I bought 22 acres 2023 summer that has a beautiful nearly 1 acre shallow pond.
It’s a water table pond and summer time can get very shallow 3’ or so.
In winter spring it’s mostly around 4-5’.
A little about the pond before I get to my inquiry about alkalinity…
The water through the entire pond is almost crystal clear. This is the main thing I really love about this pond.
There is moderate to fairly large quantity of hydrilla throughout the pond.
The pond is surrounded by loblolly pines, some deciduous, and some type of really pretty fir trees that have large stumps and some exposed roots in places and under the water.
The bottoms mostly near shore have a large amount of “muck” consisting mostly of pine needles and leaves.
It has small bream, decent warmouth, and a variety of skinny sized largemouth bass in it.
For the past 8-10 months I been feeding the brim with an automatic feeder and they are absolutely thriving. We catch some good hand size ones now and they are fat!
My goal is to produce and manage a nice largemouth bass pond.
The bass I catch now are mostly tiny from 6” to 2 lb and some with heads and mouths that should be a 3-4 ponder but just very under nourished. In another post (not discussing water chemistry) it was mostly concluded that there was not enough ambush habitat for the bass to help feed on the plentiful brim. Which I concur with.
I’m adding different structures and want to lay some of the pines down in the pond and this got me thinking about water chemistry. I did lay one large (about 10-11 inch trunk ) pine down in the pond already.
Got a water testing kit and all chemicals were spot on except alkaline which was 0 (and ph low)
Considering the current abundance of healthy brim should I be concerned with the low alkaline and just continue adding bass habitat?
Here is my plan for the pond…
Dig a shalllow water well about 40 yards from bank and supplement the water level with a solar powered pump from the well. I think a consistent topped off water level year round could be the most beneficial effort for the pond.
Secondly, with a pond rake go around the shores and rake out as much muck as I can.
Continue adding bass habitat.
Consider adding an aerator.
Consider adding up to 250lbs of sodium bicarbonate to bring the alkaline up to around 50.
The last thing I want to do however is go from seeing healthy thriving fish swimming around in the pond to belly up fish.
I guess it comes down to is what will it take to get the bass more healthy despite all the other currently good conditions the pond has going for itself.
Looking forward to any thoughts and suggestions
Thanks
CC
