A few months ago I began using a couple Kasco water circulators to push water horizontally across my pond rather than traditional vertical aeration. I wanted to report a couple observations really quick and hopefully provide a more in depth analysis after several months of usage.

1) Significant decrease in filamentous algae and increase in rooted vegetation.... What appears to be happening is the current mobilizes the FA across the surface of the pond. When large mats of FA get close to the circulator, small bits are torn loose and they sink to the bottom of the pond. Over time there are no large chunks of FA left. And when they are present I just turn the circulator toward the FA to mobilize them. After several weeks I noticed an increase in rooted vegetation which I assume is my ponds way of putting those nutrients from the FA to use.

2) More active feeding and less light sensitivity when feeding....... One of my circulators is mounted on my dock. A couple feet from it I have a belt feeder dropping feed in all day long. This feed gets pulled into the vortex created by the circulator and pushed out into the current. Almost immediately I noticed 4-5" SMB begin taking pellets. These are fish I had never seen take pellets before. And they hit them all day long. I've also noticed that my HSB bass will hit pellets in the current at any point in the day now. When thrown from my Texas Hunter feeder the HSB will only feed during low light conditions early in the morning or late in the evening. But when the pellets are in current they will feed at all points of the day. They are more aggressive in low light conditions, but they still feed in the middle of a bright sunny day. In all I'd say more fish became pellet trained, and once they become pellet trained they eat more feed and more often.

Just some early observations. If anyone has any ideas on other alterations or experiments with this I'm more than willing to try.

Thanks. Good observations of your circulator. As you see more results please post them here. I think horizontal circulators area under utilized due to lack of benefits of using them.

Thanks NEDOC for your horizontal aeration observations. I'm interested in using this method after reading what you've posted. I'll be eagerly following your updates.

Good post. Are the belt feeders capable of dispensing large pellets?

It would definitely dispense large pellets. My only concern would be if the vortex from the circulator would pull that large of a pellet in or if the buoyancy and larger profile would lead to the pellets getting pushed to the edge of the pond on windy days. Either way, I'm guessing all it would take is some rearranging so the pellets are dropped into the current itself rather than around the vortex. I'll measure tonight to see how large of opening it has. Seems like it would handle even golf ball size pellets in my mind.

PS The bad thing about belt feeders is that you have to reload them every 24 hours. We need some that are 72 hours or so.

Belt feeder? is this something you rigged up or bought? Got a picture?

Belt feeders are wonderful except one thing....... they need to be reloaded every 24 hours and they have to be hanging over the water. They are simply a box with a spring loaded belt mechanism that slowly dumps feed off of the belt as the day goes by. Mine can hold up to 10 lbs of feed and feed just about any type of feed you want to feed, from very tiny powder to HUGE pellets. I've even fed filet chunks off of mine. Here is a link to one......

https://www.aquaticed.com/products/fiap-belt-feeders

I also used one over the top of a cage full of bluegill this summer. Since this project wasn't a priority of mine I didn't fill my feeder as often as I should've to reach optimal results. But a few evenings ago I pulled some of the bluegill out and about 40% of them had become monsters! I was shocked. They immediately went into my larger pond and are trophies for the kids to catch. Oddly it seemed about 40% had grown into trophies, 30% were mid sized, and 30% hadn't grown much at all. In a way it may be a way to do some selective genetic grow out of more aggressive fish, and then cull the less aggressive ones.

Here I put a quick video together to help understand the concept...

https://youtu.be/f2l-_LzhmoQ

Thanks for the video. Nice to see how other folks do things and different set ups. It seems like that is a good way to distribute food around the pond rather than have the fish all gather in one place at one time. Not sure if one method is better than the other but nice to have new ideas.

I’m not sure that’s an advantage as the food doesn’t get far. LOL. But it did seem to pellet train some fish that ordinarily wouldn’t and stimulated feeding during bright light situations where they ordinarily would not.

Great setup & video, sure helps visualize the descriptions. Thanks for sharing.

What is the size of that circulator? It sure moves the water a great distance across the pond.

That one in particular is 1 hp which is plenty. I’d go 1/2 or 3/4 hp. Here is a better video showing the feeding. They tend to lay there waiting to hit pellets like trout in a stream. It is really cool.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJJ3ng6SL0Y&feature=share

Awesome. Now I need to figure out how to run power out to my pond. Love the videos thanks again.

NEDOC,
I’m wondering if the horizontal aeration you are using would in fact stimulate forage fish to spawn that will not do so for lack of current under normal circumstances in a pond? It would answer a lot of Saint abysmals questions upon which forage fish can pull off reproduction in ponds with no current. Just a thought to add on experiments that you might want to try.
Heppy

There was a guy on here quite a few years ago who devised an on demand feeder. He attached a piece of pvc pipe off his dock with holes drilled in it and capped off at the bottom.

The fish came and sucked the feed out of the holes. My only question was whether the water degraded the feed.

Heppy, that's a very good question. Something I'm not knowledgable enough about. I'd have to work with TJ and/or Snipe on that I'd think.

Dave, that's very interesting. I think the biggest surprise to me was how much the current changed my feeding. It seemed to stimulate pellet feeding in an entire population of fish that hadn't been noticed feeding on pellets.

Dave, Ive seen a feeder at a trout farm that looked like a funnel with tall sides and a stick hung down from the center of the funnel, and it would hang above the raceway with the end of the stick right at the water level. The trout would hit the stick and some feed would drop down into the raceway. Sort of like the lixit dog waterer, same principle at least. lixit dog waterer