Added a single 9" diffuser for aeration and several pallets for FHM reproduction.
I tried best as possible to make the overflow pipe high enough so fish could not swim from the main pond back up into the sediment pond. This will allow me to use the sediment pond as a forage pond. At least for a while. The problem is, the pond being so near the top of the hill I could only get a differential in height from the main pond at full pool of less than a foot.
I used a 6" overflow pipe from the sediment pond to the main pond. During large rain events this is not near enough. But by using a fairly small pipe it allowed me to keep the outlet higher than the full pool level of the main pond so fish would not swim back up. But in large rain events when the pipe is running full bore and sediment pond two inches above it, the emergency overflow will become the main source of overflow flow. This is by design and have already had rain events where the 12' wide emergency overflow was utilized. Will not claim this was the best solution, but it is what I came up with.
Eventually there will be a big enough rain event so the main pond is a foot above full pool and the sediment is flowing full bore and fish will be able to swim from the main pond back into the sediment pond. So it can never be kept a pure forage pond. But it will function as one till such a rain event happens. It could be next week, could be five years from now. Kansas weather. The ponds were just too close to the same elevation to do anything different.
