Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations developing a spring?

I have a seep above the pond that is always wet and muddy which produces a slow trickle into the pond, above the seep, maybe 100 yards and across the road is an artesian well which flows all year and this seep is in the same line going down towards the pond. I'd like to develop the seep into a spring if possible. Does anyone know the technique for 'encouraging' a seep to become a spring? The well across the road is on an undeveloped piece of land and if it stopped flowing because I developed the seep on my land into a spring no-one would mind. Is it just a matter of digging a hole and lining it with stone or is there a special technique? This is a very cold spring and pictures of rainbow trout are dancing in my head. Any thoughts?

If you don't mind shelling out about $22.95 there is a book called Small Scale Aquaculture by Steven D. VanGorder that covers this on one page. Here is one site you can go to to order it.

http://rodaleinstitute.org/bookstore/products/farm_books/3.html

It's also probably available at any online bookstore. The book also has other information related to your endeavor. BTW, the author is from PA and I also believe is the publishing company. I would be glad to just copy the pertinant page out of the book but I have loaned it out to a prospective trout farmer.

PaPond, I found a small trickle like that on my property about 15 yrs ago and started digging. This spring is what I ended up with. It's never gone down too much even in our worst drought years. Good luck and hard work!!

W
That site explains alot about the different techniques, thanks it will be very useful.
Cecil
I actually have that book and have read that page, in fact it is what motivated me to walk over and check out the artesian well to begin with. The section on small scale flow through aquaculture systems speaks of a 3 to 5 gpm spring feeding a tank can produce 400 pounds of trout a year. If I can harness that kind of flow, (and I believe I can) I'd bury an 8' diameter tank at ground level and give it a go. The hard part will be for the wife to figure out how many ways to prepare fresh trout.

The ground is soggy over a width of about 20 feet. The ground there is very rocky and digging is done by pick axe and pulling out flat shale surrounded by clay soil. It would be nice to contain the water if only to dry out the surrounding area and pipe the water to the pond. The artesian well above the seep was flowing at over 8 gpm in August and in November it topped 12 gpm. These are crude estimates made by forcing the stream flowing from the well into a v notch which is calibrated.

The artesian well is upstream of my pond about 600 feet away and 25 to 30 vertical feet above. The existing well was dug, lined with stone and tapped for drinking water for a house that is long gone. The well is about 4 feet in diameter and has filled in with leaves and generic crap and has not been kept up. The water leaving the spring flows out in a stream of 8 to 10 inches across. I measured the flow by cutting a 5 gallon pail in half the long way to provide a way to flow the water into a v notch cut into the end of the pail. The pail was sunk into the small stream and wedged in place and by using moss and soil, the flow was directed through the pail and through the v. By measuring the distance from the base of the v to the water level the flow can be calculated.

I'm not an expert on artesian flow and wells but here are few things to consider:

The book may say you can raise 400 lbs of trout on 8 gpms but I think that is extremely optimistic! Once this amount flows into a pond it loses it's power to keep the pond cool enough in summer if there are no other migitating factors. The rule of thumb trout farmers use is 10 to 20 lbs. of trout per gallon of flow. I harvested 500 lbs of trout out of my 1/10th acre pond last fall w/ a flow of about 38 gpms.

That said, you may be able to find more flow by digging etc. I would contact a state geologist or someone that has experience in this.

Another point is you may have much much more potential by boring a well if you have water that is confined under pressure in your area. A friend in Ohio that has a trout farm bored two 8 inch wells through a confining layer of limestone and now has 1500 gallons of free flowing ground water whenever he wants it. He has too much actually, and diverts the excess to an adjacent river. But interestingly exactly where he drilled was crucial as this ground water ran under the limestone in veins and a few feet over hardly produced any water.

Just some points to ponder. You can never have too much flow except maybe in the previous case!

Cecil, did your friend have any other wells in the immediate vicinity that produced that much? Or was it just chance luck that he made the decision to drill out the spring? 1500 gal per min?????? WOW!!!!!!!

It interesting that you ask. He told me he knew there was artesian flowing potential on the property and that is why he bought it. However he drilled one or two wells, if I remember right, and neither produced well. He's very scientific minded and was skepitcal of well deviniers, but he called one in and at least one of the spots the deviner pointed out hit pay dirt. Could have been a coincidence but he was starting to be more open minded.

I know of someone that has an artesian well of 3000 gpms here in Indiana. I'd kill for 100 gpms! I do have some potential within 5 to 20 miles of me. I may eventually purchase property there to raise my trout without pumping well water.

I gottcha Cecil!, fortunate for your friend the confined areas where located in a limestone aquifer. I have several springs that produce 6 gal a min each. I thought about increasing the output by drilling. In my case the confined areas are located under granit bedrock and seep up through fractures. The springs are located on a steep slope elevated 40 feet from the surface of the pond they feed. From what i have researched, chances are drilling would not help. Ive been wracking my brain trying to come up with an option......

MtnLobster,

Have you tried talking to a local knowledgeable well driller? My well driller knows where all the flowing artesian wells are and where he would drill to produce one.

Cecil,
When raising trout in tanks fed by spring water is temperature the major limiting factor? In a 1000 gallon tank the number I'm hearing for Tilapia is 500-600 pounds but they are a warm water fish and very tolerant. With a spring (too cold for tilapia) flowing at say 5 gpm, the water overturn rate should be around 3.33 hours, that should take care of the fish waste but in the summer sun, temperature may be the factor. I can understand how springs flowing into a pond can be so diluted that their effect on temperature in summer can be limited, but what about in tanks? any info, or good books to read on the subject. I'm setting up a system in a greenhouse for Tilapia and HSB but the spring sounds promising for trout and I'd deal with 50 to 75 pounds a year.

Pa,

Yes a tank IS different as in some of the tanks they speak of in Small Scale Aquaculture. I thought you were referring to ponds. I have seen quite a few trout in a small swimming pool at a place in New York called Hicklings. Didn't see to be a lot of flow going into the pool. The owner of this farm tells me he believes trout are the easiest of all the species he has to raise. Makes sense as most of the trout in this country used for aquaculture are domesticated vs. some of the other species.

As far as books there are several that are available via online bookstores but most of them deal with large scale raceway culture. Looks like Small Scale Aquaculture is as close to good information on what you are doing as you may get.

Here in the US most trout growers use the concrete raceways but in Europe as in the British Isles and Denmark they are still using earthen ponds with much success. Their fish look better too. Raceway fish if they spend more than a year or two in a concrete raceway look like they've been multilated to some extent. For my market if I can get fish that are grow out in ponds I have won half the battle.

Cecil,
I remember reading about a cement tank used in an aquadome to raise fish and the fish were beat up from contact with the, apparently not too smooth, walls of the tank. I guess the same is true in concrete raceways. This weekend I had an excavator in to dig a 40 foot long, 5 foot deep v shaped trench in which I'll build forms for a concrete wall to trap and deliver the spring into a pipe. If the flow is enough I may try tank culture outdoors, other than swimming pools what are some tank construction alternatives? I want to wait through at least 1 summer to see what the average flow is before I put in a tank. If nothing else, I'm succeeding in drying up a large muddy spot and condensing the flow into a manageable narrow stream flowing to my pond. I read the article about Tiger Trout in Pondboss but they're hard to come by. They would be better to grow out in my pond.

Didn't you say you had a copy of Small Scale Aquaculture? If so, there are some varations of tanks in there. Fiberglass tanks are available too. Do you have a copy of the Aquatic Ecosystems catalog? In there they sell steel circular tanks that you can set up on site or you can bury in the ground, and as one option pour concrete in the bottom with your drains in place. I have a good book on trout culture I can send you that covers this stuff if you promise to send it back when you are done. Email me your mailing address and I will send it to you. My email is in my profile.

Cecil,
I really appreciate your offer of the book loan, but I've got this thing about books, I love to read them and hate to give them up, so how about the name and author and I'll try to find it first.

Thanks

Developing Springs:

Thought I'd throw in my 2 cents. Been busy lately haven't had time to keep up with the discussions.

The information that WR provided was interesting. Developing springs is simply a case of increasing the surface area of the medium through, which flow occurs. If the right conditions exist (upward gradient) then exposing more of the sand aquifer or fractures (if a bedrock aquifer) will generally equal more flow until the gradient (or head) is neutralized. A well does the same thing by exposing the aquifer along a vertical cylinder.

Have you ever wondered why water doesn't always flow out of the ground when artesian conditions exist? Vertical permeability is generally 1/10 the horizontal permeability even in a uniform sand aquifer and substantially less if less permeable materials like clay (>10,0000x) exist above the sand or bedrock aquifer. The permeablility contrast in the sand is usually enough to prevent surface discharge and preserve the upward gradient until a relief point is reached. That relief point may be a hole in the clay, the side of a hill, a vertical fracture zone or a well.

You can maximize spring flow by exposing the largest area of the aquifer but the head and permeability will remain limiting factors. The more flow you achieve, the more you risk decreasing the head, so it depends on how large of a reservoir you are drawing from. It could be infinite or relatively small, which could have consequences if it drys up.

PA,

A couple books I like are Trout Farming Handbook by Stephen Drummond Sedgwick and Intensive Fish Farming by Joathan Shepard and Niall Bromage.

Be aware some of these aquaculture books can be quite pricey due to limited printing. The Trout Farming Handbook is a UK book and some things may seem unfamiliar but it is well worth it.

I'm still learing about how much water it takes to keep a pond cool enough and enough exchange to hold a given number of trout. I may be changing ponds for my trout to an upstream pond and making the present trout pond a pellet trained smallmouth bass pond. An ajacent pond will be a bluegill/yellow perch pond that I can funnel via gravity some of the trout overflow to ajust maximum summer temps in the low to mid 70's to keep stress down on the larger perch. The smallmouth bass pond downstream will receive overflow from the trout pond later in summer when that will keep temps for the smallmouth in the upper 60's. I can bypass the smallmouth bass pond or run full bore from the trout pond into it.

Cecil,
Thanks for the info on the books, I went out on a limb and ordered both from Amazon.com The trout farming handbook sold for 143.45 and the intensive fish farming for 86.82 a little pricey but it's almost Christmas.

Thanks