well...I went out to the pond today as most of the ice has melted. Unfortunately, every critter that was unaccounted for is dead except 2 frogs I havent found yet. I'm sure they are dead somewhere. I am def investing in a net this year. So much crap found its way into the pond..turns out the white stuff was a piece of newspaper, a piece of burger wrapper, and what looked like a wet napkin. I'm pretty ticked..none of it was from me..was all stuff from litterbugs. There is also a plastic bag stuck way up in a tree where I cant reach it. The house next door has been vacant, and I suppose some of the crap came from over there. So much litter is in that yard, plus their garbage cans blew over awhile back into the backyard..guess they didnt take that last haul out b4 they moved. I hope there arent any bags in my pond!!! God, people really p!ss me off. Someone threw an empty vodka bottle in my driveway the other day..what is wrong with people??? I need to move out into the middle of nowhere so I dont have to deal with this anymore. Sorry about the rambling..guess I needed to vent. BUT white stuff mystery solved. No fish living. I have decided to empty & clean the whole thing come warmer weather, and start all over again. Maybe I will take some algae mixed with wet leaves from the pond, make balls out of it and whip it at people as they litter by my house..right at their heads..that could be fun. I could wear camo and hide in the bushes, lmao. Sorry to hear about the fires..kinda odd it happened twice. But I'm not gonna get involved in all that lol.

You may have seen this on the forum: no two ponds are alike. Even two identical preforms will differ due to environmental factors and the way they are set up. You should observe the systems of your pond and make adjustments accordingly. I expect my pond to be very different this season since several trees have been removed exposing it more to the wind. Since my pond is 1000 gallons it is much more forgiving than yours will be but I will still need to adjust for the new conditions. I have only run the waterfall all winter for two years of the 9 I've had ponds so I don't have much good data for this winter. I will need to keep a close eye on the water flow to and from the Skippy. My pump is about adequate for the volume of water in my pond, especially once you consider the rise to the Skippy. There are a number of things that reduce the actual GPH such as head (the vertical distance the water is pumped), the filter type and size if you use a pre-filter, obstructions, and friction through the tubing, not to mention the condition and age of the pump and the diameter of the tubing. My tubing is 2 inches. That is why you need to observe what is going on. If your pump is 500 GPH, it should be quite adequate for your pond but that doesn't mean the tubing will remain unfrozen in zone 5 winters. I doubt the volume of water going through 3/4 inch tubing would be enough to keep the tubing ice free. If the pond or tubing is exposed to the wind, or to sub-zero air temps, it is almost certain to freeze. That makes a waterfall impractical for your pond. A bubbler/air-pump would be a good investment. Use a bubbler the same size you would use in an aquarium that holds 150 gallons of water. I use a very large aquarium bubbler with two output ports to make sure there are no dead spots and there is enough oxygen in the water. My fish like to swim through the bubbles, especially when they are chasing each other. There are really too many fish for the pond, so it is important to keep the water well oxygenated. The bubbler stays in the pond all year round. There are bubblers available for outside use but they are expensive. If you keep the air-pump enclosed it will do fine. Avoid excessive tubing length. Until last year, I used a DIY deicer. It is a Rubbermaid tote with the bottom cut out and a 25 watt rough usage light bulb suspended inside, supported on a shelf of Styrofoam with a hole in the middle. One poster suggested placing a net under the bulb in case it breaks. It works very well but doesn't look very pretty so I got a deicer last year that resembles a rock but didn't need to use it since the waterfall was still working. There are other DIY designs that are not so ugly. There are a lot of options. Your main concern, as I see it would be your fish. Since you may have problems to start with, you may want to consider putting the fish in the garage or inside for this winter. It is not fun trying to rescue your fish in sub-zero temps with a blizzard approaching. A large, new garbage can with a small pump and filter works just fine for fish around 6 inches. Lots of ponders here take their fishies in for the winter.

Thanks for all the info. Right now my fish load is hopefully okay... I had 17 from over the past few years (5 are about 6", several at 3-4" and the rest smaller)and now I have another 19 babies that were born this year. So a total of 38. These fish are growing quickly, and if I start getting another 20+ babies each year.. I'm quickly going to be in trouble... And I just made the pond bigger this spring so now its 1500 gallons metered. Since I was at the pet store the other day, I did enquire whether or not if they would take any babies, but they say they didn't as they weren't set up to quarantine fish from outsiders...

There are several sites that help you determine the volume of your pond. Just do a search on your browser for pond volume calculator. You should leave a de-icer on all the time since it works on a thermostat. It only uses electricity when it comes on so operating costs are minimal unless you are in the arctic circle. Since it is not attempting to raise the level of all the water all the time the cost would be far less than your heater. The area it melts or keeps from freezing is usually only a sliver, maybe a quarter of an inch, around the de-icer. It stays on the surface rather than sinking like your heater. In Pennsylvania it is unlikely you would have a problem if you plugged it in before the ice actually formed. In zone 5 I have never had the ice to be more than 6 inches and that was in sub zero cold. There are several on the market and readily available online. Cost is pretty variable. I can't judge brands simply because I have not needed to buy that many. One I purchased at a feed store 20 years ago in northern Wisconsin and the one I have now that I have not needed, I got at Menards year end sale. I have seen them at Tractor Supply, Fleet Farm and various pond shops. If I remember correctly they are more expensive than the heaters since they require the thermostat. If you don't want to spend that much you can make your own. I did that the first few years after I dug this pond. I used a refrigerator or rough duty lightbulb, the necessary wiring and a Roughtote storage box with a hole in the bottom and a float or raft made from some scrap Styrofoam board. There are plans somewhere using a search if you are curious. It cost about $10.00 with the scraps and odds and ends I had on hand. A piece of cheesecloth stretched over the hole keeps the bulb from shattering or if it does,keeps the glass out of the water. I used Great Stuff as an adhesive. The only problem was it was ugly! On the otherhand, if you use a bubbler, a de-icer isn't likely to be needed at all. My bubbler and 2 airstones go all year long for very low cost and effort. drh1, Professor David, makes an excellent case for a bubbler by itself to zone 4. The entire very excellent thread is linked below and gives more info than I can give in this post but this is his argument. "Posted by drh1 z4 VT (My Page) on Fri, Aug 20, 10 at 17:55 Hi Jenny, First, the more important questions: Nope, leaf peeper season hasn't started yet! That's usually the end of September - first week in October (for the Champlain Valley). Already many motels and Hotels are booked solid. Shoveling snow?? When one is retired it is irrelevant. You get up, you look out, you say "oh, it snowed last night; looks like 18". Isn't it pretty". You have another cup of tea/coffee; go back to bed or not. Wait until Spring to shovel out. Not-a-problem! Now to your questions: First let's deal with some heresy: a hole in your ice DOES NOT MATTER! Gasp! WHAT DID HE SAY??? Nope, it's all about providing a surface for gas exchange. IF... you're using a heater, a light bulb, stock tank heater, etc. then it IS about keeping a hole open since that is the only surface over which the gas exchange can take place. However, with an aerator the gas exchange surface is in the bubbles...NOT in the hole that may or may not be in the ice. All that air you pump in there has to go somewhere otherwise you'd have the equivalent of one of those air-hockey games only with an "ice puck" floating on an air cushion! But that doesn't happen...the air finds a way out - through a crack, through the edges, though a hole. So if it "domes over"...so what? The air is STILL finding a way out. And because you are pumping air in it is the aggregate surface area of all those bubbles that is providing the surface area for gas exchange...and it is HUGE! With a stocktank heater in our neighborhood with our winters you might get a few square feet for a hole although at -20°F you might find it disappears! But the aeration approach continues to put out 10's of square feet of surface area every minute!!! As a result not only will you keep more than enough oxygen in there (not really that much of a problem given that the metabolisms for the fish are almost non-existent as well as the microbes involved in consuming organics - and oxygen - aren't doing too much...but still not exactly zero!) but you will be stripping out ammonia and carbon dioxide and other gases you wouldn't want trapped under the ice. This is the real benefit of the approach to using aeration. As to the plastic tent? Not sure it does too much although it does allow me to see the hole for an extra couple of months. But I've had it get ice inside, even an inch or so ABOVE the water level... but still not really relevant as long as the aerator/bubbler is doing it's thing. Note the ice auger in one picture...I went out to check one fine February day (think high of -10°F!). Couldn't really see a hole in the ice under the teepee. Drilled a hole and looked...yep, everything was working fine. But the ice melted out under the teepee more about a month before it melted out of the pond so there is some solar benefit. The real purpose of the floating thing is to hold the aerator above the bottom of the pond. As to adding a stock tank heater on the coldest days?? I wouldn't bother. If you lived in zone 6 or 7 you might have some impact on the temperature in or around the heater but in my zone (and I suspect yours) adding even a 2500 watt heater is akin to performing a particular bodily function into the wind! Yes, it probably will melt out a hole, but once the heater is down near the bottom of the pond with an outside temperature of say -15° or -25°F I suspect there will be no measurable impact on water temperature. Having a heater on hand, however, does provide a way to work on thawing out a line if it develops an ice plug. I don't own a heater since, as mentioned above, I use other approaches for that problem. Like I said.. it works for me and as posted in the URL above it works for other folks as well. The problem is to understand that you are not really trying to HEAT the water to some acceptable limit but rather maintain a surface area open for gas exchange. I like cheap. I like what works...and so far, over several years, it has worked for me. The biggest factor will be whether your pond depth and volume will provide the heat transfer necessary to keep a water layer below the ice, i.e., making sure the whole (no pun intended!) thing doesn't freeze up! ---David" I definitely recommend you read the entire discussion. Anything David or Horton write is pure gold and it should reassure you. Here is a link that might be useful: Complete discussion on ice holes for ponds