Heating Your Pond.

Heating your pond is not a must, but there are advantages and disadvantages to doing so.

Let’s start with the advantages.

As Koi aren’t true cold water fish, they as like us humans would prefer to be warm, especially in the colder months, instead of sitting in a state of near hibernation and conserving energy. Imagine you going home to a cold house, instead of a warm house, it’s not nice, we all like to be warm and cosy.

Having said this, heating is not an absolute must for Koi Keepers, there are other ways in which we can protect our Koi, in the colder months.

Other advantages are that the Koi will be moving around and eating in warmer water, which in turn will extend the Koi keeping season for you the hobbyist. You will be able to enjoy them year round. Now were not saying heat the pond to 20°C year round, heating can just mean providing background heat, and we would recommend giving Koi a season so to speak, even a small period of not feeding, certainly high protein feeds.

Another advantage of having a heater on your pond is the ability to use treatments should the need arise, bearing in mind that most of the treatments available to us are far less effective, if not useless under 10°C, so if you needed to treat your Koi you can simply raise the temperature gradually to do so, then once the treatment has run it’s course and the problem has been dealt with, it can be gradually lowered once more.

There are also the issues with the immune response with a Koi in cold water, you can read more about this in our Resource Centre.

Heating of course is a massive factor to aid the growth of Koi, as without heat they will not grow. In Summer your pond may achieve a temperature of 20°C, and the Koi will thrive, but in Winter they won’t grow as fast without the heat.

Now let’s look at some of the disadvantages of heating, and of course the biggest disadvantage is the cost of energy to run it.

At the time of writing this paragraph, the cost of one unit of electricity (1kwh) is 34p, and it’s set to go even higher in the coming months, so depending on the size of your pond i.e the gallonage, it will be a massive factor in the cost, this is where bigger is not always better, but there are arguments for this as well, a bigger body of water will take longer to heat, but it will also take longer to cool.

The cheapest form of heating your Koi pond via electric is currently an Air Source Heat Pump, as these fantastic devices offer the highest COP rating, this meaning, you put 1kwh in, and can get up to 16kwh out, with certain models, and only at certain temperatures though, in Winter you may only get 4-5 COP values, but even that is a big saving against the standard inline electric heaters.

Yes the Air Source Heat Pumps are dearer to purchase in the outset, but they do deliver the savings in the longterm.

Standard rule of thumb regarding in line heaters, is that for every 1000 gallons of water, you require 1kw of heat / power.

With Air Source Heat Pumps the requirements are different, and whether the pond is insulated, covered, and what your heating temperature requirement is, all affect what size of ASHP you will require.

Below we have a some pond heaters for you to peruse, these are the heaters of our choice, and the ones we use here at The Oaks.

We can give you recommendations and help you pick the right heater, just give us a call.