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Joined: Jun 2019
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Hi . I joined the forum to learn from others experience. I have 25 yrs of reef tank experience but not much freshwater and certainly no large pond / small lake experience.
I feel the need to try and improve the water on my slice of Boles lake, North Texas.
The lake has water flowing in and out depending on how much rain we get.
The lake seems to be about 10-15 acres .
Looks like my area is only 4 ft deep but gets about 10 ft deep towards the dam on the neighbors property.
The lake has about 4 ft of soft muck on the bottom and is getting excessive nutrients from run off , so the water plants are choking the water.
This part of Texas is heavy clay.
I bought a 1 HP Gast piston compressor. Rated at 5.3 cfm.
50 ft 3/4 sinking hose and a 12 inch matala diffuser .
Question : how much should I space the diffuser from the bottom to minimize causing turbidity?
My hopes are to get the muck around my dock to decompose and if I can it would be great to have my efforts reduce the seasonal fish kill.

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In my novice opinion, you should look at the whole bow when sizing an aeration system. My fear, in your situation, is that an undersized system may only bring up dead (potentially toxic) water. A rule of thumb is that a system should turn all the water over in one day. Less than that and you are just mixing bad water with good water and making the good water worse.


Fish on!,
Noel
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With so much of the lake being under 10 ft deep I was thinking that my aerating my section and not disturbing the deeper area towards the dam that the thermocline in the dam area would help the fish survivability .
I am working with Large mouth Bass and Blue gill as well as a few channel cats . The water temps in the summer are over 90 deg and I had hoped evening aeration would help decrease those temps .

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Darrell If at all possible I would look into swapping the pump you purchased for a different style. Gast has a .75HP rotary vane pump that is rated for 10CFM IIRC. For less energy spent you could move twice the ater. It would be a much better fit for what you are trying to do.

It still doesn't address QA's thoughts on too little aeration.


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Originally Posted By: wbuffetjr
Darrell If at all possible I would look into swapping the pump you purchased for a different style. Gast has a .75HP rotary vane pump that is rated for 10CFM IIRC. For less energy spent you could move twice the ater. It would be a much better fit for what you are trying to do.

It still doesn't address QA's thoughts on too little aeration.


Thank you , and yes I agree with you . My wife urged me to keep this as budget friendly as possible so I bought the compressor off of ebay used for 100.00 dollars . She would like to see this pump improve the situation then next yr buy a new rotary vane pump and another aerator .
We are hoping to get enough positive results that the neighbors will jump on the bandwagon and we can get this lake healthy again .
Nobody really knows where or how to start . The Pro's give quotes of 30,000.00 dollars and it just shuts people down .

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Boles Lake looks to be about 18.4 acres (per google maps) and is a nice rectangle shape. I have estimated its volume at 43,000,000 gallons. If you use single diffusers that move, on average, 1000 gpm...you will need about 30 diffusers to just turn it over once a day.

Just to give you a dart on the board...A couple systems that I've read about used 19 and 20 diffusers in different 12 surface acre lakes. Assuming that they gave each difusser about 1/2 to 1 cfm...they were cranking out 10 to 20 CFM (per lake example). Your piston pump would handle up to 6 diffusers, but closer to 3 diffusers would be optimal. Your Matala 12" diffuser is rated for 0.88 to 5.65 CFM. So, what you have purchased does not seem to have near enough "umph" to handle an 18 acre lake...you will need another neighbor to two or three to get the whole thing tuning over and they would have to be spread out to cover more than just the property frontage of those few neighbors. Your talking about hundreds of feet of line and multiple pumps.

Anything less than a full turnover a day can worsen your situation with respect to fish kills. Given that the pros are talking about $30K tells me that even the most frugal system would run over $10,000 if you bought good used equipment and provided the free labor.

I believe aeration should be "all or nothing" and more is even better up to a point.


Fish on!,
Noel
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I will admit , Its real hard for me to picture making this lake worse by trying to give it a aerobic area . There is only so much I can do in my 100 ft stretch of 6 ft deep water , Its real hard to stand by and do nothing , I just can't get the neighbors to unite and work together . So I'm trying to get something started .

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If my layman understanding is correct (and there's a very good chance it isn't) if you deployed 2 or three diffusers in your 100ft at around 6ft deep, on or near the bottom, over time you would clear up the muck in the areas around those diffusers. That area would be more turbid intially due to being stirred up constantly. Whatever current you have would carry it to other locations tho.

If you add raking the bottom in those areas to stir the muck up so it got better aeration, it would eventually dissolve or be displaced elsewhere.

Annual relocation of the diffusers could eventually clear up your area, but...depending on how much current the lake sees, detritus being carried into the area from outlying areas may continue to over burden the area you want to clear up.

It's just a thought and since the neighbors wont jump on board now, maybe once they see results they may be more prone to.

You wont be able to turn the pond over, but you may be able to make a small portion (your portion) of it better.

Last edited by Mike Whatley; 06/17/19 04:01 PM.

.10 surface acre pond, 10.5 foot deep. SW LA. The epitome of a mutt pond. BG, LMB, GSF, RES, BH, Warmouth, Longear Sunfish, Gambusia,Mud Minnows, Crappie, and now shiners!!...I subscribe!!
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It's my understanding (subject to challenge) that a aeration system that is undersized has the potential to consistently pull toxic/DO void waters up into the upper water column where the fish live. If the system does not turn the waters over enough, the lower portions of the pond never detoxify/ and/or sufficiently hold DO and will continue to draft upwards creating a worse environment for the inhabitants above.

I suppose a small localized aeration system could do as Mike suggests and improve the muck in that area over time (physical disturbance would speed the process up - agreed), but I would venture to say that the over all health of the upper water column would suffer indefinitely given that the system was not capable of turning the water over enough.

Dredging might be a more appropriate localized effort, but big money comes back into play.

I am certainly open to a lesson from those with the experience that I lack.


Fish on!,
Noel
Joined: Apr 2018
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So am I QA!!


.10 surface acre pond, 10.5 foot deep. SW LA. The epitome of a mutt pond. BG, LMB, GSF, RES, BH, Warmouth, Longear Sunfish, Gambusia,Mud Minnows, Crappie, and now shiners!!...I subscribe!!
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Well for a update on a grossly undersized system for 18 acres .
I have had it up and running for two weeks now .
12 inch diameter matella membrane diffuser sitting pretty much directly on the bottom with a brick zip tied to the bottom of it for weight in about 4-6 ft of water as the lake rises and falls from rain . 30 ft 3/4 dia sinking hose .
200 ft of 3/4 garden hose from the shop laying on top of the ground . powered by a used high mileage 1 hp duel piston Gast rated at about 5.9 cfm .
The fish have really crowded this area with 100+ blue gill ,
2 large channel cats , plus for the last few days a large mouth bass that looks like its pushing the 5 lb mark , very fat .
So far the area seems to be improving but without any testing equipment there isn't any way to check any water parameters to make sure I'm not doing more harm than good . When we get to 100 deg temps I will shut the pump off during the heat of the day .


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