Thanks to all that have responded. I do feel that in the interest of fairness and full diclosure I should let everyone know that a few years back when I was a new "Pond Boss" I corresponded with one of the affore mentioned "experts" and was told that based on the specifications of my pond, I should be OK letting it freeze up over the winter. The reason for starting this thread was to let people know that they didn't have to "panic" with ice on their pond as long as the dynamics were correct. Pond owners that need to "panic" are the ones with unusuall circumstances which I'm guessing most here don't have because we planned our ponds well in advance. Again, when I begin feeding and I can asess the total population of fish in my pond I will let you all know the results. I am not trying to naively tell anyone how to manage their pond. I just saw some warnings that seemed way off-based for the situations.
