Greetings,
I need to restore my 1 1/2 acre pond after having it go dry 5 years ago and neglecting it since.
When I first decided to take action on the pond condition 3 months ago, there were no fish, no plants and very murky water. It has hundreds of bull frogs, lots of snakes and turtles and scads of crawfish.
Till this pond went dry, I kept it stocked with largemouth bass, bream and channel cats. My intention now is to grow very small fish - golden shriners for bait, and gambusia for mosquito control. I released a few hundred small fish into the pond in late June and they just disappeared. I finally realized I had almost no oxygen in the water and started emergency aeration with a trash pump/venturi setup and a week later, the fish showed up and started coming to food.
The pond is 7' at its deepest and my most pressing need is to get a permanent aeration system going. I need advice on what type is most effective. I'll have to have the pump in my barn and run 600' of tubing to the pond in order to get air down there. After I get the aeration going, I'd like to try to grow some aquatic plants to get the thing in balance again.
Thanks for whatever help you can give me and I'll also search the PB archives for relevant posts.
