Care and Maintenance Tips to Improve the Quality of Water Garden and Ponds

Installing a small water garden or a pond is one way to boost the value of your property and achieve a beautiful outdoor space. Of course, to maintain the beauty of your space and the health of aquatic creatures in the pond, you’ll have to keep the water clean and algae-free regularly. And that takes more work than just removing debris from the pond. In today’s post, we are listing down maintenance tips to keep your pond clean:

Improve Oxygen Level

A well-aerated pond keeps algae from growing in the water. Algae are aquatic plants that rob the water of nutrients. As the algae grow, the aquatic creatures that live in the pond will die.

There are many ways to boost air circulation and prevent overgrowth of algae. First, you can install a lake bed aerator on the bottom of the pond. The mechanism has an air compressor that will push water in and out, boosting air circulation. As the water moves in and out, the dissolved oxygen will be dispersed within the water. At the same time, the lake bed aerator also eliminates toxins under the pond bed, minimizing the chances of toxins seeping into the water. Adding a small fountain can also keep algae breakout at bay.

If there’s an algae breakout, you have to remove as many algae as you can manually. Start by checking if the filter is clogged then proceed with removing the algae in the water.

Treating the Water

Algae can make the pond water deadly for freshwater fish. It creates sludge and muck that suck up the oxygen and reduce the nutrients in the water. When algae spread in the water, the water becomes murky, and smelly. Good thing there are some types of bacteria that can break down pond muck and sludge. Treating your water with solutions fortified with natural bacteria, helps keep the water algae-free. Such solution can also eliminate smelly pond water.

Limiting Sunlight

Yes, you can limit the sunlight that enters the pond water. This will minimize the growth of algae and aquatic weeds. One way to do this is to add a pond dye to the water. A pond dye causes the sunlight to bounce off the pond. When this happens, the aquatic weed and algae have very little chance of getting the nutrients they need to grow and spread.

Boosting Nutrients in the Water

Introducing beneficial plants to the earth bottom of the pond ensures that the aquatic creatures get the nutrients they need from the water. You can either use normal terrestrial plants or aquatic and marginal plants to boost oxygen level in the water. For instance, hibiscus is an excellent plant to add to a floating island because it’s effective in boosting nutrients in the water. Water snowball and water willow are great choices as well. The great thing about adding plants to a pond goes beyond improving the water. It can also highlight the beauty of the pond.

Changing the Water

It’s important to change the pond water regularly. According to experts, you’ll have to change 10% of the pond water each week or about 40% every month.

Dealing with Green Water

Sometimes, you will still end up with green water no matter how careful you are in terms of maintaining the pond. Our advice is to use an ultraviolet sterilizer. This is a germicidal UV lamp that reduces algae by up to 99%. Once the algae die, they have to be filtered out otherwise, the dead algae will decompose causing toxin buildup.