Pond Boss Forums Thread Like Summary - Early observations of horizontal aeration....

A few months ago I began using a couple Kasco water circulators to push water horizontally across my pond rather than traditional vertical aeration. I wanted to report a couple observations really quick and hopefully provide a more in depth analysis after several months of usage.

1) Significant decrease in filamentous algae and increase in rooted vegetation.... What appears to be happening is the current mobilizes the FA across the surface of the pond. When large mats of FA get close to the circulator, small bits are torn loose and they sink to the bottom of the pond. Over time there are no large chunks of FA left. And when they are present I just turn the circulator toward the FA to mobilize them. After several weeks I noticed an increase in rooted vegetation which I assume is my ponds way of putting those nutrients from the FA to use.

2) More active feeding and less light sensitivity when feeding....... One of my circulators is mounted on my dock. A couple feet from it I have a belt feeder dropping feed in all day long. This feed gets pulled into the vortex created by the circulator and pushed out into the current. Almost immediately I noticed 4-5" SMB begin taking pellets. These are fish I had never seen take pellets before. And they hit them all day long. I've also noticed that my HSB bass will hit pellets in the current at any point in the day now. When thrown from my Texas Hunter feeder the HSB will only feed during low light conditions early in the morning or late in the evening. But when the pellets are in current they will feed at all points of the day. They are more aggressive in low light conditions, but they still feed in the middle of a bright sunny day. In all I'd say more fish became pellet trained, and once they become pellet trained they eat more feed and more often.

Just some early observations. If anyone has any ideas on other alterations or experiments with this I'm more than willing to try.

Here I put a quick video together to help understand the concept...

https://youtu.be/f2l-_LzhmoQ

It would definitely dispense large pellets. My only concern would be if the vortex from the circulator would pull that large of a pellet in or if the buoyancy and larger profile would lead to the pellets getting pushed to the edge of the pond on windy days. Either way, I'm guessing all it would take is some rearranging so the pellets are dropped into the current itself rather than around the vortex. I'll measure tonight to see how large of opening it has. Seems like it would handle even golf ball size pellets in my mind.

PS The bad thing about belt feeders is that you have to reload them every 24 hours. We need some that are 72 hours or so.