Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Help Fish kill - help

Good news is that is sounds like the pond is clearing up, the water is stabilizing, and you aren't seeing additional fish kills. I guess if I were in your shoes I would do the same thing on making sure the feeder was operating properly. Also sounds like you confirmed your aerator is working properly.

If you don't have the ability to test the water currently, I'd be for buying a swimming pool test kit that would at a minimum test for PH, Alkalinity and Hardness. Log your results for a couple of months for reference and decide at that point if you feel like you want to make a change or like what you are seeing. API sells a relatively inexpensive one and LaMotte sells a more expensive kit. I have both, and prefer LaMotte for the most part but either would help you to get some baseline info on the pond chemistry for a couple of bullet points.

What i see on our pond after a big rain event is that the water PH and Alkalinity fluctuate quite a bit and over the next week or so as the water gets mixed, we end up right back or very close to where we started. That initial boon of water does change our chemistry for a short period of time. The good news here is that you now have another 4' of water in the pond which should help to buffer the swings in PH by the next water event.

On the fish, I'm in a little different place than you are. We are in the first growing season of our spring stocking and my plan currently is to leave the fish alone as much as I can until we get to Sept 1 or the weather starts to cool for Fall. Our fall testing will likely include trying to trap some of the forage base in traps or cast nets. I will be looking to see how we did on recruitment specifically and whatever the results from that are either try to add to it or let it ride. I would guess that you didn't have a 100% fish kill of any species and given a little time the remaining fish population will respond to not only the additional water but any shortage trying to fill the gaps naturally. Typical stocking of the fish falls into this for Spring and Fall so for now....let it ride.

Good luck Curt. One of my biggest struggles is to not rush it. Some of this stuff just takes time.