Hello all. This is my first post, so apologies for any rookie mistakes I'm about to make.
My pond is also showing signs of an early fish kill. My crappies are gasping at the top and rolling on their sides. The scenario is this: 2 acre pond in south central Iowa, has reproducing populations of BG, LMB and black crappie (can't recall abbreviation at the moment). Also is 'old' pond, known to be at least 40 yrs old. Has ~ 43 surface acres, and ave 13 foot depth. Also has way too much FA, which I've been reading about here and formulating my plan to address it. Unfortunately, we've received almost 10 inches of rain in past 10 days, in 2-3 inch allotments. Happily, the inlets to the pond have small settling ponds with inlet dams and pipes, and the outflow is a ~ 4 foot corrugated metal pipe, all in working order. After the first huge rain, pond went up about 2 feet around the margins and then slowly receded over 2-3 days. The problem (in my rookie opinion) is the FA mats that were floated up and torn from their bases are now dying. The pond probably had 40% coverage of FA, but now broken up mats of FA are scattered diffusely. The FA dying off likely is causing loss of DO, yes? I am working on plan to reduce my sludge and nutrient load, and install an diffusion disk aeration system. It just takes time.
Probably not much to be done at this point, eh? Rake/net/drag off as much FA as I can reach and hope for sunny skies and some O2 production...
