I'm putting this in the Aeration forum because I'm thinking that aeration is the best approach. The pond is a cousin's about 3 hours away in the Kansas City area so I will have to depend on someone else to carry out any solutions, which makes me very hesitant to use chemicals for control.

It is a 3 acre, 15 foot maximum depth, spring fed pond which overflows through a spillway several times a year after a rain. Has been there at least 50 years. It is also surrounded by trees that block the wind. The last time I was there, it was a 10 mph wind in the open but couldn't feel any at the pond. The pond surface is covered by a thin green layer, some duckweed but I'm guessing mostly watermeal. Lots of frogs and some snapping turtles, but don't know about any fish.

Water testing in late July 2019 was: pH 7.0, nitrite 0.0, phosphate 0.5, ammonia 0.5. My theory is that the trees both block the wind and have contributed to a build up of bottom muck over the years. From the test results, the anaerobic bacteria are converting the muck to ammonia, but there isn't enough oxygen for the aerobic bacteria to convert the ammonia to nitrite, etc. When I was there about a week ago we put in a couple of pounds of muck away pellets along 2 parts of the shoreline and poured in a couple of gallons of pond dye plus bacteria, mostly because I already had bought it.

I'm looking at the Airmax 40 system which is supposed to be for up to a 4 acre pond. Can run electricity from the house a couple of hundred feet away up to the pond dam. Or there is a shop several hundred feet away from the side of the pond and up above it.

Am I on the right track?