While pond chemicals can be effective at remediating common pond issues, many people would prefer to avoid using chemicals and enjoy a more natural pond. Fortunately, natural pond maintenance is easier than you might think, and we have a few tips that can help keep your pond clean throughout the year.

 

1. Treat Your Pond With Beneficial Bacteria

Adding beneficial bacteria to your pond is an easy pond water treatment option. Beneficial bacteria consume excess nutrients in your pond water, and these excess nutrients are what cause many common pond issues. Continually treating with beneficial bacteria can ensure that your pond has a healthy level of healthy bacteria throughout the year.

Our AquaSpherePRO® is a monthly pond management product that can prevent the buildup of floating green organic matter and also help to reduce your sludge layer. To use this product, you simply toss in enough spheres to accommodate the approximate gallons of water in your pond. The spheres immediately begin releasing bacteria and after 30 days, you simply add more spheres.

 

2. Keep The Pond Water Moving

Standing water quickly can become stagnant water, and a stagnant pond can be a breeding ground for mosquitoes and other pests and emit foul odors. Additionally, stagnant ponds have low oxygen levels which can accelerate the growth of floating organic matter as well as force your fish to compete for oxygen.

Circulating the water not only improves oxygen levels and reduces water temperatures, but it also helps to spread around your beneficial bacteria. We typically recommend that pond owners install a bottom diffusion aerator and to purchase a system powerful enough to handle the approximate gallons of water in your pond.

If you don’t have an easy source of electricity for this aeration system, some systems do run on solar power. Some homeowners also will install a windmill on their property to use as a natural source of power for the aeration system. If you add fish to your pond, it also can be wise to install a filtration system to remove some of the fish waste and food debris.

 

3. Limit Exposure To Pesticides

When it rains, any water that isn’t soaked up into the soil will run off into your pond and

if your grass, garden or flower beds are treated with any type of pesticides, this can introduce excess nutrients, particularly nitrogen and phosphorus into your pond water. There are a few easy ways to prevent this from occurring.

Using natural lawn care products and natural weed killers rather than chemical herbicides and pesticides is one way to reduce the dangers of runoff. Our Dr. Connie’s line of natural lawn and garden products is one option to consider. We have natural, environmentally friendly treatment solutions for your lawn, vegetable garden, flower beds, fruit trees and more.

For instance, Dr. Connie’s Lawn improves your grass root development which ensures a better uptake of nutrients and guarantees a greener and denser lawn. Additionally, keep your grass at its ideal height, which varies by the type of grass on your property.  Often people mow their grass too short to extend the time between cuttings, but it’s best to keep your grass long enough to remain healthy and short enough to prevent pests such as mosquitoes.

Improving your soil quality can improve your lawn’s ability to soak up excess rainwater. Do a soil test to determine the pH level of your soil, which typically should run about 6.5 to 7.0. Talk to a lawn expert to determine the best natural ways to adjust the pH balance in your soil.

Be sure to bag up grass clippings and dispose of them away from your pond, as these clippings can blow into the pond, sink to the bottom of the pond and add to your sludge layer.  In the fall, we recommend bagging up leaves as quickly as possible, as these also blow into the pond and add to the sludge layer.

Adding a rock barrier or berm around the edge of your pond are other options that can help limit runoff from entering your pond. Adding some beneficial plants along the shoreline also can limit runoff as well as shoreline erosion. While this does require initial work to install, once these barriers are in place, they can help prevent runoff for many years to come.

 

4. Remove Excess Vegetation

While planting a barrier of beneficial plants can prevent runoff and adding a few floating aquatic plants can help reduce water temperatures, if you begin to see an abundance of weeds, you will need to remove excess weeds as quickly as possible.

Herbicides can be an effective option to consider, but for those who want a completely natural pond, you will have to manually remove the weeds. This is perhaps the most difficult component of natural pond maintenance as it requires some labor.

With floating weeds, you typically can skim these out and dispose of them. With submerged and shoreline weeds, you will need to use a weed cutter or pond rake to remove all traces of the weeds, including the root system, if possible. If the roots are not removed, the plants will simply begin to propagate again.

It’s often best to remove weeds in late summer, such as in September, because as the temperatures drop, the weeds won’t be as likely to propagate or resprout. It’s crucial that you bag up all of the weeds and dispose of them properly. Otherwise, the wind could scatter seeds and you’ll wind up with plenty of new weeds to battle in future seasons.

 

5. Add Additional Bacteria As Needed

While monthly treatments of AquaSpherePRO® can reduce excess nutrients in your pond, there are times when it can be wise to add additional beneficial bacteria to your pond. For instance, if the temperature in your area suddenly spikes, this can cause the pond water temperature to climb and lead to the rapid accumulation of floating green organic matter.

If you experience a large rain event, this also can upset the balance in your natural pond and runoff from the rains can introduce excess nutrients into the water. For these situations, we recommend adding Natural Blast® into the water. Natural Blast® is another of our all-natural beneficial bacteria products and it simply provides your pond water with an extra dose of bacteria to consume the excess nutrients that accumulate after temperature spikes and heavy rains.

Natural Blast® is an easy-to-apply natural pond care product. Simply toss the water-soluble bags into your pond, ideally near a source of aeration and they immediately begin releasing beneficial bacteria into your pond. Both AquaSpherePRO® and Natural Blast® are veterinarian-approved and safe for fish, wildlife, pets and people.

If you have any questions about our natural pond maintenance products, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us at any time. If you are experiencing poor water quality or other pond water issues currently, we do offer free personalized treatment plans for any size water feature at https://healthyponds.com/free-pond-plan/.

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Why Choose to Autoship?
  • Automatically re-order your favorite products on your schedule.
  • Easily change the products or shipping date for your upcoming Scheduled Orders.
  • Pause or cancel any time.