Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose trout in pond.

All would help keep the water cool and all have other drawbacks as well...copper and pumping cost big bucks...if wanting some geo-thermal effect, go with the tubingmade for it..still cheaper to re-stock annually.

Lillypads will do minimal shading as the leaf itself will absorb lots of heat to be transferred into the water as well as making fishing difficult or a variety being highly invasive.

an awning may help shade and keep leaves out, but be a whole lotta work to keep maintained and cleaned.

Thanks .

OK now if I put copper tubing under the pond by about a foot or two. And regards circulate the water will that work?. Also will putting a trench help keep the water cooler. Finally how does water turnover work.

Just remember heat rises, cold sinks. I don't know if the tubing with cool water running thru it on the bottom will do much good.

Water turnover spring and fall. Water is densest when it's 39°F. Anything warmer or cooler floats. Lakes and pond do a flip/flop when cooling down for the winter, and warming up for the summer.

What I was saying is pumping warm water under the pond. About a foot deeper than the pond and then dumping it back in the pond thanks. For the info

That might work, using the ground as a heat sink. You might want to play with the water flow thru the coils. Just like a car radiator won't cool the motor if a thermostat or a reducer is in the system to reduce the flow. The dwell time in the "radiator" has to be sufficient for the water to lose some of it's heat.

Thinking a bit, it might be even better if the coils weren't anyplace where they would influence the water, i.e. buried outside of the pond basin.

Now I was thinking about instead of coils using multiple sections of copper tubing joined together. I could use larger diameter tubing. I think but I hope that others chime in.

This much work and effort, it'd seem a whole lot cheaper to just restock the trout each fall... Central PA has plenty of places to buy trout at reasonable prices.

Joe I think you could end up over complicating things, if you can pump enough well water into the pond and run it down a small rocky water course for aeration that probably would be sufficient.

Agreed. And copper tubing isn't cheap either!

I have to say .... Wow.... Cecil.... Keep doing what your doing ! Looks like it's working well for you...how old were those huge brookies?.....nice work..I envy you. Taking some time but i am getting there..... Power to pond this summer(aerator ) and brookies and rainbows this June.

I get them as one year olds at 8 to 10 inches and will have up to 19 inch fish one year later, although most run in the 16 to 18 inch range by then. This cycle I hope to get them into the mid 20's and 6 pound plus fish as 3 year old fish. My biggest was over 6 lbs.

Bringing this back from a few months ago. The warm weather is here in my part of Southern Ontario and I still have all my brookies/tigers/browns and a few rainbows in the pond. Usually I pull the brookies out in mid may but I have been sick the past few weeks and wasn't able to. The guy I got everything but the brookies from gave me some advice last fall about having the trout make it thru the summer in my pond. My pond is aprox 1/2 acre, with 2-16'+ holes and an average depth of 10 feet. The pond is not directly spring fed but is 100% ground source and is directly in the water table. The pond butts up to a 6 acre Pete Moss bog/swamp with the water table being less than a foot from the surface even in the hottest days of summer.
In the past I have lost the brookies in early June and the browns/rainbows have made it thru the summer with no issues other than the one year I had the pond turn over due to 6" of rain in less than an hour.
Anyway, this guy told me to shut down feeding all together come mid may (I havn't feed in over 2 weeks). He said they will use 3 or 4 times the oxygen eating as they would if they wern't being fed. He said they will no problem find enough food on there own for 3 months if they can make it thru. The other thing he mentioned that would be benificial is building a few floating rafts as large as possible. I could easily build a few 16x16 rafts with 1/4" plywood to sheild the sunlight over the two deep holes and the cost would be very minimal (aprox $200 for the two including the barrels which I already have).
I have my aerators in the top 1/4 of the water column (difusers that float up from the bottom when air is going thru them).
I also typically dye the pond also as I am not looking for a bloom with the trout and it seems to really keep the weeds down which I don't have many of because the seriously deep sides of the pond (all sides but one little area drop faster in depth than distance you go out) and also seems to help the temps a bit.

Anyone have any opinions on these idea's? I will pull out a few of the brookies if I can but am really intrested to see if I can get them to last into the fall...

Thanks in advance...Ryan

Ryan,

I'd say it's worth a go. Not every pond is the same so what works for one may or may not work for another.

The way I see it the two main factors at work that determine if your trout make it through the summer are the amount of solar heating you get and the fertility of your pond. Obviously the more of both you get, they're going to reduce the tolerance of your trout and the oxygen capacity of your pond. Fertile waters consume more oxygen as the dead bodies of your lower food chain consume oxygen as they decompose.

Keeping warming down by steep sides and shielding solar heating will help although I question if the amount of shielding you mention would be enough in a 1/2 acre pond. Conversely the larger the body of water the more difficult it is to cool it as more cold water is required to do so.

As far as stopping the artificial feeding of the fish that makes sense. They can and will subsist on natural feed but only if their density is not so high to deplete their natural food supply. The downside is you won't get the growth rates on natural feed you will on the pellet diet.

It's been my experience, trout stop feeding on their own when conditions become less than desirable. So whether it's pellets or natural feed, if the trout are nearing their maximum tolerance levels, they shut down and stop feeding.

Very true Travis! In the local trout lakes they just sulk on the bottom later in the summer and hang in there until the water turns over. That is unless the oxygen level gets too low and they are forced up. However I was referring to a situation if they were trapped in the thermocline and conditions are still tolerable enough that they are still feeding. They can't come up because the water is too warm/low in oxygen so they stay down and feed on invertebrates etc.

I had an individual in PA tell me his rainbows would shoot up in 80 degree plus water to feed on pellets and go quickly down again. Makes sense but he was prone to exaggeration and rarely sober so I'm not sure how reliable that was.

Ryan as far as building rafts to shade the pond it would be easier and cheaper than plywood to use sheets of foam and link them together, they would also reflect the sun well, if you wanted them raised up off the surface just glue some foam blocks to the corners.

Another helpful thing to cool the water would be to run a good size surface pump or fountain which would spray the water high enough to transfer more heat to the night air, an aerator does a good job but doesn't get the water in contact with the cooler air 5 to 10 ft. above the pond.
Good luck and hope your trout make it.