How to Keep Your Pond Clean

If you have a backyard pond, odds are you’ve seen it at its best and at its worst. And it’s worst probably wasn’t very attractive. If you hate seeing your pond looking less than perfect, then you might want to find a way to include some helpful maintenance activities into your daily or weekly yard work. Things like skimming the water, making sure fish are healthy, and weeding around the banks can all help to keep your pond looking great and functioning properly.

Balance the Plants

You want to make sure you have the right balance of plants to keep your pond’s ecosystem healthy and thriving. If you notice some invasive species nudging into the water, then you might want to look into purchasing some aquatic weed control chemicals or tools to get them out. Vines that creep across the surface of your pond or certain weeds that spring up quickly along the banks could potentially choke out your helpful plants and throw the balance of your pond out of whack.

Take Care of the Fish

First of all, adding fish to your pond can do a lot of good to keeping the water and area healthy. Fish like to eat a lot of things that might contaminate your water or take over the area, so they’re a natural helper when it comes to keeping things clean. 

If you do add fish to your pond, be sure not to overfeed them. Fish will eat as long as there’s food, so overfeeding can lead to sick or dying fish which can contaminate your water. Not to mention if you put too much food and it’s not eaten fast enough, it might dissolve and dirty your pond.

Keep the Surface Clean

There’s no way to prevent leaves, sticks and debris from falling into your pond, but there is a way to keep them from making a mess. Be sure to skim the surface of your water frequently—ideally every day—to keep things like leaves from building up. As those contaminants sit in the water, they can start to decay and rot in the water, releasing toxins and making even more of a mess. This can be harmful to your fish and disrupt the ecosystem you’ve worked so hard to create.

Keeping your pond beautiful and healthy takes a little extra work, but if you can follow these few helpful steps then you’ll always have a water feature you enjoy being next to.