Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Fertilization ohio

Anyone with a pond around ohio? What do I use to fertilize? I saw the buckets you throw in in this issue of pond boss. Are those any good? Whatever happened to the old ponds that were never touched and had lunkers?

More changes of more lunkers per acre in a fertilized pond. You need proper sized forage to grow lunkers not just fertilizer.

Southern pondowners have their best luck with the fertilizer in the bucket you mentioned. See post titled: Floating Fertilizer Box?-Aug 19,02-(topic Fertilization). More chances to achieve long-term success. If you fertilize in the north its a very tricky job and I highly recommend bottom aeration to keep things mixed and minimize summer kill.

As Bill said it takes more than just fertilizing. Fertilizer makes more fish not bigger fish unless you couple with proper harvest program.

Just one thought has anyone thought about the cost of the convenice of Southern Excellence? At $30 per appl. it is more three times the easy to use water soluble fertilizers. The sceintific background in me is coming out, but how about a comparision this spring and summer of fertilizer types? Hard to have a controlled environment I know, but if you wanted to supply some product of a couple of types I or someone else on this board could test for "bloom" effectiveness, easy of use, and cost in similiar water flow and alkalinity characteristics.

thanks, I now bottom areation is better than a fountain but would a fountain work or do I possitively want a bottom ariator?

Hey bc, you are correct, using air to move, or aerate water is much better then using a pump and moving the water itself. It is also more effective at opening up frozen ponds. For example:
I tried a 130-150 Watt water pump moving 3000+ GPH, which is quite alot for an electric pump of this nature. In 3 feet of water it will open a 1 foot or less hole in 10" thick ice. That is alot of energy use for little result. Now using a 5 watt or less air pump in the same 3 feet of water I can open 10 foot plus diameter holes above each airstone. This is simply because the air bubbles move considerably more water then pumping water itself. Fountains look nice but I don't think they are an effective means to add oxygen to a pond unless it is a small pond. The other issue with a fountain is water loss and water heating in the hot summer months. I have tried both methods and pumping air is by far the best choice.

bc, how deep is your pond, how large is it and what shape is it?

Shallow ponds, less than 6 feet deep, can sometimes be aerated more effectively with surface aerators. One of the major draw-backs is that they only draw water fronm the top 5 feet of the water column. However, bottom aerators have their draw-backs as well. The shallower the water is, the less water that bottom aerators move. So, there is a point, somewhere around 5 feet (depending on size and shape of pond), where it is better to go with surface aerators than bottom aerators.

Also, if you have a problem with duckweed, or certain other types of surface vegetation, surface aerators can be a great help in fixing the problem. Don't get me wrong, I install 10 bottom aerators for every surface aerators, but certain situations call for surface aerators.

Mike Robinson
Keystone Hatcheries