Pond is one year old. Stocked. One acre and tapers to dike. 16 feet deep. Lots of leaves falling into pond. Will this change the pond chemistry? Do I even need to worry about it? Pond is in a timber.
After drowning leaves will start rotting and it won't improve your water quality - they consume oxygen and it there is less oxygen left for fish.
In your case pond is deep enough and I guess that you shouldn't worry much right now. It might become a problem after years.
Anyway, is there anything you can do? Probably chopping all the trees around the pond is the only solution.
A certain amount of leaf litter is good as it contains all of the necessary building blocks required for supporting a healthy food chain/web. That being said, too much of anything can be bad. I would not be concerned right now. You may or may not have a problem down the road.
Pond is one year old. Stocked. One acre and tapers to dike. 16 feet deep. Lots of leaves falling into pond. Will this change the pond chemistry? Do I even need to worry about it? Pond is in a timber.
Next year install diffuser aeration. It will help the leaves break down aerobically. This will head off muck build up.
The more tree leaves that a pond receives the more the chances of summer and winter fish kills. The shallower the average depth for more one should be concerned. Decomposing leaves consume oxygen. Leaves will add tannin stain (brown) to the water.
Bill,
What about the ponds and lakes in the notheast that are surrounded by deciduous forests, but have a low enough trophic index for trout holdover? Having lived there I can tell you they get an incredible amount of leaves that blow in.
Aren't you making a blanket statement?
I am making a blanket statement, however that statement as noted is for ponds not lakes and I said more chances of fish kills, not guaranteed fish kills. Other factors that help reduce fish kills when there are high amounts of leaf inputs, are flow through systems, spring fed systems, those with high volume to surface ratios, low plant & phytoplankton biomass, and healthy oligotrophic, mesotrophic systems with lots of invertebrates primarily stone flies, mayflies, scuds, etc which are good leaf processors and almost always common in healthy clear waters. Many chemical treatments used for out of balance systems compromise the aquatic invertebrate community. Those with good wind action, those with long fetch, those with clear water, and deep thermoclines handle well the leaf inputs. Eutrophic and low transparency waters are more prone to fish kills from leaf inputs compared to clear water 12 to 20+ft transparency habitats.
Smaller ponds and not spring fed, usually have average shallower depths, high plant biomasses and are the ones more prone to fish kills due to high leaf inputs which belong to the majority of the Pond Boss Forum membership. We have few members with oligotrophic lakes in the northeast. The higher the volume to surface ratio the lower the impact from BOD problems will be. Northeast trout lakes usually have high volume to surface ratios and clear water characters mentioned above which allow them to "handle" leaf inputs.