Too Early For Pond Pumps? When Should Those Start Up?
We have Amy in North Industry, who asks, ‘Good morning. I have a 500-gallon pond, and is it too early to put my pump in? Because it’s already starting to turn green, and I would like to get the water agitated.’
That’s a great question. Had a ton of people in the nursery this last weekend asking that very same question, and it is my personal recommendation to be patient. The green water does not hurt the fish. It does not hurt the plants. We just don’t like to see it.
The problem with putting the pump in now, is we’re gonna go down to 15 degrees at night, 19 degrees at night, several nights next week, and it’s gonna cool the pond down too cold if you’re pumping that 50-degree ground temperature water back up into that cold air. So I highly, highly recommend you just pump the brakes a little bit, wait about another week to two weeks.
Once we get into that first week of April, we’ll take a look at the 10-day forecast there, and if we dip down cold for a night or two, not a big deal, but we’re looking at probably four or five nights next week and daytime temps that are barely above freezing. The ground is trying to keep that water 50 degrees, so we do not want to cool it off below that, so I would be patient for a few more weeks.
When you do get ready to put the pump in, though, do not put an algaecide in there to kill that algae right away. You want to let that pump cycle for several days, and then it’s a very slow process, maybe over a week or two to get that water clear again. It didn’t grow overnight, and we don’t want to try to kill it overnight either.
‘And what temperature does the water have to be before I can put my ultraviolet light in?’
So again, there are generally quartz sleeves that are glass inside the UV lights, and you do not want any chance of freezing water or freezing temperatures when you’re dealing with that, so I would say you should be fine once we get to about the middle of April. Once you put that UV light in, you don’t have to worry about chemicals because that UV light will nuke all the algae in there, so you just need to be patient for a few more weeks, I think. Putting that in there too early could be detrimental.
Questions? Email us at [email protected] or call one of our two locations: Portage (330-499-0101) or Everhard (330-492-1243).