Pond Boss Forums AERATION Systems questions 8 acre pond at 10,000' - lots of aeration ?s

Well, back from the mountains.

The trout did indeed survive and seem to be thriving. No idea of numbers of trout that survived. They are extremely well fed and HARD to catch! We produced one single fish after about 12 hours of fishing. This fish was stocked late July 2017 as a 10-12" Brook Trout. It endured some pretty bad water quality Summer 2017 and a pretty rough Winter of 2017 and still turned into this. Of course, we had no scale and no tape measure at the point we finally caught one. Will be better prepared next time. I have to ASS-UME the ROW of this fish was pretty good!




Overall, the lake is doing much better than I have ever seen it. There are even MORE scuds than I have ever seen. They are absolutely EVERYWHERE! You can lift one clump of grass or turn over one rock and there is a pile of scuds. The situation seems the same with the fatheads - more than I ever remember seeing. We also have a lot of crayfish - VERY large crayfish. Still leeches everywhere but hopefully the trout start to knock them back some. Unfortunately, I doubt that leeches taste as good as shrimp or fish and I am assuming the leeches will be around for a while!

I am still experimenting with the aeration. We are currently running the small Thomas 2660 1/2 HP pump only. It is pushing one quad and two dual vertex diffusers. The pump runs from 12:00am until 8:00am everyday. It was hotter up there than I have ever seen it and it is showing in the water temps. Our water level is now down almost 18" instead of the normal 2" or 3". I am trying to walk the line between adequate aeration and keeping water temps as low as possible. Brook Trout prefer the coldest water of all trout and I feel like we are pushing the high end of their range. Good news is we are heading into the Fall with higher than ever DO numbers.

Here is a DO comparison. For some reason I did not get Summer 2016 DO data. I did not have the DO meter for Summer 2015. Not a totally accurate comparison, but it's the best I have.



Big thanks to Highflyer and his wife. They came up for a couple days and helped me correct our problem that crippled us last Winter with the airline/valve box. The length of airline was reduced by ~50% and put on grade all the way down to the valve box. The weighted airline then leaves the valve box buried on grade all the way down into 4' or 5' of water. The valve box is also about 2' deeper than before. All this lead to a ~2PSI reduction in system pressure by eliminating the built up condensation in the line.