Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Aeration, water temps, and oxygen.

For those that aerate a pond/lake greater than say 20-30 feet deep, what do your oxygen levels read from the surface to the bottom? My 30 acre lake is void of a thermocline (temps are 83 at surface and 78 at 25 feet), however when I took oxygen levels with a 30 foot cable, at the bottom the oxgen is only 1.5mg/ml. Here is my question, how does a bass know to avoid that deep area if the water temp is the same at surface cause from my limited knowledge I don't think that oxygen level will support fish life. Thanks.

Since you have the capability of checking DO levels at that depth, that you do a foot by foot analysis from top to bottom. I'm no expert, but I think your fish will find that layer of water that provides the nest of both temp and DO. Millions of years of evolution have conditioned all fish to seek out the best areas in their habitat. You can verify this with a depth/fish finder. The level where you see fish in the greatest numbers will be the prime depth.

Being devoid of O2 they rarely go that deep. If so, they just don't/cant stay long. Essentially, the bottom is dead, useless, water. However, in a drought, sunlight will penetrate there and oxygenate it.

We currently have an excessive heat warning going on through tomorrow night, the high yesterday was 99, the low this morning was 80.

Surface temp last night at 6pm, 83F.
Surface temp this morning at 6:30am, 73F.

I am running a hose with a sweeper nozzle shooting well water 15 to 20 ft before it hits the surface along one edge to create a current and to provide additional aeration, it is helping to keep my water temps down in my small pond. Best guess is that it is running 2 to 3 gpm.

That's exactly the setup I've diverted to with my little BOW. The bottom aeration was creating excessive heat at depth so I've shut it down until this fall. We've been mid 90s for awhile now with indexes pushing past 110 on occasion.

This setup works really well at aerating the top portion of the pond, and I think it is adding a little to the bottom without boiling everything alive. Black dye has also helped keep temps cooler as well.

I am still running my deep diffuser at night and my shallow diffuser 24/7. I will probably run my deep diffuser all day on Sunday after the cold front arrives.

For fun (and observation) I took my surface temp last night-84- and took the boat out to aerator boil and checked what was rolling up. A bit surprised to see 73 degs around the boil. My diffuser is in 7.5'-4ft shallower than max.

It's so hot in Nebraska...



My 9pm surface temp was 78F, as of this posting it's still 87F outside.