Hi all, hope all is well, havent been on in a while.

Just a quick question really, i know that over the winter months i remove the uv light from my system ,easily done, two min job on my setup.

...But the magic question is, when is the best time, with the recent snow here in the midlands its made me think that i shouldve done this already. any definate answers?

Also when is the best time to stop feeding my fish (25 in total) they are still quite happy to keep munching away.

Will they be ok with no food for how long?

Thanks

Sean

The usual advice is to feed only wheat germ once the water temp drops below 16C, and stop feeding altogether once it goes below 10C. It's said that the fish can't digest food below this temperature, and anything remaining in the gut can rot over the winter. However, wild fish don't have pond keepers to restrict their late fall diet, so if you fed your fish a bit late into the year, they'll probably survive. If eating would be certain death, I doubt they'd do it.

Other people say that not feeding the fish over the winter leaves them so weak they might die come spring, and advocate feeding easily digestible food in small amounts all winter. I've no idea which school of thought is correct. Both probably have merit in some climate with some fish. I think the stop feeding method is probably the most popular, but I'm not sure that's because it's actually better for the fish.

You need to look on the packet of the food your feeding, it should say what temperatures you can feed the food upto and then move onto the wheatgerm food. So its a matter of checking the pond temperature before feeding, also you are best doing it around midday when the ponds going to be at its warmest during the day.

In terms of removing the uv, if its nice and easy to do so, then do it, our winters arnt usually cold enough to cause the water to freeze up in side but like i say, if you can remove it then do it