Welcome to the forum Corgi and thanks for the awesome pictures and sharing your story. It is also so good to hear that there are other fellow MI pond owners and lovers.....
The name of excavator that dug the pond is RG Torpey Excavating , and even though he had dug the pond for the prior owner of the property back in '98, I still found it necessary to contact him this last summer. The reason was that the pond was down a little more than it was the summer before. It went down by almost a foot in the summer months the first year we were here. I thought I might have caused leaks in the clay liner by beating in all of the fence stakes I put in the pond for the netting I put in to deter blue herons.
The pond has an overflow that runs out and joins a small creek that has water flowing in it about 9 months out of the year. It dries up in the summer as does the level of the pond which keeps it from flowing into the creek for those 3 months. The house uses geo thermal heating and cooling and the well water used for this is sent into the pond. That is one of the reasons for the overflow. When I talked to the excavator about the lowered water levels in the pond, (it was down a about 15 inches according to a yard stick gauge I have by the dock), and thought I might be the reason because of the fence stakes. He remembered digging our pond and told me that he hit a few springs while digging. It made digging it a little more difficult for him because it was filling in while he did it. He told me that others had their pond levels down much more than I because of a lack of rainfall this last summer. He told me the stakes should not be of concern because of the soil type, the amount of clay, and the springs that feed the pond. This fall it came back to its normal levels.
The pump is a Easy Pro Rocking Piston Compressor that is oil less. A rebuild kit is available which I had to order and put in the original 15 year old motor. I did this the first winter I was here as it just quit working. The kit cost around $50 dollars and was easy to install. It took about 10 minutes and fixed the problem. The latest fix I had them do at Stoney Creek hatchery involved the same motor, but this time, the attached capacitor overheated, and all the insulation leaked out which killed it. He installed a new one on the pump while I watched and charged me $38. The root cause was because of the air filter. It got clogged up from living on a dirt road and overheated the motor and this in turn melted the potted insulation in the capacitor. I now have a spare filter and clean the one on the pump regularly. Lesson learned.
I will definitely be researching the diffuser placement in the pond based on what has been mentioned, or put in another in a shallower part of the pond and rotate seasonally between them.
As far as feed for the pond. I do not need to feed, but do anyway, as I enjoy watching them. The pond has many different insect hatches that occur throughout the year, including a mayfly, (hexagenia limbata), hatch that occurs nightly for about a week at the end of May, first part of July. We also have a ton of peepers, a load of toads, and some crayfish.
The feed I use from April through the end of Oct., is made by Ziegler. The smaller sized floating pellets. Other than the hybrids who love it, the smaller bass up to about 12 inches will also feed on it. The pond has many different year classes of bass up to some that are 6 or 7 lbs. I did not re-stock bass as they seem to be doing fine on their own. When I restocked in spring of '17, I put in 2 gallons of fathead minnows to compliment the YBP. I put in an additional 2 gallons this last spring as well.
Should I be feeding the perch something other than the fathead minnows I've been putting in? Sinking pellets ? Emerald shiners? Educate me on this. I would love to have an easy time catching 14 inch + perch. I'm hoping that I can get a self sustaining population of them, like the bass, and they will also help keep HBG numbers in check. They are my fave fish to eat. The prior gent that owned the property had stocked twice since the pond was dug in '98. Once that year, and again in '08. When he replanted in '08, he put in some perch but thought that the bass in the pond had ate them all. This last spring, I caught an 11 inch female in a colony muskrat trap that had 3 smaller males with her. The males were able to swim out of the trap before I could lift it out of the water, but the female I had to open the door for. She had a belly full of eggs and was laying them when she swam into the colony trap. I was happy to see a belly full of eggs and she was happy to continue on her mission.
Thanks, J
