Before winter arrives and the pond freezes over for the first time, care is due. Because not all plants and animals in the pond can tolerate severe permafrost.
Who removes leaves and dead plant parts from his pond, has already done the most important things. Because this organic material would sink to the bottom of the pond over time and rot there. When it rots, oxygen is removed from the water, that plants and animals need to live, at the same time fermentation gases are produced, which degrade the water quality. Your pond will be frost-proof, if you pay attention to the following:
• A few places should be kept free of ice, so that digester gases can escape. Because you will never get your pond completely clean.
• Be careful with water lilies, Water hyacinth and water salad: They freeze to death easily. Ponds with less than 60 cm depth can freeze right through, the aquatic plants would be destroyed, which is why they should better spend the winter in a large bucket indoors. Freezing does not harm domestic aquatic plants.
• Not hardy marsh plants, gold flask, Pike-herb and water ear, are protected against the cold with bubble wrap or spruce veins.
• All electrical parts such as fountains, Pumps or lights come from the water and are stored in the house. What is permanently installed, must be so wrapped and insulated, that it doesn't freeze.
• Liner ponds and plastic pools with sloping walls can freeze, without the material suffering.
• It is different with most masonry ponds or concrete pools: Pools with steep walls must be emptied before winter, because they can burst, when the water freezes. The plants then hibernate in pots indoors.
• This danger also exists with mini ponds in the bucket. If possible, you will be brought into the house and, if that is not possible, with bubble wrap, styrofoam, Straw or leaves protected from frost.
Before the first frost: The main cleaning and planting work – Leaves can be easily fished off the surface of the water with the catcher. This has to be done every few days in autumn.
Rolled bamboo mats like ice preventers made of styrofoam ensure this, that digester gases can withdraw upwards. Plants that are too close together are now thinned out a little, so that not too many dead leaves get into the pond water.
Thread algae are usually fused into balls and can be pulled out of the water with a rake, when they get out of hand. With the sharp spade, too large a swamp becomes- and aquatic plants are now divided and reinstalled.
Autumn is the right time for replanting hardy plants. Planters made of coconut fabric or plastic lattice pots are good.
Winter quarters for animals by the pond
• Fish can only overwinter in ponds, that don't freeze all the way through. They are caught from shallow ponds and placed in water buckets around the house.
• The ice cover must never be broken into, because it stuns the fish. Even worse, the shock can burst your swim bladder.
• In late autumn, frogs and toads look for their winter quarters in the layer of mud on the pond floor or in piles of leaves on the bank. So as not to disturb them, thorough pond cleaning is postponed until spring, when the animals have finished their resting phase.