Blagdon Air Pump 250 review

My pond last year

I've had a small garden pond for a few years. We've only a small garden and only have room for a tiny pond, so as you can see int he photo above it's a pre formed plastic pond about 1.5m x 1m - I can't remember the capacity, but I think it's around 150l.

Initially I had about 6 small goldfish. A couple died, a heron had on and I was left with 3. A couple of years ago I noticed some tiny fish swimming around, and with one of the bigger ones dying I now have a total of 9 - a couple of the originals and 7 small ones that are now around an inc or so long. Because the pond is so small, it tends to get green very quickly in summer even though it's got a health population of oxygenating plants, but that's clearly not enough. I had a small fountain for a while but it kept getting clogged or falling over.

This year with the heat over May/June the pond's got particularly murky and is now like green soup. I've switched a load of water out a couple of times and stuck some small barley straw bales in (which is supposed to help), but thinking about a fountain again to get the water moving to oxygenate, whilst Googling I came across pump aerators. Basically a small pump that sits outside the pond, with a small pipe leading to an airstone that sits in the bottom of the pond. Air is pumped through and bubbles up in the pond providing water movement and oxygen. 

Those of you living in Cardiff may have seen similar stuff on a MUCH larger scale in Cardiff Bay where there are aerators throughout the bay and up the rivers Ely and Taff.

There are a few different types on ones suitable for ponds on the market and I eventually settled on the Blagdon Air Pump 250 (this is an Amazon link, although I purchased mine for the local garden centre.

Blagdon air pump 250

It's a simple unit, coming with the pump, 5 minutes of piping and an airstone. This has one outlet, but you can get bigger pumps with 2 or 4 outlets. It's weatherproof so can sit outside (it DOESN'T go in the pond!!!!)

A couple of things to note.

1. Like many outdoor electrical items - especially ones that are to be used in/around water, this doesn't come with a plug. You have to add that yourself. 
2. It should always be used with an RCD circuit breaker
3. The power cable is only 1.5m long

This presented a slight problem for me. The nearest power socket is in my conservatory, but that's still about 8 metres from the pond. The cable is not long enough to site the pump outside the conservatory.

So I've left the pump in the conservatory, and bought some additional piping as the included 5m length wouldn't reach the pond, and added the additional piping out through the conservatory window, on a run to the pond. I was worried that the extra length might reduce the pumps efficiency (but it doesn't).

It all works fabulously. The pump is quiet enough to be relatively unobtrusive. It pumps air with plenty of oomph to aerate the pond visible with small bubbles rising from the airstone.

I can't say anything yet about longevity, or whether it'll make the fish any happier and the pond less green as I only installed it today, but I'll come back and update once I know the score on those things. I'm pretty happy and the only question I have is "why didn't I think of doing this sooner?". I'm sure my fish think the same.

Twitter: @Statto1927 

Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/people/simon_hiscocks/ 

Instagram: simon_hiscocks