hey guys quite a few people on this site have said that they think my pond will get to warm for trout to live in though i think it is un likely i have thought of a way to keep the pond cool and i would like some advice on wether it will work or not. the water is well aerated coming into the pond and is 55 degeres so i was thinking of using the stratification of my pond to work to my advantage there is an old spring house submerged in the pond where the water comes in at. i could build it up above the water level with cement blocks and put a liner in it then poke holes in the botom of the liner whitch is almost level with the bottom of the pond then i could run the spring water into the old foundation where it would come out at the bottom of the pond keeping the bottom suplied with cold well aerated water making a survivaable layer of cold water at the bottom of the pond. what do you guys think will this work. thanks

It's not only water temp that kill the trout, it's the amount of dissolved Oxygen in the water too - warmer water can't carry the amount of DO that cool water can. I'd let the spring water trickle and splash into the pond to add Dissolved Oxygen to it.

Good thinking! It might work. There are some other ways, but none of those come anywhere close to fitting into your budget.

thanks esshup its good to hear that from an expert. the water would still be splashing into the pond the spring house used to have the spring water flow directly into it but about 20 years ago for some reason the spring moved about 5ft up hill and flows through a series of small caves so it is not going to make a difference on the amount of disolved oxoygen coming into the pond. It still will be splashing around.

Smpond,I always wanted to build a spring house but probably never will.Was that one built out of quarried limestone?

The spring house was built out of sandstone dug up right beside the spring when the town was first built in the 1800s and was used till the early 1950s. My neighbor used to hate walking for water now he complains about going to the kitchen.

Small Pond,

Any possibility you can increase your flow or tap into some nearby flow?

cecil i have allready dug out the spring to get more water flow and the river next to our house is a sulver creek in other words it flows orange you can see from google earth. but the lucky people halph a mile up river have a bueatful trout stream.

My brother owns a sandstone root cellar. I thought your rocks looked more like limestone. I have built maybe 45 stone fireplaces so I love looking at different rock formations.

i wish it was lime stone but the only thing we have around here is coal and sandstone hence the low ph also im sure your brothers celler is level every thing around here was built with a beer bottle in one hand and a level in the other. ha ha. you must be very talented at what you do building 45 fire places wow.

We lived in Scotish-Irish country so it was a moonshine jug. I have worked on several older homes. I don't think they had levels or tape measures. People that talk about how good older homes are built have either not worked on them or don't know squat about building.

your preaching to the quire aperently last summer the hot place froze over some people bought a draby old shack that only needed a match we thought it would never sell. took them two years to finish for that reason.

If it's iron you may be able to settle it out before it gets to your pond.

cecil did a test the ph of the river is 2.5 definantly not iron also this is an old coal mining town when water goes through coal it does the oposit of lime and makes the water acidic eventualy the rocks and every thing get a slipery orange scum on it.

So nothing can be done to remedy this? Don't you have a state agency that would be interested?

nope likeley nothing can be done except puting the cold water at the botom of the pond. maby i should have mentioned this first the river is 100 ft lower than my pond and 100 yards away so even if the river was clean it would be expenesive to pump that far. they have been working on the river in 2012 the stony creek was pa's number 1 improved river it also has the bigest rapids on the east coast people come from all over the country to white water raft. but the fish will always have one spot where the water comes in at to stay cool they'll survive im sure of but wether ill be able to feed or not in july and august is another ill allways be able to feed a little right.

I thought of another option that I have been told some people with small trout ponds do to keep warming down in the hottest part of the summer. They float that pink or blue 4 X 8 or 5 X8 foam board that you can get at building supply stores around the edges of the pond. Don't use the less dense white foam as it will just saturate or fall apart. You may have to figure out a way to keep it from blowing out though.

I may have to do this myself this summer if we get a repeat of the 100 plus degree days of last summer.

Actually, they make a foam board with an aluminum foil facing. You could fasten boards to the underside of the foam with screws and fender washers to keep the foam from blowing away.

Good idea. However, how sturdy is the foam with the foil facing? I use the pink and blue foam when I build my rbc's and it lasts indefinitely.However other foams disintegrate in the water.

I have never used any foam boards but have seen a ton of it on houses. The most durable types would be for the insulation of basement walls. The silver is made to put on wood walls. If you are in a place that sells it, ask them if they have a small scrap piece.They will as it breaks easily, take it home,then put it in water and see what happens. Wish I knew more but that is the story of my life.

No problem Ken. Thanks for the ideas. I just know just because you can put it on a house doesn't mean it can last in the water. It has to be a high density foam. But I'll check it out. It may work.

I do know you can buy reflective mylar pretty cheap and if there was a way to attach it that would work too.

I can just see it now, "Indiana man jailed for blinding airline pilots over northeastern Indiana."

MYlar is easy to attach with the glue that is used on sheet goods(kitchen floors). They make a bottle with a roller that is much easier then ye ole trowel. I have used it on plastic no hunting signs and it last about 3 years.

Great idea cecil if my pond starts to get to hot ill have to try using the blue sheets of foam to keep the temp down. thanks. tomorow we go to the hatchery to get some big fish ill probably put on some pics.

Don't overstock your pond. You'll regret it. The ammonia and nitrites will kill your fish. Trout are extremely sensitive to ammonia and nitrites and and don't like suspended solids much either from too much fish poop.

I haven't had much coffe this morning, but I have pondered a possibility for seperating "hot and cool air" in aerated systems to only pump the cool air in the water. This would be done with the use of a "Vortex" tube after the pump. We use them at work in high heat locations for our control equipment. Without getting into a long post on how they work, I will send a link, http://www.vortexair.biz/Cooling/VortexCooler/vortexcooler.html
The biggest down fall I can think of is that the compressor would need to be bigger to make up for the lost "hotter" air.

I am not sure what the net temp effect would be, but I will go measure the difference between the hot and cool air discharge so we will know what the difference of air that would be given to fish in the summer. It would be nice if the water was 77 degrees, the air temp was 85, and we could put 70 degree air in, this may give aerated systems a cooling advantage in the summer, but........I need to do some measuring.

Data from Vortex cooler:

Ambient Air Temp: 91.3
"Hot Air" temp dissipated from Vortex : 93.8 (measured @ 1")
"Cool Air" temp discharge from Vortex : 68.3 (measured @ 1")

I haven't measured air volume loss, but from observation, it appears that 1/2 of the air volume is lost in the cooling effect. But the upside is, on hot days you are cooling your air 23 degrees while providing aeration. I think these things cost about $200-250. I could use the hot air discharge and run some coiled air line (50 feet?)coiled in the ground, bring it back up into my compressor cabinet to supply cool air after it has a "geothermal effect"?

FWIW:

I tried using a bottom diffuser to oxygenate my pond with trout in it a few years ago. I ran the diffuser in the deepest part of the pond, and only ran it when the ambient temps were below 70°F (mostly at night).

The trout all died in a few weeks.

When I took a temp reading, the whole pond was the same temp from top to bottom. It WAS cooler than the surface water in a local lake that's 2 miles away, but it was still too warm for the trout.

Seems to me injecting pure oxygen would be the way to go if you could justify the cost. That would inject oxygen into the bottom water without destratifying and warming the water. Renting or leasing LOX would be the most economical as I know one RAS fish farmer that does in my area. If you have the right equipment you can generate it yourself. I seem to remember seeing on the Internet a trout club doing this in PA.

On gallon of liquid oxygen equals 3.26 cubic meters (115 cubic feet).

Lusk and I did some calcs when we were together. LOX would run roughly $90/mo for a 1 ac pond. I have yet to research on the O2 generating equipment.

That's not terrible if you only need it for June, July, August, and September if you had a way to make money to compensate for that. I'm spending that much a month pumping well water for 6 to 7 months.

However if you really wanted to keep trout over the summer for a business, an RAS inside is the way to go. You have to replace the volume of your tanks per 24 hours to keep them cool enough, but that isn't as much as it sounds. If you have a 2000 gallon Intex pool you'd only need to run 1.38 gpm to replace the volume every 24 hours. Of course you'd have to run much more back and forth through the system to get 1 to 4 turnovers every hour but you can do that really efficiently using just air and air lifts. Keep in mind this is with higher densities of trout. You can get away with less turnover per hour with lower densities.

will there be more amonia and nitrates as the water warms up i would think soo because the fish are eating more and what are some sighns that the amonia is geting to high. I bought some more fish today but i have about 20 more fish bg, yp that were in there all summer i can always take them out how much would that help thanks.

If you see signs of ammonia or nitrite toxicity (gasping at the surface and lethargy) it's already too late unless you have a way to add a significant amount of fresh water. The only thing you can do is stop feeding and hope for the best.

I would get the test kit I suggested to determine ammonia and nitrite levels. It's cheap compared to the headaches it may prevent you.

Yes ammonia levels will rise with rising temps if the pond is overloaded, but one thing you have going for you is your low PH. Also be aware that a natural process known as nitrification will crank up when your water warms and algae is actually a good thing as it feeds on ammonia. Believe it or not duckweed is really good at working on ammonia and some aquaponic producers purposely plant it into their systems.

It's actually unionized ammonia that is toxic to fish and it's amount is determined by temperature and PH. If you can accurately measure the PH and water temperature you can look up the amount of unionized ammonia on a chart by plugging in the value you get with your ammonia test. For trout you want to stay below 0.020 ppm.

You shouldn't even be reading any nitrites optimally. You can counteract it's effects by adding a little salt to the pond. You won't need much. If you use salt don't just throw it into the pond as it can burn the fish upon contact. You want to mix it in a container of waer and then slowly release it into the water.

Salt is know as the aspirin of aquaculture and reduces stress in freshwater fish up to a point.

Cecil, southern fishers will put out blocks of salt, then come back in a few hours and clean up on BG.

It would be interesting to see all the details on this $90.00/mo Liquid Oxygen Rig for a 1 acre pond!

Hope you kept the napkins

I would assume that I saw it on here but not too long ago I was reading on aerating the lower,cooler water column without causing destratification.In order to keep cold water fish thriving during the hot months.It seemed to work and made sense but I just cant remember where I came across it.


I really need to get back to keeping better notes,I've got a wee bit lazy since joining the forum.

I looked at a unionizedamonia chart. and it said that at a certian temp and ph the water can't have any more amonia in it is this true. so in other words can colder water with a lower ph only disolve so much amonia like warmer water can only disolve so much oxygen. i also saw on another website that photosynthis will increase the ph but filamentous algae also eats amonia so should i let more algae grow in the shallows or should i be raking it out. and i also ordered the test kit that you sugested.

Yes unionized ammonia is limited by lower ph and lower water temps.

As far as removing algae, I would stll remove excessive amounts as you'll never get it all and what is left should still work in your favor. Remember over feeding in small pond contributes a lot to excessive algae.

thanks a bunch cecil as long as i can keep the temp of the pond below 68 and ph below 6 i should be fine. this summer ill check the temp and when it gets above 68 ill only feed a little bit if it gets to be 70 ill stop feeding entirel but august when the pond was almost complete the water temp was only 58 degeres. this definantly is the best pond website ive been on.

We all wish you the best of luck and want you to succeed even if it seems like we are being a little negative at times.

Keep us posted!

if my fish do kill over i don't want to just throw them in the river or burry them could i sell them to a taxadermist or restarant to get something out of them. btw you guys arn't negative at all my dad is the definition of the saying negative neli. tell it like it is

sMPND,if you do sell the dead ones to a resturant, please tell me which one. Then we can eat at the competition for a few weeks. All kidding aside,we wish you the best.

Probably wont be able to do much with them if they croak. Fertilizer?

Since moving back to Grand Haven, I have not only gotten lazy, but added a few pounds to boot!

My note keeping deteriorated from spiral bound note books and electronic methods, to scribbling stuff down on store sales receipt's and old envelopes. And, they get thrown away!

I'm getting to the point where I can count all my functioning brain cells on my fingers and toes.

When that little piggy goes to market...

hey JKB whats the local word on Butch's down on the channel?I heard it went a little south Either way I have quite a few stories that start out with"we just went to grab a burrito".............most of which may be best left untold

JKB- don't know if this Link will work, but......

can i add pond dye to keep the pond cool

Haven't been to that side of town lately. Traffic really sucks! Website works: http://www.butchsbeachburritos.com/

I heard they went thru some tribulation a while back, but don't know the details.

They have/had a location in the Shell complex on M104. Pretty sure it is still there.

If you haven't been here in a while, you may not recognize it.

Downtown has heated streets and sidewalks now. No Snow! Hot water from the power plant is doing the trick.

I use to rent some space at the B&B building on N. Griffin St. That has been gone for a while. Now Sporting luxury condos for your Yacht!

Nice place to visit, but wouldn't want to live here

Not sure. Anybody else know? Usually with flow through it can get expensive and it's possible it may be frowned upon if your water ends up in public water somewhere.

thanks for the advice cecil your right it probably would be expensive since i have a fare amount of water going through the pond. last night the water eroded away the dirt at the top of the gutter going into the pond making it a little muddy so today i took out the gutter and put in a pipe. dug a little trench put the pipe in it covered the pipe in dirt and built a small dam where the water comes out, and for more aeration i stacked cement blocks up so the water falls a couple of feet hits a stick splashes adding DO then goes into the pond tommorow ill put on some pics.

aerating spring water

essup,
How do the RBT and Browns due at our local State Park? That water is dark, so it gets warmer in the summer. I have caught some big browns while cat fishin years ago, but have not seen any RBT of any size caught. Are they just dying off and getting eaten by the turtles?

Boy, I can't remember the last time they were stocked there!

When you say "years ago", how many?

I know the water is deeper, and it might have enough cool water down low. In larger lakes, there is enough boundary water between the thermocline and the warmer upper water to support trout, but that's not the case in smaller ponds.