Pond Boss Forums AERATION Systems questions Aeration for an 80 year old pond

Hi all, looking for guidance on proper pump size and aerator placement for an 18/20 foot deep approximately 2 acre pond (see attachment) that I'd like to support trophy bass.

I've recently inherited the family farm to include the pond my grandfather built in the 1940's. He made his living building ponds, terraces and drilling for water in SE Kansas and SW Missouri.

I was always told the pond was 20 feet deep but the deepest I could find was 18 feet when I tried to do an informal survey. The pond quickly gets to 9 feet deep from the shore so I estimate it to average 13 feet deep and it's approximately 2 acres in surface area (see attached picture). So over the past 80 years its probably accumulated 2 feet of muck on the bottom.

The pond is spring fed when not in a draught and surrounded on 3 sides by agriculture fields and 2 of the sides gets heavy fertilization, so I think there is a lot of nutrient runoff. There are a lot of weeds by the time mid-summer comes around and the water seems to have a lot of particulate in the column, which I think is a algae.

There are big bass in the pond, I know of at least 1 approaching 10 pounds that was caught many years ago and I'd like this to be a trophy bass pond. It also has a lot of sunfish and people have caught catfish. I don't think there is any crappie.

I'd like to add aeration. The pond is 1500 feet from the closet power and when I first thought about doing this several years ago poly tubing was cheap and solar was more expensive than it is today, but now poly is expensive enough and it'd be a pain enough to go 1500 feet that I want to do solar.

I've a good handle on how to build out the solar infrastructure and what power I can expect but I have no idea on the proper pump size and placement of 1 or more aerators.

I'm looking for "good enough" over perfection if perfection has a power requirement that blows up the panel requirements and battery storage requirements. The pond has had 80 years of natural aeration and I'm looking to help it out. It's SE Kansas so there's always a nice breeze blowing across the surface, my main goal is getting that deep water up top. I'd love a solution that runs in the morning and then uses the solar to charge. a battery or two and then starts to aerate again in the evening, but that's all dependent on how many hours a day the system needs to run for turnover.

And advise and guidance is greatly appreciated

J.Midi, From my time reading the panel over the past 10 yrs plus, the user HighFlyer has been a great help to others and has a great handle on the technology and implementation. He hasn't been on the forum as much lately but he may respond to a direct message.

if you google pondboss and solar projects you may find many other useful threads. I found this one that delves quickly into the technical side. It sounds like it gets cold enough by you that you may need special equipment, controllers, and non-standard batteries to keep it going, or at least size the batteries so they don't discharge too low each time before charging again.

The type of pump is important when working with solar. Also with natural wind aeration on the top you may not need as much turning over of the deeper water. Traditionally the goal is to turn over your entire volume once every 24 or so hours but in your case you have wind action mixing of much of the water in the top acre feet so you may be able to turn over the bottom water a little less frequently and still achieve the goal.

Start with this thread, maybe reach out to HighFlyer, and if you have a lot of time to read (there are 16 pages of mressages!!) I'll also post a link to a long standing thread about how solar was added in the extreme conditions of a pond at 10,000 ft elevation in Colorado and was (eventually) successful in preventing winter kill for the first time ever. THere are fantastic photos and diagrams in this link.

Thread 1:
Good solar tech thread

Thread 2 Extreme solar:
8 acre pond at 10,000'

CanyonCreek,
Thank you for the information. I should have been more clear that I have a good handle on how to build the solar-side of the solution, but I don't know how big of a compressor I need and how many aerators. I will be converting the solar to AC power, so no DC pumps, because I will also be powering some remote cameras and extending my Wifi down to the pond.

I'm comfortable figuring out the number of panels and battery storage once I know the amp draw of a suitable pump and the number of hours it should run. I'm not going to try for continuous running as batteries are the most expensive part of the solution and am glad to read that the wind is my friend in this area. You are definitely correct that if I run it over winter it will need self-heating batteries and I was thinking this would be a spring/summer/fall solution as my algae problem really only presents during the peak summer.

Thanks again for the response