Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Aeration & Mechanical Turbidity

After heaving rains my aeration does not let my pond settle out so the pond is muddy color almost the entire summer. I have tested and it is mechanical turbidity that settles out in less than a week. I have a 3 acre, 29 acre feet pond with a Vertex Air 4 diffuser system that turns over the pond 2.14 time per day. The diffusers are on metal supports off the bottom. If I want to cut off aeration for a few days after major rain events to let the suspended clay particles settle, how long can i do so before having to do the start-up process over again? The Vertex tech claims i can cut it off for a week and a half with out having to restart the system. Does that sound correct??? I have a decent biomass.

I am NOT an aeration expert, but that answer seems a little "too easy".

If you shut down in the spring with actively growing photosynthesizing organisms, and cool water that can hold lots of dissolved oxygen, then you are probably safe for a fair amount of time.

If you shut down in August, during a heat dome, with no wind, and your highest water temperatures of the year, then your "safe time" will definitely be much shorter!

If an algal bloom dies off at the same time and starts consuming oxygen, then you could definitely experience a fish kill.

Do you live at your pond? If so, then you observing the daily conditions and making the appropriate adjustments would probably give you a better safety margin.

P.S. Is it relatively easy for you to move your aeration stations? If so, then you might experiment and see if you can still get oxygen into your water yet not create quite as much mechanical agitation of your particulates.

Hopefully, some of the aeration experts will drop into your thread.

Thanks for the response FishinRod. Yes i live at the pond, and my diffusers are easily movable, but they are already distributed fairly evenly across the pond, meaning that moving them shouldn't change much.

It sounds like the diffusers are not far enough off the bottom to me.
Maybe the supports are sinking in a bit, soft bottom perhaps.
Figure out how to raise them up more.
A plastic milk crate rests underneath the each diffuser, and works for me.

If that's the case, why wouldn't I have that problem in the fall and winter? My pond is clear then. The diffusers aren't ;eading the suspended clay settle out because of how much volume they push.

IMO the Vertex suggestion is okay to use in YOUR case. With cloudy turbid silty water you do not have a 'strong' bloom to cause nightly DO loss. Plus leaving the aeration off for just a week will not create a large enough anoxic deep water layer to be a large problem when you restart the aeration after 12-14 days. Try to make some sort of homemade Secchi disk or use an all white coffee cup on a cord with knots every foot as a water clarity / visibility tester to actually daily measure how fast or much the cloudiness is settling toward the bottom. From the little that I know about your pond conditions and with diffusers on stands off the bottom, I don't think the major turbidity problem is due to aeration. I suspect the turbidity issue could be caused or generated by some other pond "problem" because as you say it is probably rain muddy water runoff events. Aeration is tending to keep the silt / detritus more suspended once it has been moved or introduced into the water column. Keep in mind that when the silt settles the upper most silty water layer may not have "hit" the bottom in two weeks. It may take 3-8 weeks for this uppermost silty water layer to reach the bottom depending on all conditions. Restarting the aerator could just lift this unsettled layer to the surface. closely watch the water clarity coming up in the surface boil as clear or turbid when you restart the aerator.