You really should aerate more than just dropping the water into your pond. I do two things: I allow my well water to go up a vertical 1 1/2 inch pvc pipe that is connected to the top of the well, then it goes over at a 90 degree bend, and another bend that points straight down into a packed column. At the top of the packed column is a perferated piece of plastic that is siliconed in at the edges that keeps the water from channeling off to the sides.

After that the water drops through a packed column by gravity into a tank and underground through 4 inch PVC to the pond. (Tank not neccessary) Since the pond is much lower on the property than the tank, I allow the water to go up another 90 degree angle straight up at the pond and this causes it to drop out of the top splashing it even further.

Most packed columns consist of a vertical PVC pipe that is packed with plastic media (I got mine from Keeton industries) that has a lot of surface area that breaks up the water allowing it to make contact with air. Not only does this add oxygen to the water, but it also blows off nitrogen gas and other harmful gases. I was using an 8 inch five foot piece of PVC for my packed column, but I have switched to 4 five gallon bucket that are connected in a series with a space in between each. As in the PVC pipe there is plastic screening in the bottom of each bucket to keep the media in. They actually hang from an "L" post like the ones you can get for mail boxes. This allededly allows more air exchange than a closed pipe according to an educator on the AquaNic site and I went this way to increase saturation from 80 percent to closer to 100 percent. However I haven't tested it yet with my oxygen meter as I need to change the memebrane on the meter.

You can get more elaborate by adding a squirrel cage blower to the bottom of the PVC pipe blowing air up, but for yours and my application and low flows I don't think that is neccessary. I don't know about you but I prefer not to add more overhead as in electricity unless I have to.

If you email me I can send you a diagram of what I am doing. You can make everything yourself. The major expense is the plastic media.

The following is a publication telling you all about packed columns, and although it is referring to use for catfish, the concept is the same.

http://srac.tamu.edu/191fs.pdf


If pigs could fly bacon would be harder to come by and there would be a lot of damaged trees.