5 Reasons to Aerate Your Water Garden Pond

One of the more foundational elements of maintaining a clean pond is consistent aeration. Here are PondH2o’s 5 Reasons to Aerate Your Water Garden Pond.  

Some products out there work from the bottom up, while others utilize the inverse strategy. Either way, the overall goal to aerate your water garden pond is to increase the dissolved oxygen levels which equates to a healthy pond and fish habitat, especially during the winter time.

• Find the correct sized aerator for your water garden

Many water garden ponds tend to rely exclusively on a collection of waterfalls for aeration. While this can be a solid and effective method, this typically results in aerating only the surface of the pond while the bottom remains neglected. Ultimately, this can create what is known as an anaerobic environment which means one with extremely low oxygen levels in areas of the pond.

Therefore, make sure you are always choosing the correct pond aeration system to both aerate from the top and bottom of the pond.

• Higher oxygen stimulate the number of aerobic bacteria in the pond

In any pond habitat, there are billions of living bacteria at the bottom of the pond. Aerobic bacteria is bacteria that can only live and thrive in an oxygenated environment.  However, this bacteria also manifest important functions that involve the dissolution of organic debris and the breakdown of pond muck. It serves to note, too, that low bacteria levels can also result in an increase in organic build-up at the bottom of the pond, which you want to avoid at all costs. 

In other words, if you have a build-up of organic debris, this can lead to unwanted changes in your water garden, such as discolored green water. This can be easily curtailed by increasing the amount of aerobic bacteria to sustain the constant organic load trickling into the pond. 

• Aeration serves as a proxy for de-icing during the winter months

During the winter months, your filtration system and fish will be dormant. As this happens, the aforementioned organic debris will continue to decompose and release gas into the water. The gas then can become trapped in the ice which supplants the oxygen and in turn can be fatal to the fish.

And while heaters and deicers can serve the useful purpose of providing ventilation, they can’t provide macro circulation for the gases throughout the pond. Thanks to aeration, this discourages ice formation and also helps distribute the toxic gases to the surface to be released and ensures your fish are safe during the winter months.

• It’s a money saver, too

As mentioned previously, you can aerate your water garden by using a waterfall pump in the winter. However, this can be a quite draining (no pun intended) expense. Conversely, if you opt to use a properly sized solar aerator, this can nullify the need to use the waterfall pump on a regular basis, and thereby saving hundreds of dollars a year in the process, too.

• Decrease overall pond maintenance 

By chronically running your solar aerator on a year-round basis, you can thereby drastically reduce both the maintenance you have to perform and the costs, too. In addition to the other benefits, an oxygen-rich water habitat enables a robust bacteria population which helps remove organic debris, nullify harmful gases and helps lower ammonia and nitrate levels, too. 

Now that your pond is utilizing these aeration techniques, make sure to check out our Water Garden Koi Fish Pond Aeration Products from PondH2o to optimally oxygenate your water garden.

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