Pond Boss Forums Thread Like Summary - New guy and new SoIN pond

Hello PB!

My name is Paul and my wife and I recently had a pond completed on property we own in Clark County, IN. The pond is kidney shaped, a max of 12' deep, and (best guess) between 1/3 and 1/2 acre of surface area. I have put in a pea gravel beach along half of the eastern bank where it is most shallow extending 8-10' into the water, and in the coming weeks we will build a dock adjacent to this pea gravel beach. I also plan to place some structure into the pond near-term, as well as set up aeration with a HP100LL pump and a single 9" diffuser. Figure it'll be a lot easier to get this stuff done before it fills with water...

It'll take a while for the pond to naturally fill, but hopefully it will be possible to stock with fish in spring 2020. The property is 20 minutes from my house, so I don't mind a moderate level of management and I plan to supplemental pellet feed for at least the first year to help establish the fishery and stimulate growth.

Based on my research so far, I am thinking the following mix of fish:

15lb FHM
40 LMB, 4-7"
200 BG, 3-5"
100 HBG, 3-5"
100 RES, 3-5"
20 CC, 6-8"
2 TGC
100 tadpoles

Nothing is set in stone yet, so I greatly appreciate any thoughts, feedback, or criticism of the plan and look forward to participating and learning!

Before you make a final decision about aeration contact Matt Rayl who is north of Indianapolis IN.. He has more than lots of experience (expert) with aeration and should be able to help you with some DIY aeration advice and equipment.
http://americanpondandlake.com/

With your brand new small pond in IN and aeration done properly, you shouldn't have to run your aerator more than 3 to 4 hrs per day. Water clarity has a lot to do with daily aerator run time. A good strong system should produce one adequate turnover in 2-3 hrs in your small pond. My experience is there are a lot of 0523 compressors operating adequately for more than 10-15 yrs, with one or two 9" disk or cylindrical membrane 24" tube diffuser/s. Some membrane diffusers are able to handle 6-8cfm. Most new ponds do not need as much daily circulation as older enriched ponds due to lower biochemical oxygen demand (BOD). Water clarity has a big influence on BOD. Now in this hot weather, I and a few others are only running our aerators 1 hr per day for an emphasis on yellow perch production.

Well, its been an eventful seven months in the world...with a lot having gone on at my pond.

Dock completed mid-August, two 6'x12' platforms in a T:


200' of buriable 12/2 romex run from the barn in early February with GFCI circuit and outlet installed on dock:


For aeration I went with a Hakko 120LH linear pump, about 160' total of 5/8" weighted Airmax hose, and a single Matala 9" diffuser base with 18" PVC riser. I've had the aerator running on a timer 3hrs in late afternoon/early evening every day since installation.


Aerator installed with help from wife in late Feb:


Sealing dock wood in early March:



Also in early March, trying to get ground cover established all the way around...again...the drought right after we got the pond dug last year did NOT help our cause:


Not knowing how all the COVID restrictions would be, I decided to stock the bulk of my fish in one fell swoop on Sat 14 March: 10lb FHM, 100 3-4" RES, 100 3-5" HBG, 200 3-5" BG. As far as I have seen, only losses were one BG and two FHM.




My temporary redneck Optimal Jr. feeder: unused Moultree deer feeder, a cut 5gal Lowes bucket, and scrap plywood to help redirect the 'backsplash' into the pond. Currently have it running once a day, at 6pm, for two seconds. Think once the pond fills a little bit more I'll build some cement block piers left of the dock just off the bank and place the feeder there to regain dock space.


The payoff:


We're currently just over 10' depth with 2' of water at the front of the dock and 2' until the water reaches the bottom of the now-screened overflow pipe. Warmer temps and wet weather has helped the grass along some, and I'm hoping between two 40lb bags of Kentucky 41, two bags of 10-10-10 and natural grass that has proven to grow I'll have some good ground cover around it in the next 4-6 weeks to minimize erosion, everything look better, and hopefully minimize water cloudiness. Certainly wouldn't mind a little vegetation in the pond for fish habitat, either...give those panfish the best chance to grow and recruit prior to introduction of 40 5-7" LMB in the late summer/early fall.

PaulFNG - Limited aeration and depth of mixing. Diffusers on pedestals to my experience do not mix water across the lower bottom areas due mainly to the temperature gradient water density differences. What do you think is going to happen to all the sunken leaf drop from all the trees surrounding your pond?. In similar situations I have seen up to 1 ft of leaves accumulate each year in a pond. To get sunken leaves to even come close to decomposing in one year, lots of full depth pond aeration is needed. Thick layers of sunken leaves causes 'unnatural' amounts of dissolved oxygen consumption from the overlying water.

Decomposition without DO causes anoxic black sediments especially below the leaf layer that very slowly(-30-40X) decay and produce toxic hydrogen sulfide gas that is uninhabitable to invertebrate decomposers.

A quick look at your pond size and plan for two 9" Vertex diffusers @ 6 foot water depth tells me that you are on the right track for at least one turn over in 6 hours. Nice work!

The back pressure on such a system would be in the neighborhood of 5 psi and would require about 2 to 3 CFM. The Hiblow 120LL wants to run just under 3 psi (dotted yellow line) and would only produce 2 CFM at 5 psi.



It would work, but it would be working pretty hard and this would cut into it's life span. And, it would just be meeting the minimum requirement turning the pond over in a 6 to 8 hour night time run. Going deeper with just one of the diffusers could be a pump killer and don;t think about using line with less than 5/8" inner diameter. This system would be on the edge of not working well, especially for nightime only runs.

I tend to over design things, if you have not noticed, and would prefer using a larger more robust pump. But it would mean more money up front...

The Gast 0523 would put out just over 4 CFM at 5 psi and would be too much for just 2 vertex diffusers IMO. It works nicely with three and could run 4 hence more diffusers/lines/valves/etc = more money. I believe the Matala diffusers are rated for higher air flow, but I do not have any experience with them in my pond.



These recommendations are all based on a 850,000 gallon BOW, 6.5 foot average depth, with the diffusers set 6 feet below the surface. Change any of this and the results move around, maybe better, maybe worse. Move the diffusers up and the pump works less hard, but you move less water too which takes longer to turn the pond.

The recent Pond Boss mag has an article in it that talks about DIY pond stuff where it describes, briefly, what happens when too little aeration in put into place. I'll paraphrase (and add a little)...

If the water movement created by the system can not keep up with the constant production of "bad water" from the depths of the pond, then all it's doing is bringing bad water up making the good upper water worse.

As far as the FHM installments, putting more minnows in initially will get you more minnows in a shorter period, BUT it cuts it off at the knees, so to speak, for the long run. Their reproduction rates are exponential, meaning the longer they are allowed to reproduce, the more reproduction you get per unit time. AND, I believe FHM's can start breeding at 3 months of age and re-breed every 5 days after that. You can see how 2 months of time in the pond is not as productive as 5 months.

There is a difference between your 2 month plan and a full year plan. It's not wrong either way, it all depends on what level you are shooting for. How much you want to push the envelope.

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