Winter aeration for your pond or water garden is tricky. If you don’t do anything, you are likely to lose your fish if your water freezes over for more than a couple weeks at a time. But if you aerate too vigorously, you may kill your fish! The reason is that the warmest water settles to the bottom in the winter. If you aerate at the bottom, you send the warmest water to the surface and the coldest water to the bottom. So what you want to do is aerate off to the side in approximately 50% of the maximum depth. Of course there are all kinds of variables that come into play, so please contact us if you have questions. But in the majority of cases, the systems below will help protect your pond from a winter fish kill.
Koi Ponds and Water Gardens
All of our Koi Pond Aeration Systems also work exceptionally well for winter aeration. Because cold water holds much more oxygen than warm water, and because metabolic rates are drastically decreased in cold water, you can aerate a much bigger pond in winter with a certain size system than you can in the summer. There is info on each product page regarding how large of a pond you can aerate with these systems, but that is generally for summer use. Go with the high end of the range for winter.
Winter Aeration System for Ponds under 6 acres
These easy-to-install affordable aeration systems can prevent winter kills in ponds. They include airline, an air diffuser and a weather resistant highly efficient linear compressor. Please note that the exact size that a system will work for depends on many factors, including depth, vegetation load, fish load, amount of muck, length of winter and many other variables. Please contact us or send in an Aeration System Recommendation if you would like assistance sizing a system for your pond.
Ponds & Lakes
Sizing an aeration system for large ponds over 6 acres is tricky business. As a very rough rule of thumb, you can aerate two or three times as large a pond in the winter as the same system would aerate in the summer. Usually what we do is install a multi compressor system in larger ponds and lakes for summer aeration, then we can shut down one or more of the compressors for winter. Please contact us or send in an Aeration System Recommendation request to receive assistance sizing a system for your pond or lake.