Children have gone back to school, day and night is roughly the same length of time, it is getting cooler, the grass is dewy in the mornings, and many leaves have turned red. Autumn is here!

For your garden pond, you now need to prepare for winter.

For plants:

• Cut dead and decaying foliage back from marginal, surface, and submerged plants.
• Fallen leaves from trees etc need to be removed from the water regularly, and not left and be allowed to sink to the bottom of the pond.
• Split/divide and re-pot overgrown plants such as Iris, and Water lilies. It is better to do this now rather than in the spring before the plant goes dormant. The plant will then look its best much earlier next year than it would have done had you done it in April.
• If you haven’t already got any, plant some Water Hawthorn in your pond. They are like a poor man's water lily, in that they do cost less money, but they will provide cover for and attract wildlife like a lily does almost all year round, only dying back when the pond freezes over (although they do recover remarkably quickly) and the warmest weather. They will continuously flower almost all year and have a lovely fragrance!
• Marsh Marigolds too not only flower in the spring but in the autumn as well. These are great plants for brightening the pond outside of the spring/summer months.

Water:

It is important to test your water regularly so you can spot a problem before it becomes one. Check for any ammonia and nitrite in the water, these should be zero and make sure nitrate levels are as low as possible too. For the different levels of hardness, your pH should be around 7.0-8.0, kH 7dKH, and gH 8dGH. If you have a raised pond this is more important and these parameters get diluted by rainwater, unlike a sunken one which gets water from ground run-off which may stabilise them.
Sludge and silt need to be removed from the bottom of the pond either by a net, a suitable vacuum cleaner or by using a chemical degrader. If this is left it could spell disaster in the coming months. If you feel your pond needs a thorough cleaning and a water change, now is the time to do it.

Fish:
The end of September is the time to stop feeding any growth foods and switch back to a standard staple diet until the weather turns cold.
With modern practices and improved diets, you can feed your fish virtually all year round nowadays. Lower protein foods such as wheatgerm-based sticks/pellets and probiotic diets are much easier for fish to digest in colder weather and therefore don’t suffer from indigestion which can be fatal for fish. These are best fed right through until the weather warms up again, normally in April.
Certainly, if you have Koi, it is a good idea to run a course of bacteria and parasite treatment through your pond in October to kill off anything that is already there but is also a good disease preventative for the following months.

Equipment:
Give pumps and filters an autumn service. Pumps should be cleaned inside and out, and any blockages and build-up of muck should be removed to keep these running freely. You are better to do this now than having to get your hands and arms in there in January believe me, you wouldn’t want to be a Goldfish living in water that cold!
Pressurised filters, first give them a backwash as per instructions, and then strip them down and give them a clean and replace any media or foams if required. Box filters, give your foams a rinse in old pond or rainwater (DO NOT USE TAP WATER) and replace any pads if needed.
UV filters, give them a clean inside and out, remove the quartz sleeve and give it a good wipe and replace the lamp if required.
Check all hoses and fittings are secure, look for any leaks and get them repaired and make sure everything is safe to come to the cold weather.
For retailers, it is important not to see autumn as the end of the pond season, just a change in it. If you haven’t got it, you can not sell it! If the customer walks out the door not being able to purchase what they came in for you may not see them again.
Make sure you have plenty of the right fish food available for your customers and encourage them to regularly check their ponds too even in the shorter and colder days of the year.
Algae is usually less of a problem in the autumn than it is in the spring and summer but again make sure you have some treatments available. Other things to keep good stocks of are water conditioners, fish disease treatments and salt too.
Autumn is actually the best time to build a pond. The weather is still mild, the ground shouldn’t be too wet, most wildlife and insects themselves are not yet preparing for winter so any construction work should only have minimal disturbance and will give the pond a head start come springtime.

Top Tips:

• Fix a net over your pond. This will stop leaves from falling in (and hopefully keep Heron and cats out too).
• NT Labs Pond Lab Multi-Test Kit is a brilliant all-around test kit covering the 6 most important values. Good value for money too!
• For autumn and springtime fish disease prevention we recommend NT Labs Koi Care Malachite and Formaldehyde for larger ponds and NT Labs Pond Care Bacterad & Eradick for smaller ones.

Recommended products for this time of year: