Pond Boss Forums AERATION Systems questions Fountain placement

Hey everyone, My pond is approx. 1/2 to 3/4 acre I think. We just recently bought the place so I'm still measuring everything. Could be up to 1 acre but I'm thinking a little less. Anyway, it is 2 feet deep on the most shallow end to 8 feet deep at its deepest. The overall average depth is 5 ft. The shape of the pond is kind of a rectangle with gradual rounded edges. Some friends of the family have a fountain that is brand new in the box and are going to give it to us. I don't know the specs on it yet and don't care since its free, I'm going to put it into action. With the description of the pond I mentioned above, I'm thinking the best placement would be in the dead center of the pond to get the max benefit out of having a fountain? Thanks in advance for any advice.

For a fountain, that is designed mostly for aesthetics and not good mixing and turnover of the bottom to top pond water, best placement will be where you can see its spray and hear it's sound the best. Remember water weights 8 lbs/gal and 5 gal weighs 40 pounds. How high can you throw that 5 gallons of water? But you are expecting the fountain motor to do that; throw heavy water high into the air. This requires lots of energy in the form of electricity. Using a fountain is not efficient use of energy to move and circulate high volumes of pond water cheaply.

When you get the fountain installed, watch it operate. It throws the water up as high as the motor permits. Then gravity takes over and the energy is transferred and forced straight down into the water and water movement is not very far laterally away from the spray pattern.

The other disadvantage to a fountain is the depth of mixing extends to basically the depth of the intake for the fountain. There is no mechanical action to bring deep bottom water to the surface. Falling warm surface water will not mix very deep because of the density and weight difference between warm water and the layer of colder water below. Thus the mixing area for a fountain is primarily in the near vicinity of the fountain. A fountain is good at mixing and oxygenating the same water over and over. This can be a benefit during fish kills when fish are concentrated at the surface due to low oxygen.

Yeah, what I've read up on so far said that they were mostly for looks, however, I have read some literature that said that for depths less than 10 ft in a smaller pond like mine, that they would help a lot although obviously not turning over all the water.

A lot depends on how deep a fountain will mix water. They should really explain the depth of mixing is generally 1 ft below the intake. A pond's surface temperate and wind exposure most often determine the mixing layer in a pond. For small ponds in most areas of the US natural mixing is around 6 ft deep. The larger the pond generally the natural mixing layer is deeper proportionally. Good sized lakes can mix down to 20ft or more due to strong wind action and water temperature.

So if natural mixing is on average in small ponds up to 6ft and mine is 8 ft max with average being 5 should I even worry too much about thermal stratification in the first place? Sounds like all I may need is something aesthetic and maybe just a little extra from something like a fountain.

In the south it is not uncommon for ponds to have DO problems below 1-2 feet at certain times. This forces the fish to all be in that small portion of the pond (top 2 feet). Any water movement that helps avoid that situation is beneficial. Fountains are not the best by a long shot at fixing water quality problems but they are much better than nothing when the fish are all crowded in that limited area. As Bill notes it is much better/efficient to move water with air than by a motor.