Is it a good idea to turn my pond water pump off at night and back on during the day to lower my electricity bill?
Kenny, Pumps run 24 hours a day and are the chief piece of equipment responsible for keeping your pond healthy. One of the most important things that you can do when setting up a new pond is to get the proper equipment installed. The pump you install should move at least 1/2 of the total pond volume for a water garden. The term “water garden” is assumed to be a pond with lots of plants and some fish. A koi pond usually has few plants and large fish requiring more filtration than a water garden. This type of pond is better off moving at least the full volume of the pond each hour. Besides moving the water you also want to filter the water. The pump should move water through a filter that is sized for your pond. Biological filtration takes several weeks or months to mature to the point that it makes a major improvement on your water quality. The filter needs to run 24 hours a day 7 days a week to work.
You have a few issues here. Your water that leaves when it's turned off - that's part of what's called your 'water in transit', the problem part is what can't be contained by your lower vessel when turned off. A surge tank can remedy this, as can other solutions - but I'd have to see it. Leaving it on 25/7 can eliminate this effect - until someone has to work on it. Off or not - if it is a sterile pond, you may only need 4 hrs a day for the sanitization, if your circulation is proper. If its a single pump setup, then override the timer to get the look (if you have a waterfall or fountain) when you want it. If it's a live pond, then it really needs to run all the time. These points are all part of a proper waterfeature design. Unfortunately, in this market, lots of folks and others are creating things which have the attributes you describe - and plenty more. It's like the professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Arizona said, 'A waterfeature that is not properly designed and/or built is a planter waiting to happen'. Good Luck!
If your pump is rated to run 24/7 you can leave it running. To save electricity you could get a simple timer and set it to run for 30 mins 2 or 3 times at night and run all day. Or you could have it coming on/off at various times thru day night. This should keep water oxygenated enough
we only turned our pond pump on when we were outside to enjoy the pond...that way if our pump got knocked over we were there to keep the water from being pumped out of the pond...which did actually happen due to wind alot..lol...my goldfish in the pond...have lived thru two winters and a summer just this way...they dont need the pump to survive the wind keeps enough oxygen in the pond with ripples that its fine...as for the mosquito's...they form in any standing water..they form in normal ground ponds..they will form in your pond whether you have the pump running or not...we have had our pond 8 years now..and the first year we ran it all the time...we still had mosquito's and that was the only water source around...frogs started coming to the pond after we turned the pond off..which was actually cool..part of the summer we had tadpoles and the fish of course ate some of them...
