Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Help Virgin pond builder

I am getting started with my first trout pond and I have a lot of questions about: Liners, areators, shade vs direct light, how deep, and habitat. Mostly, I just want to get off to a good start with a healthy pond. What would be a good recource to guide me at the beginning of the building process?

Use the internet as a start. Use the search topic Fishing Pond or bass pond or trout pond or? Almost all States have public sites where fisheries biloogists post papers and "how to do it" stuff. Mississippi is a good starting source and a lot of them have links to other State sites.

Read all of this site. The past discussions and questions, while not all pertaining to your questions, will make you more knowledgable and then allow you to ask more specific questions. An awful lot of things that you aren't aware of are answered here. You might also want to start a dialogue with others that are doing what you want to do. Pay particular attention to Bill Cody, Kelly Duffie, Greg Grimes, David Willis and some others that do this for a living. Oh yeah, if you see anything by Bill Cody, read it until you really understand it. Sometimes it takes several shots but is absolutely worth it.

I would subscribe to Pond Boss magazine. It answers a lot of questions that I am not smart enough to ask. With the exception of the time my wife threw out some "junk", I have all of my back copies and refer to them sometimes.

Think in "holistic" terms. You know you can't grow a garden in poor soil and you can't grow fish in poor water. I think it all comes down to water quality. A top of the line predator can't make it if the smallest piece of life is having a hard time due to water quality problems. Thats why I said pay attention to Bill Cody. He is a water quality expert and also is a Northern pond guy.

I would talk to other pond owners and the NRCS about the soils in my area and ask them what to expect.

Oh yeah, keep your checkbook handy.

Matt-Congratulations on your new project. I have a 1 1/2 year old pond that is entirely for rainbow and steelhead trout. I will briefly tell your what i did and what didn't work. My pond is an earthen pond approx 1/2 acre. I live in Western Nebr and we have hot summers and mild but sometimes very cold winters. My pond is 7ft deep at the deepest and varies from there. I have a 3 to 1 slope and have very little problems with weeds in the pond. I have a clay bottom but decided to line it with a plastic liner with a foot of dirt on it as well just as a precaution. I fill it with a 40 gal/minute well with an overflow on the low end. I have to run my pump 24/7 during the hottest part of the summer. Usually July-Sept 15th to keep the water temp cool enough not to stress the trout. I put in ?? number of fathead minniows in May of the first year and stocked the trout in late June. The minnows reproduced like crazy and i also have snails and crayfish. The fish that i catch typically have as many snails in their belly as minnows. The first problem that i ran into was i put in a bottom diffuser and during August the first year had a massive die off due to lack of O2 and mixing the water colume and deleting the cooler summer refuge water due to the mixing. I immediately purchased a top water kasco splasher and this summer which was miserably hot i never lost a trout. One thing you have to have is a water supply either natural or spring fed. If you use a well it is best to set up a packed colume and aerate the well water as well. I am working on doing this as the well water have very little O2. I imagine that in Arizona in the summer you will have even a bigger challenge keeping fish alive unless your are committed to all the things listed above. Test you soil and then test your water. During the heat of the year this summer i had a terrible suspended Algae problem. I was hesitent to treat with Curtrin but did in late September and it totally got it back to 2 ft visability. My coming 2 yr old steelheads are 5-6 pounds and the rainbows are arround 3-4 lbs. The biggest success that i have had was putting spawning pallets on the shallow edges for the fatheads to spawn and in fact i had to trap several thousand minnows to get the population down so i could have more fishing success. That is the short answer but hopefully it will help you not make some of the decisions that i did when it came to aeration. One thing that i should mention is my consultant C.B. aerates his well water and gets along just fine with just a bottom diffuser. The top water splasher just produces so much more DO. Hope that helps somewhat. Get a book and read it before you do anything else.

jeff

Matt,

I have a trout pond myself and although I am not at the level of a consultant I am flattered that Jeff would refer to me as one (C.B).

Anyway here is what I have learned from having a trout pond for my third year:

1.) I would not use a liner if you do not have to. Not only are they expensive but with natural hydrosoil you get more more microorganisms working for you breaking down waste and keeping yor ammonia levels down. However Jeff adding soil on top of his liner works just fine. However just a liner will work just fine but you may need more aeration.

2.) ASAP prevent any erosion coming into the pond as once you get those clay/silt particles floating around it takes a while to get them settled. I had that problem as my pond builder came much later in the year than he promised and I did not have time to plant cover.

Chronic silty water is hard on the gills of trout as it collects on their gills, causes irritation and subsequent bacterial growth. Of course this is more of a problem with smaller trout.

As far as preventing erosion ASAP I have since found burlap 6 feet wide that comes in rolls and staked out along the shoreline with grass seed planted underneath is optimum. I did this in a holding pond a while back and the water stayed crystal clear regardless of how much rainful we had. Of course there are other ground covers out there too.

2.) Make you pond steep sided, and bigger is not necessarily better for a trout pond especially if you will be feeding your trout for optimum growth. The steep sides keep water warming down, and the bigger your pond is, the more difficult it will to keep it cool if you have warm summers, and you are running in well water. Steep sides also keep weed growth down.

My trout pond is about 1/10 acre (88 by 59 feet) with a max depth of 9 feet. That does not sound deep but the pond is basically a pit -- it drops off so fast.

3.) You need to keep max temps in summer below 65 F. if at all possible, and have sufficient oxygen of a minimum of 6 ppm. 55 to 65 F. is optimum for trout growth and health. I use a 4 inch well that pumps about 38 gpm of aerated 51.6 F.well water into the pond 24/7 from late spring to the end of September. The well is 88 feet deep and costs about $100.00 per month to run 24/7.

I aerate the well water (well water is devoid of oxygen when it first comes out of the groud) by sending it up a 1 1/2 inch PVC pipe than horizontally over and then it drops in to a series of 4 five gallon buckets with plastic biofilter material in them to break up the water, add oxygen and blow of nitrogen gas, C02, and hydrogen sulfide. This drops into a poly tank and then flows underground through 4 inch PVC to the pond. Since the pvc outflow is several feet lower than the tank level I put an elbow on the inflow to the pond and run the water up about three feet where it cascades down additionally aerating the water, although I acheive close to 100 percent saturation with the buckets.

3.) If you want your trout to grow optimally and/or you want more trout in your pond than it could with natural feed, and you want good survival then feeding them commercial floating feed is mandatory. Do not overfeed and be aware that the more trout you have and the more feed you feed will be inviting more and more aquatic vegetation and probably an algae bloom. Both are not bad in themselves but in excess can cause problems and not be aethetically pleasing.

4.) I aerate with a 1/10th hp compressor and a couple of stones set on a stand in the center of the pond on the bottom. I am not really aerating that much but actually mixing the water column to promote biological breakdown of waste and prevent an anoxic layer on the bottom. I believer Jeff had a fish kill because his pond is much bigger (more warming) and he may have disrupted an anoxic layer after it formed depleting oxygen throughout the pond.

When daytime temps get above 80. F. I shut off the compressor during the day to prevent too much mixing and warming of the water. It is possible that it would not warm the water up that much especially since the well runs in cool water but I prefer to play it safe. I will be collecting lots of data this coming summer to dertermine all the variables.

I am considering using this diffuser in tandem with a powerhouse surface diffuser at night when air temps are below 65 F. The diffuser will go off at night and the powerhouse will go on.

5.) I will be adding a couple of grass carp to the trout pond this spring to keep weeds controlled. I recently harvested my trout mostly by hook and line an drained the pond. The amount of weed growth was staggaring. Athough the water temps will not be optimum for grass carp feeding I have date from Alberta that they will keep weed growth down albeit you may have to add more than the standard rate of 10/acre/

6.) Purchase your fish from a source that passes a health inspection annually and don't be afraid to purchase advanced size fish to get some real monsters soon. I generally get my trout at about 2 pounds and can easily have a 6 lbs plus fish 11 months later if I feed them. So far my biggest fish was a 11 lb. 12 oz. hooked jawed brown that stayed in the pond 2 years after being planted at 2 or 3 pounds. I have grown a brook to 5 lbs 2 oz. that was just under 3 years old.

Although I need to update my website you can go to http://www.ligtel.com/~jjbaird/bairdfish2

to see some of the trout from my trout pond.