Fall and Winter

I was wondering who Oberon was.

Talking about salt. i use the blue 50 lb bag that is used to soften water. I add salt maybe 3-4 times a year, occasional peroxide and baking soda.so far no problems in my pond. knock on wood!!! LOL!!!

Belle

This message was edited Sep 12, 2011 8:55 PM

Hi Belle. Yeah. I am going undercover. lol. I changed my userid to remove confusion with MerryMary. she was here first. It usually only ended up being a problem on long threads where people were responding to 'mary' -- Salting in the fall is out for us. Allows the water temp to go to cold, below 33. Bad for fish. Bad enough they endure 4-5 months of 33F under the ice.

Silly....there's enough "Mary" to go around....Typhoid Mary, Mary Mary Quite Contrary, Mary had a little lamb.... :D

Yes, and i have heard most of them, usually from the nuns in school and usually "Mary Mary quite contrary.....lol

This thread is very interesting. I don't ad any additives at all to my pond. When I had one fish that had an ulcer on its side I took it out and quaranteened it and put rock salt in water a little every day and changed water ea. day. It healed up fine in 1 week. If my fish are sick they don't show it. Nobody comes to surface gasping for air so guess waterfalls airate it. The few plants I have in there may help.
When Merry Mary comes over she can check things out and tell me if anything is wrong until then I'm happy and they all seem happy. Don't have thermometer but when I throw some food in and they don't show interest I quit feeding them for the winter. Right now they are still eating like pigs. Guess you call it dumb luck.
Oberon I can see where keeping fish in Alaska would be a challenge. My husb. loves Alaskan salmon broiled. Wish I did cause its good for us but its yuk to me.
Have a good week all.
Bonnie

I am not totally nuts about salmon either,but my husband is so he eats it several times a week. Since he got so many at Chitna, I guess he has to. No ice on the pond yet. It iced over around the first of November (I checked my pond pictures from 2010) last year I am hoping for a good October. but it was 34F this morning and there is frost on the pumpkin. Good thing I did a bunch of end of summer yard work yesterday. Still have two holes to dig for late peonies coming. Ground will be pretty hard soon.

this is the time of year that I think about adding salt. Soon, the plants will all be cut back and the vacuuming for the winter's nap will all be done.

Mary - where are you on this being in Alaska? Haven't heard from Joy either - what is going on in your pond?

Carolyn

Well, I wrote a note just above yours.....buuuutttt. lol. I managed to catch my 'once every 5-10 years' cold, so haven't been moving around a lot. boy when I get one it's a whopper. Holding @ 39 (upper 30's) at night so presume pond (which seems to hold at about 9 degrees warmer than ambrient temp) is around 40. Clear skies, hence colder weather. Wierd how that works in the fall and winter. I have cleared all plants from pond, except lilies which are cleaned up and in the deep end. We ended up treating the pond with antibiotics just a month ago which required 25% water changed each treatment, so the pond is pretty clean. Just some kitty litter left from the pots in the deep end. So other than pulling pumps and setting up deicers, and one underwater pump to circulate lowerwater, we are ready. Oh, also run a heat trace through the line from skimmer to biowell, and pump out the biowell completely. Then cover it with plywood and plastic to keep out the snow. All this last facilitates start up in spring. The first year the ice plug in the under ground pipe took forever to thaw, like it was the end of June.

Oh, I wish you felt better! At least when you are over this cold, you won't be due for another one in 5 years!

We can only hope. It will pass. Thanks for the good thoughts.

Hope you feel better real soon Mary!!

Thanks Bernadette. Feeling better already with all the good vibes.

Mary-O....hope you're feeling better! Get some rest...colds seem harder to get rid of these days....

It is getting better, or just morphing -- not sure. No, it is much better. Just need to lay low for a bit. Thanks.

Cut back plants in the bogs today. Waterlilies were pulled from the pond, cut back and vacuumed the pond. We will start with salting the pond tomorrow. Water temps today was 52 degrees, so today was the last day for feeding the fish.

It must be hard to stop feeding those monsters. Our weather is so cool, and the fact that the fish have hidden in their caves for their long winter rest makes it easy not to fret about them 'starving'. I know they aren't, but still. I know they come out during the winter, at least the small ones as I have seen a couple in the skimmer in the spring when the ice was still thick.

MS -

I know what you mean - in my mind it is difficult to put to rest that our fish don't eat for almost half the year. Especially during the first year, it was difficult for me to rationalize. As time has gone on, it has gotten easier, but I still have difficulties with it because it does not make sense in the ways we are used to. These babies are our pets, just like our kitties and puppies are our pets.

I already miss them and this was a tough year too. We had temps that topped 100 degrees for close to a week in July. I know our friends in Texas have that happen routinely - not sure about Florida. I was worried then because of oxygen content and we have an additional bubbler that is rated for 7000 gallons and we are just under 5000.

Next month, we will be looking at pulling the pressure filters and the pumps one by one as the water temps drop. Typically, we totally shut down between the week of Thanksgiving and the first of December.

During our winter months, I always try to see what fish I can see through the holes in the ice. Sometimes I do see them, more often then not, I do not see them.

I have such zone envy of our friends in Florida when it comes to ponding.

I do worry about them too not eating. We very seldom have our water frozen and DH does not want the deicer. he thinks they will get electricuted!!! LOL!!

Belle

Oh Belle. That is so funny. But if your pond ices up you MUST have a deicer. Poor fishies will be breathing gases in short order. Carolyn has a full month on us of no ice. I imagine our deicers will go in the end of October before the ice sets in permanently. Three in all.

Carolyn, only once in the time we have had the pond did I see fish through the ice holes. Plus the one winter that I found a couple in the skimmer once or twice. It's funny that you do just what I do, treking out pulling the decier and peering in the hole with flashlight in hand to see if anyone is out and about. I MISS my fishies already.....

Belle

Tell your DH that it is no different than running the electricity for your pumps to the pond. MS is right that if you have a hard freeze on your pond, it will eventually kill your fish. The gas build up will be too much for them.

I already miss my fish as well..... this whole fall thing into winter is depressing.....

Carolyn, do you fish have places to hide or can you see them as they go to sleep and then the pond ices over?

MS -

I don't have any places for the fish to hide, but what they like to do is to get in and amongst the pots of waterlilies. I am thinking that because it is the shallower end, the water is probably a tad warmer there with the deicer over it. the shallower end is about 3 1/2 feet of water.

Ahhh,. So you get to see your fish for a lot longer than I do. Even if they are snoozing you can still see them, especially as they are so big. Damien shut down the biowell, but left the pressure filter running. He brought the big 55W UV into the garage to drain it and store for the winter. We fed the heat trace through the line from the skimmer to the biowell so it will stay thawed out all winter. Makes for an earlier start in the spring. I did some vacuuming though the bottom was really clean. Just some of that dratted kitty litter. Maybe in the next few weeks we will bring in the pressure filter. Last year we had a freeze and Damien said the line to the pressure filter was frozen somewhat. Don't want a repeat of that.

I don't use the kitty litter and I think this may have something to do with why my fish don't typically go after my waterlilies. I use pea gravel, so I have no clay in my potting medium.

Yes, I do get to see the fish as they are sitting at the bottom of the pond. However, if it is anything like last year, the icing over the pond was opaque and not clear. I had wondered the entire winter if my fish with the tumor had survived the winter, which as you know he did, but only to die this past summer. :(

I am switching to pea gravel next summer. How often do you feed the plants and with what? When do you figure the ice will go opaque. Ours is clear (somewhat) for a while before it goes opaque plus, of course, the snow covers it also.

I feed my WL's once a year with the year long waterlily fertilizer stakes. If I had to do it more often than that, it would not get done.

Last year, it went opaque early and stayed that way through the winter. Drove me nuts, I could not see into the pond....

Where do you get your stakes? I have to fertilize each month and as you say, I am lucky to get it done when they go in and maybe once more. Planting in gravel would seem to guarantee that they would be living on what they get from the water and whatever fertilizer they are given.

MS

I order through Webbs or through Foster and Smith.

Scroll down to the Laguna Once a Year http://www.webbsonline.com/catalog/fert/index.html

I guess I had looked at these before. Problem is that while two mini pkgs costs 12.98, the frreight is about $26 from each of the above places because we live in Alaska. Drives me nuts. some places with do USPS but not Webb or Foster and Smith. They insist on 2nd day air to us.

I use the full size, not the mini's....


Too bad you cannot get Ground Service. It would save a fortune.

Some companies will do it, some won't. I was going to get the mini's due to the depth of my pots. they are glorified dishpans. That was what Texas Waterlilies recommended among other things. I guess 7" would work. It would be just about the depth of the pans. I will continue to scout around.

Beautiful waterlilies Carolyn.
I have Tropical Water Lilies this year and will be pulling them very soon. I had heard that you can put them in a plastic bag with some damp sand to over winter. Has anyone tried this and how did it work for you?

Holly


Thank you.

We tried the tropical WL this year and my fish seemed to think they were a delicacy..... so, looks like I am sticking with the hardy WL.

I have heard the same thing as your description above to carry over tropical WL. I am curious myself as to whether this method works. Please let us know - I have never heard from anybody after the fact.....

It was 30F this morning at 7am. The pond was 38F. there was a slight bit of ice in one corner of the pond. It will melt off as soon as the rather cold sun comes up. Supposed to be clear and cold today. Frost on everything. I MUST finish the yard this weekend. I have three bags partially filled with leaves and such in the yard, two beds are cut down but I haven't packed up the stuff, and one cart filled with garden clippings sitting out in the open filling with water when it rains. Still need to warp burlpa around my honeysuckle to protect it from the moose. Also a climbing rose next to my mailbox - stupid moose even take a chomp or two out of it. Part of me wishes it would just snow and get it over with.

Carolyn I will let you know. Cold weather is heading our way, too. I pulled the TWL out and have them drying out in a protected area. The Taro is up in the plant room for the winter and a couple of other marginals are ready to plant in the Veggie Garden for the winter. I have a couple of small above ground ponds and the fish need to be moved out of them and put in the deeper pond for the winter. I moved the Hardy WL out of the smaller ponds and into the deeper pond. Not much else to do to them other than move the fish and drain them.

TWL? Texas Water Lilies? Drying? Not sure I get this. I take mine out, clean them up, cut all the greenery then dump them all in a tub and into the deep end. All hardy but if the ice gets to them, no soap. Oh. Tropical water lilies?? So you dry them out. I would love to get some but they don't seem to make it through the winter, even at the bottom of the pond.

I am thinking TWL is Tropical Water lilies...

Yeah. Light bulb finally went on. duh!

Yes Tropical Water Lilies but they did come from Texas Water Lilies. LOL

So you are drying them out? I would think that would kill them