Drought stricken pond

josusa47

My little wildlife pond, about a square metre surface and 13 inches deep when it's full, has lost almost half its water.  I've taken out the little solar fountain to reduce evaporation.  It's full of Canadian pondweed aka Elodea, there are two water lilies and no vertebrates.  I'm saving my precious store of rainwater for the garden, and I haven't much left of that.  The pond gets about eight hours of sun and the water gets quite warm.  I'm wondering whether to top it up with mains water.  I suppose that would be less harmful than leaving it to dry up any more.  What's everyone else doing?

Fire

I'm topping mine up every other day, with tap, as I've keep the little fountain in (off gasses the chlorine) and it's mostly a glorified bird bath.

Joyce Goldenlily

My circular pond is 6ft diam. 4ft deep, in full sun all day, and I am topping up with tap water every 3/4 days. It has waterlilies and iris growing in it as well as oxygenating pond weed which is very thick and the tap water does not have any adverse effect that I can see. There are frogs, snails and sundry zzzy things living in it and they all seem fine. I think if you are worried about using tap water that there are products which you can add to ponds to dechlorinate the tap water. I use one for my indoor aquarium but have never bothered with the pond as it doesn't seem to need it. I do not have a fountain in my pond as waterlilies do not like moving water..

josusa47

Thanks everyone.  I'll get some water in there.

wild edges

Check if your water supplier uses chloromine. If they do you'll need to treat the tap water with a product that removes it. If they don't them just add smaller amounts of tap water and use your pump to gas off the chlorine. Too much tap water will start to kill off benefical bacteria in your pond water and can cause algae blooms and problems like that.

Hostafan1

My lake is 0.8 acre and is about 12" below the overflow.
There is absolutely nothing I can do to "top it up".

Buttercupdays

My pond isn't as big as yours @Hostafan1, but it isn't down quite as much, though of course, it isn't as deep either!

It does get a fair bit of shade from trees, which must be helping, but I am watching very anxiously as it is the only water I have to water all my plants, now that the spring that supplies the house has dried up!

Only time in 34+ years that this has happened and there are a fair number of houses in the area that are off grid as far as water is concerned.

My boggy border isn't boggy at the moment, but the ground is still damp if you dig down just a little. Working anywhere else is very odd, as if I pull up a weed, all the soil just falls off as dust - never had that happen before!

Hostafan1

My concern is that the banks will dry out and crack the clay liner underneath.
More correctly , it's a dam , rather than a lake and if the clay breaks up, I'm in big trouble. There is , however , absolutely nothing I can do about it.

Buttercupdays

Our pond is also formed by a dam across a tiny valley, but I'm not sure if it has a clay liner as such. The subsoil here contains a lot of clay, with loam and silt above and the water table is generally so high that holes easily fill with water!

The pond did completely empty one summer, we think because the ducks dabbled their way into an old sough that runs underneath!

There are lots of them under the fields, really deep, dating from the 19th century or even before  - there's been a house here since 1674. Luckily it blocked itself up and refilled fairly quickly (it was a normal summer that year ) and hasn't happened since.

plant pauper

I'm, more or less, in a peat bog (how very oirish) right on the water table so most of the time my pond acts as a sump. I put in an overflow pipe a couple of years ago to keep the level down to enable me to cut the grass!!! This year the overflow is about 6-8 inches above the level of the water. The zizzies don't seem to mind that much and the only fish that might be in there are about 2" long so I'm not particularly worried. Wouldn't matter anyway as we have had a hosepipe ban since last Saturday. It rained every day for eight months straight. Where the h**l did all that go?!?!?!

josusa47

Thanks everyone for your advice.  I've filled both my watering cans from the tap, and I'll leave it to stand for 24 hours before I put it in the pond; hopefully, that will get rid of some chlorine.