Garden Studios

Your pond could be home to frogs and newts which will be in peril if the skin ices over for several days.

That’s since the ice prevents harmful gases from being released and forestalls oxygen from moving into the water.

The best method to avoid your pond from freezing is by installing a pond heater, but unless you’ve got expensive fish you could possibly not desire to add in your fuel bill.

You can also keep your pond pump running, but when this is near the skin it is able to ice up and whether it is near the underside this can disturb the single warmish water available to fish and amphibians.

The alternative is to exploit specially-designed polystyrene foam floats to maintain some small patches ice-free.

Some people use more than one tennis balls or half-full drinks bottles for a similar reason, but when the temperature drops down really low then neither of those will prevent the pond completely freezing over.

Once that occurs the one thing to do is place a pan of boiling water at the ice to soften it.

Don’t pour the boiling water onto the ice, as it will probably just turn to ice itself.

And whatever you do don’t smash the ice because this causes shock waves throughout the pond and will kill its inhabitants.

In the meantime, before freezing weather finally arrives, be sure that the entire dead leaves and weeds had been cleared from the pond and diminish overhanging shrubs in order that oxygenating plants within the water can photosynthesize.