Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Renovating a Pond or Lake? Muck Reduction Observation

About 3 weeks ago I built a Rc51 aerator for my small pond. I have been running my trash pump several times every other, just letting the discharge hose run wild stirring it up. I have also been walking it in my waiters with a rake churning up the deep pockets of muck. Huge pocket of hydrogen sulfide , I tell enough to gag you in some spots. I did not walk it for about 4days but today when I went in I was surprised, in the shallow area when I started there was on average half a foot to a foot of muck. Today most areas I was walking on clay. The deeper pockets were hard to tell but I would say a few inches. Now I have been getting a lot of runoff from the mountain and my overflow has been running like crazy so I am sure a lot of the suspended material has been going through my overflow, but I don't think enough to make that difference. Some of my pockets of Muck are in the 3ft of muck. Pond is a little over a 10th of a acre with varying depths of 2ft to about 7ft strange geography of the bottom some spots will be shallow 3ft then boom large stretches of deep. Does removing all that sulfide gas increase reduce the muck that fast? Is it the nonstop stirring breaking it down? The pond had FA growing all over when started now there is next to none, most of the fish died which is fine because I want to drain it and make it a YP, GSH, FH pond. Probably add HSB and or some SMB after my YP spawn a year.

Cody:

I can't answer your questions, but I have this observation for you. The local lake has some public access areas around it. They are used for swimming. The first person brave enough to get in the water finds the areas have 6"+ of muck on the sand bottom. After about a month of people using it off and on, the area is back to a hard sand bottom. I can't for sure tell you that the muck was decomposed, or if it was just stirred up and floated off to the side. But, I do know that aerobic bacteria work a heck of a lot faser than anaerobic bacteria.

This is why almost everytime I am at my pond I put my chest waiters on and radomly do some walking around in about 4 to 5 foot of water and less. You got to break that up some and get things working. Course I wouldn't do it to much to quick as you could hurt your fish I suppose. That's why you need to be real careful when starting up your air system each spring or a new system in general. I have heard of a few guys going out in there boat and draging a garden rake on a rope behind them just to break up the first couple of inches of muck so your air system can get to work cleaning it up better. Not sure if that actually helps??? I would think it would as you break that muck up it will decompose better. Just like esshup said like swiming in the same spot in your pond for a few weeks and all of a sudden you got nice clean sand!

RC

P.S. I hope your system is working good for you!

So today I got it pumped down to about 2ft and something pretty cool happend. The entire pond started to bubble here and there at first. Next thing you know the entire pond started to boil for a good hour. I am guessing the realease of he water pressure alowed all the hydrogen sulfide to be realease . It's was pretty neat.

Try lighting a match?

I was smoking a cigaret no boom.