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Hi all I have a 1/2 acre pond 12ft deep in Nothern Michigan Built in2004. The pond has a liner covered with sand and Filled whit a well. It is areated with a 1/4 hp rocking piston compressor an a single membrane siffuser placed in the deepest part of the pond run 24/7. Reading the system forum I need to replace the diffuser with 3 fine bubble difusers and place in shallow water in the winter? no wonder i have regular fishkills and cannot catch fish in the winter. I have had problems with all three types of algea, hopefully with a better system this will become lessof a problem.I have used lots of dye trying to stop the algea and now know that it is not good for the fish. Justinstalled a pressure regulator with a reading of 12 psi. THE difusser has only been cleaned once since installed. does the Eco 7 pump really work good? if so imthinking of buying one for a back up. I spent over $600 for system on advice from the supplier, i see i could have got s better system at a better price. Suggestions????

Welcome to the Forum, hawg lake. I am not an expert on nothern ponds but hopefully someone from your part of the country will chime in on this.

Welcome h.l. There is some excellent reading on the forum about aerating a pond. Sounds like you could be the victim of "super cooling", and that would kill fish. Someone that knows far more about it then me will post.

I just posted DO and temp readings that were taken last year in some different ponds, one with a diffuser in the deepest part of the pond accidentally partially left open. Take at a look at the temp vs. a pond that had an aerator running in the shallows and two that had no aeration at all.

It's in the "winterkill" thread.

hawg, what type of fish are you stocking that are winter killing. 12 psi would be just twice the pressure you should have.Not sure with one diffuser that is partially plugged that you are super cooling.Is your pump output approx 1.5 cfm or greater??

Hey Hawg,

The Eco Plus 7 is a good pump for a linear pump. I been using one in 8 feet of water for 2 years now no problems. A couple of other guys on this site have been using them as well just this last year. I know of one that has his in 11 or 12 foot of water and it's doing fine. It would be a decent backup I think. Keep in mind I am running my Eco 7 in 8 feet of water using 3, 9 inch diffusers. So I believe it would be fine for you as a backup! You may not need 3 diffusers but I would go to 2, 9 inch fine bubble fusers. That should be fine for your size pond unless you have a very strange shaped pond. Your fusers need to be in 3 to 4 foot of water or so in the winter though. Just to keep the ice off a little on th pond. You DONT want to run it in the deep part of your pond! That is and can be dangerous to your fish!

Good Luck and welcome to the PBF!!

Thanhs for the informatio. If im understanding this in winter ponds have enough DO. Aeration in shallow keeps open water for gases to escape?

My pump is rated at 1.5 cfm at 10 ft. My pond is bucket stocked with 15 to 21inch LMB and SMB, and 7 to 10in. BG . I have had only one year of complete winter kill others have been 5 to 20 dead fish in the spring. So when the ice melts I should replace the diffuser with at least to membrane diffusers. What pressure should i have 5?















what

Thanks from readingthe forum you sure know what your talking about. So I should have the duffuser in shallow water once the water temp gets below 60* in the fall until it warms up to 60* in the spring? here in nothern michigan that is usually in early October until late april. Having the right setup should do wonders for my fish.

If your pond receives lots of leaves and windblown organics or dead weeds in the fall, IMO place the diffuser deeper (6-7ft) for winter operation. This tends to cool the water below 39F but the fish can tolerate water cooler than 39F a lot better than they can tolerate no DO in the deeper water.

For MI ponds the pond should be closer to 20ft deep than 10ft - 16-18ft is a much better depth for MI snowy winters unless snow is regularly removed from 20-25% of the pond.

I'm guessing your bucket stocked fish are going into winter stressed due to lack of a proper food web. This compounded with heavy blue dye shading eliminating phytoplankton - zooplankton and continuous winter aeration makes things worse. The stocked fish could also be starting out stressed due to transfer shock and lack of a proper food web for these large sized fish. All that you are doing is not natural to these fish and many of them cannot tolerate the winter conditions. Winter is the hardest season for all fish. Big fish are old fish and old fish are normally the weakest fish similar to humans. Great Grandma is not as strong nor healthy as her grand daughers. The weakest ones are being eliminated.

I wondered about the depth of the pond too but I am a southerner and normally don't have winter fish kills.

There are numerous stressors going on with this situation. Depth is just a minor one.

I completely agree with Bill. A step back with an evaluation of the current management plan would be appropriate.

Bill 6 or 7 foot of water with the air when you only have 12 foot to begin with??? Isn't that pusing it a bit? Not arguing just asking? You can get some serious turnover in 7 foot of water when your pond is only 12 foot. Now I'm confused! Everything I have read says around 4 foot of water for air in winter.

Or put the fuser at about 2 foot below the surface?

RC51, with the organic load in the pond, the bacteria is using up a lot of O2 near the bottom, that's why Bill is saying to put the diffisers lower in the water column, to get more of the total volume of water aerated. You are correct, the diffuser depth is usually 1/4 to 1/3 down the water column, but remember "it all depends".



hawg lake, not only does the winter aeration allow for the bad gasses to escape, it also allows more sunlight into the water thru the open areas vs. the snow covered ice. You get the majority of O2 generated in the pond during the winter via photoplankton. That's why keeping it dyed isn't a good idea. The dye is to keep sunlight from penertating to the pond bottom, therefore keeping submerged rooted plants from growing. Secondary function of the dye is aestetics. The dye is working against you. It'd be better to get a good photoplankton bloom going during the spring/summer to prevent sunlight from reaching the pond bottom. The dye is stopping a lot of photoplankton from growing.

Ok cool that makes more since. So your basically doing the better of 2 evils one being not quite as bad as the other. Like Bill said no D.O. means dead fish for sure!!

So can I assume when we say super cooling we are only talking about 4 or 5 degrees difference in temps?

thanks,

yep. One pond that has RES in it was 35/36 last winter for a short bit and I thought we'd lose the RES due to the cold water. 39 is what the water at the bottom of a pond in the winter usually is.

Caution when "lumping" the term diffuser into one general catagory. Diffusers are built to lift different amounts of water. 5 different diffusers at the same depth with the same air supply can lift 5 different rates.Five 9 inch diameter dics (seemingly) the same can also lift varying rates. Slit size,configuation amount of slits all lead to different lifting rates.So one pond that has a diffuser placed deeper in a pond in the winter may have few problems and his neighbor with a "diffuser" at the same depth and airflow may have issues. This is only one of the variables that can perplex winter aeration. I agree that high lift diffusers placed at 50% of the depth in most one acre ponds and smaller that you can effect the entire pond.This can be a plus or a minus.Know your lifting rates. Good topic keep it going !

Ted proves again "It all depends".
Note to all that I stated IF the pond receives lots of organic materials and thus has a higher BOD move the diffuser deeper to increase mixing and minimize winterkill. This applies especially to ponds that experience winterkill with aeration. In my experience more fish die of DO sags in winter than from supercooling of the water. IMO supercooling is stressful to pond inhabitants and rarely causes death compared to winter DO shortages.

Placing the diffuser shallow during winter is general recommendation not an absolute. In my experience, many ice covered ponds do 'okay' in winter with diffusers in the deepest water.

Ted, you da man! Those are VERY good and valid points that I'll bet a lot of people don't consider when thinking about an aeration system, when buying a complete system, and especially when designing a DIY system. There are reasons why a system from the PB advertisers are a bit more expensive than a DIY system; you are paying for the design and research that goes into building the best system for YOUR pond, not a generic system.

There's so many "it depends" when it comes to individual ponds that it's impossible to have a generic system that is the best system for all ponds.

Ok so that raises a question for me then. I am here in Northern Arkansas. In winter most of the time we average around 35 to 42 for average lows here in winter and upper 40's to mid 50's for highs. My pond is 8 to 9 feet deep which is where I have my diffusers. I don't think I have a D.O. problem in winter but I do have a lot of organic material that enters my pond and have a lot from previous years. Would it be ok for me to aerate my 1 acre pond year round then? And if yes should it be for a limited time each day verses 24/7 like in summer?

If you are lifting in the 1-1.5 range per 24 hours I would not have a problem with year round aeration with the information provided. I would simply shut it down at 40F no matter night or day.Any thing over 1.5 lifts per day in cold water is probably not going to be beneficial. I would also want to see placement of station(s)If running on central station you may not be destratify totally. Temp checks in various areas may confirm this.If OM reduction is part of the goal and you have 8-9 ft of water you may want to lift in more than one area to promote additional aerobic bacteria throughout the entire pond bottom. Decomposition is very slow in cold water "compared" to warmer water.

Hey Ted thanks for your advise! Oh and by the way that weighted hose I got from you is working awesome!!

thanks a bunch,

Appreciate it !!

Hey Ted,
I want to try and keep this post going cause you guys have some good info that a lot of us don't know. You said in the above post to "Know your lifting rates"

Can you or Mr. Cody expain as to how you go about finding out what your lifting rates are in laymens terms? What do I need to look for? I laid out an example below but if that is not enough to go on please could either of you use an example that we could all somewhat use as a basic template say for a 1 acre pond at a certain depth.

Lets use this for an example if you can: I have a 1 acre pond I have 3, 9 inch slit fine bubble diffusers. Peak air flow is 6 scfm per fuser, designed air flow is 0.5 to 4.0 scfm per fuser. My air is set at 8 feet my Eco 7 puts out 5.1 psi and 7 cfm. With these numbers how can I get close to what my turn over rate would be for a 1 acre pond 9 foot deep? Lets say for arguments sake we are running our air for 12 hours a night.

Thanks in advance for any help in this. I think a lot of people don't understand how this works and it would be great if someone like you or Cody could expain it a little better where us rookies can understand it!

Thanks,