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That green water color is awesome! Is that typical for that area?

The trees look great, magnolias' are slow growing at firt but after they get going they are great.

Did you buy the trees at a local nursery? They look great BTW.

I did get all of the trees from a local nursery. They were raised at a tree farm about 30 miles from my place. I am planning a trip home in April for a couple of weeks so hopefully I will see some well established trees.

I don't think the green water is natural, I had my pond consultant (fish salesman) add some chemical to it last year.

On the pond, I stocked minnows and perch in Nov 2008 but I am thinking about not stocking any bass or catfish until Oct/Nov 2009. That will give the perch and minnows a full year to establish themselves before any predator fish are introduced. Since I am not even living in Texas, I am not concerned with an additional 6 months. I just want to ensure that there is sustainable food sources for the bass when I do stock them.

Anybody have any thoughts on this? Should I just go ahead and stock them in April when I go home? Is fall a good time to stock bass/catfish?

My $0.02 says waiting one warm season to allow your forage base to establish is a good practice. I am, however, looking at the situation through Northern eyeballs.

I think you can put the cats in either with the bass or before. Of course, it depends on your forage stocking numbers.

However, I think it would be better to wait until later. Actually, you probably won't be able to find stocker size bass or cats in October or November.

Wow that pond looks beautiful! Good job! I noticed back earlier you said you had some problems getting the pond to hold water and had to use bentonite. Well i'm having the same problem and it's been well over 1 year now with no luck. I was just curious what process you had to go through to get it sealed off and what type of soil you were working with.

I was also curious if you ever got a chance to determine how many gallons per minute your well was pumping? I am considering drilling a well here to keep my pond topped off if I can ever get it sealed to a point where it would be worth pumping water into it. I would appreciate any information you could give me.

Thanks.

Belkins,

I never have gotten around to measuring the output of my well. The drilling contractor told me I should get between 80 and 120 gpm. I want to add an extension to the discharge pipe from the well with a discharge pipe at about 8' so that I can fill a chemical tank. When I do that, I will be able to measure the discharge.

As for the bentonite, when all the water drained out we were able to identify a few spots (small sinkholes) where it was leaking. We purchased sacks of bentonite from a local lumber yard. We then spread it out on the very bottom and disked it in with a small tractor. We only put the bentonite in on the half of the pond that was leaking the fastest. On the other half, we did not do anything because it still had some water and all my remaining fish in it. I am confident that the pond still leaks. During these cold months, we are still running the well about about 30% of the time. This summer is going to be interesting. The soil was a real course clay and we were confident that we would not even need bentonite but obviously that was not the case.

I would like to add another pallet of bentonite to the pond this spring but I am not sure how effective the application would be with water already in the pond. One issue I am fighting is that we are currently in an extreme drought. As a result, I am getting no help from rain water and all the ground around the pond is extremly dry. There are cracks in the ground very close to the pond about 1.5" think and I know we are loosing a lot of water to absorbtion.

I created an Excel spreadsheet that calculates how much water is needed to keep a pond full. The spreadsheet factors surface acres, average depth and pump output. With all this info it reports the pumping hours per year required to keep the pond full. It assumes that the bottom of sealed off and there is no significant leakage. If anybody is interested in this, send to me your e-mail address and I will e-mail it to you

If I could get 80 to 120 gpm I would do it in a heartbeat! Our well contractors here say we are more likely to get 10-20gpm. I'm not sure with the size pond I have and quite a seepage problem still that I could do much good with that kind of flow. How deep is your well? I haven't seen a pump that will even flow that high at the depths i'm looking at. What kind of pump are you using? We usually hit a nice water supply here at around 100-150 feet. If my math is correct at 20gpm it would take 2 months of 24/7 continuous pumping to fill my pond. That's granted it wouldn't be seeping out as fast as it was going in nor taking evaporation in consideration during the hot months.

I have just about ruled out a polyethylene liner mainly because of the cost and we have alot of deer in the area which i'm afraid would make a mess of it! So i've been looking at bentonite route but the thing is it seems my leak must be somewhere on the banks. The pond will leak down to a certain point (around 3 feet deep) and then stop drastically. It appears all the water is pushing out through the banks at a rapid rate. Which is weird because I always have heard once you got the bottom sealed off you pretty much had a pond. Due to the steep incline of the banks it would be really hard to get a piece of equipment in there and till the soil, spread the bentonite and compact it so I'm not sure how to approach it. I guess i'm trying to have faith in the old "time driven sealing" but after a year of waiting i'm growing impatient and tired of looking at a big hole in front of my house! It's good to hear from people who have had some of the same problems and get some ideas how to go about it. Send me that spread sheet i'd definately like to see it! send to belkins456@yahoo.com

Thanks.

Admittedly, I have negleted Pond Boss but I finally have some updates to report. Since my last post, I have had some drama at my pond but I think I am past the growing pains and on my way to a well producing pond.

As my fellow Texans will confirm, we had a really bad drought for about 2 years. All of that changed for us in August and we started to get rain. When we got our first rain, my pond turned brown and the fish just disappeared. I didn't really see too many dead along the bank but I did see a few. I think the pond turned and I had an oxygen deprivation problem so I installed an areator. Now, the pond has stayed pretty green and the fish are visible when the feeders go off - although NOT NEARLY AS MUCH as I saw them before the oxygen problem. You can see the bubbles from one of the areator diffusers on the 3rd picture.

Unfortunately, I really don't know how many fish I lost but I do think that I lost some. I have therefore stocked some additional BG since I installed my areation system and I am considering some more BG, shad, and FHMs next weekend. They probably won't reproduce this year but at least they'll be ready for next spring.

I have some ducks that I bought and put on my pond. They are domesticated Roens drakes and a few female mallard hens. Last year the hen laid eggs around the base of a tree but a varmit got the eggs so this year I am building some duck boxes. I built one and I am going to build a few more.

What kind of pump are you using? Right now I just have a 10 gpm installed.

Have you tried to do a creel survey (fishing) to see what bites ?

I have a 3 hp pump. It is a low pressure/high volume pump and runs on 220v.

I have not fished recently. The evidence that I have for fewer fish is that they are not attacking the fish food with the same verocity as before.

Reduced feeding happens as the water gets colder.

I am still not convinced that I didn't have a major fish kill but we'll see. I added some additional minnows and blue gill in November. I am hopefully optimistic that I'll see a lot of fish come back after the water warms up.

Last weekend I was bouncing a small jig on the bottom and caught this. It is the biggest I have caught in the pond. With all the stocking and feeding I have done in the past 18 months I think I'll be happy with what I've created.


If I could do anything again, I wish I had added the areatation system as soon as I started stocking. I would have never had the problem and I think I would have more fish today. Also, I would know that the stripers and Tigre Bass I stocked were still alive and well. As it is right now, I am not convinced that my bass survived my problem last year.