Really glad I found this place.
I've got a pond that I inherited when we bought our house about 10 years ago. It was originally dug to provide grade material for the house in 2003 and I don't think it was ever intended to be water tight as it basically fluctuates with the height of the ground water - except in spring when the rains flood everything.
The original owner did stock it with 3 different types of fish but I don't recall what they are other than the BG. He also had a floating fountain using a sump pump but it was dead when we moved in.
Anyway, when full the pond is somewhat triangular shaped and about 8000 square feet according to google earth. As far as I can tell it's about 12-15 feet in depth at the deep end. When full the shallow end is about 6 feet and then drops off rapidly another 3 feet and continues to the deep end.
Haven't done much with it other that get the fountain working to help with aeration. I did install a waterfall and just recently replaced the dead pump for that. It draws from the deep end and probably pushes 2000 GPH. The water from it doesn't smell bad, which is good, and the fry love it(not sure what they are) as they hang out there in the current. Right now it's running about 18 feet over rocks so it should be helping with any DO issues from the deeper water.
I also installed a secondary pump with a venturi to get the entire pond moving as the shallow end was fairly dead as far as water movement. Being it's now summer the pond level is down about 6 feet. I'm thinking of putting in a well specifically to keep the level up during the summer but haven't done so previously due to the cost.
In spring time we get a decent number of ducks & geese and a GBH has it as a regular stop. All 3 can be seen in the picture.
Right now it's down about 6 feet. I added some pond blue earlier today and it appears there's some minimal water movement in the middle based on the water color there. Makes some sense as the water makes a complete clockwise several times per day. Not sure what's causing the lighter color but visibility is only about 8 inches max even after a week of the increased aeration.
I also get a fair amount of FA when the weather initially warms due to all the runoff from the fields as the drain tile runs through our yard. I'm also fighting with pondweed but other than that there's basically no cover when it's this low so I just made some habitat stuff to put in. Not interested in fishing it but there's no harm. Never done anything special in the past and never had any issues with the fish surviving and reproducing. I used river rock in the buckets to hold them down. Couldn't see spending money for the porcupine fish attractor sphere so I 3D printed a couple that work just fine.
Well this is turning into a long intro so I'll leave it that. I do have an aerator system arriving next week so I'm sure I'll be asking questions about that.
