Will this work? - 07/17/14 09:59 PM
I have a small pond. It's not large, but I honestly don't know how big it is. Maybe a half acre? I'm told it is actually very deep as it was a small pond before a dam was built to make it deeper, but not a ton bigger. It's near a river in VERY rocky soil that's known to not hold water very well and yet it never goes down below the spill because it's got a natural spring feeding it (albeit at barely above what it needs, because it rarely has much more than a trickle running out during dry times, but there's always something).
It does have a pretty big runoff area feeding it as well, and some of that is horse pasture. Only about six horses and associated pasture, but enough to include some amount of manure runoff. And worse, a few months back we fertilized. Not long after, boom, the entire pond was covered with algae. And it's stayed that way for several months.
As far as fish life, it has (or had, I assume they're still there as we never saw any sign of a fish kill) a good many very large koi that the previous owner put in as well as an albino catfish that's about 4' long and a few other catfish we've seen.
So in trying to figure out how to get rid of the algae, I decided to first just try aeration. But I'm cheap, so I thought I'd try my own crappy fountain first. I have a few different pumps sitting around, including one shown in the video below. I glued up some PVC I had laying around so the pump would spew above water and submerged the pump. It's only about a foot down. I understand more might be better. I understand an air pump might be better. But will this help at all? Curious what folks think. It only took me an hour of time and some stuff I had laying around, but it's obviously consuming some pretty good electricity, too. Anyway, check out the video:
Let me know if "this is dumb" or "well, it might work...let it run and see." And if the latter, any estimation on how long it might take to see an improvement?
--Donnie
It does have a pretty big runoff area feeding it as well, and some of that is horse pasture. Only about six horses and associated pasture, but enough to include some amount of manure runoff. And worse, a few months back we fertilized. Not long after, boom, the entire pond was covered with algae. And it's stayed that way for several months.
As far as fish life, it has (or had, I assume they're still there as we never saw any sign of a fish kill) a good many very large koi that the previous owner put in as well as an albino catfish that's about 4' long and a few other catfish we've seen.
So in trying to figure out how to get rid of the algae, I decided to first just try aeration. But I'm cheap, so I thought I'd try my own crappy fountain first. I have a few different pumps sitting around, including one shown in the video below. I glued up some PVC I had laying around so the pump would spew above water and submerged the pump. It's only about a foot down. I understand more might be better. I understand an air pump might be better. But will this help at all? Curious what folks think. It only took me an hour of time and some stuff I had laying around, but it's obviously consuming some pretty good electricity, too. Anyway, check out the video:
Let me know if "this is dumb" or "well, it might work...let it run and see." And if the latter, any estimation on how long it might take to see an improvement?
--Donnie