Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Help New Pond (kinda)

Hello, First time user...been reading this forum and website for a few days now and finally decided to register. I'm in Iraq right now, due to return in August (I hope!). My email address over here is rich.adkins@krab.af.mil. Enough introductions, on to the important stuff.

I recently bought land and built a house on 26 acres. The land had an existing pond about 3/4 of a surface acre in size, the basin is a bowl shape, the surface shape is a "T". The water has never been clear, probably due to soil composition. There was no structure, manmade or otherwise. I drained (which has since refilled!)the pond and much to my suprise it was LOADED with a wide variety of species, from channels to bass to four or five different sunfish, and the odd assortment of white bass, one striper and several yellow bass. However, they were ALL very skinny, imagine that ! The deepest part of the pond was only about 5 feet and it had a bunch of the "slimey" algae in it. I want to expand the size of the pond, establish coppernose, Florida Strain, some channel (for eating). Please tell me if my plans I'm about to describe will work...gathered most of what's below from this forum.

1 Expand to 1.5-1.75 acres, make dept about 7 feet
2 Create under water structure, both terrain and manmade
3 After fill, plan to add 3 tons of AG lime and utilize Southern Excellence this fall and next spring. This fall I want to stock the coppernose and a LARGE amount of fatheads. I'm also considering stocking the (spelling ?) Gatmusa ? minnow (mosiquito eater !!)
4 In the spring I plan on stocking the bass and channels.
5 I do want some aquatic veg, but want a species that will not take over and at the same time provide some cover for young fish.

My goal here is to provide a fishery that is basically sound with some minimal management. I may get into it a bit more after I retire though ! I'm trying for big 'gills, and quality bass, if the pond will sustain a trophy bass (over 8lbs) then that's a real bonus but not a major concern. There will be a very limited number of people utilizing it.

Please, any suggestion, comments, stocking rates, fertilizaion, experiences of a similar sort...will this works kinda stuff...apprx costs involved...should I feed...how to set up a spawn area...man, I've got a million question !! (LOL at myself !!)

Thanks in advance for any help...

Master Sergeant Rich Adkins
Kirkuk AB, Iraq (for now !)

Torchy,
Thanks for your service!
Because of you and your fellow service men and women who serve our nation and preserve our freedom, we are able to pursue our interests and highly prized way of life.

As a fairly new member of the pond community, the only thing I would suggest is an aeration system, which will increase the carrying capacity of your pond and eliminate problems down the road.

I would suggest you contact Bill Cody or other experts on this board who provide excellent guidance to appreciative board members.

Good luck and God speed,
George Glazener

George,

Thanks for the kind words...receiving support and hearing folks say thanks make this way of life alot easier!

Do you have any experience with "passive" aeration such as wind or solar power ? If I had to use active, I'd have to run power underground for about six hundred yards, give or take a little...not sure I want to pay for the set up and unsure if I could get the wire to carry the correct load that far...I'd be willing to carry less biological load and not aerate if that's feasible...

Torchy

Torchy,
Go to the archives and search “aeration” – there’s a ton of information there, as well as info on other subjects you inquired about.
The experts on this board are amazing – and helpful.

We are running air 150ft plus from the pump to our pond – and others have mentioned more than 400ft, but 600 yards??? Solar power, as well as windmills are also discussed in the archives.

It all depends on the goals you set for your pond. If you opt for less carrying capacity, you may not need aeration. If there’s enough wind to power a wind mill, the wind itself may be adequate for natural aeration?

Move you question up to topic “AERATION – System Questions” and I’m sure you’ll get some help.
Good luck,
george

Torchy,
Please accept my BEST wishes & MANY thanks for what you and ALL you guy's, and gal's are doing for all of us at home!! I can't express the apreciation, gratitude, thankfullnes and PRIDE that WE have people like you who are making the world a better place!!

Now another idea which I haven't seen discussed on this sight. What about Waterwheels? I have found out it isn't practial to have one installed to generate power unless you have a LOT of flow, however I intend to build my own & use it to operate a pump for areation.
Just another thought.
Ric

Hey Sarge, my problem with both solar and wind powered aeration relates to Dissolved Oxygen crashes. The time I really need aeration is on cloudy, calm days in the late Spring. Neither method of power is there when I really need it. One better alternative may be to just have power run to the pond. I did it when I put in a well 100 yards from my house. The local co-op didn't charge to run more wire with a power pole to the well. However, I do get an additional meter charge of $8.50 per month whether I use it or not. In any case, guard your butt and come home safe, then worry about the water hole.

Ric, Do you have an area of running water to turn the wheel? Sounds like a fascinating idea.

Ric,

I'm interested too. I run well water into my trout pond via a vertical pipe and a water wheel underneath it could build up some power to run aeration???? That way I could cancel out some of the power it takes to run the well.

The water wheel sounds good, however, I have no flowing water...the existing pond is a "dug" pond, as opposed to a dammed up pond...the drainage is several hundred acres but the land topography is relatively flat...the pond hasn't gone dry since it's construction...lotta silt buildup which is one of the reasons I'm re-digging it...I think I'll have to forego the aeration for the time being, gotta figure out how to run power six hundred yards to the pond...is the rest of my "planning" sound? I really appreciate the advice ! You guys are great...

Torchy

Greetings Torchy, sounds like you plan to do what I did when I retired from the Navy 7 years ago but alas as I sit here at work getting ready to start I can only dream of the pond at the house and the stupid heron I can't chase off three times this morning and he just flies to the cow pasture and waits to return time for a pellet gun firecrackers don't work! I have a small 1/3 acre pond that I aerate and feed about 4K gallons of water from a well to keep it topped off. I have bream, yearling bass and 2-3 pound cats in it right now. I am in the process of building a 8000 gallon Koi pond off of one end of it and plan to circulate water from the main pond to a water wheel into the Koi pond and flow down a stream about 20 ft long back to the main pond. It should look nice when I am done. You can go to my web page and see how the construction is going and when you get back shoot me an e-mail and I will send you a copy of the pattern I designed for making the outer ring for the wheel It will be just over 7' in diameter. Take care and remember to duck.

SMC(SW) Bob Koerber USN Retired

Dave,
Yes I have a small stream which will feed my pond.
Cecil,
Duke Energy did a study on utilizing small pond waterwheels in this area for power production. Payback was too far down the road to make it practial. However if you design, build, install yourself ... I work for myself cheap! I was planning on using the wheel to operate the pump not power it. My pond isn't built yet & will have to wait & measure outflow before designing the wheel for optimum output. I've been searching the web for weeks & can find lots of info on waterwheels but not much on design for small flows. The old wheels were built on large streams & they could build the wheel as big as they wanted & then divert enough water to fill it. A friend was involved with the Duke project & has promissed to look up his data on small flow wheels for me .. still waiting.
Bob,
Do you have info on design for small flow wheels?

I would think that if a windmill powered aerator would work, then the water wheel would not be that hard, however, I've never seen one so I can't say for sure. Most likely, you would have to narrow the flow of water to a jet to power a wheel. This really interests the engineer in me. Most likely this would work in the case of either a well fed pond like Cecil's or if you had access to a stream. Total potenial of a using a stream is what the flow is like. I won't go into all the details here, but I did study hydroelectric power a bit in college. If you need any help in designing that, I would love to be involved! Feel free to contact me by e-mail.
Torchy, keep up the great work for our country. I was in the Third Infantry Division a couple of years ago and I miss being there with them but glad I'm not all at the same time.

The design part will be in figuring what size to make the buckets so each will fill to max cap as the wheel turns. Make it to small & I waste water .. to big & I'm pushing excess mass around .. wasted energy. Idealy the first few buckets full will overflow until the wheel reaches optimum rpm & then, for most effecient use of outflow from the pond, the buckets should fill to max as they pass the incomming water without spilling over. Figuring that out is where i'm going to need help! There's got to be a better way than trial & error. I'm getting to old for this! I plan on placing the wheel at the bottom of the dam to take advantage of increased velocity via gravity.
Ric

Ric, you have e-mail.