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Spring Up Your Pond
To ensure that your fish and plants emerge from the long, cold winter healthy and ready for summer we recommend the following steps.
Remove any leaves and debris from the bottom of your pond.
Raise and fertilize any overwintering plant containers from the bottom of the pond.
Trim and remove any dead plant material.
Divide plants if necessary.
Water hyacinths, lettuce and other non-hardy floating plants can be added to the pond after any danger from frost has passed.
Start feeding your fish slowly when the water temperature rises to 50 degrees (usually mid April).
Placing a pond thermometer in the water near the edge of your pond will enable you to know when the time is right.
We recommend you switch to feeding your pond fish either Spring / Fall or Wheat Germ until the water temperatures rise into the 60’s. These foods are specially formulated to aid digestion in cooler waters.
Remove most of the sludge from the bottom of the pond either with a pond vacuum or silt net. A thin layer of sludge may be left at the bottom of the pond.
Remove your pond heater / deicer from your pond.
Check your salt level. Salt test kits are relatively inexpensive. We recommend using Pond Salt to raise and maintain the salt level to .3% over winter and early spring. This will protect your fish when they are in a weakened and more suseptable state due to the colder temperatures. A higher salt level kills most microscopic parasites, improves gill function and helps keep the fish healthy as they enter the next season. This higher salt level will not harm plants in their dormancy. Maintain the .3% concentration until early May, then make water changes to reduce to .1% and add water hyacinths and oxygenators. An added benefit to adding pond salt is most algae will be killed at this concentration at a time when algae still grows but other aquatic plants are dormant.
Clean and inspect your filters, replace if necessary to ensure proper filtration throughout the summer.
Clean Quartz sleeve, check and replace uv bulb if required and reconnect Ultraviolet Light if applicable.
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