My pond runs all winter, zone 2/3

[brandonsdad02]

Yes the ones that are still on are led lights.

 

[sissy]

I know some use the others to help warm the water .i used to but no matter how much i sealed them so gave up and went with down lights .

 

[callingcolleen1]

I put mine away for winter cause I paid lots for them and I didn't want extra wear and tear on my underwater lights. These are my first underwater lights and I just love them. Here are some pictures of the fish at night from the bottom pond with the pretty lights at night. You can see the hornwort floating by the Lilly pads.

 

[brandonsdad02]

I try to hide mine in some of the rocks in the pond. I don't want ppl to see the housing or the cord. I just want to see this light coming out of no where

 

[callingcolleen1]

I don't think you can see my cords? are they even in the picture? Now I got a complex!! ( ha ha )
The cords run on the underside of this big sweet flag and the rest is housed inside a hollow log by the pond.

I NEED YOUR HELP!!!

I finally found my dang tap measure after months of looking for it! I have to confess my sins.... I don't know really how much water my ponds hold. I took a guess and thought around 3500 gallons give or take a few hundred gallons.

OK here are the measurements... top pond is square( 6 feet wide, 8 feet long, and three feet deep, with one shelf that is down 1.5 feet in water, runs along one side. The rest is square and pretty much up and down.

The middle pond is rectangular and about 5 feet wide, 12 feet long, 3 feet deep for the most part.

The bottom pond is oval shaped, and 7 feet at the widest, 11 feet long, and about 2.5 feet deep. One self runs along the one side of pond, one foot down, running about 7 feet along one side.

So how much water do you think I have??

 

[callingcolleen1]

Found a "handy dandy" site when I goggled "pond water volume" and I my estimate of about 3500 gallons appears to be in the right "ball park" of roughly 3500 US gallons. (Canadian gallons different) anybody get anything different??

 

[callingcolleen1]

Everything here in Canada just nice, weather could not be better for January, at 37F, or 3C. We have not had the cold weather we normally have this time of the year, but I and my fish are not complaining. Pond Look great, fish look good, resting on bottom of pond. I will get pictures later, tired, worked all day and last night.

I wanted to tell everybody that this time of the year I get some very soft very green algae in pond, not very much, but fish like to eat this in the spring. I took some of the soft green algae into my new clean fish tank, along with some of the hornwort that has been still growing all winter!!! Well let me tell you, the new plattys that I got the other day have eaten all the alage up, so I am going to get some more for the indoor fish. The algae that grows outside all winter under the ice is packed full of taste and very healthy for the fish, not like the algae that grows indoors, as the indoor algae is not so very green, the stuff that is grown in low light fish tanks can turn black and blue, and black or blue algae is not good, it is toxic.

Take a look at the first picture, that clump of soft green algae has been all gobbled up like it was green cotton candy by all the fish in this tank. See the lovely Hornwort floating in the water, I pulled that out of the ice cold pond the other day, the clump in the pond is just huge!!

 

[sissy]

I never saw all the little tiny fish geeze how many are there

 

[callingcolleen1]

Sissy I got so darn many I don't even know, all I can tell you for sure is the "no wild guppies were lost in the cleaning process" .... just in case my hubby is reading this!!! Ha ha ha. That's what I always tell him, but there is no way I could get them all, they breed out of control!!! Self populating like rabbits there are! I often though that they would be real good for very small water features that get too warm for goldfish or too small for goldfish. They would eat the mosquito larva and self populate the water feature quite nice. Maybe this spring I will put some in a water feature or something......

Just look at them! Count them if you can for me please!!

 

[sissy]

oh my looks like a swarm of bees colleen

 

[brandonsdad02]

I really wanted to know how my fishies were doing today so I set out on a mission to find out. Took my cordless circular saw and my garden hose hooked up to the hot water heater to get the job done. I used my saw to cut the ice 2,5 "s deep then I used the hot water to pretty much laser cut the rest of it. Took about 45 mins to get the ice block cut out. Worked good. I really should think about getting that heater set up now.

The white layer on top is from our blizzard on Dec, 20, 2012. You can see the layers in the ice since then. I'm not sure if that much ice really forms each night or what is going on, but it looks really cool

This is another shot of the ice with the pond light shining on it.

 

[callingcolleen1]

Brandon, your fish appear all fine and look "dandy", BUT I don't know about that buzz saw, could had sacred them half to death! Was the saw noisy? Then what if you fell in with the electric saw in hand? You will have to be carefully, can't say I would saw a hole in my ice when the heater would have opened a hole without any possible trama to you or the fish!

 

[sissy]

You may shock your fish changing the water temps to much .Just be careful how much hot water you add

 

[brandonsdad02]

Everything I used was cordless. The saw wasn't very loud since it was a new blade and a battery powered motor. I've only used the hot water this one time and that was to just "cut" the ice chunk. Every other time I add water it's with cold water and I usually put the hose in the bog and let it run in that way.

 

[callingcolleen1]

Well that is very good to hear Brandon'sdad02.... all is well and fish are well, and it is warmer right now up north here in Canada than where you are! Figure that out?