Feeding: As the temperature will drop this will mean that any fish you have will have a slower metabolism and you should feed considerably less, if at all.

Plants: Remove any dead plants and to save lots of hassle cover your pond with a net, to stop leaves falling in, but prop up a small section so that amphibians can get in or out should they want to. You really should put a net over the pond because when leaves fall into the pond they sink to the bottom  start to rot and decay, this produces toxic (to the animal life) gas which if the pond freezes over will be trapped inside. 

Frozen: If your pond does freeze over DO NOT hit the ice with anything as doing this will create shock waves which can harm / kill any wildlife in the pond. Instead pour boiling water on to the ice to melt it, or you can use a pond heater which should be left running 24 / 7  We have heard of putting a child's ball on the pond on a "dome" but we have found that if it is really cold the ice will adhere to these and you can not easily remove them.

Filter: If you have a filter we would suggest that you raise the pump (rest it on a couple of bricks.) so as to not disturb the warmer bottom layers of water, and turn its flow rate down. You can also switch off and or remove the u.v. unit since if the water flow is very slow it may freeze and damage the quartz sleeve.

We really do not recommend turning your pump off, if you have, switch it back on and follow the advice above.

Some will say that that you can turn the filter off completely, we would disagree since when you turn it back on  you will be dumping a whole load of dead bacteria into the pond.

Pumps are another debatable question, some say that you should take the pump out and store it in a plastic bag, some say take it out and store it in a bucket of water (In either case to stop the seals from drying out) We personally leave the pumps in situ since in our case the water never freezes  that deep. The choice is yours.

since click me 

0 21 10 06   19 07 01 07