Photos courtesy of
Aquascape Designs, Inc.
November 2005
Winter Ponds
How to prep your pond
for hibernation
By Barbara K. Iverson
Was this the summer of your backyard pond? Then this is the fall of your over-wintering preparations. Chicago’s rule of thumb for ponds is to close down around Thanksgiving and start up again around Mother’s Day.
Everything that seemed so fresh in the spring and ripe in the summer is now bracing for the next turn of the wheel of the seasons. Those spring tadpoles that became frogs have grown sluggish in the cold, and soon they’ll burrow into leaves and mud at the bottom of your pond. They’ll be down for the count as the calendar page turns to November and the last of autumn’s leaves fall into the water.
Some ponders string a net to keep leaves out. If you don’t like the look of a net, you can use a shallow skimmer net to get rid of most of the leaves. This is important because too many decaying leaves on the bottom of the pond steal oxygen from fish and frogs. The trick is to leave a couple inches of mud and leaves, scooping out the rest. Be careful as you scoop and watch for frogs or fish that can get caught in the leaves and net. If they do, throw them back in.
Goldfish and Koi don’t need fish food, but many people feed them for pleasure. Never give fish more food than they can eat in 15 minutes. Once the temperature falls to 50 degrees Fahrenheit, stop feeding them. Feeding fish during their sluggish winter period can kill them. Goldfish over-winter easily. Koi can over-winter but are not as robust as goldfish.
You can drop tropical plants like taro and papyrus, container and all, into watertight ceramic pots or pickling crocks and bring them into the house. They need full sun. I top off the crocks with pond water until the pond freezes and I have to use tap-water. Come May, just put the plants back into your pond and store the crocks.
Tropical water lilies can be stored in a cool basement like other bulbs. In November, take hardy water lilies and arrowroot, trim off the stems and place the pots in the deepest part of the pond.
In the Chicago area, it’s best to wait until Thanksgiving for the final preparations because, despite cold snaps in October, it warms up routinely until the end of November.
For rigid form and smaller free-form ponds, shut the pump off and plug in a thermal de-icer to prevent the entire pond from freezing over. A cheap rubber ball floating in a rigid-form pond will help with the freeze-thaw cycles. Just place it in the pond in November and take it out in spring. The pump comes out of the pond, gets washed off, and then stored in a bucket of water. The pump mechanism will dry out and fail in the spring if you don’t store it under water.
Float a thermal de-icer with a thermostat control in the pond when the pump comes out. The de-icer is about the size of a pie plate on the bottom that sits in the water. Its top tapers off into a smaller opening that is about four inches above the surface of the water. By keeping the water under it from freezing, the de-icer allows air exchange to go on all winter.
In bigger ponds, you can keep the pump going all winter to prevent freezing and make sure there is air exchange. The key to fish and frog survival is to allow ammonia from the fish waste to escape into the air and oxygen to come into the water. A pump that moves water fast enough to keep some open water from freezing solid is all you need.
Some evaporation takes place, even in winter, and some of the water will freeze, so you’ll need an alternate way to add water periodically, like a hose from the garage or a five-gallon bucket to carry water from the house.
If this is your first winter, watch your waterfalls and shallow areas when it freezes to make sure ice doesn’t dam up and prevent the pump from circulating water. If you make a mistake or it gets extremely cold and the pump can’t work, you can keep an open spot in your pond by pouring boiling water on the ice. Never try to pound a hole in the ice, as that can injure or kill your fish.
Take care winterizing in October and November to avoid carrying kettles of boiling water out to melt a hole in the ice when it’s 15 below in January.
A good de-icer with a thermostat only runs when it is needed, below 40 degrees Fahrenheit, and shouldn’t cost more than a few pennies a month, so you’ll have cash for new flora and fauna in the spring.
With luck, the ice will freeze like glass before the snow sets in, providing a glimpse of the quiet, slow world of fish in winter, a special reward for any pond keeper.
Barbara K. Iverson, Ph.D., a journalism faculty member at Columbia College Chicago, spends time outside of class devising ways to chase raccoons away from the fish in her backyard pond.
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