Adding a pond to your property can be a good option to consider for many reasons, but we know that some people hesitate to add this feature because they are wary about the amount of maintenance needed to keep the pond water healthy. At Healthy Ponds, we can provide you with easy-to-use pond cleaners and some other easy ways to keep your pond clean.
Why Add A Pond?
If you already have a pond, just skip down to our handy list of pond cleaning tips, but if you are thinking about adding a pond, but still on the fence, there are quite a few benefits of adding a pond to your property, including:
1. Ponds Can Provide A Source Of Irrigation
A one-acre farm pond can irrigate about 15 acres of crops, and even if you don’t have crops, your pond can irrigate your lawn and gardens.
2. Ponds Can Provide Water For Livestock
If you have livestock or horses, these animals can use the pond as a source of water. However, it is not recommended that livestock drink out of ponds exposed to runoff from chemically-fertilized lawns. We also recommend testing the water to ensure it is free from cyanobacteria and other toxins.
As a side note, if you have stock tanks filled with tap water, we do have an all-natural stock tank water cleaner (NOTE: please link blue words to https://healthyponds.com/product/stock-tank-water-cleaner-reloadable-dispenser/). This product is chemical-free and veterinarian-approved and uses beneficial bacteria to improve and maintain water quality and clarity.
3. Ponds Improve Your View
While a healthy lawn and trees can provide you with a beautiful view, there’s just something special about ponds and water features. If you add a decorative fountain and surround the pond with beneficial plants and rocks, this further improves the look of your property.
4. Ponds Provide You With Hours Of Recreation
If you love to fish, adding a stocked pond to your property can be a great option. We do recommend talking with a fish expert before stocking the pond. An expert can help you select the best species, determine the ideal fish population and provide you with tips about feeding and general care.
Many people also love to swim in their ponds, and a clean, healthy pond can be fun for the whole family. Additionally, ponds tend to attract birds and other wildlife and many people enjoy viewing the myriad of wildlife that might be attracted to their pond.
How To Keep Your Pond Healthy
While pond cleaning is important, this pond maintenance doesn’t have to take a huge amount of your time. Follow some of our tips, and you will likely be able to spend most of your time enjoying your pond rather than trying to keep the pond clean.
1. Think About Pond Depth
If you haven’t yet constructed a pond, pond depth is something you need to consider. With a small decorative garden pond or koi pond, you will want a depth of at least three feet. This ensures that your fish have plenty of room and provides them with cooler areas during the summer months.
With a farm pond, you typically will want to dig the pond at least 12 feet deep. Shallow ponds have warmer water as there is greater exposure to UV rays. When the water is too warm, your fish won’t have any cool areas to swim and warm water accelerates the growth of floating green organic matter.
2. Use Beneficial Bacteria
When a pond contains an excess of nutrients, such as nitrogen and phosphorous, this can cause the rapid accumulation of floating green organic matter. While there are chemicals that can be used to deal with this issue, a more natural approach is often an easier and better way to tackle the problem.
Treating your pond monthly with beneficial bacteria for ponds can be an easy way to ensure that excess nutrients aren’t causing problems in your pond. Our AquaSpherePRO® is a natural pond cleaner that contains beneficial bacteria. These bacteria consume excess nutrients in your pond’s water.
To use this product, you simply toss the biodegradable spheres into the pond, and they immediately begin releasing bacteria. After 30 days, you just add more spheres to continue treatment. Treatment should continue as long as your pond water remains consistently above about 55 degrees.
When the weather begins to warm up, we recommend adding our Natural Blast® product to the pond. This pond cleaner also contains a proprietary mix of beneficial bacteria. Adding a large dose of bacteria at the beginning of your warm season can ensure that the pond has enough microbes to handle sudden spikes in water temperature and excess nutrients.
Natural Blast® can be used in conjunction with AquaSpherePRO®, and Natural Blast® can be added any time you notice odors coming from the pond or when you notice the emergence of floating green organic matter. You also can add this pond cleaning product after a large rain event or if the water temperatures suddenly spike.
You cannot overtreat with beneficial bacteria, but you can undertreat, so it’s important to add enough product to compensate for the approximate gallons of water in your pond. To calculate your pond’s number of gallons head to our free pond size calculator at https://healthyponds.com/pond-calculator/.
Both Natural Blast® and AquaSpherePRO contain safe and natural bacteria, are veterinarian-approved and are 100% safe for humans, fish, livestock and pets.
3. Install An Aeration System
A pond with circulation will always be healthier than a stagnant pond. An aeration system can move cooler water from the bottom of the pond toward the surface, helping to keep the water temperatures down.
Aeration systems also help distribute our pond cleaner throughout the pond, ensuring that all of the water has a healthy dose of beneficial bacteria. We recommend installing a bottom diffusion aeration system, as these tend to be more powerful, and you need a system that can pull water from the bottom toward the surface. You also need a system that can circulate all of the water in the pond at least twice in a 24-hour period.
Aeration systems can increase your energy bill, but they prevent many common pond issues such as preventing odors and the formation of floating green organic matter. Without aeration, your pond can become stagnant easily and not only does this affect water quality, but it also will attract dangerous pests such as mosquitoes.
4. Prevent Runoff & Erosion
Runoff from fertilized lawns and crops can introduce nitrogen and phosphorus into your pond. Using fertilizer without these elements can be a good idea, but you also can add a border of decorative plants and perhaps rocks. These plants and rocks will help prevent some runoff from entering the pond and also help prevent shoreline erosion.
When trimming your grass, we recommend bagging up the grass around the perimeter of your pond to prevent this from entering the pond where it will sink to the bottom of the pond and eventually decompose into pond muck. Bagging up autumn leaves also can reduce the amount of pond muck or pond sludge.
Pond sludge is unappealing for swimmers, but it also reduces the water quality. Using a pond vacuum and our Natural Blast® pond cleaner can reduce pond muck, but if you can keep grass, leaves and other debris out of the pond, this is always a good step to take. For small ponds, such as a koi pond, it is recommended that you add pond netting in the autumn to prevent leaves from entering the water. This can make fish pond cleaning much easier.
Got Questions? We Can Help! The Healthy Ponds team is available to answer any questions you might have about our pond cleaning products. If you experience issues with your pond water, we also offer free personalized treatment plans for any size water feature at https://healthyponds.com/free-pond-plan/.
