Preventing string algae and pond de-icers

I took the plunge this last winter and kept the fish outside. I was
told that moving water doesn't freeze so I kept my two pumps on all
winter. One is for a spitter and the strong one is for the waterfall.
Eventually it got too cold and the water stopped flowing from either
the spitter and waterfall (I live in the Toronto area).

Well my plan was to thaw out the pond with some hot water from my
kitchen sink via a quick connect to my garden house. This worked great
but very time consuming. I realized that the pumps were generating
enough water flow to keep the pond from totally freezing and they helped
form a hole on top of the pond which is critical for expelling toxic
gases. I am happy to say that all my fish lived !

I was going to look into a de-icer but cold winters in Canada means that
the deicer would almost always be on and with the price of electricity
these days it was cheaper to buy new fish than save the old ones.

Well I didn't have to buy either !

TheStealth wrote:
Well winter is over here in Montreal and the ice is almost gone from my
small ~800gal pond. I have a few questions to ask before I start cleaning
it out and reintroducing my goldfish.This will be my 3rd season with a pond
and for the past two years I have managed to control the suspended algae
with a few different versions of DIY filters but I always been getting some
nasty string algae outbreaks. I want to know what can I do to prevent these
outbreaks. I have heard that leaving some barley straw in the pond will
help control it. Is this true? Are there other techniques to control it?

The second this I want to ask about is pond de-icers. I have 13 goldfish
and have to keep them in two separate aquariums over the winder months
because my pond freezes solid. Next fall I am afraid the fish will have
gotten too big to keep indoors in two aquariums and I don't have place to
set up a third. I was thinking of leaving them in the pond over the winter
but to introduce a pond heater/de-icer. Is this feasible? If so what kind
of de-icers should I be looking at? Any model or brand that you would
recommend?

Thanks for any info.

Mike