Added a Pre-sediment pond to the sediment pond. Had room in the terrace channel coming into the sediment pond to make an approximate 40'long by 20' wide by 5-6' deep mini-mini-mini pond.
This one is small enough I can easily clean it out with the backhoe as needed. It should catch the largest dirt particles and any corn shucks or debris that comes of the agriculture field right next to it. Ag field is in the background in the first picture.
Water comes from the field via a terrace, through a double culvert that has a road over the top, and dumps directly into this very small pond. It then exits this pond and runs over about 30' of the original terrace channel (which is rocked and is part of a 4-wheeler road) into the sediment pond. Then ultimately the water goes from the sediment pond into the main pond.
Pictures are poor. It snowed before I thought of taking some. Will get better pictures when it fills with water.
The clay piled to the left in the first picture (to the right in second picture) will eventually be moved out and used elsewhere.
May throw a few FHM in it next spring just for kicks.
Wanted to add an observation to this thread. Last year I had added a few 4" RES to this pre-sediment pond and many many small 2" BG had swam upstream into it during numerous rain events (only time water flows) from the sediment pond and had grown to 3" or so. Lots of FHM too. I could observe them from the bank and trapped lots of them to put in the main pond.
An interesting thing happened. We had a reasonably large rain event that caused lots of flow through on this tiny pond (which is expected). I found a couple of dead 5" RES after the water subsided and no small BG to be found and only a small population of mid size FHM. Either most of the fish washed down stream into the sediment pond or died.
Previously high water flows have caused small fish to swim upstream and populate this pond. This time something else happened. I don't have a definative answer as to what happened or why, but somw possibilities.
First, the runoff of the corn field came very fast. There was probably at least a ten times full volume water exchange in this pond within a time period of a few hours (this pre-sediment pond is only about 40' long by 20' wide by 6' deep). It was a cold rain following unusually warm weather and warm water.
One thought is that extreme temp and/or Ph change got to the fish and killed them. Or at least some of the larger ones and the smaller ones stressed and washed into the sediment pond (it is about 1/10th of an acre). The other possibility is the field had been sprayed with a corn herbicide a few days earlier so herbicide runoff could have also possibly stressed the fish. Water went from clear/green with a nice algae bloom to muddy in a short time (the very reason this pre-sediment pond was built to be the first line of defense from runoff from this field - so it is doing its job). Or a combination of stress factors.
Loosing the fish is not a big deal. The tiny pond is to catch sediment before it reaches the sediment pond or main pond. I just thought it interesting observation of what happened after this small pond had been so fertile in small fish numbers and now it is almost without fish. The water is starting to clear up. I'm sure with another rain small fish will again migrate up to it and repopulate it. Probably for this same thing to happen all over again at some future date.
Tiny ponds with hugh flow through have some special chalenges.
