Pond Boss Forums AERATION Systems questions Avoiding winter fish kill

I have a contract on property that has a 3 acre pond. The deepest point of the pond is 10-12 ft. 50% of the pond is less than 6 ft deep. The owner told me that 7 years ago the pond froze and he lost all of his bass. The pond has been frozen now for 3 weeks and weather here in S.W. Missouri is very cold and forecast is for the same cold weather for quite some time. Is there anything I can do to avoid another fish kill?

Rosinmo, there are a number of threads about winterkill on the forum, so you may want to search for some for more in depth discussion. A couple of quick thoughts, though, are to run a shallow aerator to keep an opening in the ice, or to shovel clear strips on the ice to allow for light penetration so photosynthesis can continue to occur. If using an aerator, there are a lot of considerations to be taken so you don't end up supercooling the water and killing your fish anyway. I don't aerate yet so I don't have direct experience to share with you, but plenty here will. If the ice is thick enough, get out and do some shoveling in the meantime so you get light down into the water. That'll be a good start.

rosinmo, Todd covered the 2 main points in helping to reduce winterkill. Probably the best thing to do now that the pond is well frozen is to clear some big patches of snow, with a 3 acre pond that would be alot of shoveling so if you have access to a snowblower that would work well, just make sure you have at least 3 or 4 inches of ice.
If there's power available at the pond and you have a submersible pump you could chop holes in the ice and pump water onto the cleared areas to make the ice more transparent, and if the snow isn't too deep the pumped water can help clear some of the snow.
In the future having an aerator and 3 or 4 diffusers spaced around in shallow water can save alot of work.

If there is power to the pond (or you can run a long extension cord) maybe a submersible sump pump or small dewatering pump (the kind that you hook a garden hose to) would work. Just get the pump in the water (but keep it off of the bottom) and run the water thru the hose out onto the ice and let it go continually. It'd open up a hole. Even better would if you could elevate the hose a bit and let it splash back onto the ice and subsequent hole.

While it isn't an aerator, it's better than nothing.

Winterkill all depends on the biomass in the pond, and the amount of O2 being produced. My pond has been frozen for almost 8 weeks now without aeration or shoveling snow and the O2 levels are still high.

Thanks Everyone. I appreciate the input!