John Jay

For pets. A lot of salamanders are fairly toxic to humans if you eat them.

So the species I am going to keep in there are newts. They need a long cold winter to breed properly so I didn't want to heat the pond plus I don't want to spend a lot of money on electricity. I also was reluctant to run electricity to the pond since I am not really knowledgable about electrical wiring. I pond a pond aireator off amazon and 300ft spool of chinese air tubing off ebay. I hooked up the aireator and run 100ft of the tubing out to the pond and much to my surprise here it is a cold snowy night and it has a big hole made in the shallow section of the pond. The real test will be how it does during the coldest days of Jan and Feb, of course, but I am thus far amazed that this concept is actually working. The aireator has a place for a second line too so if the tube ever does condensate and freeze, I can run an emergency line with my extra tubing. If this does work, I'll trench em in some condiut for next year when there are actually animals in the pond.

Ok I have something to try with the bubbler. I ordered 300 ft of airline tubing. Once it gets here, I'll cut off 120 ft for each bubbler and run it out to the pond (it was much cheaper to run airline out to the pond than an electrical wire). Hopefully I don't loose too much air pressure en route... I suppose if it is really airtight maybe it will still the pressure. I have a hard time imagining how bubbles would keep a pond from freezing in a spot but that seems to be the first line of defense everyone recommends so I'll start there and if it works next year I'll buy some kind of high end tubing and bury it in PVC.

The hoop house is over my pond and I want to keep the pond for completely freezing over so that gases exchange during winter.  I am in CT in USA

I built a hoop house over my pond to try to keep it slightly above freezing. The problem is when I built the pond I had not considered using it  year round so where it is doesn't get much sunlight. I used the PVC poles and 6 mil plastic but it's not enough and only makes a few degrees difference even during the day. Question I have is what can I do to improve performance. I would be fine adding another layer outside or inside but with the very limited sunlight I wonder if it will make any difference or if I should try something different?