Hi all,
Long-time lurker, first-time poster.
I have a .7 Acre pond (old quarry) with an average depth of 5 feet that was drained and graded about 5 years ago. No natural inflow or outflow other than runoff and seepage when the water gets high. The field to the right in the first pic is uphill and there is a berm with trees on it to aid in keeping the soybean/corn field runoff from entering the pond.
(Photos taken Fall 2008)
Previous owner had used a Kasco circulator to help stir the pond. I used it the first year I owned the place and it cost me ~ $70 a month to operate 24/7 with not much noticable effect. Didn't do anything last year for lack of time and the pond got "gross".
Pond was stocked with FHM which still seem to be hanging in there. No other fish that I know of.
Let me state for the record that I contacted Ted at Forever Green and he gave some sage advice. Didn't end up buying a system from him (more in a minute) but I did buy Bottom Line from him (Thanks Ted!)
My passion and hobby is aviation (not fish or ponds yet) and am building an airplane - so I just couldn't help myself when it came time to do an aeration system. I'm a "homebuilder" at heart.
So after entirely too many hours on this site, another koi pond site and a million supplier websites, I decided on a roll-your-own aeration device supplied by a linear air pump.
Purchased a Medo LA-120 for ~$400 because it was widely reported to be "under spec'd", had no diaphragms to be replaced and had many reports of zero service needs for 5+ years running 24/7. Best of all it pulls about 120 watts while delivering 4.2cfm (per manufacturers specs) at 5' of water. (all numbers based on spec sheets not personal measurement - except power. It pulls 150 watts with no backpressure at all and about 120 watts in my pond. I stalled it briefly by plugging the supply and the power dropped to a mere 40 watts.)
Supply line is Ted's Bottom Line.
Now the roll-your-own aspect. I toyed with two 2-disc stations but decided to experiment with a Wisconsin knock-off of a popular 5-disc station model.
Why - because bigger is better and I wanted to see how it would perform...
Thus:
I acquired the 9" discs from an online supplier for
~$15 ($18.50 with S&H) each. Claim they are "fine bubble" setup - have no way to verify that. They are 3/4" threaded molds for the frame.
Decided to center-feed the system and branch in a "TEE" format since the local home supply doesn't make a fitting to do a 6 way 3/4" PVC split.
The outboard pipes (vertical in the above picture) are not part of the air system. I just cut fish-mouths (see - I'm taking my aviation knowledge and crossing it over to fish!) into two additional pieces of PVC. These are solvent welded to the surface of the pipes and then I added zip ties for added joint strength.
I angled the barb fitting so that the supply line would clear the outrigger support.
Lastly, I took a 12"x12" cement paver, drilled some holes in it with a masonry bit and zip-tied the whole contraption to it (sorry - was in too big of a hurry to test it and forgot to take pics at that stage.) A piece of line around the base and another zip-tie connecting the supply hose to the rope (strain relief for the barb fitting) and it was ready to test.
I haven't done any photos or video of the gizmo in action but it seems to move the water - and boy does it raise a stink when it is running (yes - I've been following the double-every-day startup routine).
I can see very distinct cross-shaped outflow pattern coming from the center of the "boil". Took the canoe out and held my breath. Seems to be "welling up" pretty significantly in the center and the bubbles are still small (I'd guess 1/16" - 1/8" at the surface).
Any guesses as to the turnover rate I should expect to get with this contraption? May end up breaking this beast down into two (or maybe even three - I have a spare disc) separate stations, but thought I'd give this a whirl for a while.
Other than show & tell - I did have a question. How will I be able to tell whether one central lift station is working vice several distributed and would it matter on this size of a pond?
One last plug - Ted is the man. No - I don't work for him (but I am from OH originally!
) but do sincerely appreciate that he answered my questions.
Barry
