To this end, 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. Here are some of the very best things you can do for your pond that are simple, easy, inexpensive, and will have a fantastic impact on your pond’s health and beauty.

Remove excess organic debris

One of the simplest tools you can have to maintain a great-looking pond is the humble skimmer net. Get those leaves, sticks, and acorns (Oh, the acorns) out of your pond before they start to rot, and you’ll have a much happier pond.

We use the term “organic debris” to refer to anything that was formerly living and is now in your pond. Plant detritus is the most common thing you’ll find in your pond (including dead parts of pond plants), but this can really mean anything that was once alive and can decompose, right down to single-celled algae and bacteria. Organic debris breaks down in your pond as it is eaten by bacteria (either aerobically in the water or, worse, anaerobically in the sludge layer), releasing a variety of chemicals and pollutants that can directly harm your fish in large amounts, cause your water to change colors or smell foul, and certainly lead to algae bloom problems.

Just a few minutes with the skimmer net or pond vacuum can get the bulk of this problematic debris out of your water before it causes problems, and your pond will look better uncluttered to boot. For bonus points, periodically trim dead sections of your pond plants off and remove them from the pond.

An important corollary task to getting dead things out of your pond is preventing them from going in there in the first place. This can mean taking a bit more care when mowing near the lawn or blowing leaves. It also means getting the right pond net for your pond and getting it up before the leaves start to fall. Getting your net into place, unless you have the wrong net or an unusually large pond, shouldn’t really take more than a half an hour or so.

Aerate

A good aerator does so, so many things for your pond, and it’s a relatively low-cost, very low-maintenance way to keep your pond beautiful. Modern bubble aerators are more energy efficient than ever, using only a tiny amount of electricity to keep your water circulating well and consistently oxygenated. They also facilitate the gas exchange with the air around the pond that is so important for the health of your ecosystem, and can even keep your pond from icing over in colder climates. A good aerator really is one of the best investments you can get for your pond, and it’s something that I recommend over and over to clients and friends. I basically never shut up about aeration.

Don’t overfeed your fish

If it takes more than five minutes or so for your fish to eat what you’ve put in the pond for them, then you’ve likely given them too much. The goal is to put in the right amount of food so that none of it goes uneaten by your fish and sinks to the bottom or gets sucked into your skimmer. Uneaten fish food is just more added organic debris to throw off your pond’s ecosystem. It’s particularly bad, as it’s dense with the nutrients that free-floating algae, bad bacteria, and the anaerobic sludge layer feed off of. It breaks down quickly, causing spikes in free nutrient levels, and sinks quickly once it’s water-logged, right down to join that sludge at the bottom.

Keep in mind, too, that your fish will eat less when the water is colder, so keep an eye out especially not to overfeed in cooler months, and switch to cold-water food or stop feeding entirely when the temperature is right.

Partial water changes

Aside from aeration, partial water changes are probably the task that I spend the most time bugging pond owners about doing. The benefits are absolutely massive, and it truly doesn’t have to be very much work at all if you’re smart about it. I take a lot of the water for my water changes out in buckets that I use to water my plants (the potentially toxic buildup of pollutants in your water from decomposition can be very good for plants, as it is basically fertilizer). The rest comes out when I use my pond vacuum to remove organic debris and sludge from the bottom (multitasking!). I shoot for five to ten percent of the water in my pond replaced every week or two in the warm months, less when it’s colder. The water that you add will need to be normalized to your pond water. That is to say, it needs to be about the same temperature as the water in your pond to avoid shocking it, and it needs to be dechlorinated. The easiest way to do this is to fill a large container with water and leave it to sit in a shady area, though dechlorination chemicals may be needed, especially if your local water system uses chloramine, which doesn’t offgas easily and builds up in the pond. Once the water is normalized, just add it to the pond (I go in through the skimmer). I haven’t ever actually timed it, but I suspect that I rarely spend more than ten or fifteen minutes of active work on a partial water change.

So, there you have it. Four simple, easy things that you can do to keep your pond more beautiful than ever.

A pond aeration system may not be the ultimate solution to all pond problems, but it is among the more effective general purpose influencers of pond health that you can add to your pond. They’re relatively inexpensive to purchase and run, require almost no maintenance, and can improve almost every aspect of your pond’s health.

What is an aerator?

Generally speaking, aeration is taking air from outside of your pond and getting it to dissolve into the water. Some aeration should be designed into every pond from the beginning, usually in the form of a fountain or a waterfall. This works pretty well, as splashing the surface from above with water is surprisingly effective at introducing air into the water. This designed aeration, in my experience, tends to be closer to the minimum amount of air introduction to keep your pond healthy, rather than the ideal amount. For most ponds, especially ponds that are large, deep, or unusually shaped, I strongly recommend adding an aerator into the mix.

A dedicated aerator is a very simple thing. It consists of an air pump that forces air from outside the water down through hoses to dispersal units on the bottom of your pond, sending a stream of bubbles into the pond. As the bubbles rise, they circulate the water and dissolve some of the air into the water. It’s a simple process, but a lot of companies have put some very impressive engineering to work maximizing the effectiveness of these little bubbles (and the efficiency of the pumps). Dedicated aerators range from tiny, single-bubbler units for use in an aquarium to enormous, many-bubbler setups that can effectively aerate acres and acres of water.

For most pond owners the middle ground is, of course, just right. This usually means a single, high-efficiency air pump sending air through two to six bubblers (sometimes called aerator stones). The stones should be placed thoughtfully. The goal is to circulate water and bubbles to minimize “dead” regions of water, especially the deepest parts of your pond and areas that aren’t in the natural flow channel of your water (such as “cul-de-sacs”).

What does an aerator do for me and my pond?

1. Oxygenates

The primary and most important goal of aeration is oxygenation of the water. Dissolved oxygen plays many, many roles in a healthy pond ecosystem. Your fish need it to live, obviously, but so do the beneficial bacteria that break down and remove pollutants, contaminates, organic debris, and the waste that your fish produce. Without sufficient oxygen in the water, the bacteria that are the primary cleaning agent of a well-designed pond’s filtration system cannot work at peak efficiency. This means a less clean, less healthy pond.

An aerator designed for a large pond or lake at work.

Perhaps the biggest advantage of a bubble aerator is that it can oxygenate areas of your pond that are getting less oxygen from your current aeration. This includes the areas that are outside of the normal water flow channels of your circulation system. More importantly, a bubble aerator gets oxygen into the water at the bottom of your pond. This gives the beneficial aerobic bacteria in your pond access to the part of your pond where the most problems can arise due to organic debris settling to the bottom. This settling, with insufficient oxygen, leads to the proliferation of potentially toxic anaerobic bacteria that thrive in low-oxygen environments, and to the sludge layer that they live in.

Oxygenating your pond more effectively with an aerator also means that the dissolved oxygen levels in your pond remain more consistent. Inconsistent oxygen levels are caused by insufficient aeration, which is then exacerbated by a variety of factors inside of and outside of your pond. Temperature fluctuations cause the water to hold more or less dissolved oxygen. Water movement being cut off (power failure, cleaning out the pump, etc.) can cause a big drop in the oxygen levels. Rain can also cause big changes. These fluctuations stress both your fish and the beneficial bacteria that are crucial for keeping your pond healthy.

Algae blooms can be not only a major culprit in exacerbating inconsistent oxygen levels in your pond, but are also one of the more problematic outcomes. A sharp rise in the oxygen levels in your pond is responded too most quickly by the single-called, free-floating algae in your pond. They start to reproduce rapidly to take advantage of the extra oxygen in your pond, and these increased numbers of free algae cause pea-colored water. Then, either the oxygen levels start to fall back down on their own, or the algae over-produce to the point where they themselves drive the oxygen levels down. Suddenly, there is insufficient oxygen in the water to maintain the algae population, and they start to die off in massive amounts. With the lower population, the oxygen levels start to rise again, only now there are large amounts of dead algae in the pond that are breaking down into organic pollutants, causing further problems with your water and feeding into this bloom-and-bust cycle of the free-floating algae population. There are other contributors to the algae bloom-and-bust cycle, especially sunlight and excess nutrients in the water, but maintaining consistent oxygen levels is one of the best ways to combat this major problems faced by many pond owners.

2. Improves circulation

Circulation of your water, like aeration, is something that should be accounted for from the beginning of any well-designed pond. Water enters the pond from a waterfall or fountain, then moves through the pond to the skimmer box or filtration intake, which sends it back to the waterfall. This creates a water movement channel that should do a fair job of circulating the water in your pond. Most ponds, however, will have two major dead zones where water is circulated much less effectively. First, unless the pond is designed in a very particular way, there will be areas of the pond that are further away from the main channel, such as corners, coves, or other oddities of shape. Second, and more important, water tends to flow along the upper third or so of the pond between the waterfall and skimmer. The deeper water of your pond gets much, much less circulation.
Each bubbler that you add to your pond adds an additional vector of water circulation, from the bottom of your pond upward. This directly reduces the dead zone at the bottom of your pond where pollutants and debris will otherwise settle down to contribute to your sludge layer. The upward vector of circulation also complicates the existing channel of water movement, which helps to push circulation into the dead areas around the fringe of your pond. All of this movement of water keeps algae from building up excessively (especially string algae), and also keeps mosquito larvae from making a home in the more stagnant areas of your pond. The upward movement also prevents your pond from having temperature and oxygen gradients. Those gradient layers, with cooler water on top and the warmest water on top are especially exacerbated in summer, with the hot air and sunlight warming only the top of the pond. Differing levels of warmth and oxygen levels cause your bacteria to be far less efficient at cleaning your water, and stress your fish as they move from layer to layer.

3. Breaks up surface tension

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. The lowered surface tension also facilitates gas exchange between your pond and the air around it, getting out the carbon dioxide that your fish produce and even allowing the increased release of some pollutants. Finally, the bubbles are effective at keeping your pond from freezing over completely in all but the very coldest conditions. An ice cap over your pond can cause serious problems with gas exchange, even causing your fish to suffocate in extreme cases. It also prevents some pollutants from dispersing out of the water, building them up over the course of winter. Preventing the ice cap from forming in the first place is the best way to deal with it, as breaking up ice manually is potentially dangerous for your fish.

Aeration isn’t the silver bullet for all pond problems, but there are some problems that it can solve completely, and far more that it can help to alleviate. For how much it helps a pond’s health and how little work and cost it requires, dedicated pond aeration is a worthwhile addition to almost any pond.

However, 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. This is why hydrolics work, but it also means that a hard strike to the ice on top of the water gets transmitted to everything else in the water, including your fish. In the wrong circumstances, hitting a solid ice cap on your pond can be like directly hitting your fish. This can injure or kill them.

That’s worth saying again: hitting the ice on your pond to break it can kill your fish.

The best way to deal with an ice cap on your pond is to prevent it from happening, using either an aerator or a surface heater. If the cap forms before you can prevent it, use a drill or saw to get through it, just like you’re ice fishing, or use a surface heater to gently break it up.

• Get some of those leaves and debris out

Assuming that you haven’t put up your net yet, you should definitely grab your skimming net and get to work. Clean out everything that you can without risking hypothermia. All of that organic debris will decompose slowly when it’s cold, but once things warm up it will go fast, adding tannins to your water (which leads to the dreaded tea-colored water), throwing off all of your pond’s water health balances, and adding to your sludge layer.

• Balance your levels carefully

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. Don’t change out more than 5% of your water a week, preferably less, and be sure that the temperature of the water your adding is equalized to that in the pond before you add it.

• Add cold water bacteria

Slower winter metabolisms don’t just affect larger animals and plants. Even bacteria slow way down, and that means that the beneficial bacteria in your pond aren’t cleaning it the way they do in warm months. Supplementing your system with special cold water adapted bacteria will go a long way toward making your Spring a happier experience.

• Switch to cold water fish food

Cold Water Fish Food is a key part of keeping your fish healthy through the winter. The slower metabolisms of the fish can mean that the richer normal fish food can cause major health problems. If your pond water is below 55 degrees, switch to cold water food, and once it is below 42 degrees stop feeding altogether. The slowed metabolisms mean that they’ll be fine without the added food.

• Get that net up

Unless you’re unusually scrupulous about cleaning up the rest of your yard, chances are that there are still leaves and other organic debris waiting to fall or in a position to be blown into your pond. The right pond net can save you considerable problems.

• Keep the ice from closing the surface off

A pond surface that’s completely covered with ice closes off gas exchange between the pond and the surrounding air, which can cause buildup of all kinds of things in the pond and lead to oxygen deficiency. Keep the water at least partially open using an aerator (my preferred method) or a heat source. if your pond does ice over, DO NOT break up the ice by hitting it with anything. Because water resists compression and therefore transmits kinetic energy very efficiently, the shock from the hit, even a relatively mild one, can hurt or even kill your fish, even if they’re nowhere near where you hit the ice. Just don’t do it. Use mild heat or a drill to get through the ice.

Header image by Martin Schmidt.

Some things about how metabolism affects your pond, though, are fairly easy to predict and control. One of the best examples is how water temperature affects the metabolisms of fish. Pond fish are cold-blooded, so their metabolisms are heavily affected by weather. As the water around them gets colder, their metabolisms slow more and more. Fortunately, we can deal with this slowdown fairly easily by changing what and how often we feed them.

The simple rule is this: when the water temperature is below 55 degrees F, switch from normal food to cold-water fish food. When it drops below 42 degrees F, stop feeding them entirely.

The reason we stop feeding them below 42 degrees is fairly simple: at that point, your fish’s metabolism has slowed enough that they’ll hardly need to eat at all, so any food you give them will simply be rotting in the water and negatively affecting your water health. This is complicated by the fact that algae and bacteria metabolisms are slowed, too, so the extra organic material won’t be dealt with effectively by the rest of your pond ecosystem.

Above 42 degrees, though, it’s much more complicated (though not harder to deal with). Your fish still need to eat between 42 and 55. Their metabolisms are slower, though, and that has made their digestive tract much less effective. Cold water fish food has been designed by people who are much smarter than I am to be easy to digest and to only give your fish what they need for this slower metabolic state.

The consequences of continuing your normal feeding routine below 55 degrees can be quite serious for your pond. The incompletely digested or uneaten food that your fish leave in the water can’t be dealt with by your pond bacteria at this temperature, and that can leave your fish spending the entire winter in badly out of balance water, add significantly to the unhealthy sludge layer of your pond, and cause massive spring algae blooms. Worse, the slowed digestion of the overly-rich food can cause serious direct health problems for your fish, and can even cause what can only be described as fatal constipation. This is why I strongly recommend a switch to cold water fish food at lower temperatures. It’s a very easy solution to what can be a big problem for your pond.

• Check water flow to the pump. This is, far and away, the most common pump problem that I’ve seen from customers. Your pump can’t push water if it doesn’t have access to it. First, check to see if there is anything keeping water from getting to the pump, be it a large rock or debris, leaves, a clogged skimmer net or opening, a jammed skimmer flap, or just a skimmer mat that has gone too long between cleanings. All of these things can keep water away from the intake on your pump. Your pond could also just have low water, keeping the pump from getting enough water through the skimmer box. Keep in mind that, between the plumbing, your filter/waterfall box, and the waterfall itself, the pump will drop the water level a good bit when it’s running. It may seem like the skimmer box is plenty full when the pump is disconnected, but once it starts it the box runs dry or nearly dry.
• Make sure the pump isn’t vapor locked. A vapor lock happens when the pump gets an air bubble trapped in the volute, the main internal space of the pump. The impeller will spin, but it won’t be able to move water because of that air bubble. The solution to this one is pretty simple, just tilt the pump underwater so that the intake is upward, letting the air bubble escape.
• Make sure the pump is getting electricity. Check the ground fault and circuit breaker to make sure that neither has been tripped. You may also want to try plugging a different compatible appliance into the outlet your pump usually uses to make sure that power is getting to the outlet. If not, it’s time to call in a qualified electrician.
• Flush your plumbing. The easiest way to do this is to disconnect the fitting above the check valve, letting water flow out of the system and back into the skimmer box, bringing any possible clogs with it.
• Pull your pump out to inspect it. Check the intake on your pump for any debris that has lodged in it. Most pumps will deal with small debris pretty well, but something like a rock or large piece of detritus could get in there and block the impeller or intake. Clean out the intake to make sure that it’s clear.
• Try it again. After you’ve got the pump out and cleaned, try plugging it in at this point to see if the impeller is spinning. If it isn’t spinning, go to the next item. If it is spinning at this point, re-install and try it again. If your impeller is spinning properly at this point and you’re still not getting water flow, then it’s time to check again to make sure that your pump is getting enough water and that your plumbing is clear.
• Jumpstart your pump. If your impeller isn’t spinning, first try a jumpstart. Unplug the pump and carefully give the impeller an assisted bump with a screwdriver. If the impeller has seized up, this should knock it loose and give it a chance to spin freely. Plug it back in and, if the impeller is now spinning, unplug it again and re-install it.
• Check the power supply. If the impeller is able to move freely but still isn’t spinning when plugged in, take it to a different electrical outlet to try it. This must be an outlet with a ground fault (GFCI). Plug in the pump at this different outlet. If the pump still doesn’t respond or if the pump trips the ground fault, something is likely wrong with the pump. If the pump works fine at another outlet, then something is wrong with the electrical supply at your pond, and it’s again time for an electrician.

Once you’ve run through these items with no joy, it’s time to get in touch with the pumps manufacturer. Seriously, though, it’s probably just the pump not getting enough water.

The Cause of Tea Colored Water

Tea colored water is caused by the buildup of tannins in the water. Tannins are a class of polyphenolic molecules that…. you know what? You don’t need to know that. Tannins come from plants, usually plants breaking down in some way. Lots of different plants produce tannins, such as oak trees (the word tannin comes from an old German word for oak). Tannins are, in fact, what make tea brown and bitter. They also give astringency and color to wine and, to a lesser extent, coffee. Tannins are used to tan leather (that’s where the word “tanning” comes from). They’re useful and desirable molecules in many things, but in your pond, they’re mostly just making the water ugly.

The Cure for Tea Colored Water

Fixing the tea coloration in your pond’s water requires two basic steps: get rid of the source that’s putting it in the water, and taking it out of the water itself.

The first step is generally pretty straightforward, if not always easy. You need to get excess plant material out of the water. Leaves and sticks on the surface or around the edges of the water are part of this, so skim away. If you have enough tannin-producing debris in your pond to be causing real problems, though, than your source is probably on the bottom of your pond. You need to manually remove vegetation debris (leaves, sticks, and especially acorns) from the bottom of your pond. You’ll probably want to deal with your sludge layer as best you can, as this is where most of that debris will eventually end up, and it’s a major source of tannins. Here’s a more in-depth look at dealing with pond sludge. You really can’t take short cuts in getting rid of the source of the tannins. As long as the source is in there, your water will keep coming up orange, no matter how you treat the water.

Once you’ve got the source of the tannins dealt with, getting rid of the tannins that are in your water is much easier. A partial water change will help, and bacteria and algae in your pond will break down the tannins over time, but the quickest and easiest way to get rid of the tannins is to add activated carbon to your pond. This will bind with the tannins (and a lot of other unwanted vegetable by-products) and take them right out of the water.

Fire and water. There are few things in the world quite like combining two traditional opposites for making a stunning statement. For my part, our new Fire Fountain is one of the most exciting new products to come through in a long time.

This product would be really cool if it were just a bowl of stones and water with a fire pot in the middle, but it’s so much more than that. It features a pump system that moves water steadily from the outside of the bowl surface, falling over the edge of the inner ring like an infinity pool, an endless cycle of water moving toward fire. Place your own decorative stones or pebbles or glass, and you can shape the movement of the water to create your own pattern of ripples in the water to reflect the light of the dancing flame.

It’s ridiculously simple to set up, too. The whole thing is designed to be basically plug-and-play, with the pump and tubing included. You just need to put in the pump (easy), add water (easy), put fuel in the stainless steel fire pot (easy), and plug it in (easy). Arrange your own decorative stones (or whatever else you choose, within reason), and you’ve got your own one-of-a-kind living sculpture of fire and water, right there on your patio.

Maintenance is a breeze, too. Just periodically change out the water (no chemicals to worry about), keep the wick saturated with smokeless paraffin or fuel gel (not included), and maybe rinse your stones and filter from time to time. The fire pot is stainless steel and the basin is made from strong GFRC, and the pump is a quality product from Aquascape, one of the most trusted names in water gardening, so this fountain should give you years and years of easy, low-maintenance beauty.

The Aquascape Fire Fountain can be purchased here.

Duckweed, though, can be a huge problem in a pond. In good conditions, a duckweed plant can bud and divide once per day, meaning a daily doubling of the plant population and complete coverage of a large pond in weeks. Many pond owners have learned that duckweed can be an object lesson in the power of exponential growth. Coverage of a pond with duckweed and watermeal (they’re often found together) can cause significant problems for a pond. They block the sun’s light from penetrating the water, which will quickly kill off healthy, water-cleaning algae. Without this algae, nutrient levels will explode, creating unhealthy algae blooms and significant buildup of organic debris in the pond (the sludge layer). This will encourage growth of anaerobic bacteria, which create toxic water conditions that can kill fish, turtles, and other plants and further encourage the duckweed proliferation. That’s all bad.

Smaller backyard ponds generally don’t have much trouble with duckweed. That’s because it’s a fairly fragile plant that doesn’t do very well in moving water, and a pond with a fountain or waterfall will usually move enough to keep it down. It tends to be large ponds and even small lakes (especially manmade ones) that have the most trouble with duckweed. In a large, relatively stagnant pond, duckweed’s rapid proliferation and tendency to travel along waterways and on animals can cause it to take hold and completely take over a pond quickly, and once it’s got hold it can be difficult to get rid of. If you have a strategy, though, you can control unwanted infestations and even prevent it from taking hold.

Preventing and Controlling Duckweed

Eliminating established duckweed can be done with certain herbicidal chemicals, but this isn’t the route that I recommend, especially not at first. Rather, I’d go with a two-pronged mechanical approach to removing the pest. The first step is to simply skim out as much duckweed as you can. A simple pond net or even a pool skimmer or fine fishing net can be used. Wait to do it on a windy day, if possible, when the plants will be more compressed on one side of the pond. You’d be amazed at how quickly you can devastate the population of duckweed in your pond.

This won’t, however, be a permanent solution. If even a few tiny plants avoid removal, then they will likely come back, sometimes covering a pond in as little as a week. 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.

The same fragility that makes duckweed a rare problem in small ponds can be taken advantage of in larger ponds with one or both of two pieces of equipment. The first is a simple fountain, though a larger one than you would see in a small pond. Large pond fountains do two things: first, they agitate the water surface, making it more difficult for the duckweed to survive and spread. Second, it aerates the water, which will give the healthy aerobic algae a chance to remove some of the excess nutrients from the water that the duckweed thrives on.

The second simple piece of equipment that can help to eliminate duckweed infestations is a bubble aerator. This accomplishes the same tasks as the fountain, though it is far better at deep aeration and not as good at surface agitation. A good bubble aerator is just as, if not more, useful for keeping a pond healthy in a larger body of water, especially ponds that take in a lot of agricultural or commercial runoff that can carry huge amounts of nutrients that need lots of healthy algae to deal with.

Huge thanks to Joel, a customer who sent us an email telling us about his experience with getting rid of duckweed, along with the images that accompany this post!

Here are before and after pictures taken just one week apart.  Our pond was completely covered by Duck Weed and Milweed.  No fish or turtles any more.  We installed the Kasko just over a week ago and skimmed the offending growth.  Now it looks great and is remaining free of new growth.  Aeration really works!

We’ll soon be stocking with fish again!  Thanks!

From now until May 31, 2015, Aquascape is offering a fantastic mail-in rebate worth up to $50 off of their products.

Now, that’s a great deal, but it gets better: Combine it with our Spring Savings coupon deal, also worth up to $50 off exclusively at Loch Ness Water Gardens, and you can save up to $100 off of a purchase of any combination of Aquascape products!

Here are the details:

From March 15th – May 31, 2015, Aquascape is offering a rebate on various products worth up to $50:
Purchase any combination of Aquascape products totaling:

• $500 and above: receive a $50 rebate
• $350 – $499:  receive a $30 rebate
• $225 – $349: receive a $20 rebate
• $100 – $224: receive a $10 rebate

Use this printable PDF to get a prepaid Visa card for your rebate amount from Aquascape.

You can combine that with our Spring Coupons, good throughout the store, for up to an additional $50 off, taken off at checkout. Use these coupon codes for access:

• Orders under $100: Use code save5 to receive $5 off
• Orders $100-$250: Use code save10 to receive $10 off
• Orders $250-$500: Use code save25 to receive $25 off
• Orders over $500: Use code save50 to receive $50 off

Make an actual to-do list

This is one of those tips that took me a long time to figure out, but has since been absolutely invaluable. Sitting down with a pen and pad to make out a physical list that you can check off is incredibly useful for a few reasons. First of all, it’s helpful in just about any endeavor to have a list of discreet tasks that you can attack one at a time, making the whole project less overwhelming. Second, you’re much less likely to forget some key step along the way if you have a list of them to check off. Finally, the act of making out the list itself will help you to think of different things and ways to do them that can make the whole process easier and more effective.

Be thorough with your first debris removal

That bane of pond health, organic debris, has slipped into your pond over the winter. There’s just no way that I’m aware of to avoid it. Every new Spring means cleaning out your pond. What many pond owners forget to do, though, is to clean around the pond before removing the net. This can be one of the most effective things that you’ll be able to do all year to keep your pond’s ecosystem healthy. Your pond, as you well know, will develop a mystical magnetic force that will pull any leaves and sticks and acorns within range into the water to decompose and throw your chemical levels all out of whack.

Early in Spring is also one of the best times to deal with your pond sludge before it gets out of hand. Use your pond vacuum, your skimmer net, or just stick your hand into that still-chilly water and grab out every bit of debris and sludge you can before it really gets going as the water warms up.

Do your partial water change right

I know that this is something that I harp on constantly, but partial water changes are really invaluable for preventing the buildup of harmful elements in your pond. A good partial water change can help to prevent all sorts of problems, and they may be most valuable early in the year, when your pond has had a full winter of less-than-entirely-effective (or even entirely absent) filtration. I realize that a chilly weekend might not be your favorite time to be dumping a garbage can, rain barrel, or buckets of water into your pond, but, trust me, it’s worth it.

Clean your pump intake

Spring is the best time to do basic pump maintenance, as things have been building up and growing in your filtration system throughout the winter, and starting Spring with a fully functional pond pump can make everything easier. Even if you don’t do much maintenance, though, at least go ahead and pull out your pump and clean out the intake (you should be able to just use your fingers or a brush of some sort). This will do a lot to not only extend the life of your pump, but also make it run more efficiently throughout the year.

Time your fish food changes right

Once your pond is staying consistently above 42 degrees F, you can start feeding your fish cold-water fish food. Do NOT, however, start on regular fish food until your pond is staying above 55 each night. Normal fish food is richer, and can cause digestive problems for your fish when their metabolisms are slowed by cooler water.

Consider Cold-Water Bacteria to get a head start

When your water gets below 50 degrees or so, your pond’s beneficial bacteria’s metabolism slows to a crawl. However, using Aquascape’s Cold-Water Bacteria is a great way to get a head start on pond health. It’s designed with bacteria that continue to metabolize nitrates and ammonia down to 35 degrees, which can give you weeks, or even months (depending on where you live), of extra biological filtration, and that means much healthier water and fewer sludge and algae problems.

1. Pond Vacuum

I’ve talked before about the importance of a decent pond vacuum, and I’m sure that I’ll talk about it again in the future. It’s something that is just not replaceable for keeping your pond clean and healthy, especially if you have deciduous trees near your pond. Spring, though, is one of the most important times to have it ready. If you didn’t cover your pond for autumn (you remembered to cover your pond before the leaves fell, right?), you’ve got some serious organic material to get rid of. Even if you did cover it, There is still going to be some 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.

Even if you have a good pond vacuum, now is a good time to go check it out. Make sure that your vacuum is in good working order and ready to go before you need to use it. A couple of years ago my mother went out into a beautiful, bright spring Saturday with the entire day blocked off to clean up the pond, only to discover that she’d left part of the vacuum out and full of water through a hard freeze, destroying part of the hose. With the time it took to get a replacement and free time to clean out the pond, it was tea-colored water for an extra month.

2. Dechlorinator

You’re going to do partial water changes this Spring, right? Well, if you’re going to do that, you’ll want to have dechlorinator ready to go. Make sure that you don’t have just a tiny bit left in that bottle from last year before you need it.

3. Pond Skimming Net

Did your dog chew a hole in the pond net that you left out again this winter, even though you swore that you wouldn’t? I bet he did. He always does.

4. Filter Media, Live Bacteria, Barley, and Activated Carbon

A lot of water health problems start off in the Spring when your pond’s ecosystem is still reeling from the season change and trying to find its balance. This can be unfortunate and disappointing, but it can also be a great opportunity to nip problems in the bud. Two of the most important things are those partial water changes and clearing your pond of organic debris and sludge, but sometimes you’ll need some help along the way with new, clean filter media or some natural water additives.

5. Fish Food

Once your water temperature hits 50 and is staying there, it’s time to start feeding your fish again. Start with cold water food and stick with it until the water stays above 60 at night. Cold water food goes a long way toward starting your fish out healthy, as it’s easier for them to digest when their systems are still slow from the cold. I find it’s key to have a good, high-quality fish food ready on hand when Spring is coming to make sure that I don’t end up having to run to a local store and get inferior food (seriously, guys, fish food quality makes a huge difference).

BONUS: Sun Protection

The suns rays may seem fairly mild in the spring, especially when it’s just getting warm enough to start working on your pond, but you still need to protect your skin. After a winter spent mostly inside, you may feel desperate for some rays, but your skin is especially vulnerable. Also important to keep in mind how often going out to just quickly net up some leaves or check the water level can turn into a couple of hours puttering around the garden. Don’t get burned.