Fountains are great

 

But they can turn into lil swamps when left to their own devices. So how do you keep yours looking fresh n clean?

 

There are a ton of products on the market that claim to clear/clean/descale, or whatever your fountain. Here’s what we’ve learned over the years:

 

1: First, decide what style of fountain you want. This will determine what group of chemicals are right for you. You do this by identifying what exactly you like about your fountains. Do you love the noise? Do you want the fountain to be pet friendly (ie: dogs, cats, birds, bees, etc etc) or is your preference for a more “sterile” fountain? Will you be maintaining it yourself or will you have a service provider look after it? If you’re doing it yourself, how much time, realistically, do you intend to dedicate to the upkeep? There a big difference between  1 / month maintenance and 1 / week maintenance. We put fountains into 2 categories. 1 – A sterile fountain: This is a fountain which will focus on the cleanliness of the system and 2 – A pet friendly fountain: Any fountain where animal life will be using it as a source of water.

  

2: If you’re going for a sterile system, next find out how you want the fountain to smell. If a small bleach smell isn’t an issue for where the fountain sits, most fountains will stay clean w/ 1″ or 3″ bleach blocks. These are super simple to use and will prevent both algae build up and kill any mosquito larvae for you as well. The one downside with bleach, is that it WILL leave heavy mineral deposits. And these over time do eat away at stains, finish, epoxies, cement, etc etc. There are chemicals on the market that claim to prevent mineral buildup, but we have yet to find anything that gives us consistently good results. Best approach we recommend for mineral deposits is actually brushing them before they have time to build up, minor acid washes once every 3 months or so, and using other forms of algaecides. Also take into account that water from a fountain that’s treated with bleach will damage and kill plants. So waterflow and surrounding plant life should be considered.

3: If you’re going for a pet friendly fountain. Then you will want to stick to algaecides designed for ponds. API Algaefix is an easy one to use, but we also like the Aquascapes line of products. Particularly their S.A.B. You will also want to dose something for mosquitos, especially if your fountain doesn’t have a lot of surface agitation. Mosquito donuts are great for larger fountains and Mosquito Bits are perfect for small systems. Something to note, is that pet friendly algaecides typically need to be dosed more often

 

  

4: If you just prefer to keep is simple, and avoid extra work, planting lavender and citronella around your fountain will keep the mosquitos out as well 😀