Pond Pumps

I do want to announce that it is time to start up ponds, now that the below-freezing temperatures are just for an hour or two in the morning. We’ll be back up in the 40s and 50s in the afternoon, which is what the ground temperature is anyways, so it’s a good time to go ahead and clean out the filter systems. This is the time of year where a lot of people will drain the ponds and get all the muck out of the bottom of the ponds. That should happen about every three to five years, a total cleaning, what we call it, where we drain it down, house the fish in tanks off to the side, get all the sludge out of the bottom, and then refill it. When you refill the pond, it’s really important to use a product called pond water conditioner.

There’s a lot of new homeowners. Ponds have become so popular over the last two decades. There’s a lot of first-time homeowners that didn’t put the pond in, don’t understand how it works. Let us educate you. A couple of things you need to bring in for us to be able to help you: How long and how wide is the pond in feet roughly? Is it six by ten? Are we talking about 30 by 30? It’ll help us help you. And then the rough depth of the pond as well. That’s going to help us figure out how much water volume is in there. Water volume is important because the bacteria that you put in, the algaecide you put in, it all goes off water volume. We’ll help you figure out, if you know the length, width, and depth of the pond, we can help you figure out how much water volume is in there. Then we’ll tell you how to treat properly.

Now, pond water conditioner eliminates chlorine and chloramine instantly on contact, and so as you’re refilling the pond, it’s important to add especially if you have city water. Even if you have well water, this product contains aloe vera that helps regrow the slime coating on the fish, which is a big part of their immune system. It’s very important to use that product in refilling the pond. It makes the transfer of the fish in and out of the water much, much less stressful to the fish.

If you’re having any issues with pumps, a lot of times pumps are pulled and set out in the wintertime, and they won’t always restart. Stop in the nursery. We’ve got a couple tricks that we can use to sometimes get an old pump running, and if not, then we’ve got all of the different options here for replacement as well. We don’t have to always replace the pump. Sometimes there’s only one moving part. It’s called an impeller, and it can be replaced. And so, it’ll keep the maintenance cost of the pond down. If you’re not sure, bring it in. We’ve got experts on staff that can take a look at it for you.

Most pumps are based on the size of the waterfall, but we want to make sure that we’re cycling half the volume of the water in the pond every hour. Now, the more often you cycle it, the cleaner the water becomes. Our back pond cycles 17 times an hour. It’s extremely clean. That’s at the far end of what you would want to do, but it also helps keep the water cleaner because that water is passing through that filter system 17 times an hour. The minimum you want to pass it through is half the volume in an hour. So, if you have a 3,000- gallon pond, you want to have at least a 1,500-gallon-hour pond pump. The rule of thumb is for every inch wide the waterfall is, you want 100 gallons an hour of flow. So, if you have a three-foot-wide waterfall, you’re going to have a 3,600-gallon-hour pump, and you’ll be cycling the pond more than once an hour as it is. We help people with that all the time, and the different heights of the waterfalls affects the pumps differently. Some pumps will slow down much quicker. Other pumps that have a little bit more copper windings in the motor that will be able to push that water much higher. There are different pumps for different jobs, and we want to match up. We’ll ask a lot of questions when you come in and you need a new pump because we want to match up for the pump that’s going to last the longest in that environment.

If you’re just going to do this for the first time, don’t be afraid of it, go and talk to the folks at Rohr’s. They can really help you get started. Call or stop in for all of your pond, plant, and fish needs.

Questions? Email us at [email protected] or call one of our two locations: Portage (330-499-0101) or Everhard (330-492-1243).