If one does the homework for amount or volume of water that can be pumped by the windmill vs amount of water moved from the air produced, I am very confident the air pumping will move more water. I have data for the amount of water volume and cfm of air a windmill can pump and it is significantly less water volume than what 1cfm of air can move water to the surface. Do the home work to verify my comments. Many windmills have pumping capacity. Some diffusers have volume ratings per cfm of air.
Please prove me wrong with references if the following is not correct. Do not expect aeration to significantly reduce FA growth if and importantly if the nutrients feeding the algae are sourced from dissolved nutrients in the inflow water such as from the watershed or manual fertilization. Many new ponds have FA algae problems due to the 'fill' water containing dissolved fertilizers (nutrients) and or from nutrients leaching from newly exposed dirt. Fertilizing the watershed to grow grass can result in heavy FA growths after rain events. Aerators do little to precipitate or bind incoming dissolved nutrients or manually fertilized nutrients (N & P) in the water column. Aerators can help reduce the amount of nutrient recycling and phosphorus accumulation in the anoxic hypolimnetic (deep) water, especially phosphorus, from the sediments due to anaerobic conditions and decay.
Aeration appears to work best when the phosphorus concentration is at or slightly above that level an aerator can diminish or suppress phos primarily in internal nutrient recycling. In these instances, an aerator appears to work 'wonders' at reducing algae growth. Aeration prevents stratification and reduces nutrient build-up due to reducing anaerobic conditions above the sediment water interface. However when phosphorus concentrations are a lot higher than what an aerator can reduce, then high amounts of algae growth occurs due to excess nutrients and the aerator appears to have little affect at reducing algae even though it did reduce some phosphorus but not all required to grow some algae. Very little published data is available on this topic. If one has a alkaline rich pond with low algae growth and then if granular or liquid fertilizer is added, noticeable algae growth will occur despite having lots of aeration and/or if excessive aeration is added.
In regards to fish activity in the bubble plume, the fish are attracted to the bubble plume because it contains high amounts of zooplankton that are carried from the bottom zone to the surface in the upwelling water. Small fish feed on the zooplankton buffet and larger fish feed on the smaller fish. Fish feeding in the bubble plume is most noticeable during daylight when most zooplankton are inhabiting the deep water which is a common occurrence for most 'forms' of zooplankton. The majority of zooplankton are diurnal and migrate up and down in the water column daily. They inhabit the deeper water during daylight and near surface water at night.
Last edited by Bill Cody; 11/08/13 10:36 PM. Reason: additions and improvements
