How To Aerate A Pond And Why Your Fish Need It
Keep Your Fish Happy And Healthy In Your Maryland, DC, Or Northern Virginia Pond

Don’t stop ’til you get enough! If you want to add oxygen to water, all you need to do is keep the water moving or continuously disrupt it. This can be done with aerators, waterfalls, streams, or aquatic plants. The more disruption the water’s surface gets, the more oxygen it gets! Let’s go more in-depth on surface aeration.
Checklist of Aeration Benefits
- Keeps fish and other wildlife safe and healthy
- Circulates the water, preventing stagnation
- Moves debris towards skimmers, making it easier to remove
- Creates a hole in the ice during winter
- Fun for fish!
Surface Aeration

Aeration 20,000 Leagues Below The Surface
Would you only want the outside of your body to be healthy? Like a body, ponds are an ecosystem. All of the separate parts need to be taken care of so it’s healthy as a whole. By aerating the deeper parts of your pond, you’re ensuring the whole ecosystem is healthy, not just the top. This is especially important for during the summer.
Summer mostly comes with a splash, which is what your pond will need. Warm or hot water can’t hold as much dissolved oxygen. This puts your pond at risk. Your fish can become sick, algae can begin to grow uncontrollably, and your pond can start to look like a scene from a swamp monster movie. Add sub-surface aeration to help prevent this! It’ll also keep your maintenance costs lower.
Do you want to know about the actual aeration device? Keep reading!

The pond version of Old Faithful, but with bubbles. It’s a disc the size of a dinner plate attached to an air compressor which you drop to the bottom of your pond. When you turn it on, a beautiful column of bubbles will rise up towards the pond’s surface. There’s your aeration, plus some added benefits.
It cleans too?!?! This column of bubbles can reduce stagnant areas by circulating the water. The moving water can push debris towards the pond skimmer, making it easier to keep your pond clean. Both you and your fish will love a pond which uses an aerator to clean. Fish love aerators because they like to play with it! They’ll be shy at first, but after the first one darts through it, the rest will follow. This scene can be a little different when winter strikes, so read on to learn about winterizing ponds with aerators.
Winter Aeration

You can shut off the aerator and use a de-icer instead to create a hole (even if the waterfall is left on)

Aerate Your Pond!
Aerate a pond and you can have it lifelong. Sadly, it isn’t a cure-all. Ponds still need maintenance, even low-maintenance ponds like ours. You can lessen the maintenance, and thus the cost, by keeping your pond in tip-top shape with aquatic plants, pond bacteria, and other types of filters.