Pond Boss Forums AERATION Systems questions How to aerate a long, thin retention pond system?

With that shallow of a pond, the dye will probably not work. I'm only saying that because to get the dye to work, it has to reduce sunlight penetration in the water. Get it dark enough to work in shallow water, and the aesthetics might not be what the HOA is willing to live with. You want to get the dye dense enough to limit sunlight getting to the pond bottom.

The good thing about Tilapia is that they die off in the winter. Scavengers will eat the dead fish that they can reach, removing them from the BOW. To grow, the Tilapia eat algae, which uses nutrients in the pond to grow. With the scavengers removing the Tilapia every fall, they are removing nutrients from your pond.

I have a HOA here in Indiana that has a large pond that they have problems with in regards to weeds and algae. It is 8' deep in the deepest part of the pond. If the water is clear, algae will grow on the bottom of the pond in over 6' of water.

They want fish in the pond, and have experienced both summer and winterkills. They are using a Vertex bottom diffusion aeration system in half of the pond now, and will be adding another system to the other half of the pond next year. The year after that, they will be adding 1 hp surface agitators (not fountains) to help aerate the shallowest part of their pond. The surface agitators that I've seen that have the least amount of problems with regards to clogging are the Volcano II aerators made by AquaMaster. They have stainless steel parts, and are more durable than agitators with plastic parts.

http://www.aquamasterfountains.com/volcano-ii-hydromax-series/volcano-ii

As a side note, they experienced a summer kill this year in their pond. Many, many 6" crappie were observed dead, along with other fish species - nothing dead was less than about 5" in length. The summer kill happened in the half of the pond that did not have the aeration system in it. So, that alone proved to them that the aeration system is working and doing what they wanted it to do. Enough fish died that it stunk pretty bad when you were down wind of the pond.