I purchased a piece of property about 5 years ago. The property has a pond that is shared with 3 other properties. It has been extremely neglected for an unknown amount of time. I have no idea where to start with this project. For starters the pond is approximately 0.75 acres. Will attach aerial photo. This pond facilitates flow from storm water run off from parts of the neighborhood to the pond and out through creeks to the anclote river. There is a huge land mass floating on the pond. I have had a friend come over to remove some of the land mass to allow for fishing from my end of the pond. All in all my friend said it would cost approximately 10k to get the pond up to speed. That’s just unreasonable for me and my neighbors are not on board with that either. It’s my limited understanding that the reason the land mass is there is because the water chemistry is off and allowing the foliage to grow and fertilizing it. After clearing enough of the foliage to get some breathing room from my bank I can go out with my son and catch small blue gill and have had some rather large bites when fishing close to the remaining land mass. This makes me think the chemistry must not be too bad. I’m curious to know exactly where to start. Do I start with water chemistry or with the land mass? I will take any help I can get. Thank you in advance
IF the pond is only 6' deep you won't see much benefit from aeration. You will see some, but not to the extent that you'd see if you had 10'-12' water depth. With the floating island in there, getting the diffuser/air station to the deepest part of the pond won't be of much help if the vegetation covers the deepest part.
Even with a water test, you might find that your water has low alkalinity. If you add lime to bring the alkalinity up, you might cause a big algae bloom just due to allowing the plants to utilize the nutrients that are there.
Basically for now, a simple pH test done 3x on the same day will help tell us a lot. Do the test at sunrise, middle of the day and at sunset to see how much it swings.
When we do a water test for our customers we test for the following, and these are the acceptable ranges:
NH3 = Ammonia 0-1 mg/l CL = chloride 10:1 CL to NO2 SO4 = Sulfate 0-1,000 mg/l (500 if watering cattle) NO2 = Nitrite 0-1 mg/l NO3 = Nitrate 0.005 - 0.5 mg/l but can be up to 90 mg/l SiO2 = Silica 5-25 mg/l SRP = Soluble Reactive Phosphorus <0.3 mg/l TP = Total Phosphorus 0.01 - 0.075 mg/l TKN = Total Kjeldahl Nitrogen 2-6 mg/l COND = Conductivity 100-2,000 µmhos/cm
Use this as a guide when sending out water to be tested. Talk to the people that will be doing the test and make sure that they can test down to that small of an amount. For instance, take TP. If the lowest level of Total Phosphorous that they can detect is <1 mg/l then the test that they do for you is meaningless. They have to be able to detect down to 0.01mg/l for them to be able to give you a test result you can use.
Thanks for the response. Yes it’s 5.5 ft about half way out to the land mass. We can’t get to the actual middle to determine depth. There is a creek that runs to and from pond yes. However rains would have to be torrential for it to make it to that creek bc of undulation. The creek outlet is also over grown and the property owner does not want to clean it out. Unsure about droughts. To my knowledge and surrounding knowledge of others in neighborhood it has not dried up but I would think at some point it would have had to dry up to begin the start of all this vegetation.
Good deal. Water depth of 6 feet or more makes a good fishing pond much more likely to be achieved.
I would definitely get a water test, but I suspect it will be OK if there are no industrial chemicals or heavy agricultural products running into the pond.
How far away is 120V electricity? Adding aeration might be one of your most effective means of helping your fish.
If a neighbor's electric line is closer, then perhaps you could put a cheap meter on the line extension and agree that all three parties split the electric charge for the aeration.
I would definitely keep the neighbors in the loop for all ideas.
I would keep clearing some small access points to fish from the banks. Sampling your pond by fishing throughout this year could give you lots of valuable information.
Is there any type of structure in the pond for the fish? The BG and other forage fish like "fluffy" cover to hide in. The bass like more open cover like some larger tree branches so that they can ambush their prey.
Do you catch fish throwing your baits to the edge of the floating island? I suspect that may be your main structure in the pond right now.
I know $10,000 seems like a lot of money to clean out the floating island and "expand" the size of your pond. However, that is probably cheaper to fix and expand the pond compared to almost any other problem. The good news is, I see no reason that you must clear it all at one time. Just keep taking small bites and observe how much that helps.
The productivity of the climate in Florida is both a blessing and a curse! Beautiful pond ... surrounded by thick jungle.
Is the depth of 5.5" a typo, or is most of the pond only 6 inches deep?
If that is the case, then yes you are going to have to spend $10,000 (or more) for a decent fishing pond.
Some questions before deciding to spend big bucks:
Does the water coming into the pond contain fish species that you cannot exclude from entering your pond? For example, is there a small creek that runs into the pond during flooding rains? Or, does the water supply come from running off of your property and the neighbors' properties with no chance of fish washing in?
Do you have decent control of the water flowing OUT of the pond when the area receives flooding rains? If not, then spending money for improvements and fish in a pond where your fish will wash downstream is probably a poor investment.
Does the pond ever go dry during drought periods?
If you are optimistic about your pond after thinking about the questions above, then one option would be to deepen the pond. Can you make a berm around the downstream areas of the pond? I don't know if that would destroy the view of one of your neighbors, or divert water into a basement, etc.?
However, excavating the material and moving it the minimum distance would certainly be one way to improve your pond.
Good luck on your pond project! Hopefully, we can answer a few more questions if you keep adding information.
Floating? Are you sure? If it’s floating, I would start with herbicide in a couple of limited areas to see what happens.
Don’t hit the whole thing at one time. Rotting vegetation can rob oxygen leading to a fish kill. Leave safe areas for the fish to escape to. Maybe 10% at a time.
