Pond Boss Forums AERATION Systems questions Would a windmill help?

Sounds like you need to do some catch and remove on the NP, or continue to stock expensive minnows for them........

Northern pike(NP) do tolerate low dissolved oxygen similar to yellow perch (YP).

Well I think the windmill might have helped, and removing about 8 NP. The biggest being 30" and 6 pounds. We were up last weekend and there are babies. Here is a link to youtube to see the video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdbIAgleAEk&feature=plcp Hope it works! Still haven't seen any YP.

that is fun to see fish like that.

Baby LMB.

Long over due update: My 5 acre pond turns out to be almost 10 acres. The LMB are still reproducing, so are the NP. Removed 9 more this summer. To my surprise I caught an 18" Walleye! How it got in there, no clue. YP are doing well too. I now need to replace the diaphragm in the windmill as it ruptured late this past winter. Long story short. the OWS windmill made a huge difference in water clarity and quality. Hardly any Leeches now. Thanks for the help. Phil.

Windmill diaphragm often ruptures during winter when an ice plug forms in the airline and air pressure cannot be released. Sometimes mechanical parts will break when air pressure cannot be released.

Well your air didn't have anything to do with your leeches going away but your LMB did. They will eat them up. NP are a blast but hard to establish smaller fish once you have 30 inch NP! LOL... Good job removing them hopefully you will get a happy medium at some point! I would be VERY excited about the WE!! I wish I could have WE man they are good eating!!!!

RC

This seems real similar to my application. Similar winter conditions at least. We will see how I fare this year running one koenders and one American Eagle windmill.

I just got back from a week long fishing trip in northern Ontario Canada. Four guys fishing at least 6 hrs a day. We only caught WE,NP and SMB. Seems it is possible to have a mainly predator population. Only crayfish and young of other predators in the stomachs of the fish we cleaned. Put our minnow trap out in various areas, no minnows caught, only leeches and a couple of crayfish.

Have you taken anymore DO readings?

Buffer,
My father in law also goes to northern ontario probably close to where you went fishing. Remote lakes, hard to get to, clearly off the grid, pristine water, clear water, rocky bottoms, and he said too, it seemed only predator fish there. I couldn't imagine how they could survive without forage? he said outside of crayfish there were no minnows, no sunfish, bluegill, perch, just SMB (huge ones hanging out in the rocks) tons of pike and walleye. That is it! How does that circle of life maintain?

Also some lakes up there had lake trout that were there 'naturally' You wonder how a whole lake can have pretty much nothing but lake trout in it and yet no one put them there? It seems a single species lake has to have had some man made intervention at some point.

So those lakes don't winter kill just because of their depth? I wonder why Buffer's does then? Perhaps even those natural lakes winter kill now and then too?

I went on a moose hunt 5 years ago on the BC/Yukon line. We flew 80 miles into the bush on a float plane and fished our butts off on that trip. All the lakes we fished there had nothing but big pike and lake trout. I was told that was the ONLY fish species in those lakes and that the big lakers ate the small ones. Pretty wild.

There is a lot more to the complexity of the food web of natural lakes than almost all anglers realize. Almost always there are lots of unseen or inconspicuous food items available to grow the big fish that are present. Often the standing crop of big fish is not large. Large lake predators have large feeding territories similar to land based predators. A lake's individual fertility will only support a certain fish biomass or standing crop. This is strongly connected to carrying capacity. Another important factor when fishing remote lakes is hook smart fish. Rarely fished lakes have apparent high catch rates until the resident fish become more accustomed to lures and angling methods. Often you will hear the lake is fished out, sometimes the lakes are not fished out it is the big fish are just more hook shy in heavily fished waters!

Turns out it wasn't the diaphragm, the hose on top of the windmill had pulled out because the swivel bushing had seized. greased everything up, re-attached the hose, installed membrane diffuser, all is good now. Feeling bad about keeping the WE, might have stopped potential spawning of them.

Have you taken any more DO readings?

No I have not, good idea though. Still have the kit. Should take DO readings thru the winter with the windmill. See if there is much difference. There must be, they are surviving now. Thanks, Buffer.

Hey Buffer, fellow Ontarian here, just south of you in Port Hope. Just getting into this pond thing. We want to install a windmill at the back of our pond, do you remember where you bought yours from? We are looking into OWS. Any pros/cons since you bought it? Do you do anything special to it in the winter etc? Thanks in advance!
Jenna

Depending on how deep your water is, I would strongly consider the American Eagle.

wbuffetjr, why do you recommend the American Eagle. I'm in Canada, haven't been able to source a local distributor. OWS are available as entire kits from all our local hardware stores.

I currently have one Koenders windmill which is very similar to the OWS and one American Eagle windmill. The American Eagle truly does put out a much bigger VOLUME of air. More volume is going to move more water.
On top of that, the American Eagle is built like an absolute tank. Much Much more heavy duty. My Koenders had a failure in the very first season and had to be sent back for warranty. Tipping the tower up and down to deal with problems and maintenance is not fun, trust me. Mine failed and had to be dealt with when there was already snow on the ground.
The only draw back to the Eagle is pressure. It can only aerate down to 16' or so IIRC.

I would also say this.... If you have ANY access to electricity, just use a regular compressor. You can run air 1,000'. After spending the money on two windmills, I am putting in a solar system so I can run a regular compressor. I get a ton of wind but the windmills still aren't able to keep the pond open through my winters.

^^^ What was said above. Plus working on the windmill when it needs it will be a pain. Compressors don't fail when it's nice, calm and sunny out, and working 20' up in the air, or getting 3-4-5 guys to tip over a windmill to work on it isn't any fun.

re: Koenders. I found out earlier this year that their windmills and compressors furnish 1.1 cfm of air, and it's only the newest ones that furnish double that amount of air. Since their model numbers haven't changed, I don't know how to tell what specific compressor furnishes the greater volume of air.

I have a situation now where the client buried approximately 600' of 3/8" tubing going to his pond and he is using a Koenders EL2 electric compressor. Motor failed, I replaced the motor, having to buy one aftermarket because Koenders doesn't sell them as replacement parts. Compressor works, no air coming from diffuser. If I use a regular air compressor, and drop PSI to 5 psi, air comes out of the diffuser. ?????

I believe there is a leak somewhere in the underground line that is allowing some air to leak out, and the EL2 does not furnish enough volume of air to overcome the leak and have enough air going to the one diffuser in 5' of water to operate the diffuser. I have a feeling the shovel will be getting a lot of use in a few weeks.

Would pond dyed blue water going through the 600' of tubing help you find the leak and save some shoveling?

Esshup,

I could be wrong, but I think it is their "double diaphragm" units that make double the CFM. I have one of the double diaphragm units. It still does not make a plume any where near the size of the plume the American Eagle makes. I know that isn't very scientific and I do not have a way to measure the CFM produced by either unit, but you can clearly see a difference.


Good luck with your shoveling..... I hope you find the leak in the first foot and not the 590th foot!! lol