Pond Boss Forums Thread Like Summary - 35 acre farm pond should I aerate and how?

I had my pond evaluated and I've got a lot of weed clean up left to be done as well as other things but aeration was advised to help with the pond's overall health.

It is a 35 acre lake. I've attached two images below. One shows the farm house that has power but due to the size of the pond the hose length would be extensive to cover the pond. I'm really just looking at bang for the bucket. I'm intending to put the aerator near the house and pond Dam due to that's the deepest spots in the pond and would give me the best overall churn. We don't typically have fish kills due to the fact the pond has low fertility due to the watershields and fragrant water lilies. I'm spraying those to try to kill them down and somewhat worried about a fish kill due to trying to reduce them.

Any thoughts or suggestions? The pond does have a lot of trees around its banks but due to the sides it still gets good surface movement.

Thanks

PBODE - I and nature agree with the pond consultant that Killing plants in the pond pond does produce dead, sinking plants that end up on the bottom and hopefully if your are lucky they decay and recycle the nutrients - earth to earth dust to dust. Killing in-pond plants does nothing to remove the nutrient fertility that caused the plants to grow. Aeration of any kind in my experience very rarely results in less plant growth. I see and visit lots of aerated ponds that grow lots of varying types of plants to excess including all types of algae to nuisance levels / amounts. Good aeration can improve organic muck decomposition in deep anoxic (no oxygen) bottom areas which can cause better nutrient recycling that can and usually does then stimulate some form of plant growth although it may be a different type of plants that were present during pre-aeration activity.

IMO your excessive plant problem is mainly due to the age of the pond and during its life so far has collected lots of incoming nutrients that are now abundant and feeding the abundant plants. An additional plant growing cause in your pond is it's overall shallow water at a maximum of around 5 feet deep in one acre of water. This large area and shallow water depth allow sunlight to likely all the entire bottom areas where sunlight, water and nutrients stimulate plant growth. It is nature's way of doing things. Then when nutrients are high some sort of plant growth is almost always high.

Normally in a 5 ft deep pond with some wind exposure the warm summer water with wind action will circulate water down to 6 ft deep. Temperature and dissolved oxygen testing will / would verify this. So your pond water is IMO usually with wind action is regularly circulating oxygenated surface water down to the bottom about all the time. If this it true in your pond what is the benefit of aeration artificial circulation?? If wave action is the purpose of the aeration to inhibit plants then get yourself a small motor boat or jet ski and use it at least weekly.

Bacterial additions can be helpful for sediment decomposition especially when and after chemical treatments are used to kill plants. Those chemicals depending on composition and chemical structure not only kill targeted plants by they also usually kill or damage lots and lots of bacteria. Thus reseeding the treated pond with bacteria can be beneficial. Normally in a healthy pond a famous, nationally renowned professor emeritus Dr Claude Boyd in School of Fisheries, Aquaculture, and Aquatic Sciences at Auburn Univ Alabama says that his testing showed that ponds that are not chemically compromised have all the needed and necessary bacteria to decompose the muck and organics. His testing used standard microbial pond enhancements. Give the normal naturally occurring pond bacteria dissolved oxygen and they will do great things for organic decomposition. IMO commercial pond bacteria blends are made of bacterial cultures that are already present in most all natural pond systems. I don't know if it is legal for companies to create new strains of bacteria that do not already exist for public resale. Provide me a email address in a PM and I will send you a copy of Dr. Boyd's bacterial article from Pond Boss magazine.

Whenever someone wants to sell me pond bacteria I ask them "What species of bacteria are in this product that are not already present in my pond". They will never know or give a good answer or at least the correct answer because commercial pond bacterial products never reveal or tell the species of bacteria that are in their products - they call it priority information. IMO they don't tell because their bacterial species are all the same species that are common naturally occurring decomposer species that have been cultured for resale. Municipal sewage plants use these bacterial products all the time to enhance processing of sewage.

Did you do the water clarity test that I requested? " ...how clear is the water? How deep can you see an all white coffee cup in the water?"