Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Ice, Snow, and Winter Fish Kill Potential

Don - You can find out how your fish are doing by doing a little ice fishing. If you can catch a fish near the bottom in deep water there is adequate oxygen there. I suspect the creek water may have a good influence on the pond. Can you measure the water temp of the water entering the pond? Most of the pond is likely close to the same temperature due to a short retention time?.?

Below is the impact of using a diffuser set at 12ft deep (pond 16ft deep) under ice and snow cover. Snow cover since late December.

Back on Jan 18 pre-aeration, DO at 5ft to bottom was 2.0-2.3 ppm (mg/L); water temp was 39F and 40F at bottom.

Aeration started Jan 18th and after 4 days DO increased to 6.3Surf, middle 4.5 and bottom 3.2-3.4 ppm. Water column and bottom temps now 36.0-36.3F.

On Feb3 after aerating 16 days DO was 5.1 to 6.1 and water bottom temps dropped to 33.6-34.4F. Aeration was stopped since water had good DO although water temps were abnormally cold. I did not want to continue aerating an take a change of further decreasing water temps. My philosophy was low water temps are better for the fish compared to no or too low of dissolved oxygen. Aerator shut off Feb 08. It had been running 5 hrs per day keeping a water opening about 60ft diameter that refroze closed each night.

On Feb 11 with aerator still off 3days, ice above the aerator was 5" thick after aerator was shut off 3 days ago (Feb08) before the last 7" snow. Ice in several other areas of the pond was a pretty uniform 11" thick with 6"-10" of snow cover. DO at bottom in several areas was still good 3.6, 4.0, 4.6. Bottom temps had warmed slightly to 34.4 to 35.1 from the previous 33.4-33.6F. DO consumption was slow probably due to colder than normal winter's water temp of 39F.