With the newly renovated 3 ac mostly <6ft deep pond in MO and after a few years maybe one year depending on productivity and water clarity do not expect the water below the thermocline or below diffuser depth after early summer to contain dissolved oxygen. Dead sinking organic 'rainout' particulates (stuff) will consume all the oxygen below any thermocline depth. If I had a pond in MO I would not aerate it during winter unless the pond was in a wooded area and it received lots of leaves or had lots of submerged vegetation during fall. Leaves and dead plants consume lots of oxygen as they decay.
ok,
We removed all trees, willows, brush etc. from everywhere close to the pond now. The main runoff comes mostly from large fescue fields. A small secondary runoff comes from another field but is adjacent to part of my forest. I imagine some debris does come through there when it does flood in during a hard rain. I am considering placing a small pond, maybe to use for forage fish, that could also catch and hold some sediments and debris that would otherwise flow into the pond.
The pond used to have quite a build up, giving off lots of gases if you walked through the muck in the shallows where the large majority of brush, willows and small trees were growing. I had one huge fish kill a few summers before when we had extended weeks of over 100 degree temps and I lost about three feet of depth from a drought. The pond never regained it's footing and after the fish kill, the coontail and watermeal took the water over.
