IMO you will not get $1700 worth of information for a walk around.
If the pond continually has water clarity of 6ft then enough sunlight will reach the bottom for phytoplankton and plants to make dissolved oxygen on the bottom in 13ft of water. More turbid water will not allow DO to be produced on the bottom deep zone and a minor fish kill could result during summer periods of more turbid water. As I noted, the volume of anaerobic water in the deep zone will determine how much of a fish kill would occasionally happen and if an aeration system would be a good investment or even needed.
I think this old sediment nutrient laden shallow clear water pond will be a money pit because it will take lots of money each year to keep the weeds and algae controlled to make the pond useable and look ‘good’. Buying an aeration system for this pond would just be the start of lots and lots of annual management expenses for this relatively old aging pond.
IMO if I lived on a pond like you describe I would consider selling my property. This old shallow pond with lots of shallow water and thick organic nutrient laden sediments that water often has 6 ft of clarity is a continual weed factory that will always be causing more and more greenery problems that could be quite expensive to manage it to have only a few weeds – algae. Weeds and algae will want to grow more each year not less because of the nutrient enriched condition and accumulating more nutrients each year.. Weeds and algae can easily grow 12-13ft deep when water has clarity of 6ft. All ponds are nutrient collection basins that every year get more and more enriched to grow more and more plants. It no doubt harbors lots of geese and ducks. 10 geese make the manure of one cow. Plus during dry periods the 15 acres of water could be 8 acres or less. Ideally IMO this pond should be drained and rebuilt with steeper banks and get rid of all the years of accumulated deep, organic, nutrient, enriched, sediments out, and get more of an average depth of 10-12ft to reduce weed / algae problems. This pond is a money pit.
Home DO testing units will not measure accurately water collected from the depths unless you use special collection methods for the subsurface water. When you bring water from the subsurface and expose it to the air to test it ,,,,this adds DO to the water and gives an inaccurate false reading.
One option is to do the pond depth map yourself spend around $900 to buy a YSI Dissolved Oxygen - Temperature meter (DO200ACC-10) with a 12 ft long probe sensor from Zoro. Do the water DO temperature profile yourself. YSI are good reliable DO-Temp units that could be later resold for decent money. There are other cheap DO meters on the Web that reselling the unit might not get much money.
Or Amazon --- YSI 55 Handheld Dissolved Oxygen Meter with 50' Cable and Probe,$700.00
Last edited by Bill Cody; 08/19/24 09:10 PM.
