Help me illuminate my little aquatic ecosystem

June 29, 2006 1:16 AM

There's a pond in my new backyard, help me brighten it up

The previous owners maintained a fish pond in the backyard and I absolutely love it. I thought it would be really cool if I could put an LED pool light in there to make things a bit more visible underwater at night. Will this affect the fish? Will the light be okay when the top of the pond freezes over in the winter? Is this even the best way to accomplish what I want to do? If not any assistance from seasoned pond professionals would be appreciated.

posted by saraswati to home & garden (4 comments total)

We use two pond lights in our fish pond. They have regular light bulbs, not LEDs. There is a timer on them which turns them on at night. They came from one of the big-box hardware stores (Lowe's or HomeDepot) and were not expensive.

The fish have never had any problem with the lights, as far as we could tell. There is some cleaning that you will have to do from time to time. For ours, the light bulbs have plastic snap-on clear panels covering them. We have to snap those off for cleaning.

It does not get below freezing where we live, so I can't advise on that point.
posted by Robert Angelo at 6:40 AM on June 29, 2006

I got my father a floating solar powered LED light for his pond that worked very well. It's floating shape made it immune to negative freezing effects. He didn't have fish so I'm not sure how they'd react.

The light was less than $20.
posted by Mitheral at 7:11 AM on June 29, 2006

We had a pond in our last house, and lit it with underwater pond lamps. No obvious negative effects to the fish, though we only turned on the lights if we were actually sitting around outside, or entertaining.
posted by Tacos Are Pretty Great at 7:45 AM on June 29, 2006

Based on our British pond, as long as the light is insulated it'll be fine in all seasons. And it's a lovely way to watch the fish at night.
posted by ceri richard at 10:40 AM on June 29, 2006