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

In the last three days I've found 3 floaters. One 5" GSF on Saturday, and today one I cant ID because turtles ate the head and tail (think it was a BG) and a 6" female BG. I'm wondering if this scum I've been dealing with has anything to do with it. I've got aeration going twice a day, early morning and late evening, both at 3 hours each which should equal 2 turnovers daily. I've also noticed feeding has been a bit off the last few days too.

I had a few floaters on and off this time last year too.

Any ideas guys?

I sure seems like there is more talk about "floaters" this time of the year. I wonder if coming out of winter has something to do with it and/or the fact that we spend more time at the water to notice the floaters compared to the colder seasons. I have seen some larger dead crawdads at my pond, no fish luckily, but just dismissed them as casualties of nature.

I recall having a floating layer of pollen-like stuff last year that seemed to come and go without incident so hopefully yours will do the same.

The one thing I can talk about with experience is that when I had aquariums, any change in the system...adding new fish, water chemistry (poor maintenance), temp changes (heater failure), etc, could easily result in floaters. Let's face it, our ponds are constantly changing. A few dead fish every now and again is the way of it.

Keep an eye one the pond, as we know you do, and you'll know if it's an epidemic in short order.

I dont have much choice in keeping an eye on it, but I do enjoy just sitting on the porch and watching to see if something happens.

While I have made some changes to the environment with Dye, raining on the algae to knock it down and adding another run cycle to the aeration, i wouldn't think any of that should be detrimental to fish health. I took a PH reading yesterday evening from elbow deep off the dock. You can feel a significant temp change about a foot deep. PH was 7.5 using a 5 drop tester.

How long does it usually take for PA to run its cycle and disappear?

Well today the scum floating on the pond seems to be a bit thinner. Dont know if its finally reaching its end and starting to break up, or if the cloud cover today just didn't generate anything new. I believe the floaters may have stressed due to a drop in DO with all this algae dieing. It's also possible that largest fish may have just reached the end of its run. That's part of the problem associated with bucket stocking...you dont really know how old a wild 4-5" BG is.

Haven't found anymore floaters, so hopefully adding that second aerator run cycle is helping. I did bite the bullet today and bought a gallon of copper sulfate and with the breeze having blown a good amount of the algae to one bank, I was able to spray about 2 gallons of diluted algaecide over that area (less than 10% of the pond surface) and it quickly turned brown and started to sink.

More rain is predicted every day thru Sunday, so maybe itll all be gone soon.

While my floater issue seems to have gotten better (none found in over a week now), I have noticed a few fish with that cotton looking mess on their dorsal fins and caught a couple with red, blotchy sores on their sides. Something is definitely stressing them out. It isnt wide spread yet, as I see very few during feeding when I can get my eyes on a few hundred fish of different size class.

In an effort to determine if water chemistry may be the cause, I bought one of those home water test kits from the Depot that test for Iron, Iron bacteria, copper, hardness, chlorine, alkalinity, nitrites, nitrates and PH. I also backed up the PH test with my 5 drop wide range tester. Everything came back as immeasurable except Alk (60ppm) and PH (8.5, highest I've seen it in months). The Alk/Hardness doesn't surprise me and I am planning to add another 500# of aglime and 100# of gypsum this weekend, which should also help the PH (and hopefully the hardness)

What has me scratching my head is the nitrate/nitrite readings being 0ppm. I would think there would be at least some degree of measurable quantity of one or the other. My shoreline grasses and plants are doing well and there are loads of phyto-feeding sized fish, so there has to be some nutrients in there.

Is this a bogus reading or is it possible for my nitrate/nitrite readings to be immeasurable?

A bit more info...
Reading was made at 2:30 PM
Partly cloudy, 85*f
Surface temp = 75*f
Bottom temp = 72*f 10.5' at diffuser
Aeration running 12 hours - 7pm to 7am (pond completely shaded)
Visibility = 27" & trending deeper
Pond dye added 14 days ago

As always, any insight on this confusion would be greatly appreciated.

Mike, any fish you get "in-hand" so to speak, mix some sea salt in a bucket (5gal) like 2-3 Tbsp of salt in with water and put each fish in there for 15-20 seconds.. That will kill anything on open wound sores and help replenish slime coat. Won't fix the entire issue but it will help each fish.
It does help with gill efficiency too..

Thanks for the salt bath tip, bud. I've been doing as much reading as I can find on salt and salt baths. Been trying to determine if adding about 30# of rock salt to my pond (325k gallons) might help all of them, letting the aerator mix it up gradually. I know once it's there it's always going to be unless I get another big flush like last week. Not much info out there on how much to use. Definitely dont want to use too much. My plants are starting to really get going and I'd hate to kill them....or my fish.

When I fished a lot of tournaments, I carried a product called Please Release Me that had some salt and other additives in it to reduce stress and help with slime coat production. It worked really well.

PRM is mostly electrolytes but salt is one of the elements. We use a special sea salt mix for all fish hauling and a "hot" dip for walleye after stripping them.

I know you could sure tell the difference in fish where PRM was used against those who weren't. Took forever to get a weight because they wouldnt settle down in the basket.

See this vs your tests


Interpretation of Water Analysis
Reports for Fish Culture

https://srac.tamu.edu/serveFactSheet/262