Over the past two weeks, I've had a few dead fish floating each day. I measured water temperatures (3-4 feet down) last week around 87 degrees, and I know there were a few days 2 weeks ago when it was noticeably warmer than that when swimming.
Initially I was just seeing larger perch (7-9 inch), but then I saw some smaller perch (4-6 inch) and, more recently a few bluegills (5-6 inch) and a couple baby LMB (2-3 inch...didn't know they spawned).
I assumed that it was just getting too hot for the perch, but it's concerned me a little more that I've been seeing BG lately.
My pond is 1.5 acres. 1 acre has a max depth of 12-15 feet, and the other half acre is flat at 5-6 feet. I have aerators going 24/7 with 3 diffusers. *** We did have a power outage for the last 2.5 days, and I ran a generator on the air pump for around 10 hours during that time. There were heavy rains and some wind that stirred things up a little bit...and actually I've noticed fewer dead fish during that time.
Vegetation is reasonable. I have a moderate ring of american pondweed around much of the shoreline, but I have cleared some manually and also sprayed some of it recently. I did treat the algea about 3-4 weeks ago with copper sulfate (maybe 1/2 the shore line with 10 pounds). The water was noticeably MUCH clearer about a week later (less so now). Prior to that, I had never had much visibility. For a little while there it was up to about 4+ feet and may have helped warm the water during a hot spell.
I don't have anything to test for diffused oxygen, and I haven't gotten into a panic yet, but I figured I should ask around anyway. I haven't kept track, but if I had to guess, I'd estimate over a 2 week period, I've lost (personally seen floating): 6-7 large perch, 6-7 smaller perch, 5-6 bluegill, 2 baby LMB, 1 large golden shiner.
Any thoughts? Should I be worried? It does seem to have slowed the last couple days, but I don't want to get slammed all of a sudden either.
