Pond Boss Forums AERATION Should I aerate? Winter 100 % fish kill - aeration?

Last year's drought dropped the water level down to 3 or so feet from 9'. We had ice storms which added to the ice on the pond's surface. When the ice started melting, there were dead fish embedded in the ice and many floated to the surface once the pond was completely melted.
A fish kill happened years ago but not as complete. Part of the blame for low oxygen may have been the 4 grass carp that had grown to 8 lbs. that ate too much bottom vegetation. They of course were floating with the rest. Also, there were many spawns over a decade from bass and panfish possibly leading to overcrowding.

I don't expect those conditions of drought, too little vegetation and thick ice to exist in the near future, but is aeration an option? As is, I'm holding off on putting in grass carp unless bottom weeds get too much, but have restocked with a few bass and many panfish. A spawn did take place as evidenced by a fingerling seen yesterday..

It was so sad seeing all those dead fish, but heartening catching fish for the first time since last fall. Usually, sunnies would swim near me expecting small bits of bread thrown to them. None so far - only one small turtle (3 of 4 never returned.)

Sorry about the fish kill.

Yes, several of the our northern members use winter aeration to keep ice off in a few places - which doubly helps with keeping the water oxygenated. Some even place one of the diffusers in a location to protect their docks.

Do you have AC electricity available relatively close to the water's edge? Solar generation, during winter at a northern latitude is a big ask.

See if you can find some of those past threads for winter aeration.

P.S. Having your aeration on during July and August will also make your fish happier during the lowest DO time of the year while not ice covered.

You may also need to add the rough dimensions of your pond in this thread. That will help the aeration experts give you some better specific recommendations.

The rule of thumb I use is to blow a hole through the ice if it has been solid for a week. (YMMV - We usually have freezing and thawing multiple times here in Ohio.) I have shallow water air sources present for Winter use, so as not to eliminate the warmest 39 deg F water at the bottom of the ponds.

Dirty/snow covered ice is worse as it lets almost no light through for photosynthesis.

If you have electricity further from the pond, it is cheaper to run air to the pond than electric. I use 1" plastic water pipe to send aeration about 650ft to my second pond.

There are a great many Winter aeration threads here that can provide multiple perspectives on the subject for you to consider.

We live in the NY finger lakes and this past winter we added aeration at the dock and at the spillway. Both of these aerators were in under 4" of water to limit the cooling effect. We got just over 12" of ice this year and this may have prevented a kill and saved a lot of stress on my dock. I used a 1/4hp pump at the house and ran a 1" line 300 to the pond for two diffusers. Seemed to work. We are running the aerators in the summer as well, but at different locations. We originally posted a picture of the ice openings last winter.

https://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthre...p;filename=Aeration%20-%20Open%20Ice.png

When submerged weeds regrow to low densities add just one grass carp. Then when the weeds get again overgrown to what the 1 GC can keep reduced add the 2nd GC. Use just enough GC to allow 15%-35% of the weeds to be present. Do no eliminate them just keep them trimmed to an acceptable density.

2" snow and 2" of cloudy ice will stop all sunlight and plants under the ice will die, then decompose, creating even more of a draw on the O2 reserves. Most plants that grow underwater during the summer don't live during the winter, just like plants on land.....

3' water depth doesn't leave you with many options, you probably had 100% of the fish biomass in less than 30% of the pond. If the water drops that low again, I'd expect a significant winterkill even with aeration. Harvest during the year is a very vital part of pond management, especially if you are going into winter with less than full pool. In my personal pond when we had a drought I made sure to harvest over 100# of fish before the winter to lower the O2 demand from the fish.