How do I care for my pond in winter here in Minnesota?
Proper winter care is essential for maintaining a healthy backyard pond, especially in climates like ours here in Minnesota where temperatures drop significantly during the winter. Here’s a few tips to help you prepare your pond for the winter.
1. Cut Back and Remove Dead Vegetation
Trim plants. Cut back and remove any dead foliage from aquatic plants to prevent rotting. This will also prepare your plants to come back healthier in the spring. Water can get quirky in the winter when your pond is doing more sitting under the ice, so keeping trimmed plants healthy helps keep the cycle working properly.
2. Clean your pond
Remove debris. Before winter hits in full force, clean out leaves, dead plants, and other debris to prevent excessive decay. When too much decay and decomposition occurs, toxic gasses can build up under any ice and kill your fish. Having the right filtration system such as a skimmer installed helps keep things from accumulating, as does fall netting over your pond to catch leaves from your trees before they hit the water.
3. Balance water chemistry
Check and adjust as needed. If you are worried about your water, give it a test. Ensure the water chemistry is balanced going into winter, as this can be crucial for the health of any fish. You don’t need to over think this, but if you have no idea what might be going on, give it a test. If you’re not sure what to do with the test results, contact a professional. You don’t want to lose your fish friends this winter!
4. Manage fish carefully
Feeding and general care needs adjust. As the temperatures drops below 60°F, reduce feeding. It’s also recommended to switch food over to a cold weather food blend. The metabolism of your fish slows, and they require less food as well as a different kind of food. Feeding them too much when it gets colder can seriously hurt them. In fact, once temperatures drop below 50°F, stop feeding your fish altogether. Once water temperatures consistently stay below 50°F (10°C), continuing to feed your fish could kill them.
5. Consider water level
Adjust as needed. Ensure the water level in your water feature is adequate. With water freezing and thawing and changing forms so often, it may be necessary to top off your pond with water more often than you might think. Even if your outside water is turned off, you may need to grab water from inside your house as needed to top off your water feature.
6. Pump and filtration system
Keep running or remove. While in mild climates, you can keep your pump and filter running as normal, you may want to think twice here in Minnesota. Keeping your system topped off with water may be more effort than you’ want. If you have fish, you don’t have much of a choice than to leave your system running, but if you don’t have fish relying on the pump and filter then you can choose to shut things down. Removing and storing your pump for the the winter is one way to be done until spring.
If you do choose to keep things running for your fish, don’t forget aeration. Your fish need aeration from an air pump to maintain oxygen levels, which is especially important under ice. While it sounds funny, your fish do need air to breathe! Additionally, you’ll need to provide a pond heater or de-icer to prevent your pond from completly ice over. While ice fishing is great here in Minnesota, your pond doesn’t agree 100%! Your fish need a hole in the ice to allow gas to escape so they can keep breathing.
7. Regular checks
Just keep an eye out on your water feature. Monitor the ice and snow build up. Make sure your pond doesn’t completely freeze over and clear large amounts of snow off so that your fish and aquatic plants are still getting the sunlight they need (because we all need sunlight during our Minnesota winters!).
8. Prepare for Spring
Plan ahead. Late winter is a good time to start planning any changes you want to make to your pondscape or any maintenance you may need to do in the spring. The art of waterscaping your yard is a never-ending journey!
Remember, the specific needs for winterizing your pond can vary based on where it’s located in the state, pond size, depth, and whether or not you have any fish or plants you’re trying to keep alive. Taking the right steps in the fall and early winter can make a big difference in the health of your pond come spring.
If you do need any help with your pond in regards to cleaning and maintenance or knowing what next steps to take to winterize your pond, feel free to let us know how we can help!