Water Gardening: winter covers on ponds ?, 0 by DRH2

DRH2 wrote:
Equilibrium, sorry about that. If you look closely at the dimple/pimple in the center of a number of hummocks or mounds of snow in somewhat of a circle — that’s where the teepee/bubbler is mounted. I’ve attached another jpeg that is a bit easier to understand. The point I think is important is this — as PAX705 has pointed out - even if the pond appears to be frozen over as long as the bubbler is doing it’s ‘thing’ then ammonia and excess carbon dioxide are being stripped out. The air you put in will ALWAYS find a way out! Think of it this way: with a deicer you are dependent on the size of the hole to provide transfer of the bad gases out of the pond. With a bubbler you are not. As long as you continue to bubble gas into the pond each of those tiny, little bubbles provides a surface area to strip out the bad gases. As a result, a bubbler will usually provide about 10X the surface area for removing gases that any heater, deicer or pump will provide. I had to chuckle reading a recent version of a Water Gardening magazine where all they could talk about was using a deicer/water heater for winterizing a watergarden. I guess I’m just not that much in love with my power company!!! LOL!! In my zone (4) your pond will get ice on it. You will not be able to keep it totally open and running at 55 F so you can feed and watch your fish all winter long (plus I’m not really interested in wading out through a couple of feet of snow just to get to my pond to see the fish having fun at 55 F while the rest of us are... you get the idea!) will amount to electrical costs on the order of $100's of dollars per month. Yes, it is possible to turn a heater on and off to reduce the amount of energy consumed and still keep a hole open. But I really doubt that you’ll ever be able to beat 4.5 watts!!! AND get about 10X the surface area for stripping out the gases. However, all I can say it’s worked for me for several years in my pond in this zone.

As to size of the pond? It's about 21x18 or so. About 3 feet deep. Basically we got rid of a swimming pool - best investment we ever made!