Indoor Ponds Keep Plants and Fish Healthy During Winter Months

If you've never seen an indoor fish pond or are of the mind that the only place for a fishpond is outdoors, it's time to readjust your thinking. Many people love the idea of having a goldfish or Koi pond in their lawn and garden area but find the reality isn't always as wonderful as the fantasy.

Every winter runs the risk of losing the plant and fish life in your pond with the first freeze. As a result, more and more people are coming up with a method for bringing the outdoors, in and forming your very own pond indoors is a beautiful alternative to a tired old aquarium. While an indoor pond doesn't have to be beautiful in order to be functional, you can choose to make it a focal point and conversation piece quite easily.

A fairly simple and inexpensive way to craft an indoor pond this winter season is by using interlocking landscaping blocks to form a basic outline, and place a pre molded plastic pond liner (to avoid leaks), and other landscaping items such as rocks, plants, and soil in order to fill in the gaps. Others have even used a plastic kiddie pool for the fish and disguised the pool by hiding it with bricks or landscaping rocks.

The main purpose of indoor ponds is to protect your fish and plant life from the extreme winter weather conditions. It is quite easy to move the fish and plants from one pond to another. Be sure to keep the indoor pond regulated for temperature and water freshness by using proper equipment. Taking these precautions should keep your Koi fish and your plants healthy throughout the harsher winter months.

About The Author
Rob Bernabe invites you to http://www.artificialgardens.com, your water gardening center. Here we provide tips on water fountain and waterfall ideas. For additional information on related Koi ponds, check out http://www.artificialgardens.com/Building-Koi-Ponds-Can-Create-A-Beautiful-Relaxing-Atmosphere.html on benefits of building Koi ponds.

Get Rid Of Green Water Algae In Your Garden Fish Pond

Do you have a problem with green water in your garden pond?

Many people who have a small fish pond in their back garden commonly experience this problem particularly in the summer, and waste a lot of money and time on buying chemicals to prevent the green water algae, when in fact they can adopt a more permanent and natural solution to the problem, which also ensures the safety of your fish.

This goes out specially to all you pond and fish enthusiasts who generally have small ponds, don't have much cash to spare, or just want to learn how to improve the health and clarity of your water, and so keep happy fish!

I first started my Leisure web site at http://leisure.prior-it.co.uk/pond.shtml in 2003 to show how you can design and build your own homemade DIY bio-filter for if you get that terrible green water (thick green pea soup) in your pond due to water-borne algae.

After much research from various fish pond web sites and forums I got an idea for creating a filter design that was a more attractive than most homemade bio-filters which are often constructed using a "Rubbermaid" tank - a big hulking water tank with appropriate plumbing, usually sat at the top of a waterfall, and which normally requires hiding behind plants, rocks and the like because it is so big and ugly.

Like many amateur pond-owners, your pond is probably quite small, perhaps between 350 and 1000 gallons capacity, and so does not require a massive amount of filtration. On my web site I will show you how to set about building something that looks ok, and incorporates a number of different features to aid easy cleaning, and ensure efficient breakdown and filtration of waste products produced by your fish. For example a vortex settlement chamber, a pre-filter and oxygenating venturi, and more recently a trickle-tower filter.

Since then I have updated my pond filtration setup in a number of different ways, and recorded these changes in my Pond Bio-Filter web site (http://leisure.prior-it.co.uk/pond.shtml), but what was lacking was a way of sharing new ideas, successes and failures along the way.

So I also created a Blog for you that will hopefully act as a way of filling the gaps, and keeping you informed of how things progressed and any news and suggestions.

You can find and subscribe to the blog at http://leisure.prior-it.co.uk/jims-pond-blog/

I hope you find it useful.

Just follow the links to my web site, where you will find information on “How to Build a DIY Pond Bio-Filter”, and “Homemade Pond Venturis” where you will find plenty of detail and lots of photographs.

Good luck.

Jim

About The Author
James Prior is an amateur pond and water-garden hobbyist, webmaster, designer, and builder of all types of water features. Jims Pond Blog and Leisure Website is a useful resource for garden fish pond keeping, and cheap homemade DIY bio-filtration and oxygenation methods and techniques. The website provides ideas and construction details complete with many photographs detailing bio-filters, venturis, trickle-filters, pond and stream construction.
For more information see: http://leisure.prior-it.co.uk/pond.shtml
Copyright (c) 2006, James Prior
leisure@prior-it.co.uk

Overwintering the Garden Pond

It seems that there are always questions in the fall about winterizing plastic ponds. To begin with, clean out all the gunk (composed of fish and plant waste) at the bottom of the pond. Specialist garden catalogues have a little gizmo that attaches to a hose and when the hose is run, the gizmo acts like a vacuum cleaner, sucking debris from the bottom of the pond. Or you can put your pump on the pond bottom and point the discharge into the garden. If you don’t remove the plant debris, it will continue to decompose. Decomposition uses oxygen as one of its primary fuels and this means that oxygen will be taken from the water to fuel plant decomposition. If there is an ice-layer over the pond, and there will be shortly, the water will not be able to replace that oxygen and the pond will go into an anaerobic (without oxygen) state under the ice.

Now, you’ve never quite smelled something until you’ve taken a whiff of a pond that’s in that state. It is basically your very own backyard sewage system. Aside from getting rid of the smell, the reason you remove the bottom layers of material is so any fish you’re leaving in the pond will have enough oxygen to survive the winter. And survive they will as long as you stop feeding them when the water temperature is less than 50F. At that temperature, it is really too cold for them to feed and any food will simply rot. The fish will survive as long as the water doesn’t freeze solidly to the bottom of the pond. If the pond is three to four feet deep, it will not freeze and your fish will be fine. Shallower ponds will either have to have a bubbler, a pump left running to keep an open area open or the fish removed to an aquarium for the winter. But start with removing the gunk.

About The Author
Copyright Doug Green, an award winning garden author who answers pond questions in his free newsletter at http://www.water-gardens-information.com.