To follow up, I spent about a month pumping water into the air and opening up large areas of the pond every day. I was seeing a few live fish for the first few days, so I was hopeful. I kept it up until it wasn’t safe to go out on the ice.

As the ice thinned, I started seeing dead fish. Lots of dead fish. Big and small. As the ice got thin,the eagles figured out they could pull them out of the ice. It was pretty easy living for an eagle this spring.
[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]
There are 5 bald eagles in this picture.

Now that everything has thawed out and starting warming up, I’m pretty sure I’m looking at a total loss. I have not even seen a crawdad.

So what happened?
There are still millions of zooplankton in the water. I see them moving almost everywhere I look.
There are more cattails in the water than ever before. Weed growth wasn’t much different than years past. Maybe the water coming in carried some nutrients that the zooplankton liked and they blew up and used all the oxygen? Maybe too many fish? I have been culling some bass, and as I lost a lot of the larger ones the year before, I thought I was ok as far as numbers.

Any ideas are welcome. This pond is close enough to power I’m going to go with traditional aeration

Brad
1.5 acre pond with LMB, BG, BCP, CC, FHM and lots of crayfish, unknown type. .5 acre pond with FHM and GSF. 12 acre irrigation reservoir that I don't know what to do with. New pond, roughly 1.5 acres. Pond Boss Subscriber.