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Message: [QUOTE="callingcolleen1, post: 135595, member: 4209"] Brandon dad2, My hoses do that every year, they make a "tunnel of ice" and so does the waterways, As long as the pump is faster than 200 gph it should not freeze solid. I shut some pumps down to simulate a natural reduced winter flow of water like the creek does here, and everything turns out good. I run about 1200 gph that flows from each pond for the winter. You could get a pond heater just for when it's "really cold", don't worry about three inches of ice, the snow will fall over and everything will go into a deep sleep. As long as the water is flowing, which it should if the pump is not too small, (and you have a good filter that won't clog fast) the fish all be just fine. If your pond has less than 1000 gph and if it is less than 2 feet deep, you will just have to heat more. If it is really cold, my pond can "appear to be a frozen block of ice" but it's not. When the water flows, and it's extremely cold, like below -35 or so, there is still open water pockets in the ice, they may be small, but they are there, with a heater running. If you have large marshes that float, like my naturally floating water iris, the fish go under there and the pond can appear "empty" of fish. The iris acts like a "bale of hay" that farmers used to put in dugout and provides air holes for the fish. [/QUOTE]