Large pond with a lot of leaf litter
Bottom aeration is the best tool for pond management. The bottom of the pond is where most of our problems come from so why not start there to help bring the pond back to life or at least keep out newer pond from the eventual problems.
Yes there are ponds that don’t have a problem at all, for a few years or many years but eventually will have one form of problem or another at some point in the ponds life span. (Scroll down for video)
Simple things like, what happens when it rains, where does the rain end up? In your pond? What and where has the rain traveled from, across the fertilized lawn or crop fields? Did the rain pas through pet or live stock waste, what about the flying manure spreader that show up each spring. Then there are other items that end up in the pond. Every fall the leave fall. Not only what falls directly on the pond but the wind storms blowing the leaves to the pond, they float for a bit then sink.
These items and plenty more nutrients can enter the pond and are sitting on the bottom of the pond decaying, turning to muck and sludge. As these items decay there are gasses building up at the bottom of the pond. The smelly one when you step into the pond is the hydrogen sulfide and the odorless one is carbon dioxide, both are very harmful to the fish. The gasses do ten to escape the pond spring and fall when the pond turns over. If the concentration of bad gasses out number dissolved oxygen water we end up with a fish kill.
With bottom aeration we are pushing out the toxic gasses allowing them to escape from the water so oxygen can be absorbed back into the water. Getting oxygen to the bottom of the pond helps the fish become less stressed, give them more of the pond they can use and with oxygen at the bottom of the pond Beneficial Pond Bacteria can now start working on digesting/removing the sludge and muck.
The video below simply shows an aeration system already installed with the system on the shoreline and ran electric to the compressor from the house. The pond had experienced a fish kill after a long hard winter. During the install, the diffuser at the deep end pushed up black smelly water. Even on the second diffuser placement the black water was still present. The black water is the by product of the hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide. The result of many years of not only leaf buildup but nutrient build up from the rain and watershed that fills the pond.
It took many years for the pond to get in the shape its in but now on a plan of healing with the added water movement and oxygen the natural bacteria can get to work, the fish can breath easier and adding our Sludge and Muck Remover will only help to speed up the process along the shoreline and our Pond Clarifier will work on the clarity of the water. The recommendation for using the muck and sludge remover would be to apply starting on the right side of the pond and along the mowed grass area. The same as the image above, the right side being where the blue boat is. This is where most of the run off comes to the pond but also the road does not help matters.
The aeration system is a PA66 from EasyPro.
