BARLEY STRAW FOR YOUR POND
Barley Straw the newest old time remedy for algae control in modern ponds and water gardens!
Barley straw has gotten some good buzz in the pond industry the last few years as a natural remedy for algae control, but this “new” product actually has some history behind it,
THE “NATURAL” POND
Each year I get several calls about natural ponds that need to be worked on. I enjoy working with natural ponds a lot and get great satisfaction from reviving ponds that are on their way out or have been “dead” for some time.
Read MoreTHE STAYCATION POND
Every now and then we all come across a new buzzword. Well, in my industry and in several others as well one of the latest “buzzes” is the staycation. Maybe you’ve heard of this latest trend with homeowners.
Read MoreDE-ICING YOUR POND PT.2
Now you’ve chosen what type of de-icer you plan to use it’s a good idea to know how to install them. It is best to place the de-icer in your pond at the time of winterizing your pond. You may not necessarily have to have it plugged in but it is staged and ready to go. The floating de-icer is best installed away from the edge of the pond as far towards the middle of pond as the cord will allow, if you have a larger pond you will want ot consider using multiple units. Many floating pond de-icers come with attachments to keep the heating element from coming in contact with pond edging or equipment.
Read MorePOND SAFETY AWARENESS
Pond safety is a pretty tough topic to be able to come to any one solution as to what would be definite guidelines for safety. The difficulty in defining this matter comes from the fact that there are so many types of ponds, waterfalls, koi ponds, fountains, water features, and streams. Each one has its own safety issues that need to be addressed. Discussing some good general guidelines for pond safety should help any reader fine tune some pond safety guidelines for your particular pond installation. Safety is an issue/concern that is often expressed by people who are in the pond market looking at doing a constructed pond installation. Pond installation safety can be addressed regionally as well in that guidelines, regulations and codes of safety will vary from state to state or even town to town; a New Jersey pond installation will not be looked at as the same pond if it is a Pennsylvania pond installation.
Read MoreA WORD ON POND EXCAVATION
Pond digging! That seems to be what most call this activity. I call it pond excavation, and as a professional pond excavator that seems to sound so much better to me.
At some point every pond builder has heard, and will hear again, the suggestion from a potential customer, usually while in the negotiating process; “I friend of mine has a backhoe and they will dig the hole, can you do all the rest after them to cut costs a bit?”
Read MoreFEEDING YOUR POND FISH
It is drawing near the end of summer and it is time to make sure that your koi, goldfish, and pond fish are getting all the food that they care to enjoy right now! This time of year is an excellent time as a pond owner to take advantage of their voracious appetites and let them build the fat reserves they’ll need for those winter months when pond fish no longer are taking in sustenance. It is a good time to be able to interact with your koi fish as well, if you’re interested in hand feeding your koi this is a great time to give that a try.
Read MoreFROGS AND SKIMMERS, OH MY!
It is early winter time here in the Northeast, a time when pond pumps in many ponds that have skimming systems suddenly and seemingly for no reason just stop working. I seem to get many phone calls this time of year that “my pump has suddenly died, it was working this morning and this afternoon it has just stopped”.
After so many years in this business and seeing patterns and situations that develop at given points in the year my first piece of advice for those customers with “sudden dead pump syndrome”, after telling them to unplug the pump, is to ask them to check the pump intake to see if their neighborhood frog has it’s leg caught in the pump intake. I estimate that about 90% of the time that is what the problem is. Most of the time if the problem is brought to my attention early enough the frog can be released and be on its merry way, hopping a bit crooked, but all the same on its way.
Read MorePONDS AND RAINY DAYS
Driven inside. Yes, believe it or not another New Jersey rainy day in the summer of 2009. You know my pond work is outdoors most of the time so I only get rained out by heavy rain with thunder and lighting, and that’s what we have today in New Jersey. So, it’s a good excuse to give the pond construction crew a day of rest, and the pond maintenance services tech a day to cool off too. But for me I just find another way to work, and this seems like a golden opportunity to talk about ponds and watergardens and how rain can affect them. Full Service Aquatics customers come to expect clear water in their ponds on a consistent basis, and that’s what we deliver to them, but there has to be an exception made when Mother Nature decides to drop that wonderfully precious, nutrient rich rainwater from the sky. Rainwater is one of our greatest gifts but water full of nutrient is not always great for our koi ponds and water gardens, especially in great quantities.
Read MoreWELCOME TO THE LOVEYOURPOND BLOG
Welcome to the LOVE YOUR POND blog. Start date 9/09. I hope you will find this blog entertaining, informative, and worthy of your time reading it. The blog is dedicated to all things aquatic, and we will discuss topics that will range from water gardening to fish breeding, aquarium keeping to filtration systems, the backyard pond to public botanical gardens, water conservation to rainbarrels. As this blog develops it will become a wealth of information for the reader and we encourage your feedback on all topics too, together we can make this something great! My goal will be to keep this blog updated often, and topical; your feedback will keep this author on his fingertips and create the outlet for more topics to be developed and discussed here. This blog will not only cover the success and sunny side of all things aquatic, it will delve into the difficulties of this passion and the realities of this passion which are not always easy topics when writing about a passion.
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