Pond Boss Forums AERATION Should I aerate? Urgent Trout Problem

My boss has a 1/4 acre trout pond and is in the hospitol having surgery. His trout are turning up 3-6 at a time .

The pond is 10' at the deepest part, no vegitation at all. He has a 20' waterfall running 12 hours during the day and recently started oxegentaing ( no startup at all just went directly to 24/7 oxegenation ) . He has 2 duffusors running, 1 @ the 10' hole and 1 near surface at about 4' deep. The aeration has muddied up the water but he continually is adding about 10 gpm of fresh water with an overflow on the opposite end that skims the surface and drains into a lower larger pond.

The trout are facing head face into the bottom of the waterfall which would indicate to me that they are looking for oxygen but I can't imagine with the 2 diffusors going 24/7 there is a lack of oxygen plus the waterfall is adding additional aeration.

The water temp seems pretty mild ( can only test with touch of the hand ) I would guess it's somewhere around 65 degrees at the surface.

I'm not sure if it's possible to over aerate or maybe the muddy waters are irritating the trouts gills ? He has 60 trout stocked and has lost about 12 in the past 3 days. I wold really hate for him to return and find out all of his trout died.

Any help or advice would be greatly apprecited. I have just turned off the aerator to wait and see if a couple hours of it being off will get the trout returning to the deeper waters but I'm not sure if that's the solution or not ?

TIA

Farmer hold tight there are a few guys on this site with trout. I would have done the same thing as you did and turn off the air!! His startup procedure was not good to begin with or should I say lack of startup procdure. Trout are sensitive creatures in deed. Turning on an air setup 24/7 right off the bat may very well be his problem. Hopefully you will get some answers here shortly!!

Attica Farmer,

The aeration probably brought up many toxins into the water along with raising the water temperature considerably. If the trout are turning in to the fresh water, it is most likely in an attempt to avoid the anoxic water being stirred up.

I would suggest turning off the aeration right away or at the most, running it at night only. If possible, increase the fresh water flow as much as possible also. Finally, if possible, get an accurate water temp reading. Trout can live in 65-70 degree water, but are severely stressed at such high temps and an additional stressor like anoxic water can kill them quickly.

Thanks guys,

I kicked off the aerator right away and withing 2 hours the 7 that we could see went back into the deeps. We did loose one but many more look like they were saved.

I plan to try aerating for 4 hours 1 AM to 5 AM tomorrow night and see how they react. He paid big bucks for the aerator and It sounds like he wants to find a way somehow some way to utilize it.

He was very pleased when I called his room and told him it looked the the worst of the storm was over.

Thanks again.

On your restart consider leaving the 10 ft diffuser off or wean it back a lot, I would concentrate on the 4 ft deep area for now.Depending on how much circulation you have 4 hours may be too much too soon.

The trout were probably doing just fine lurking in 50 F. plus water until someone decided if it it's not broken I still need to fix it.

Sounds to me like the thermocline got busted up it bringing water temps up and possibly some anoxic water on the very bottom. And of course warmer water does not hold as much oxygen so the trout were bunched up in the best place for oxygen.

I just hope it's reversible. The diffusers may have permanently ruined a good situation. 10 gpms of new water is not very much water for a 1/4 acre pond. If it was me I'd keep the darn compressor off until I accessed the situation!

I noticed the same thing when I started up the aerator back in June. I haven't seen any trout after that, even tho I shut it off. I fired it up again towards the end of July hoping to drive any remaining trout to the 25-30 gpm well water that I was putting in the pond, but I haven't seen any. My guess is that they're all dead.

This country is littered with trout that have died because someone cranked up the diffusers in the summer and killed the fish. I know of at least one poster on here that did that. I was able to get away with it by running my compressor at night, and due to the fact I had plenty of well water running into a relatively small pond.

That said, I'm looking forward to Scot (Esshup) getting his hypolimnetic system up and running next year and tweeking it. If anyone can do it Scot can. Scot I've seen your analytical mind at work. I have no doubts you'll figure it out. And you're welcome to use my D.O. meter to collect data.

When you do I can see a whole new tool in our arsenal of keeping trout in the deep waters of a summer pond, and even making sure our coolwater fish make it through a hot summer.

Well the bad news just got worse today. We left the aerator off for the night and this morning there were 3 more floaters. We removed the deep one and kicked one on in the shallows just as Cecil had suggested. I left early and had a another employee evaluating the situation. He was leaving at 3:30 and if there were stressed ones near the surface the aerator was getting turned off. If everything looked ok at that point the timer was being set to run 12 - 4 AM.

I really believe well enough should have been left alone. There was only one mort prior to the aerator going in and then the hammer came down and it really looks like the entire pond is going to be a washout.

If they continue to drop off I'm going to try to convince him to do a HBG pond only and leave the trout off the menu.

I'll post an update first of the week, Thanks everyone for the input .

Farmer I am sorry to hear that. Trout are / can be high maintenance fish for sure. They are very picky when it comes to their water and what they live in.

Sorry about the mess!

Farmer:

I too thought I could over-summer the trout due to the high water table in the area. I aerated like you did and killed the trout by warming up the deeper water. So, next year the experiment will change. I figure that if I can't get it figured out in 3 years then I'll just plan on stocking the trout for the cooler seasons.

This was my bosses pond and I really don't know why he started aerating, things seemed fine by appearance prior to the diffusers dropping in with the exception of one mort. I think he started to panic and ruined the thermo plus by placing a diffuser right in the middle of the small 10' hole it naturally pushed them all out to shallower warmer water.

There is one diffuser running right now in the 4' range and based on an employees report this morning there were no fish near the surface.

monday morning should tell all , either they weathered the storm or it will be a complete revamping and species planning for fall stocking.