pond heater

Keep Fish Alive With Floating Pond Heater

If you have a backyard pond, especially one containing fish, it may be wise to consider a floating pond heater. Living in an area of the country which realizes extreme temperature variations during the winter, a means of allowing poisonous gases to escape from underneath an ice covering will help keep your pond in a more inhabitable condition.

Rotting vegetation under the water can produce gases which not only cause a foul odor in the water, they can be deadly to fish and possibly to other plant life. By providing a hole by using a floating pond heater, through which these gases can escape, will make a healthier aquatic habitat.

Additionally, by providing a hole in the ice cover, needed oxygen will also be replenished into the water. Some folks may prefer to manually poke holes in the ice, but a floating pond heater can keep a hole opened without having to confront the ice personally.

Keep Opening Available Throughout The Winter

Most floating pond heaters are powered by electric, usually with a ten foot cord, allowing it to float through the water, but limiting the size of the hole. By allowing it to float freely over the pond, it may not be concentrating enough heat in one area to maintain the opening.

The floating pond heater can be placed in the water before the ice forms, and a thermostat allows for it to be turned on and off at a specific temperature. For example, A typical setting of 40 degrees will not turn the unit on until the air temperature reaches that point. When it gets below the set temperature, it will turn on and prevent the ice from forming in the space in which it is floating.

When the air temperature rises above the setting, a floating pond heater will automatically turn off so as not to waste power when the pond probably will not freeze over anyhow. Thus it can be placed in the water in the fall and left to do its job as required until the threat of a freeze has passed. It can then be removed until next winter.

Of course a floating pond heater may have other uses than keeping a hole open in the ice on a pond. A person with outdoor animals may use one to keep ice from forming on a water source for those animals. It can also be used to allow for a water source for wild outdoor animals who may have to go without fresh water when ponds and streams are frozen over in the winter.

Using Pond Heaters To Maintain Your Aquatic Life

They’re lovely, graceful and delicate, well-adapted to their own natural environments. But when you remove fish, reptiles and plant life from nature and into your backyard pond, you’ll need to do for them what they can no longer do for themselves; provide food, shelter, and a dependable pond heater.

Freshwater life – plants, fish, turtles, snakes, frogs, and even microscopic organisms- adapted over eons to live and reproduce in either flowing water such as streams, or still water ponds. A large variety of living creatures can live and flourish in your backyard pond. However, this is an artificial environment for them. In their natural environment, these creatures would be able to freely move about to regulate their body temperatures. Since, as your “guests,” they can no longer fend for themselves, a pond heater is the only way to insure their survival during cold weather.

Using Your Pond Heater: Who Benefits?

Life in your backyard pond is regulated by temperature and oxygen. In cold weather, fish grow lethargic and turtles hibernate for weeks at a time. Your pond heater shouldn’t create bathwater-warm conditions; this isn’t a normal environment for freshwater aquatic life. So, assuming you’re not attempting to raise tropical warm-water fish in your backyard, it’s safe for you to simulate a natural environment by setting your pond heater to a temperature of about forty degrees in the winter. If you live in a cold climate and don’t have a pond heater, all your aquatic life will freeze to death. Pond heaters save the lives of the creatures for which you assumed responsibility, and you’ll learn an expensive lesson.

Just as you use your pond heater to ward off frigid temperatures, setting the temperature too high can be just as disastrous. Freshwater dwellers will invariably escape from pools of water that’s too hot for them to find food and reproduce. If you’re recreating a natural environment, what you don’t want to see are tendrils of steam rising from your pond in January. This is a sure sign that you’ve cooked all your aquatic life.

Many high-quality pond heaters cost a bit more, but they automatically regulate the pond’s temperature to simulate the change in seasons and water temperature. Rather than maintain a constant temperature, which is unnatural to aquatic life, these pond heaters simulate the cool of winter and the warmth of summer without going to extremes that endanger the lives of your backyard friends. Since these pond heaters that sell for about $300 on the Internet provide normal temperature changes, your freshwater fish, plants and reptiles can live, feed, and reproduce just as they would in nature. Your pond will flourish, as will your enjoyment of your backyard slice of nature.