Pond Building Tips

A garden pond can end up being a significant investment and one way to protect your investment is to install pond netting.

Koi pond netting, or garden pond netting, is typically synthetic mesh netting designed to be placed over your pond. It provides a shield of protection from various different factors. Face it, if you spend all that time and money building up your treasured pond you might as well take an additional step to add pond netting for protection. You can buy pond netting from retail pond locations and online. Also if on a budget you can go to a garden center and buy netting for fruit trees or strawberry netting. I build a frame made out of plastic electrical conduit half inch in diameter to make the frame for the netting, which is available from home centers.

If you buy mesh that is a small enough pattern you can provide protection for your pond during the Fall. Trees, plants, and shrubs will shed their leaves, and while this is a beautiful time of year it can wreak havoc on your Koi pond. If leaves fall into your pond they can remain on the surface for quite some time preventing fish from surface feeding. As time goes on the leaves absorb water and will settle to the bottom and for a residue layer and start to decay which can eventually pollute your pond and kill the fish inside. To help the residue that will decay in the pond you can add a micro-bacterial product that will absorb the decaying materials.

Another threat to those precious fish is from land faring predators like birds, cats, raccoons, and other predators. These animals by nature will prey on fish, and there is nothing easier for them to grab a quick snack from your garden pond. To these animals and if you don’t protect your pond the fish will soon be gone. Installing pond netting will keep them from attacking your prized Koi and give you peace of mind as well. Another problem that not too many ponders seem to mention are that deer really like water lilies and other types of vegetation.

You may be in the habit of winterizing your pond to by removing the aquatic plants until warmer weather arrives. Part of this process should be the inspection of your pond netting to make sure it is secure, has no rips or tears, and is not sagging in any areas. Doing this yearly will insure that you will always be able to protect your investment and enjoy it for years to come. I usually don’t remove any vegetation that may survive by putting them in the deepest part of the pond and move them back in the spring.

When closing down I believe its best to remove your pumps and install an airstone for oxygen and put in a pond heater that will keep an opening to allow the waste gasses to escape. If you do this every year you should have no problem in loosing any of you valuable investments. When starting backup in the spring it always makes sense to change about one third of the water. Don’t forget to add chlorine and metals removal after adding fresh water.

These are pictures of closing my pond with mesh netting and making a cover out of vinyl soffit purchased at local home center for the Koi to hide under. I have one heater and two airstones running to keep an open hole in the ice once it freezes. We had a wet snow last year 2009 and if left us with a real neat scene with the snow adhering to the net. I usually can’t wait till winter is over so I can enjoy my pond again in warmer weather.