Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Muddy water Anyone apply Alum straight out of the bag?

I have 300 lbs. of alum to add to one of my ponds and considering the pond is quite large I do not relish mixing it in garbage cans with the pond water to make a slurry and spreading it all over the pond. I've done this on a much smaller pond and it was a chore then. It would be much easier to brodcast the crystals and I have been told by one extention agent that it can be done on a calm day.

Has anyone done this? I am skeptical it is as effective as using the slurry where it is already dissolved in the pond water. But if anyone can reassure me that it is effective I will go ahead and do it. No need for a buffer with this pond, so that saves some effort. Alkalinity is so high it is almost off the scale.

Cecil,

I've done it before, and I had good results. I took a seeder designed for a 4-wheeler, and I strapped it to the bow of the boat (I have the luxury of an electrofishing cage bolted onto my boat). I hooked the leads to a 12v battery and drove around the pond. I had a guy in the front of the boat that controlled the amount of alum going into the seeder. It worked great. I feel like I got a pretty even dispersal. I've done it by hand from a boat and it was pretty much a pain in the butt. Hopefully you have a seeder. Our's is made from a company called Herd. It saves a lot of time. Good luck. Shawn

Shawn - what "grade" of aluminum sulfate were you using? Was it a powder, crystal, granule,...? Give a relative size comparison to something.

I've always wondered, but never tried to apply the granule without pre-dissolving in water. I was concerned that the granules would simply sink to the bottom and dissolve there, rather than in the water-column.

Depending on the grade that you successfully used, I may try using a GranBlow spreader ( GranBlo ), which would greatly simpify and speed up the process.

How high is the ph ? Mine is between 7 and 8. Would I need a buffer. I am having a huge struggle this year with clearing my water.

My PH is about 7.9 to 8.O but a little lower near the inflow from my trout pond where the incoming water that is well fed from trout pond runs a little lower. If I do not overflow my trout pond water into the warmwater pond for a while, my water PH climbs up to 8.3.

PH is important but just as important is your alkalinity. Your alkalinity is what buffers you from a rapid PH drop due to the alum being acidic. A Ph change of more than 1.0 is hard on fish. I did some scaled down testing in jars and did not experience any PH drop whatsoever due to my high alklinity.

Here are some links I posted in another category if you have not seen them that explain things for a better understanding. The use of Gypsum is also covered in the second link.

http://www.perigee.net/~jrjohns/aluma.html

http://agfacts.tamu.edu/D11/Calhoun/Mar/Recfish/Pondmgt/mudpond.htm

Interestingly, apparently my alkalinity is high enough and does such an effective job of buffering PH changes I have not seen any diurnal PH swings which are supposed to be common in ponds.

Thanks for the contributions (can't go back and see the names with this format without losing this post) I may try the dry approach. Baraclear sinks to the bottom and is supposed to work. How it sinks to the bottom quickly to tie up nutrients in the bottom and also coagulates clay particles at the same time is beyond me.

BTW, I got these 50 lb. bags for only $11.60 a piece at a local chemical supply by looking in the yellow pages. If you need some kind of buffer you would probably be able to get it from a chemical supplier also. (See one of the previous links on my previous post that explains how much buffer to add)

I hope I helped someone and I sure appreciate the help from others.

Kelly,

I just now got around to getting on the internet again so I apologize for the tardy reply. I just went out to the shop and checked the Alum. The bag says "Low Iron Granular". I would compare the size of the particles to somewhere between the size rock salt and table salt. It spreads rather nicely at this size, although, crytals would probably spread even better. I just felt like I could get more nutrients to bind if I used the finer alum. We applied it to cause nutrients to flocculate and decrease the amount of nutrients for a severe algal problem. It seems to be working thus far. I have a control pond right next to the one I treated with the same problem, and the problem is persisting in the control pond. We applied the Alum last summer with the our observations on algal growth taking place this spring. So far so good. Hope this helps. Shawn