Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations How hot is to hot???

So with the heat reaching 106 here today and it being so hot the last 30 days how hot is to hot before you start to have fish floating?? How hot of water can LMB stand or BG? Is it that much cooler in 7 or 8 feet of water that they will be ok? I aerate for 8 hours every night. Is that enough in this kind of heat or should I be running it longer?

thanks,

It's been hovering around 100 here.. I dove in the pond Monday to sink my diffusers and it's still very cool in 8' of water even cooler in 10', I think the problem is in unaerated ponds (unfortunately mine should be done by the weekend)where there's no oxygen in those cooler waters..

Hey BK thanks for that info. Dang water in my pond in the shore is like hot tub water dang near! It's crazy!

It's so hot on the surface in my pond it's literally hard to breath and takes your breath away. Just plain nasty hot.!!

Believe it or not, bass and bluegill can stand hot water. But, they can't stand DIRTY hot water. That's where ponds get into trouble in summer. My biggest fear this year is that we went into this heat wave late into an extended drought. As ponds evaporate, water leaves but the stuff dissolved in it stays behind.
As it accumulates, BOD can rise.
With lower affinity for oxygen, hot water struggles to continually absorb enough to keep going.
Running your aeration system at night is wise. It helps mitigate the temperatures and also exposes more water to the air, where it can absorb more oxygen.

I may need to research again the pros and cons of running an aerator 24/7 vs. nights only. Once I get my system running in the spring it runs full time until I shut it down for the winter.

Yeah one of the reasons I asked this question was because I found my first dead bass the other day? It was about 5 inches long. Looked fine? Then I got to thinking maybe my water is getting to hot? Or not enough D.O. in this hot water. I don't know I may just be paranoid also! Some fish die right? I too may have to look into pros and cons of running my air a little longer.

When it's excessively hot, temps like we're experiencing in Texas (it was 89 at 6 a.m. in Dallas this morning, on its way to 110), and you've run your aeration system continually, your water is as clean and healthy as it can be, based on the system. With extremely high temperatures, running the system at night helps take advantage of a lower mean temperature.
In other words, if you were to check the temperature every minute, write it down and then average it over 24 hours, that's close to the temperature your aerated pond will be. But, running it at night, that ambient temperature will be cooler, thus your entire water column will be cooler than if the system ran 24/7. For extreme heat as this, it can make sense to run it at night. Temperature becomes the issue rather than totally thinking about oxygen and water contacting the atmosphere.

The last few weeks I have tried relentlessly (and unsuccessfully) to pump 6"-1' of water out of my pond so we can resume digging. I thought in this 100+ degree heat it would be a relief to get into that water. Not so much. The temps had to be over 85. Last year there were a ton of tadpoles. This year nothing but bugs.

I realize an windmill operated aeration system is not preferred over something you can control manually, but in this heat would it be even something positive to have a windmill system for a one acre pond?

Thanks Bob for your input. I am running my air 8 hours a night but maybe I should jump it to all night at least. I have a setting for dusk till dawn. That may help out some.

Very good question Omaha I never thought of that. A windmill air station will run when there is wind and that could be right during the heat of the day you never know right! Course here lately we haven't had a bit of wind to go with this heat wave!!

Right. I'm thinking way down the road here, but after talking to some of the aeration experts at PBIV I'm worried that I'm going to have to get a box down by the pond by the time I'm ready to aerate because a windmill won't give me what we need for our little pond. It could operate at the exact time I don't want it too, causing a deadly turnover. So I'm really curious if we should just abandon that idea and set our sites on getting electricity down there somehow.

I looked into a windmill aeration system and being at the mercy of the winds was enough for me to go electric. The windmill systym would have cost me more than the electric system because of the size of the windmill I needed.

If the site is secure, I wonder what the price would be for a propane powered generator (on a timer) for the aeration system vs. running electric?

I have researched both windmills and solar aeration systems. I have concluded the windmill would not work on the most days it is needed the most. But on the other hand, there may be enough oxygen leftover from windy days. Solar system are very expensive and I can not justify the cost.

Water temperatures are in the 90's here. We have had one fish kill but like Bob Lusk said the water was hot and dirty. Have not had a fish kill in cleaner ponds.

Right or wrong, we have a water pump and a sprinkler set up to pump some pond water back into the pond. I know this probably not as good as an aeration system would be but mother is barking about the amount we have spent building our newest pond. Plus it would take aeration systems for ten various ponds.