Maintenance
Summer
Summer is here - and you've put your time into getting the pond ready this spring. You cleaned out your pond, kick-started the ecosystem, and counted your fish to make sure they all got through the winter. You've earned some quality time with your pond and what better time than summer?
While the majority of the hard work is behind you, there are some summer maintenance items that still need to be addressed if you are to have a season of clean, clear water to enjoy. By keeping up on these tasks, you should have a healthy pond all season long.
- Keep your pond "topped off" - Making sure the water level stays where it should be will ensure that your pump and/or skimmer is able to operate properly. This will help keep your pond free of debris while providing plenty of oxygenated water for your fish. The summer heat can be tough on oxygen levels.
- Add more plants - The more the merrier! If at all possible, try to cover at least a third of the pond’s surface area with water lilies. Also, make sure you have plenty of marginal and floating plants around the pond to blend the pond’s edge with your landscape.
- Trim those plants - You’ve added the plants, now keep them lookin’ good. Routine maintenance, including removal of spent blooms, yellowing leaves, and excess growth will get rid of nutrients in the pond, reducing the possibility of algae blooms. If you devote just a few enjoyable minutes each day to this task, it never becomes “the big chore” that encourages procrastination.
- Feed your fish - But be careful not to overfeed them. In the extreme heat of the summer, this can lead to oxygen depletion and possible algae blooms. A good rule of thumb is not to feed your fish more than they can eat in a period of two to three minutes.
- Do not clean your filter pads - If you have a biological filtration system, cleaning off the filter pads will destroy the algae fighting bacteria that live there, resulting in excess algae growth.
- Fertilize lotus and lily plants - To encourage more prolific blooming during the summer months, use lily fertilizer tabs near the base of the plants throughout the growing season. It’s not really necessary to fertilize marginal plants if they’re planted right in the pond gravel–they will easily pull the nutrients they need right from the pond.