I’m looking for some confirmation that my thinking is correct and that what I am proposing to do is reasonable. We bought the property we live on now in Jun 2002. Part of the property is a 2.5 acre pond that is shallow on the north half, pretty much 3 feet deep in two coves, and then sloping down to the deepest part by the dam, which is about 12 feet. It was created in the very early 80’s, and it appears to have about a foot and a half of muck in the bottom
In 2004 we noticed that we were having pretty big FA blooms that weren’t going away so well. I contacted Vertex water systems and we bought a system with a 3/4HP compressor and 3 dual disk air stations. We’d always had a problem with water primrose, but we were able to use a herbicide on it to get rid of it.
In 2006 we had a real bad FA bloom that wasn’t going away, and we ended up contacting Clean-Flo. They proposed a second aeration system, also a 3/4 hp compressor, one 12in diffuser and 2 6in diffusers as well as some enzymes and beneficial bacteria. We continued to get FA blooms, and water primrose. We were still keeping the water primrose under control, but the FA hung around longer in more parts of the ponds. We continued to put in more beneficial every year, including this year, but the muck layer persists.
Since 2010 we have been having a plant boom of coontail covered by duckweed and watermeal and interspersed will FA blooms and some really nasty smells. 2010 was the first year we couldn’t take our boat to all areas of the pond because we’d get the prop fouled in massive amounts of coontail, so way started manually gathering the coontail/duckweed/FA. We worked as well as we could going out in the boat and between my wife and I we get 10 5-gallon buckets full of the plant mixture by reaching over the side of the boat and pulling it in. It is very time consuming because we end up dumping the buckets in the font end loader on my tractor to haul it out of the watershed while my wife pumped the water out of the boat for the next run. I don’t know how much I gathered in the first year, but we easily pulled out 10,000 pounds in each of the last 2 summers. The problem seems to be getting worse, not better. The only real benefit we’ve seen from this is we went from almost no visibility in the water to the approximately 18 inches we now have. Fishing has been near impossible, so we have no idea of our fish population other than we have a mix of LMB, BG, catfish and grass carp (20 placed in 2010 and another 30 placed in 2012)
We know we have a nutrient problem, but now we need to find a way to correct it short of draining it and dredging it out. We have a couple of sewage lagoons that discharge into our watershed, but for the last two years when the plant life was at a peak, we were also having a drought, and there way were we getting any of the discharge. My current working theory is that the drought concentrated nutrients and released more nutrients due to bottom action from the fish and when we’d get turnover from temperature changes.
One thing we are trying is some Biohaven islands we bought from Martin Ecosystems but we didn’t get started on them until the end of August. Each one is 70 sqft and they are both planted with Blue Flag iris, juncus effuses (soft rush), carex stricta (tussock sedge) and pickerel weed. After reading some articles on this forum, I decided to move some of my aerator heads up by our dock and leave the islands there so they don’t freeze up this winter. We live in Warrensburg, MO and if you want to see a picture of our pond at the end of the worst drought in 2012, just look up 260 SE 581 Rd. We’re the biggest green blob in the picture even though it looks more like a sewage lagoon
Right now my plan is to continue aerating, even though I think it is stirring up nutrients from the muck. I’m think about get a few more 6in diffusers and working with multiple diffuser in one area while I walk around and stir up the muck. I bought a drysuit so I can start gathering remaining coontail early in the spring, which should also make the aerators work better. I’m also thinking about getting some plastic pontoons to make a barge so we save time over having to pump out the boat each trip. Lastly, even as much as I have tried to, I’m afraid we might need to use a herbicide on the duckweed and watermeal. Does my course of action seem reasonable? Does anyone have any suggestions to make things better. Thanks in advance for reading through this and providing any ideas that could help us fight this mess and reclaim our pond.
