Tuesday, August 15, 2017

Ponds Charlotte NC Maintenance- Using A Pond Skimmer To Reduces Pond Filter Load

By Frances King


While not all pond keepers use a pond skimmer in their garden pond to remove leaves and other organic vegetation, those that do tend to have clearer water because a pond skimmer also removes surface dust and pollen which can cause the water to appear cloudy. You will notice that I said clearer and not cleaner. Your pond water may appear clear, but this does not necessarily mean that the water quality is healthy and clean. Water in Ponds charlotte NC needs to be purified or cleaned of ammonia, a potentially lethal chemical to aquatic pond life.

Summer can be the most problematic time for fish ponds, the heat from the sun on the water leads to your fish being a lot more active. Which means they will eat more food which in turn produces more waste; this is when you must make sure your aeration and filter in the pond are working efficiently?

Uneaten fish food falls to the fishpond floor where it starts to decay giving off ammonia and other gases. When feeding your fish, get into the habit of removing any uneaten food from the fishpond surface after about 20 minutes. This will help to reduce the opportunity for the pond water to become polluted.

You will also notice an increase in algae growth during the summer months; this can be down to the photosynthesis increasing growth within the algae. A good way to control this growth is to control how much sunlight the fishpond gets; pond lilies are a great way of controlling sunlight as the wide leaves sit on the surface keeping the water underneath reasonably cool.

A fountain aerator is a floating fountain that consists of a water pump, nozzle and long electrical cord (typically around 50 - 100' but custom lengths may be available.) The water pump sucks up water from a few inches to a few feet within the pond and shoots the water up through a fountain nozzle. Air molecules then attach themselves to the water droplets and fall back into the fishpond. This is how the fishpond gets aerated.

As the debris is sucked into the skimmer, it is trapped in a basket where it can be removed at a later stage. Some pond skimmer models also use a secondary set of mechanical filter pads to trap any leaves and other vegetation that has managed to avoid being trapped in the filter basket.

What type of pond skimmer should i use? The first option is a floating surface skimmer. This option is the best choice for small garden ponds, as it is the cheapest and easiest option to install; simply connect a length of pond tubing to the suction of the pond pump. Furthermore, the depth of the fishpond doesn't affect the operation of this system; simply connect a longer piece of pond tubing between the fishpond pump and skimmer unit.

One thing you must make sure of doing during the winter months is to make sure that the pond does not freeze over if the pond freezes over it can cause serious problems to the pond environment and more importantly to your treasured fish. The problems that arise with a frozen pond is that the waste and other debris cause toxic gases that can't escape, this, in turn, means oxygen can't get in to the water neither which makes for an extremely unhealthy environment for the fish.




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