Winter Pond Temps

[callingcolleen1]

I can't find my thermometer to see how cold water is, but I am very sure it is very cold!!

 

[Mucky_Waters]

That's a good idea Mucky Waters, is this the first year doing that? How did the frogs and fish make out last year?

Yep first year. Last year I had some casualties. Even though nothing actually died until spring melt, I'm sure it was because they were in a weakened condition from low oxygen level during freeze up.

 

[MitchM]

Also, the transmitter part of the thermometer, located on top of the ice but buried in snow is reading -2C/29F even though the ambient air temperature is -23C/-9F.
- so some great insulation being provided by the snow cover.

 

[callingcolleen1]

Yes, snow is covering my ice too, that does help keep the pond warmer as well. I saw some fish swimming under the ice threw a little breather hole in my ice, good to know they are doing fine with the pond heater, now I can rest for a little while. Getting colder by the minute, now it is -26c (-15F)! I am sure I am colder right now than most of Alberta!!! What the heck is going on???

sorry to hear of your loss Mucky, I think you will have much better luck with your new system and I like the sound of it very much!!

 

[waynefrcan]

-26 here as well, started up the bottom heater and it warms the water enough to keep a hole open. This year I decided to not run the 1500W bottom heater 24/7 but only enough to keep a hole open.

 

[addy1]

pond went from 34 to 49 in the last few days, it will be diving down again as that out west cold front comes east

 

[callingcolleen1]

Minus 24 Fahrenheit, -31c and it is really bleeping cold!! Ponds flowing nicely and large breather holes open now in ice that's to big 1500 watt heater and flowing water. I can see the fish under the ice nicely now threw the holes.

 

[MitchM]

pond went from 34 to 49 in the last few days, it will be diving down again as that out west cold front comes east

That's a big temperature swing for your size of pond, isn't it?
I've never seen a swing like that.
Where is your sensor?

 

[addy1]

it is around 10 inches down, I am sure the bottom temp is probably more stable, do have a powerful aerator running, so the water does get mixed up. The pond had an inch of ice on it before I got the aerator set up.
Right now everything is melted again. When I had a temp probe on the bottom and this temp probe last winter, the temps were always pretty darn close. The bottom one the wire broke, just have not replaced it yet. Not that concerned about bottom temp, the fish seem to do fine no matter what it is. And I won't do any thing about it no heater used here.
The bog is turned off, it would really pull the temp down with the surface area of moving water.

The water temp has been doing up and down swings, with the darn cold (for us) to darn warm bouncing fall temps, esp when the sun is out.

The aerator keeps the walk out area, the more shallow area of the pond ice free, the deep end ices up, about 1/3 of the pond stays ice free. Right now raining and 50, lost 10 degrees so far today. We are dropping to high 20 during the day next week and 15 at night, The ponds will freeze up again and drop temp again.

We hit 67 yesterday and 60 the day before full sun, it was toasty.

 

[MitchM]

it is around 10 inches down, I am sure the bottom temp is probably more stable, do have an aerator running, so the water does get mixed up. ..

Yes, that would do it.
We get ice at that depth while the 5 foot bottom stays pretty stable.

 

[Mucky_Waters]

OK I found a problem that came up with my new winter circulation arrangement. If you go back a few posts you'll see the pictures of my pond in the summer and now that it's frozen over. This winter I decided to flow the pond water through my bottom drain, into the settling tank, and back to the pond, with all the plumbing located under the ice. If you look at the water levels in the previous pictures they seem pretty close to the same, but I guess with the ice on the pond there is something else going on, and I can see that it may end up being a more serious problem as more ice and snow settle on the pond. The problem is one of water levels. Normally the water level in my pond is maintained by an overflow at one end of my pond which is simply the lowest edge of my liner drains into a sort of dry creek bed area that runs into a rock drain pit. The problem is that with the ice on the pond this overflow drain no longer works! The result is that the water level in my settling tank in my pump room is overflowing.

You can see the normal pond water level mark on the tank, and you can see that the current water level is sitting right at the top of the tank, and there is evidence that it is overflowing. Now I can remove some of the water to bring the level down, but it looks like this may be an ongoing thing that I will have to check regularly unless I can figure something out. The good thing is that there really isn't a lot that that overflowing water can hurt as the floor and walls are concrete and there is a hole in the floor below the settling tank, in fact the tank is cone shaped and extends into this hole where there is just soil and rock that the water can drain away into. However I would rather figure something out so the water doesn't flow over the side of the tank as there are a few other issues with having excess water in that room, one of which is it creates extra humidity in the room which condenses on the metal door and freezes when it is very cold out. If this gets bad enough it could freeze the door shut so I couldn't open it.

 

[MitchM]

I don't think you have many options Mucky. I think the ice and snow are going to keep on displacing and pushing water into your settling tank until the ice melts again.
For what it's worth, I have a fan blowing air on my greenhouse doors continuously which keeps them from icing shut.

 

[callingcolleen1]

I Used to have water from tank to tank, you need to slow the flow down in pump or get bigger out hose from settling tank. Easy to Fix if you adjust the flow...

 

[Mucky_Waters]

I Used to have water from tank to tank, you need to slow the flow down in pump or get bigger out hose from settling tank. Easy to Fix if you adjust the flow...

I'm afraid Mitch is right, slowing down the water flow won't help, you see, the tank is gravity fed from the pond, the pump is located after the tank and sucks water out of the tank and pushes it into the pond. If anything the pump would draw down the water level in the tank, not pump it up. I think my only option is going to be to manually drain water out of the tank once in a while, and just try and keep ahead of the rising water level. Last year I had 3 ft of snow on the top of the pond, I think that would displace a lot of water.
I was hoping I had the door frost issue solved, I built a 3" thick R20 styrofoam plug that fits tightly inside the door opening, but as you can see in the pictures, the moisture still manages to seep by.

 

[MitchM]

It would help with your door frost problem if you covered that tank, too.
I bought some corrugated plastic from Rona that I cut to fit my indoor aquariums. It really reduces the evaporation.