Wintering my Fish

"TheStealth" wrote in
:

I've got a pond (~800 gallons) with 13 goldfish. I live in Montreal,
Quebec so leaving them outside in the winter is out of the question
(the pond is currently solid). At the moment I have them indoors in
two aquariums (one 30 gal and one 20 gal). Next year I fear the fish
will be too big for these small aquariums so I was thinking of maybe
getting one of those Rubbermaid Stock Tanks and Putting it in the
garage for the winter. My question is does anybody know where to buy
one of these in the Montreal region??? Or know where to buy a similar
product?

Mike


I have a pond about the same size as yours and I live in a similar
climate - central Wisconsin. The ice on nearby Lake Winnebego is about 3
feet deep this time of year. We've had continuous sub-zero deg C weather
for about 10 days and about 6 nights in a row of sub-zero deg F nights.
This winter I faced the same dilemma as you anticipate for next winter.

I'll tell you what I'm doing, and in the spring, I can tell you how it
worked out. The pond had intermittent surface ice, starting around late
November. In mid December I shut off the circulation pump and put in a
bubbler at the bottom of the pond and I left a heater plugged in. I used
a small pond heater (28 watts ?). That kept a fairly large hole in the
ice (about 1 - 2 feet diameter) depending on the weather. All was good.

Then we had our first cold spell of the season. The air temperature went
down to -20 deg F one night. In the morning the pond was solidly frozen
over and the bubbler had stopped. The heater must have developed a leak,
it triggered the ground fault interrupter and that shut off both units.

I used a couple of gallons of boiling water to bore a hole in the ice. I
ordered a new heater, and I found an old aquarium bubbler and dropped the
air tube into the hole in the ice. It took 3 days for the heater to
arrive. In the mean while I had to pour a couple of gallons of boiling
water into the pond every 4 - 6 hours to keep the hole open.

The new heater arrived a few days ago. The weather has been relatively
mild since then, night temperatures around 0-5 deg F, day temps about 20-
30 deg F. So far the new heater is maintaining the hole.

I'm sure I didn't cook the fish with the hot water, but I probably did
cause the pond water to warm up slightly for minutes each time I added
the hot water. My bigger concern is that some of the fish may have been
frozen in. I'm sure there was always at least a foot depth of liquid
water at the bottom of the pond, even on the worst days. Would the koi
and goldfish stay down there? I'll find out in a month or two.

To get back to your original post - if you decide to leave the fish
outside and use a heater in the pond, keep a back-up unit handy. In the
coldest weather you might want to run two units.

Good luck,

Rich