Pond Boss Forums AERATION Systems questions Hypolimnetic Aeration for Trout Pond

I was leafing through the Aquatic Eco systems Catalog and Tech Talk 114 caught my eye. The article is about using Hypolimnetic Aeration to increase DO without disturbing the thermocline.

This sounds great for a trout pond. Does anyone have any experience with Hypolimnetic Aeration?

I am thinking about using airlifts and some culvert to bring oxygen to the bottom (15' deep) of my 1/10 acre pond.

I have been looking at Oxygen Cones and venturi air pumps to aerate without disturbing the thermocline. Anyone have experience with these?

Bender:

While I was with AES, I helped designed the system used in that Tech Talk. We pulled water from the Hypo into a building that housed the O2 Cone, 02 generator and water pump.

The water was fed to the top of the cone and as it trickled down to the bottom of the cone it absorbed the 02 generated by the 02 generator that was plumbed into the bottom of the cone.

The water then was gravity fed back to the Hypo. At the exhaust pipe location you would have a ploom of supersaturated 02 water (15-18 mg/l) and it would be diffused out approximately 70-100' in diameter.

That particular job was expensive to install but the client was very pleased with the results.

Could you use an O2 cone with air? I think the cost of an O2 generator wouldnt make this practical for me, however, if we could maintain DO with air it might be doable.

Yes, you could use just the cone. Obviously the O2 generated or absorbed by the Hypo water will be less, most likely around 10 mg/l. This would reduce the ploom to about 20-25 feet of oxygen saturated water.

The O2 saturators don't look to complicated. I might try to making 3 or 4, out of 3 sections of PVC (6",4",2" diameters) and push water through them with a 11000 gph pump with venturi pumps to add air/O2.

Do you know how much O2 the saturators would use?