Pond Boss Forums AERATION Systems questions Just not working?

Firstly - Because you are feeding Purina AMax 500 and Endurance Pro what brand of feeder are you using?
Secondly - How big is the pond?
Thirdly - For your 4 year old 15 ft deep pond, how many fish have you harvested from this pond with springs that bring new water in and old water out over the spillway about 20+ gallons a min.?
Fourthly - what is the fishery goal or goals for this pond?

1 - TX Feeder
2 - 1.2 acres
3 - about 80
4 - 1lb+ BG. 100% i am trying to keep 5 large LMB by marketing them and culling all others, but, if they see to be a problem, then i'll lean towards having big BG over LMB.

You should be removing every female bluegill you catch, and every bass that is over 14", NOT the small ones to meet your goal. If you want to keep 5 large ones, fin clip those 5 and remove any others that get over 14" The small noes you should leave in there so that they can EAT as many small bluegill as possible to leave room for the bluegill that escape predation to grow. A customer with a 4 acre, 30 foot deep pond that has Smallmouth, Redear, Hybrid Striped Bass, Golden Shiners, Yellow Perch, Hybrid Crappie, and both hybrid and regular bluegill in it harvests roughly between 1500 and 2000 fish per year.

If you had a hard rain, that will drive all the algae to the bottom of the pond too. Lets see in 2 weeks how well the pond is doing. Typically ponds that have an algae problem and are not using Tilapia to eat the algae are needing to be sprayed every 2 weeks.

We've had no rain. So the only factors that have changed are: aeration(which wasn't helping at all the previous 2 weeks) and lower the feed times. I did spray about 1/3 of the visible algae last week, but like i said, in the past few months that has not been helping that much. Not to mention, almost all algae is gone, not just the amount i sprayed. So, now, the amount i have is much easier to maintain. I can spray what seems to be around 2 square yards of total algae at most along the banks in spots. Super satisfied at this point.

Now, i do need to pull my far diffuser and add more weight i guess. It's moved a good 20ft and is no longer the deepest spot. I am going to increase my harvesting and now get them fam out to enjoy and swim no that algae is all but gone!

Note that with greater clarity, sunlight intensity that reaches the bottom increases. O2 bubbles form in the algae growing on the bottom and lifts it up to float which in turn exposes fresh high nutrient surface on which more algae can grow.

When my clarity gets high, I get the nasty floating green globs with a muck backing. That has happened since the pond was new and still very low nutrient. Pond dye may be of big help here if it continues to be a problem.

But for feeding quantity, my 12 bass and many other fish are growing exceptionally fast on 1 cup of quality food 1-2 times daily. From 3-4” in late May to near 10” and chunky. The problem I have is they are spoiled rotten on fish food and aren making much of a dent in the pumpkin seed population yet.

My plan is to wind down the feeding as the summer wanes so I don’t overdo the nutrient injection into my bathtub. I don’t have any flow through for much of the summer, so the nutrients don’t get rinsed out.

esshup has good suggestions - heed them.

You say:

You are feeding high quality fish food and using a good autofeeder to distribute the pellets. A feed spreader time of 5-8 sec each day should distribute plenty of food for your size pond, type of fishery combination and your goals of big BG with some table use harvest while reducing the amount of green string algae (aka FA).

Since your pond is at a carrying capacity weight stimulated that was by IMO excessive pellet feeding,, and you have only harvested around 80 fish so far, then as suggested by esshop, each year going forward to start,,,,, FOCUS on harvesting mostly the female BG in spring early summer (Mar-July) and also remove Each Year at least 150-200 of the smaller BG sizes (3"-6") should allow you to maintain ample numbers of fast growing big BG for a once daily feeding of 5 sec. Catch, trap or seine to remove the small BG. Wth a small #8 or #10 hook and worm under a bobber, you should be able to catch at least 10-20 small BG each hour.
Is it a female or male bluegill. From our Common Pond Q&A Archives
https://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=422568&page=1

When LMB of 8”-10” appear shinny, harvest 10-15 of the medium size LMB per year. Keep good paper or digital annual records in a Pond Log of all sizes and numbers of fish harvested. Then the annual trends of fish sizes caught will allow you to see if the fish community of sizes and numbers is remaining somewhat stable. When the visual annual summaries of the fish caught and numbers harvested gets skewed toward average smaller sizes then you can make adjustments going forward as to what you are harvesting.

One idea to determine how much food is being distributed for each timed pellet feeding is when the feeder runs empty weigh the amount of food that you put into the feeder. Let’s use one 40 lb bag. Set the feeder to distribute for 5 seconds once a day. Then divide the number of feedings (days) it took to distribute the 40 lb of food pellets. Example - 1 quart of BG sized pellets weighs close to 14 oz. We start with 40 lbs of pellets. If it takes 30 days of one 5 second feeding per day to use the 40 lbs(640oz), then one 5 sec feeding delivers 21.3 oz of pellets. 21.3oz / 14oz/qt = 1.5 quart of pellets/day or 4.26 oz of pellets per second of feeder run time.
3-4 sec feeder setting should deliver close to 1 quart or pound of pellets.
In a fertile naturally productive 1 ac pond with alkalinity at or above 40 ppm, 1 quart of pellets per day for your specific fishery goal and pond should be very adequate to produce large bluegill for some annual harvest of panfish (females, immature BG, and a few two to five LMB per year that are larger than 14”). In my experience the more immature BG (2"-5") that you can harvest each year more than 200, this will skew higher the numbers of larger BG to be present for your 1 quart of pellets fed per day for this 1+ acre pond. Don't forget your pond with alkalinity above 40ppm will produce lots of natural foods even with some use of blue dye to adequately grow fish for your goals. Your dyed pond water in a white 5 gal bucket should be the color of clear sky blue. ALL this assumes you are doing proper thinning of the density of BG each year.

In the future be welcome to return with your pond adventure results so we can help with some management ideas to maintain a quality fishery or a better fishery and hopefully reduce the amount of floating string algae and need for algaecide. Pond dye should help reduce high amounts of string algae when the amount of pellets fed daily is reduced to around one 5 sec per day. Your pond gathers more algae feeding nutrients per day especially in summer. Nature says - Constant Accumulation of nutrients pushes the pond to grow more plant materials.

Thank you so much for the detailed info. I am trying to create a system for archiving results. My issues are of course how much time i get out there. My place is just over hr away from home and is intended to be future retirement spot. For now, i get out there 1 or 2 times a week. In the past, when i used charts available via this forum the bass and bg are all in the healthy/plump range. My current issue is the amount of fresh water coming in. If I were to dye the pond with a full bottle as instructed, the dye will be dissipated within 4-6 days completely, with no rain. So, that being said, I think any additive will get washed out quickly. I am going to order a O2 probe to get a reading of temps and oxygen. Because, just by "feeling" the temp change from top to 8ft down is big and the top never really getting warm. That's all relative so i need to get real measurements and report back. The two springs, one on top and one about 6ft deep in water kick off so much, i'm wondering how much my aerators are really getting done. Anyway, ordering probe today and will report back. Thanks again

Toby - I keep forgetting that you have constant overflow from some spring fed water. Pond dye is not an option.
Your fish in a healthy plump range in reality has a lot to do with how crowded those fish are as density in the pond and how much food each one gets to eat on a daily basis. Thin bodied fsh usually means they are too crowded. Then reduce their density so each one gets more to eat. Adding more forage to an unbalnced fisheyr is IMO not a really good idea because feeding more food to over crowded fish often improves the spawning and recruitment of more new fish to an already overcrowded ecosystem. Fish harvest from a pond that is continually naturally becoming more productive with more fish is the wisest management for producing a high quality fishery for the long term.

I'm guessing your DO is just fine, but like I said look into making that tiny gradient into a cascading/step natural aerator into the pond - if done right it'll probably be completely saturated by the time it hits the pond. You wont need the aerators.

I cut a trench from one pond to my 6 acre lake and cascaded it cleared up the bloom overnight.

Cheers.

Water clarity has a huge amount of importance to do to the natural oxygen production depth. It is always important to know the secchi disk clarity when concerned about the depth of oxygen production in a pond.

I have put Tilapia in my pond for the last 10 out of 11 years and have had zero problems with algae.

I took some depths and moved the Diff 1 deeper. I'm going away later this week, off to Baja for a week chasing tuna so i'll test DO and clarity when i get back. Hopefully i can test some change in DO beyond 8ft deep by then.

You should be getting into the good Bluefin bite. Good luck!!! How will you get them home? What boat?

Everything reminds me of her...

Let us know how it turns out!! And good luck fishing, we had a good trip to my northern camp, about 30 big pike and 20 walleye.

Ooops. First i meant to post the latest depths etc in my other string. Sorry for repost. As for Baja, we go out of SD CA for a 7 day trip. Last year we spent 2 days traveling south where Yellowtail and Yellowfin were nonstop. Didnt get into bluefin though. Never know until we out of the marina where we're going. Thanks...

Yep, I know the drill, I used to live in Oceanside and went out on many of the boats in the SD fleet. I still keep tabs on the fishing there, the Bluefin bite this year has been epic. My longest trip was a 10 day. I would go out at least a 7 day once a year and multiple shorter trips, Alijos Rocks, Guadalupe Island, for the longer trips, just a day boat or an overnight local trip once a month the rest of the year either out of SD or Oceanside. I always had to get a crab cake sandwich from Point Loma Seafoods either before we left or after getting back. What boat are you going out on?

I'm going on the RoyalStar. I have a buddy that has been going on their labor day trip for 10+ years. I just got on it last year and decided to stick with it since it's also my birthday week. We ran down to the ridge last year. Was great! Looks like lots of yellowtail currently. Looking forward to it. My only issue is that cost of processing and shipping 1,600 miles is HIGH. My wife and kids dont like fish that much so i end up giving so much away. This year i'm going to bring home about 1/3 of what i did last year. Hopefully we get at least one bluefin run. I dont fell like chasing them all night for 3+ nights in a row but one would be nice.

Nice boat! Yeah, processing costs are something that I didn't have to deal with but now I'd be in the same boat as you. I would be tempted to drive. I have 3-4 150 qt. marine coolers and we brought deer and pronghorn back home from the West side of Wyoming in them.