Keep pump/skimmer going all winter?

15 years ago

As I read about people shutting down there pumps for the winter, I am getting alarmed that maybe my plan to keep my pump going is a mistake. My artesian pump pulls from the bottom of the skimmer through a length of about 25 ft of buried pvc pipe. During the summer, the pump feeds the skippy/waterfall and a bypass. All I have done for this winter is to divert all the flow from the pump to the bypass and drain the skippy. Am I courting trouble?

This is my first winter with this setup. Last year I had a submergable pump in the skimmer with 2 1/2 inch flexible tubing going back into the pond and I had no problems.

Sort by:Oldest

Comments (6)

ichthius
15 years ago
My pond is about 45F. I've turned off all the filtration and aeration, stopped feeding and the fish are doing great. The come up and beg for food but don't get any.

Best fishes
David
www.goldfishgarage.com
bradley787
15 years ago
There is nothing running in my pond for 2 days now. I had a heron attack 3 days ago, and the remaining fish are burried in the leaves in the 4 ft deep part. The leaves were clogging the leaf guard and pump so I turned everything off. It's 42 degrees here right now and actually snowed last night. The water is probably below 45 degrees. Pond is 8 ft by 6 ft. 4 ft in the deepest part.

Is it safe to leave the pump (filtration) off 3 more days until I can get in and clean out the leaves and build a hidding place for the fish?
Related Discussions
how do I winterize my skimmer
Q
Comments (5)
Jeff, You certainly live in a harsher winter climate but I don't do much with my skimmer to be quite honest. But in a Green Bay winter you are going to need to probably stop moving water the way you have all summer-long. Net pond in fall. Move aquatic plants down or out. Remove netting. Late Fall cleaning. Turn off & remove pump. Caveat: Remove the pump(s), and if you have fish then establish a large bubbler (alternate pump) to keep at least a small section of pond free of ice. Unless you get a lot of hard freeze then thaws, repeating, I would think that the skimmer door wouldn't be a problem. I've never considered removing my inlet door (a Savio skimmer). Some winters I've removed my pumps from the bottom of the skimmer; I think I did that the first winter, then the second winter I turned them off but left them in without issue. This past winter I ran one of my two pumps all winter. I have two magdrive pumps, about 3700 gpm each, and we've had two really hard winters in a row. What may be different with your situation versus my situation is that your ice is probably going to be thicker. I had ice the better part of the winter, often thick enough to skate on, but I could see with my setup, which sounds a lot like yours, that I still had water moving into the skimmer & UNDER the ice even as it came over the second falls. That won't be your case. I think your two areas of problems would be: 1) You're going to have thicker Ice at the skimmer door. Possibly thick enough to dry the pump basin. 2) If you kept the pump running the first part of winter, or started it up early during a lot of freeze-thaws towards the end of winter, when the Ice wasn't so thick, you could get a cold snap, like at night, this could block your bio-falls/weir in a way that ice damns or diversions would form and throw your pond's water outside the limits of your aquatic garden. If the plastic on your skimmer and skimmer door is thick, like my Savio, I would think you could just leave it. I have heard of people draining their ponds, especially below or to their rock edge, to protect freeze-thaw action eroding their rocks, but I would hate that look of a substantially drained aquatic garden... but you may be under a foot more snow than we typically have here so the appearance my not be of consequence. I don't know if regular Air Bubblers are enough to keep your Green Bay ice open... maybe others from the far north can chime in here. But the problem I could see with a temporary fountain like pump, say at the center of your pond, is that you could get water pushed up from the pump ON TOP OF the surrounding ice. This just creates more and more ice and could drain a substantial volume of the pond. Good luck next winter.
...See More
Keeping fish out of the skimmer
Q
Comments (18)
Here is the solution I came up with. Not terribly efficient (it needs cleaning every couple of days) but no more dead fish in the skimmer! Ironically, when I went out to take these pics I did find a tiny frog, very much alive, and hiding in the fold between the bellows and the hardware cloth. I've indicated his where abouts with an arrow but you probably won't be able to see him. The hardware cloth was cut to be the sameÂ width as the bellows and then I put some duct tape around the edges to protect the skimmer from the sharp edges. Conveniently, the bolt that holds the latch to close the skimmer is exactly the right size so the hardware cloth can stick to it (though it would stay in place just fine without it). I suppose truly suicidal fish and frogs could find a way to get past this, but it does protect the casual visitor. Only took about 15 minutes to make and doens't add too much to the cleaning routine (though I nearly fell in once trying to get it out!) BasilB
...See More
Running skimmer in Winter
Q
Comments (4)
No i have 2 heaters i was planing on puting one by the wier opening taking the wier door off leaf basket out and filter out to give it better flow. Besides I need to keep an opening so the gases excape I have air filtration towards the bottom any how to keep the water from freezing This is my first year with my fish in a bigger pond out doors. I used to have a preformed pond I would put my fish in my shed for the winter because i did not want the pond to freeze over it was about one and a half foot deep Thanks for the info
...See More
How can I keep frogs out of skimmer box?
Q
Comments (11)
robin, I've got a Savio skimmer. I've had the same problem with the frogs getting inside the skimmer and dying. It hurts when you've fed and got to know them all summer and then that happens at the end of their first year. I did similar to what jan and bradley did, putting a piece of heavy gauge aluminum screen in front of the skimmer opening. You have to be careful with this because if you have any leaves falling they will clog up that screened area much quicker than they would the skimmer basket. I also thought that by doing this just before the weather started to get cold that the frogs would figure out that the skimmer was going to be off-limits and they would head elsewhere. Next year I'm going to try something a little different. I made a small piece of screen that slides behind the handle opening of the skimmer basket, so they can't get through that, and then it folds over the top enough so they can't get over the space at the top when the lid is on. This way I can leave the screen off the front and the farthest they're going to get is into the skimmer basket. I won't have to worry about them getting to the area behing that where the pump is. kimbra, Try the HTML clickable thumbnails. Also, give the frogs some time and they will get used to you. I feed mine crickets and nightcrawlers and they come right up to me now and they'll let me pick them up. Once you coax a few to within a few feet of you with worms others will follow. I think you're always going to have some that just don't want anything to do with humans. Witz
...See More
groundbeef1
15 years ago
Where do you live? Alsaka or Florida. Makes a big difference.

As for no filtration, how many/big are your fish? 3 feeder goldfish, no prob.

10 18" Koi, and you are going to have problems.

Water temp is working in your favor, although you should be aerating it, even if the pump is down. Get an aquarium air pump. They are cheap, easy to set up, and work very well. I spent $15 on mine at Meijer. Just make sure that you put it in some sort of weather resistant shelter.
bradley787
15 years ago
I'm in Austin, and I have now turned the pump back on. I have 4 small GF and 3 koi, less than 6 inches each.
webskipper
15 years ago
Aerobic bacteria in the filter are dying by the millions when the pump is off. If you can somehow keep the whole system running then the bio system will adjust to the cold and the fluctuation in bio loads year round.

I covered my filter falls and it seems to really help keep the heat in since the waterfalls is where most of the heat is released. I use pond heaters because I have a few big pre-forms set up like a brook. One heater is right under the falls to warm the water in the undertow.

Another thing I might have to do depending upon ice forms, is to run a dedicated pipe to the filter falls backwards to keep some bacteria alive and add a "T" fitting to divert water directly into the top pond. This way more water and heat will stay in the ponds. Makes sense right?

One year I stopped the filter falls for an hour and the pipe underground froze. All I could do was run water into the frozen filter falls and thaw it out in reverse. Water eventually came out the pump connection months later.
prairie_bogger
15 years ago
We successfully run our pump (Artisan) and skimmer for at least 2 winters prior to last year. The circulation was skimmer to pump to inground bog filter. Last year we planned on doing the same, until an ice storm (exactly a year ago yesterday) left us without any power for several days. Needless to say, everything froze up and when it finally thawed we decided to just pull the pump for the rest of the season.

When we reinstalled the pump last spring, for some reason the pump wouldn't pull water from the skimmer and we ended up bypassing the skimmer. Never had time this summer to get things corrected and we didn't feel like the "temporary" setup would work for the winter, so we've pulled the pump again.

Since you ran the pump all last season without any problems, I would think that the setup you have this year should work fine. Good luck!

Sherry

Keep pump/skimmer going all winter?

Comments (6)

ichthius

bradley787

Related Discussions

groundbeef1

bradley787

webskipper

prairie_bogger

COMPANY

BUSINESS SERVICES

GET HELP

CONNECT WITH US