Thanks for the reply!
1. If your pond is fed by springs or goes up and down with the water table then it sounds like some fluctuation is normal and not a concern. You add pond from your geothermal in the winter and naturally use your overflow then....
The outflow from the pond has a small wooden bridge over it and it is just a trickle flowing out. It meets up with another small trickle of a creek that winds through the property. I have some culverts under some of the trails and even during high water, (if you can call it that),in the spring, I don't think much could swim upstream to get to the pond.Because the culverts and the flow of water through them has a drop at the downstream end of the culvert not allowing the small minnows I've seen in the creek to get past the culverts.
I use Aqua-shade pond dye, and for filamentous algae, I use Cutrine + along with some activator. I use this in a sprayer for the algae. The first year, all I needed to do was the Cutrine treatment twice. This last year, I had to do it 4 times as there was much more of it.(It was a long dry summer)
This increase in algae could directly relate to my 36" lake rake I used to remove debris and leaves from a few areas of the pond. This rake disturbed the algae which then starts a bloom.
As well, this year I had a duckweed explosion in the dry summer months along with some sago grass showing up where I had not noticed it the year prior. In hindsight,this may have been the result of overfeeding. In our first year here, we had a successful brood of 5 ducklings and the wood duck female. They would visit the pond a few times a day and clean up any uneaten floating pellets they could find. This last year, shortly after starting the feeding regime, I found what appeared to be broken eggs from the wood ducks. We had 4 mating pairs this last spring and we had high hopes for a repeat performance this year, but a predator got to their nest and eggs. Probably raccoons, but coyote,fox, and even some birds are suspect.
Regardless, we did not have a family of wood ducks to act as the clean up crew for the stupid human that was throwing too much food into the pond. When these floating pellets sink to the bottom along the shoreline, it causes huge increase in nitrogen and kick starts conditions for weeds, including the duck weed and sago. Although the pond excavator told me that everyone he had talked to were having problems to one degree or another with the duckweed. Very little rainfall for over a two month period and higher than normal temps.
I bought a treatment for the duckweed and sago grass. A product named Clipper. It was not cheap and requires activator and water in the mix, and then spraying. When I read further into Clipper, after having bought it, I decided not to use it as I did not want any fish kills from it. I used instead a lake rake for the sago grass, and a pond skimmer for the duck weed. It was a constant battle to keep the duckweed away. Impossible to get all of it without treating the pond, but it was good exercise and I didn't have to harm the fish. I was able to keep most of it at bay.
When I said YBP, I was referring to yellow bellied perch. We have white bellied perch in Lake Michigan, and connecting lakes to Lake Michigan. I've notice many abbreviations here for the many species of fish. Some are obvious, and some are not. For example is HSB short for hybrid silver bass? IDK.lol Is there a list of these abbreviations?
I put some branches in the pond down at the far end where the cattails are. There were already some in the water from a shoreline tree, but I added a couple more for the fatheads to have somewhere to spawn. The perch may use it as well. The spot I caught the female in the trap that had been spawning was caught on a south shore in about a foot of water with little or no vegetation to speak of. Just some leaves. The north shore warms first in the spring and I would think that it would be the better choice. I just happened to catch one in a colony trap on the south side of the pond. It does not mean that they are not using the north side which warms first.
I also threw in the pond about a yards worth of washed p stone sized gravel to give the HBG a few places to do their thing.
I threw in a few shovel fulls in a few spots around the pond and it took them no time at all to turn it into beds. The first year before I planted I had about a dozen beds I could see. Some were bass. After planting in '17, I had about 30 beds I could see, and others that were just deep enough to where they couldn't be seen from shore. I found them while wading and putting in the fence stakes for the attaching the bird netting to. Some of these beds I found while wading were huge. I also noticed what the bottom was like wading it in waist deep water. Mostly, marl/clay with a few spots that had a mat of leafy matter. These areas I spent considable time with the lake rake remove one plastic sled toboggan load at a time. Each time, I removed a bunch of the leafy matter, I was also disturbing the filamentous algae, and that is why I had to use Cutrine + 4 times this year and opposed to two times the first year. By distubing the bottom debris, I increase the algae. Now that I've cleaned up what had not been done since the pond was dug, I should not have to work as hard on keeping the away the leafy matter. Some is good, but not too much, and with woods surrounding the pond, it needs a little clean up now and then.
I was surprised that the pond is still 14 feet deep for most of it, as I would assume sediments would have filled it in a little. It is still the same depth he told me he dug it to 20 years ago.
I've seen the crayfish we have in the pond darting off as I walk the perimeter, and I've also seen the 1" dia holes they've crawled out of along the shore, but I've yet to have one to get close up shot of.
By the way, the rebuild kit came with some simple instructions and all it took was a screw driver, allen wrench, and a small knife to pry out the old gasket. 10 minutes tops. Now that I watched the guy repair/replace the capacitor, I would feel very comfortable doing that as well.
Cheers, J
