My pond is about 45F. I've turned off all the filtration and aeration, stopped feeding and the fish are doing great. The come up and beg for food but don't get any.

Best fishes
David
www.goldfishgarage.com

There is nothing running in my pond for 2 days now. I had a heron attack 3 days ago, and the remaining fish are burried in the leaves in the 4 ft deep part. The leaves were clogging the leaf guard and pump so I turned everything off. It's 42 degrees here right now and actually snowed last night. The water is probably below 45 degrees. Pond is 8 ft by 6 ft. 4 ft in the deepest part.

Is it safe to leave the pump (filtration) off 3 more days until I can get in and clean out the leaves and build a hidding place for the fish?

Where do you live? Alsaka or Florida. Makes a big difference.

As for no filtration, how many/big are your fish? 3 feeder goldfish, no prob.

10 18" Koi, and you are going to have problems.

Water temp is working in your favor, although you should be aerating it, even if the pump is down. Get an aquarium air pump. They are cheap, easy to set up, and work very well. I spent $15 on mine at Meijer. Just make sure that you put it in some sort of weather resistant shelter.

I'm in Austin, and I have now turned the pump back on. I have 4 small GF and 3 koi, less than 6 inches each.

Aerobic bacteria in the filter are dying by the millions when the pump is off. If you can somehow keep the whole system running then the bio system will adjust to the cold and the fluctuation in bio loads year round.

I covered my filter falls and it seems to really help keep the heat in since the waterfalls is where most of the heat is released. I use pond heaters because I have a few big pre-forms set up like a brook. One heater is right under the falls to warm the water in the undertow.

Another thing I might have to do depending upon ice forms, is to run a dedicated pipe to the filter falls backwards to keep some bacteria alive and add a "T" fitting to divert water directly into the top pond. This way more water and heat will stay in the ponds. Makes sense right?

One year I stopped the filter falls for an hour and the pipe underground froze. All I could do was run water into the frozen filter falls and thaw it out in reverse. Water eventually came out the pump connection months later.

We successfully run our pump (Artisan) and skimmer for at least 2 winters prior to last year. The circulation was skimmer to pump to inground bog filter. Last year we planned on doing the same, until an ice storm (exactly a year ago yesterday) left us without any power for several days. Needless to say, everything froze up and when it finally thawed we decided to just pull the pump for the rest of the season.

When we reinstalled the pump last spring, for some reason the pump wouldn't pull water from the skimmer and we ended up bypassing the skimmer. Never had time this summer to get things corrected and we didn't feel like the "temporary" setup would work for the winter, so we've pulled the pump again.

Since you ran the pump all last season without any problems, I would think that the setup you have this year should work fine. Good luck!

Sherry