Sunil right now there are only minnows in the pond, with a plan to add predator fish next year. The thought with aeration wasn’t so much for the fish (we also circulate the pond horizontally with a 2000 gpm stream, so there is always oxygenated water circulating), but more so to facilitate the break down of any organics that fall to the bottom. I mainly added aeration “because that’s what you do”, and it was easier to dig in the lines during construction versus after, but maybe aeration will be unnecessary for the first several years, or maybe even longer. What do you think?
Good questions Esshup. We haven’t stocked any pumpkinseeds yet but plan to. Fortunately we don’t have any snails yet, and didn’t in the smaller version of the pond we had for four years, so hopefully snails don’t become a problem.
For the system it was designed to run 8/7, so that we could keep the pond looking natural during the day. Like I mentioned above I added it because “that’s what you do”, but I got questioned on it for the first time and realized I felt like I didn’t have a great answer. If we are moving the water horizontally, and if there are limited organics, do we really need bottom aeration for now? The suggestion from the person I talked to was to turn it off, but to then keep an eye on DO, and only turn it back on if you see low DO as you go down. That made sense to me, but was a bit “counter traditional wisdom”, so I wanted to check with you all. What do you think of that?
