How to Prepare a Pond for Fall and Winter

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By eggman123
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Preparing a pond for fall and winter is vital to your fish's survival. Unless you plan to restock every spring, read on to see how to prepare your pond for the cold fall and winter months.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

Pond netting
Pond net
Aquarium

Step 1

First, make sure your pond is nowhere near a decidious tree. If it is, you will need to buy special pond netting to go over the pond. This also does two other things for you, keeps predators out and also keeps fish from jumping out of the pond. You can also buy a pond net and scoop the leaves out of the pond.
Step 2

Next, get the fish ready by feeding them less as the water tempature drops. When it gets and stays below 60 degrees, stop feeding them all together. Don't worry, their metabolism slows as the tempature drops, so they don't eat as much when it's colder. When it drops below 60 degrees, they stop eating. DO NOT FEED THEM DURING WINTER!
Step 3

Going back to the leaves issue, if you let them settle, they will mess up water quality and could also have the potential to kill fish, so get them out as soon as possible.
Step 4

Just because your fish has stopped swimming as much, doesn't mean you don't have to do regular things to the pond. You still have to rinse filters, keep algae out, (although they're probably won't be any), and keep checking to make sure your fish are disease free.