Pond Boss Forums AERATION Systems questions Aerate in the day or at night?

Yeah my water here gets hot also! Real hot. I only run my air from dusk till dawn, I have LMB, HSB, BG, RES and I have never had an issue yet...

I think the problem with your SMB is yes they can tolerate higher temps but as soon as a little something goes wrong in your pond.... then their in trouble... As long as the status quo stays the same then they can be ok.... They are a bit more touchy of a fish kinda like trout but not quite as bad...

RC

I have been extremely pleased with Bill Codys recommendations on running my aeration in our YP pond. He recommended running the air at night from 1am to 7am only. This has cut the evaporation down in half. The top 28-36"s will warm during the day and the small minnows love the warm water. If we go for a swim our toes around 48-60"s down will get numb from how cold the water is.

We run our water fall at night too now. When the pond had ice and was cold we run the air in the day and waterfall to bring the water temp up. Once the water was at 60 we turned it into night mode. This helped us get our perch feeding quick in the spring and they keep feeding in the summer because the water is not too hot.

Perch seem like they just disappear when the water got over 75. I don't know why but they just stop eating. This year running only at night the perch are eating three times as much feed as they did last year. They are eating in July now still like its May. Last year running the air 24/7 the water hit 85 and I really thought the perch were gone from our pond. For two months they stopped eating. The aeration run in the day pushed our water temp up to 85 from top to bottom.

Running at night we have been able to keep the pond below four feet under 75 all year so far. Swimming is still nice because the top 30"s still warms in the hot day time. The volume of water that is colder far out weighs the volume that warms.

That's interesting. Wish I kept track of my water temps better. Thanks for posting that.

This is an interesting subject. Having read the thread it made sense to me from an evaporation point and water temperature point to run the diffusers only at night.

I have always (for the last two years) run 24/7 but after reading this thread put two of the three diffusers on a timer the other day and only run the two from midnight to 7am and let the third continue to run 24/7 (I have 3 seperate pumps that each run an individual diffuser so it is easy for me to selectively run each one).

Then the more I thought about it, this morning went out and took the timer off and am going to run 24/7 on all 3 again.

Here are the things I thought about (sometimes thinking gets me into trouble ). If lower anoxic water is being transferred from the lower portion of the pond AND at night the algae are not creating DO in the upper water would I only be pushing low DO water up to mix with water already getting lower in DO? Would I not be mixing low DO water back down to the lower water?

It seems to me a person needs to take high DO water created in the upper few feet of water by daytime algae and mix it with lower water to create a DO "sink" as storage so that at night this lower water is already charged with DO.

On the other hand, this may have more to do with water movement capacity. With a large enough pump so the BOW can be turned over multiple times a day, perhaps it only needs to run a few hours for the full turnover. I don't think I have that much capacity.

So now basically by using what I think is a logical argument I am running the pump in the day time to move high DO water to the lower regions of the pond to be used at night. Have I just confused myself more than I already was?

I think your kinda right snrub that's why most folks would say running your system 24/7 is best.... but if you HAVE to choose one day or night then night is the preferred option do to the plants and FA not producing D.O. at night. I have never ran mine during the day and I been fine but my pond is only 9 feet deep. So I am not at as much risk as say someone who has a pond 15 feet or deeper...

RC

What we found was that running 24/7 was we had bubbles on our rocks around the whole pond on the shore. The water temp would work its way up to the mid 80's for two months with this temp top to bottom.

Running at night we do not have the over oxygenated water with bubbles on the rocks and much cooler water temps over all.

Our fish are Yellow perch and will turn off the feed when the water temp gets over 75 so for us running at night is best for us. Until I seen it first hand I would have never thought we could heat the pond top to bottom with aeration.

Cheers Don.

So once again what your saying is "It All Depends" On you giving situation with what you have in your pond fish wise.

A temp of 80 all through out my pond would be ok with the type of fish I have LMB/BG/RES/HSB... but if you had trout or maybe SMB that would prefer cooler water then running your air 24/7 may not be a good thing to do in the heat of the summer...

RC

SMB are OK with warmer water, they just have slightly higher dissolved oxygen requirements than other fish and can get in trouble sooner if DO levels start to sag suddenly.

When my bloom died back due to weather changes recently a dozen of my SMB got very stressed, I also had lots of my larger GSH piping on the surface and one single yellow perch. Interesting that I never did see a single RES piping at the surface. I did end up with 8 SMB morts in the 14" to 18" range, 3 GSH in the 6 to 7" range, and that one 11" YP.

One thing I've noticed when catching SMB now, they still look great, and fight great, but seem more slick or slimy when holding them. I think it may have to do with the warmer water at the surface, but 2' down, it's still pretty cool.

I know when we are swimming and get within about ten or fifteen feet of the diffuser we can really feel the temperature change from the cooler water coming up from the deep.

I would have to think that size of system make a difference also. For example on a given pond say system A would barely have the capacity to turn the whole pond over every 24 hours (or maybe even undersized and longer than that) compared to system B with twice the capacity that would turn the whole pond over in 12 hours or less. With both running 24/7 he smaller system might never completely homogenize the water temperature from top to bottom where the larger system could?????

again, depends on what the surface temperature is. If you are in texas and surface air is 100, you don't want 'homogenized' water as you super heat the water throughout. Having some area for cold water refuge or in general keeping ALL the water cooler is the goal. In northern ponds we tend to get cooling in the evenings enough that it makes sense to try to expose the water to that cooler temperature.

Also, many of us have 'shallow' ponds around 9' with less chance of thermocline creation and less risk of a zone of poorly oxygenated water.

Deeper ponds with significant stratification do want complete turnover of all pond water to help prevent the stratification.

Shorty, what is that brilliant green plant visible on the shoreline in your picture? Looks nice.

My ponds are not over 10' depth anywhere but they definitely will get a thermocline and bad lower water without aeration when the wind dies down in the heat of summer.

I remember one time swimming when I was a very small kid in a farm pond that was very turbid from suspended clay. It had two thermocline. The first at about 2-3 inches and the top water was so hot if felt like it was scalding you till we splashed around enough to mix it up. Then another at about 3' where the water was hot. Then below that the water was very cold.

I still remember that top couple inches feeling like we were wading into boiling water.

Brome grass.