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#536251 06/08/21 10:35 AM
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Newbie to the forum. We have a large pond that is hourglass shaped and half is deep the other half shallow. Lots of much and coontail and now duck weed and watermeal. I plan on buying an aeration pump for a 4 acre 20’ deep pond. That will break the bank. Then there is hoses and diffusers to consider. I like DIY projects, any suggestions on making diffusers and how many lines and diffusers I should use? We used to swim and fish in the pond and last year most of the fish died and we couldn’t get control of the floating weeds. Trying to keep my pond from becoming g a bog while trying to not break the bank. Any suggestions are welcome! Thanks in advance!

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Welcome to the forum MRS.G!

DIY diffusers are NOT where I would try to save the money, but there are those that have made them with soaker hose and/or PVC pipe. The small size of the bubbles is what makes a professional diffuser more desirable than a DIY model. Smaller bubbles yields more water movement. Making the stands for the diffusers will save some money however. Any savings from a DIY system is going to come from designing your own system, sourcing your pump (and shopping around), buying the components, and using your labor to install it (this includes the electric run or airline run to the pond). If you just look at the component costs...it's hard to save much money when compared to buying a turn-key system of like components. The real savings is in the labor to design and install. I am confident that the forums can help a lot with the design, but the labor is up to you. IIRC, I saved about $700 on my 1/4 horse system, but I had to run electric 175' underground to the pond which accounted for most of the savings as the neighbor and I did it for return favors. The rest of my savings was in my "pack-rat-ery". I had most of the plumbing parts and materials for the little pump house. I'd say I spent $1300 on my system which would aerate a 1 acre pond if needed even though my pond is only a 1/4 acre.

The first thing to do is to show us it's shape (with some good dimensions) and some depths. We are looking for the surface area and average depth...This will allow us to estimate how much water you have in the pond and how many diffusers you should have. From there, a pump size can be determined. The rest is pretty straight forward.


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Welcome to the forum!

Send me a PM with the address and I can map the pond, and with knowing where/what the depths are I can figure out where diffusers should be placed.

The aeration system by itself won't cure the weeds but it will help slow down the eutrophication process and minimize any fish kills you might have in the future if you decide to restock the pond with fish.


www.hoosierpondpros.com


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https://earth.app.goo.gl/V5M7rZ
I mapped it yesterday and it’s about 2.75 acres. In the shallows, the depths average about 3’ and in the deeper part, around 9’. Depths were as low as 27” to 10’11””. It needs so much work as as a seasonal employee who is now off work, I don’t mind hard work. Any and all suggestions are SO welcome! Thank you!!

Last edited by MrsGumby; 06/09/21 09:48 AM. Reason: Typed in link since so can’t upload picture.
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Here's a snip from you google earth link for safe keeping...

[Linked Image from forums.pondboss.com]


Fish on!,
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Thanks. I have that. Just couldn’t figure out how to upload it and I like the measuring tool on the link. Appreciate the help though! 😊

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There are still some fish, lots of turtles, and about a million bullfrog tadpoles that look like small fish and haven’t evolved in the last 3 months. I did see some blue girls bedding, and a couple of bass. I was happy to see some fry. I was relieved that my pond was not completely dead other than the mutant frogs.
(Seriously, last year we saw a bullfrog snag a robin and eat it,)

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My mind is wanting to treat this pond as two 1.4 acre ponds. The deep half (on the left) is pretty straight forward, but I would have to lean on someone with experience in what you have going on in the shallow half. I'm just not sure what can be done with that much shallow water or if it would be worth messing with.

I assume you meant that the deep half "averages" 9 foot and that it has deeper waters than 9 foot. If this is true, you need to look at a centrifugal vane pump or a piston pump as they will pump the air into deeper waters than the cheaper diaphragm pumps. Actually, even if your deepest part is at 9 foot, I'd still advise the centrifugal vane or piston pump, but that might be a difference in personal preference and/or the actually depth you choose to place your diffusers. I'd design the system to be able to put the diffusers on the bottom and be able to move them up in the water column if desired rather than be locked at a 4 to 5 foot depth to begin with.


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In the middle of the deeper and there are areas that are 10‘11“ to 9 foot. I was hoping that if I could get the water circulating enough in the deeper end that the shallower half of the pond would take care of itself. But the shallow end has a natural spring trickling in, at least it used to. There is a fair amount of coontail weeds in that end as well..

Thanks for the pump suggestions. That is what I was looking at. I was looking at this one.
https://www.septicsolutions.com/sep...023-rotary-vane-pond-aeration-compressor

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Gast makes very good pumps and the 3/4 horse should be plenty for your needs. There are other good pumps out there, but I am biased to the Gast Pumps merely because that is what I have.

Look at esshup's web site...

https://shop.hoosierpondpros.com/Aeration_c3.htm

and you will find good price points for the 5/8" ID sinking air line and the single vertex diffusers. It's where I bought my line and diffusers. He also has the PondLyfe systems and he may be able to recommend one of those...I'll leave that to his expertise.

The Gast 1023 should be able to run 5 to 9 diffusers nicely. My opinion would be to plan on 7 to 8 with the 1023 (maybe 9 depending). The 1023 is probably overkill, but that is my style at times (I like the extra diffusers for surface conditioning...my pond gets pretty scummy at the surface) . You could consider buying the Gast 0823. It's a bit smaller pump with the same HP (I think), less money and would run 4 to 7 diffusers. Now, if the budget gets tight after adding up all the costs...we can look at the Gast 0523, but this pump might be too small depending on what gets aerated and how deep you go with the diffusers. We'll just wait and see where your budget takes you.


Fish on!,
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Having an abundance of shallow water will always be an uphill battle, as far as vegetation is concerned. But then again, the term "shallow water" is open to interpretation. I'd say if the majority of it is 3', you'd be ok. Having too much in the 1-2' range will pose some issues, I'd imagine. It would make a great refuge for YoY fish and FHM though.


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As far as vegetation is concerned, the water clarity is more of a determining factor than water depth, I've seen "weeds" growing in 12' of water when sunlight could get to the bottom.

Water depth plays a large role in compressor CFM requirements when looking at de-icing an area during the winter too. As does the bubble size.

This past winter we finished our testing and found that for shallow water de-icing the more CFM and bigger bubbles = bigger the open water area.


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Do I need to keep open water in the winter? When there are fish, my family used to like to go I e fishing.

Also, aren’t the diffusers supposed to sit on the bottom of the pond? Or do I want them at different levels? We have muck build up on the bottom and lots of water meal and duck weed on the top.

Lastly, we love to go on paddle boat rides to see the fish. If we put pond dye in the pond, would we still be able to see them?

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Originally Posted by MrsGumby
Do I need to keep open water in the winter? When there are fish, my family used to like to go I e fishing.

Also, aren’t the diffusers supposed to sit on the bottom of the pond? Or do I want them at different levels? We have muck build up on the bottom and lots of water meal and duck weed on the top.

Lastly, we love to go on paddle boat rides to see the fish. If we put pond dye in the pond, would we still be able to see them?

If the pond freezes over in the winter for more than a few weeks, 2" of milky ice and 2" of snow will stop sunlight transmission, effectively putting a stop to photosynthesis in the pond, and the O2 in the water will be slowly depleted by all the living organisms in the pond. How long that O2 level lasts varies so much from pond to pond that I cannot answer it. I have seen a winterkill in a 6' deep, 1 ac pond within 2 weeks after freezing over solid. (Windmill system, no wind and heavy cloud cover for 2 weeks, then the wind started back up and there were dead fish in the hole that opened up, and dead fish when the ice went off the pond.)

Diffusers for the summer are on the bottom in the deepest part of the pond. DIffusers for the winter are on the bottom (if possible) in 1/4 the total pond depth, where the open water will extend all the way to the shore so if something goes in, it won't have to crawl back up on top of the ice to get out.

The purpose of dyeing the pond is to minimize sunlight transmission, so being able to see the fish all depends on water clarity and the color of the fish. (I can see light colored Koi in a dyed pond at 3' water depth).


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MrsGumby,

Hello! I'm down here in Georgia and have just this year jumped into the ring of fighting duckweed and watermeal in a fifty-year-old two-acre pond that has also suffered from some fish kills in the last two or three years. The very first thing we did was install an aeration system to TRY and help reduce the nutrients in the pond by boosting dissolved oxygen which is then supposed to help fuel the natural bacteria that helps to consume the excess nutrients in the water that are fueling the growth of watermeal and duckweed. The other thing we are leaning on the aeration to do is heighten the amount of dissolved oxygen in the water to help to eliminate fish kills. The duckweed was knocked out earlier in the year, but the watermeal has persisted. We are trying to avoid fluridone treatment for as long as we can resist it to see how mechanical/aeration techniques may stymie the watermeal's proliferation. Ultimately, we will probably end up doing a fluridone treatment towards September/October when we usually end up with multiple dry weeks in a row. Fluridone treatments are incredibly costly and any water fluctuation that adds water (heavy rain) can throw the percentage of systemic in the pond out of whack and waste the efforts if it is not boosted accordingly.

So, what I CAN say is that the aeration is going on about three weeks after installation. We have absolutely noticed a marked difference in fish activity at the top of the water! Also, the water clarity has increased rather drastically. I don't know how permanent this is or isn't. We run the aeration from 12am to 8am on a timer. We do this because it gets so hot here (we've already hit the low 100F this summer a couple of times) that we don't want the pump running in that heat and blowing hot air into the pond. I think where you're at that you may be able to get away with running it 24/7. The reason I bring this up is because if I get out to the pond before the aeration cuts off, the clarity is roughly around 20-24", but if I'm there in the evening the clarity is closer to 40" depth. Anyway, aeration is something that will be beneficial to your pond no matter what you decide to do to try and deal with the watermeal.


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Thank you. Mine has been aerating for about 3 weeks now, but only in the deeper end. And only I. A couple of spots. I also Added 2 gallons of blue dye. It does look better on the deep end. The shallow end is just a thick layer of green watermeal. It’s gross! But at $1/ft for hose, I don’t think I will be able to get a diffuser down to that end. I would need at least 600’ of hose! At least the fish can all come down to the deeper end. Hopefully the giant snapping turtles won’t get them!


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