Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Evaluating and adjusting fish populations Winterkill

Groundwater is loaded with dissolved oxygen?

Why do most of our groundwater wells pump out water nearly devoid of dissolved oxygen into our ponds???

I think the officer is telling ya'll to take a time out.

You must be a mind reader!

LOL slowing down..slowing down to a stop. adirondack, they have the right to challenge any presented info of course. I know I would, if I see something off, even with a just bit of info is off. Please, be patient with me. I got so much files to go through. Old PDF and scanned image files are not as friendly for searches when I have decades of storage materials I have to dig through..just be patient.

But for a quick answer Rex, depending on where you're getting your groundwater, which can rob or give your water the oxygen content.

What's below you that make up the soil strata? What's around your underground water source which may rob the oxygen content?

For now, I step back to look through the myriad files. Always good to have backup from geologist and geotech group.

Leo your info on ground water O2 has really rattled the prevailing thought on ground water, looking forward to more facts on the subject, it might almost be like the time people found out the earth wasn't flat.

Or when the earth revolves around the sun...

Rex, I like your avatar......

Bill Cody where is your famous line again
"It all depends"
I think it fits in good with this ground water DO2 levels debate.

Leo, when I tested the water coming from my well (that is 66' deep) with Cecil's YSI meter, it showed 0.1 mg/l O2. But, test that water just a couple of feet away it jumped to 3.0 mg/l

I doubt that chemicals or pollutants are the culprit because there are 3 other ponds within 300-400 yds and they didn't have the winterkill. This property is away from houses, etc. The closest house to the ponds is roughly 1/3 mile, and there are 2 single family homes there. Other than those homes, it's probably a mile to another building.

Too few fish of too few species died for the culprit to be toxicity - pollution - contamination.

You lost me. 3 feet away - meaning at the surface 3 feet away after exposed to O2 or at 63 feet subsea still underground in formation ?

What Bill said - unless the pollutant is a natural element that those species can't tolerate but other species can. HSB can't take very low alkalinity but BG/GSF and others can. I don't know enough about trout to guess what they may be susceptible to.

The fish could have been in a catch 22 – seeking warm underground water temps but not able to stand the low O2 it contained – caught in a thermal O2 dilemma until it was too late. If they were near the bottom when the warm low O2 water mixed/descended/stratified they would have initially liked the situation until the O2 got to low at which point swimming up would have made the matter worse until they got to near the surface.

What baffles me is why the 2 species killed were cold/cool water species and not any of the warm water ones. What about the YP ?

Just an idea. At this point in time, we do not know for sure that all the other HSB and trout are actually still alive.Maybe some were sinkers and others floaters? Could it not be possible that only a percentage of the fish that have died actually floated? How long does it take for fish to gas up and float in cold water temps?

A good percentage lie on the bottom and never float. Frequently something begins to eat the dead fish before it floats. Alkalinity and hardness will not be low in the ground water in the region where esshup lives. The soils there will contribute hardness and minerals to the water. pH should not be a factor because trout can tolerate fairly low pH and tannins (wooded area leachate) in the water. Inflowing ground water will be warmer than water column water of 39F. However when seepagae ground water enters the pond it will be quickly diluted and blend with the regular pond water minimizing the impact of negatives and positives in the ground water.

Ok, I reread the o.p. Esshup says that the fish were in the bottom. Hey Esshup, at what depth were the fish when seen laying in the bottom. If they were in deeper water, this is my take. Ice cover, combined with reasonably clear water. I.e. small amount of phytoplankton to produce oxygen. Ice cover limiting oxygen absorption at the surface.Calm and overcast days. No sun reduced any photosynthesis that may have normally occurred. Calm = no aeration from the windmill, or oxygen absorption and mixing through wave action.

One more question concerning H2O and H2O2. I dont really get the chemistry part, but is your average DO meter capable of detecting H2O2? Where I'm going is 1. Can H202 be utilized by surface dwelling creatures? 2. I've heard it said that well water immediately absorbs oxygen from the atmosphere, or is it possible, that when the H2O2 reaches surface pressure the molecular composition changes, becoming H2O?
I have put fish in my well water before and survived a while without aeration. I also wonder if the notion of aerating all well water, at times has made some well water habitable merely by offgassing noxious gases I have seen you guys talk about, that were not detectable with the nose. I think it's called hydrogen sulfide. If water contains an elevated amount of hydrogen sulfide what are the effects on a DO meter?

I'm confused with ewest. Is the O2 jumps from 0.1mg/L from 66ft to 63ft? If that's the case, did you monitor any other depth beside the 2?



1. DO meter don't detect the H2O2, since it's unstable, creating odd reading. The meter is calibrated to detect only stable H2O structure.

2. H2O2 is unstable, so, it's always search for other elements to fill the missing spots. Any element that's willing to give itself readily or share, it will connect. If the covalent bond takes more energy to bond than the structure allows, it will search for other free radicals or elements to bond with instead. As you indicated, if well water reach a state of purified state, H2O2, it will hunger for the extra sites to be bonded to. So, yes, well water will want to bond with atmospheric elements, H, O, S, N, C, etc., or what ever it can get its hand on. This is why, in my field, we're monitor underground water supply so fiercely in California, since the underground water is susceptible to bind to chemical bloom, containing toxic compounds, that will taint our naturally filtered water supply.



I'll give you a thesis paper on that one. I believe the geotech engineer from our office wrote that paper just 4 years ago. I will ask to verify. You're in the ball park. In the meanwhile, I will continue to search through my external hard drive for the supporting files about groundwater with high DO. Please bare with me.

How I read what esshup wrote is that the water coming directly out of the well had a reading of .1 mg/L and then he took reading in the water a short distance away from the pump and that was 3.0 mg/L.

If I assume to understand Esshup correctly he is running water through a garden hose. At the outlet of the hose, he detects almost no DO. Then 3 feet away from the outlet of the hose he is detecting 3. If I am understanding this whole H2O/H2O2 thing correctly, the oxygen may be there, but is in a state that is not recognizable to the DO meter as Leo states.

My hunch is the water molecule is giving up one oxygen atom rapidly, causing a stable H2O molecule which is recognizable to the meter.

Do I have my chemistry correct?

H2O = 2 hydrogen atoms, and one oxygen atom.

H2O2 = 2 hydrogen atoms and 2 oxygen atoms?

So when the extra oxygen atom is released, you now have an oxygen atom that is a "free radicle", thus showing an "abundance" of oxygen in the water?

You win todays prize!

I was pumping water to my pond thru a 3" hose/pipe. The pond was low, and the water flowing into the pond hollowed out a 5' dia hole before it flowed out of that into the pond. Right as the water came out of the pipe it read .1mg/l, but 3 feet away in the pool of well water it read 3 mg/l. The water was falling about a foot before it splashed into the hollowed out pool.

This was in my pond, not the pond that winterkilled. The winterkilled pond is about 12 miles away from my house, but the ground and ground water is virtually identical. pH is right around 7.0

The fish that I saw on the bottom were in about 2'-3' of water, but the vast majority of fish were floating. There is between 3' and 4' of visibility. For most of the winter, the pond has been ice covered, although the ice hasn't been thick enough to walk on. What little snow we've had, melts within a week. The ice is whiteish in color, due to the melting/freezing cycles.

No fish smaller than 9"-10" were observed dead by me. The pond owner said he saw one dead fish that was about 4"-5" long, it was gone the next day when I visited the pond. I took some pictures of the pond, I'll get them posted tonight.

quote=JamesBryan]One more question concerning H2O and H2O2. I dont really get the chemistry part, but is your average DO meter capable of detecting H2O2? Where I'm going is 1. Can H202 be utilized by surface dwelling creatures? 2. I've heard it said that well water immediately absorbs oxygen from the atmosphere, or is it possible, that when the H2O2 reaches surface pressure the molecular composition changes, becoming H2O?
I have put fish in my well water before and survived a while without aeration. I also wonder if the notion of aerating all well water, at times has made some well water habitable merely by offgassing noxious gases I have seen you guys talk about, that were not detectable with the nose. I think it's called hydrogen sulfide. If water contains an elevated amount of hydrogen sulfide what are the effects on a DO meter? [/quote]

I think you need a little bit more specialized equipment to test for Hydrogen Peroxide. Here is some basic info anyway about the stuff.

H2O2-Fish

It is basically used as a disinfectant, kinda like Chlorine, but breaks down quickly, and leaves no residual. It is lethal to fish.

If H2O2 was of any use for supplementing DO, the Aquaculture World would be all over it.

Anytime you aerate water, it will off gas, so the oxygen replaces what got booted out, if it got booted out. Water is a natural "Sink" for some, so once you boot them out of the water, you may need to get them away via air movement or other methods. Not a typical problem in a pond

When I got my first DO meter. I went around and tested everything liquid, plus the air quality. My sisters well water was the worst. Heavy Hydrogen Sulfide, and it always smelled bad. DO was basically non existent, but when you fluffed it up with aeration, BINGO! It still has residual bacteria after the fact that put's a slime coat internally on anything, given time.

YUCK! Systems like that need to be flushed out once in a while. Maybe pumping a bunch of Hydrogen Peroxide in there would help!

You decide!

Yes that is correct. It is hard to describe the shape on here. All atoms want to get to equilibrium and it could be correct, Leo would have to answer that. I just know basic chemistry and a few other things.

Thank you Mr. Ludwig!You are a GENTLEMAN and a scholar!

Isn't H2O2 an oxidizer and typically unstable and very reactive in 'trying' to ozidize anything vulnerable in its path? How stable is H2O2 in a natural aquatic enviornment? I suspect not very stable.