Hey Tim D.
I don't think I have ever been compared / put in the same sentence with Bill Cody so thanks for that!! I am humbled by it, not near as pond smart as Mr. Cody but I work hard at it and don't give up!!
With that said I believe I would be concerned about your situation also! I don't know that I have read about any other 5 acre pond 50 feet deep that impressive! We don't say this often, but I think in your situation some air would be better then none at all. Lets go through a couple of situations here.
1. Your pond is 5 acres 50 foot deep the question is do you actually use all 50 feet? Most guys would say you need to have an air system at the deepest part of your pond for best circulation of water. That's true however you could put a system or 2 right next to that deepest part say in 25 or 30 feet and have good mixture. Maybe not 100 percent mixture but good. I mean how many fish are actually in the 35 to 50 foot depth of your pond? Probably not that many and if they were there they could move up to 30 feet easy if the D.O. started getting a little thin in the 50 foot range.
2. I have a 1 acre pond 9 feet deep max. I use 1 air station with 2, 9 inch diffusers and a 1/3 HP Gast pump and it handles my pond easy! I believe I could go to 20 feet with this pump. I run mine at night from dusk till dawn which I about 12 hours, and my bill is about 11 bucks a month. Just so you have an idea. So let say you setup 3 of these type setups with a little stronger pump and 3 diffusers on each setup. And you set them in 25 feet of water around your pond. Well it wouldn't air the entire pond but you sure would get a lot of it and I don't think you would end up with your piping issues you have now! I mean you have a big problem if the little fish are piping cause most times it's the bigger fish that will die first as they need more D.O. then the smaller fish. So this type of setup would cost you around 33 to 38 bucks a month to run give or take your electric and how it's billed.
3. It's not the electric bill I would be worried about it's all the equipment you would need. Some might use 3 pumps with 3 separate stations some might get one BIG pump and use a gang valve to separate the air going to 2 different stations. You could use 2 bigger pumps and 4 air stations 2 coming off each pump with a gang valve with 2 fusers on each station that would give you 4 stations with 2 fusers on each one that would move some water. There are a lot of different ways to go as you can see.
4. You need to make sure of your pump pressure and cfm. What's the max CFM of pump whats the max air pressure of pump. So you know how far down you can put your fusers. I would PM Mr. Cody maybe he will help you out. He is much, much more knowledgeable then me when it comes to air and air setups. Hey good luck and keep us posted as to what you do.
RC
