running (give it a good clean out now so that bacteria and stuff can build back up by the spring), but turn off any waterfalls if you can as this will lower the water temperature. Make sure there is a hole in the ice. If the pond ices over completely stand a warm pan on the ice. Don't break a hole with a hammer as the shock waves will kill your fish quicker than anything else. Don't pour hot water to melt the ice as this will create sudden temperature changes in the water.
If you have heron problems then either your pond isn't deep enough or it is too shallow at the edges. Heron are waders and won't "fish" if they can't stand in water. I lost a couple of orfe and couldn't work out why I kept finding them at the side of the pond. Heron would have eaten them there or flown off with them and there weren't any claw marks to suggest a cat or fox. I netted the pond and the next day I fished out a drowned magpie

 

[BADGER.BRAD]

A drowned magpie ! Magpies have a rather bad reputation but I would never of thought of them if I had been in the same situation. The pond now I have thought about it and done a rough calculation is about 750 litres a little hard to tell as it is contoured and shaped the 500 litres was really a bit of a wild guesstimate. It goes from about 2 inch's to a shelf of about 1 foot deep 1 foot wide then in to a drop of 38 inches. At present the output from the filter drops about a foot into the pond which was deliberate to give the pond a bit of movement and introduce more oxygen into the pond ( the fish seemed to be spending a lot of there time gasping at the top) This seemed to help a lot but after the advise about switching off water falls would I be better to feed the output of the filter directly into the pond, presumably stopping the movement and the Oxygen just for the winter ? I think I may well go with a pond heater as well in an attempt to keep at least an area of the pond surface open.

Thanks all for all your comments

Brad

 

[mr_cellophane]

38 inches, that's a big drop. I keep my little waterfall going all year, but it only drops a couple of inches into a little pool and then flows over a ledge another couple of inches into the pond. My main return is via a venturi which oxygenates the water.