This winter was like an old-fashioned winter of my youth, apart from starting a bit late. It was cold, never had a thaw, snowed a lot, and got the pond ice the thickest it has ever been. More than 18 inches.

My garden pond suffered a complete kill. My aerator tube froze up despite it being insulated, and the pond deicer disappeared under the snow, so I didn't know it stopped doing anything for a month. All koi fish and frogs, dead. It probably froze near to the bottom, despite being 3.5ft deep.

The 1/2 acre pond seems in good shape, but the center STILL has about 10 inches of ice in the middle, though it would be hard to get to it from the 1 ft of open water around the rim. Normally we are ice out by now, lots of March sun and multiple days above freezing do the trick.

This unfortunately has presented an interesting problem with my dock, as the pilons are still locked in ice, but the ice is otherwise a floating island held tenuously in place by my dock.

Last year the dock's posts got yanked upwards and out of the concrete footers when the water rose after getting locked in ice. This year, still loose, they are getting pushed off the concrete to the side.
It may be time to remove the end of the dock, replace with a ramp out to a floating dock platform I can pull out in the fall. After all, it already looks like a ramp down into the water.

Hey, at least no sign (yet) of any significant fish kill. Just a couple of small Black Crappie.

Brutal report, squid.

Your weather, ice and snow reports are sounding like the reports from our friend with a pond in Colorado at 10,000 feet elevation! You might need to drive a metal pipe in the ground in your Koi pond and add an aerator to keep it from freezing over!!

Glad to hear fish seem OK and also that global warming took a year off in New York

I have not tried this but the last time the ice on my dock was moving around I thought it would take out the hole dock. So I was thinking ahead for the next year and bought a 40 lb. sack of salt. I would pour around posts so ice would melt there first. Small amount of salt like that would not hurt a pond. Just my 2 cents worth of advice.

Even large amounts of salt wouldn't hurt the pond.

That kind of makes for a rough time putting on hockey skates and getting onto the rink ;-). The pond hockey was epic this year apart from the stress cracks that would open up wider than a skate blade and cause some less than entertaining falls. We kept a bucket of fresh water around to deal with the cracks. There were more good skating nights this year than the past 5 years combined! The ice was pretty chewed up until we would get it resurfaced from a sunny day.

Since my water level goes up and down quite a lot in the summer, a modification to replace the end of the dock with a ramp and floater is actually something I was planning on despite the damage. I want enough area out there to put out a small tent or umbrella and chairs. so 10x10 or so.

That project going on hold for now as we are putting in a 15KW solar install. We need a surplus of capability for supplementing heat and hot water. Need to get off propane! (No NG at our house, only wood, electric, and propane). To complicate matters, the land around us is up for sale, and I may have an opportunity to append another 8 acres of swampy habitat for relatively cheap (for us). Can only choose one as a kitchen upgrade is the other.

Keeping things busy!

Wow, sounds like you have a lot on your plate. What is propane out there now? I need to order about 1400 gallons and I'm trying to hold off until oil comes down.

When it comes time to do the floating dock, I'd order the floats and hardware from Dockbuilders Supply in Florida. Shipping the floats will be $$ but the plastic is 4x thicker than the floats from Menards/Home Depot. I'd go for the land.........

I would love to get the land if I could also pull off solar at the same time. One saves me money in the long run (solar), the other... NYS taxes are terrible. I will lose money. If I play my cards right, my neighbors, who we get a long with well, will purchase the land and at some point want to break it up a little. Hopefully that point will be after the solar install is complete and I get the tax rebate. They don't want the swamp part, I do. I just cannot lay out the initial solar costs and land costs in the same year.

We live in the Finger Lakes, so I may be able to find a supplier of those same floats from Florida, or at least a marina that can order them to save on shipping. A lot of docks built in our area. Otherwise I will order from FL. Thanks.

Oh, I am paying $2.19 a gallon of propane since I locked in pricing in the middle of last summer. Going rates right now are between $3.50 and $5.75 depending on quantity user per year (bulk rates). Rates all over the place, you have to shop around. I wish I owned my own tank so I could barter a bit, but a 500gal tank is expensive, and every time you switch they nail you for an inspection.

Thanks. I own two 1,000 gal tanks, so I can shop for propane. One fill lasts more than a year, and if I use the pellet stove in the house a fill would last 2 years. There is a propane fired heater hanging in the insulated pole barn, I keep it 40°F in there for the winter, but I'll use more propane if I'm out there working and turn up the heat.

Unbelievably the ponds are mostly frozen over again. What a late spring cold snap!

While still open, I noticed the perch are quite preggers, but have not yet let go of the eggs. Most of the fish have been congregating under my sketchy dock out of the sun, so laying on it and watching I can see many of my fish family. Lots of fat mama perch this year! Way too many Black Crappy toothpicks. Only a single bass on which all depends to thin the herds of the BC. The walleye have not been keeping up!

While I was hanging about the pond last week on one of our few warm days this spring, my largest koi got a wild hare, and started breaching like crazy! Flinging its orange carcass clear out of the water several times in a row. I thought something was chasing it, but nothing was there. Assuming it is a fish's version of the zoomies.

How do animals know the weather forecast? I assume your YP are going to keep their fins crossed until the next bit of warm weather arrives.

They don't. It is a question of photoperiod and temp. Sometimes they get it wrong and many die. Lots of data points with no successful spawning on a given year. Missing year classes are not rare and can happen because of several reasons including weather.

ewest,

Thanks for the clarification. I was making a "tongue in cheek" response, which I see now was not completely obvious.

When I read the forum, I focus on the advice of the "experts" that I know have lots of valuable experience. I frequently forget that we have many new posters that have no way to properly weight the advice they see typed on the internet!

I weigh advice by how much it is in accord with what I wish. True, it doesn't always end well, but at least I feel good.

thank you Lord for no ice on ponds in Texas - the flip side of that coin is our ponds deal with 100 to 110 degrees in the summer and water evaporates at what seems like 5 inches a day!

Tim, I have had NO rain. Big pond is down 5 ft. Small one is down about 4 ft with red algae showing up.

I pray you get some rain soon, Dave. But not too much at once! Hard to go into summer with things too dry.

Dave, I wish I had the ability to send you some of ours,, we were reasonably dry till the first of Jan and since then have got what appears to be way more then our share of precipitation,, its really muddy out there now,, no crops going in yet due to muddy fields, as a person who makes a living excavating dirt its getting old! this barnyard slop is hard to shape up into anything that I can sell. and customers screaming at me to get to their project, getting further behind every day. pond has been overflowing for a while now, I had lowered it last summer for some maintenance but shes full now!

Given events in Ukraine and Russia, grain shortages are likely. Sure hope they can get the crops in before much longer!