I count 6 dead catfish. But I'm not good at the "How Many?" game.
Well Our Tank Took a Hit Last Week
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Last: 3 yr ago by wareagle044
I have a large solar aerator that has a couple of solar panels to power the pump and two oxygen diffusers in the pond. It is rated for a 2 acre pond. The manufacturer escapes me but there are several companies that manufacture this type of equipment. It essentially keeps the water in the pond circulating. Pond Boss has a forum that will get you lots of answers on aeration and a lot of other pond issues. I'm sure the issue in the OP could have been avoided with a little more thought and research before killing the algae.jpb1999 said:What kid of aerator do you use?docb said:
I have two aerators on my pond to help with this issue
Neither you just have to be aware of the issue and use appropriate aeration to prevent stratification if the pond is so deep that wind mixing isn't enough to keep stratification from occurring. By appropriate I mean that the aeration has to be capable of inducing vertical mixing in the pond. I have seen systems that use a relatively small pump with a bottom intake and surface discharge that are effective. You can detect stratification by monitoring the water temp profile from the surface to the bottom.jpb1999 said:So your saying a deep pond is good or bad?rab79 said:
ok, your pond has to be deep enough to stratify, i. e. cool water on the bottom warm water on the top with a boundary layer. The two levels don't mix so the bottom layer becomes anoxic, which dead algae on the bottom would facilitate.
When the top layer cools it breaks up the stratification and the two layers mix with the anoxic layer reducing the oxygen concentration to potentially lethal levels. The centrarchids are more susceptible to low oxygen levels than catfish so you can get differential mortality, depending on the level dissolved oxygen drops to.
How do you stop the layers from mixing?
If stratification develops you aren't going to be able to prevent mixing at some point, the idea is to prevent stratification.
NO AMNESTY!
in order for democrats, liberals, progressives et al to continue their illogical belief systems they have to pretend not to know a lot of things; by pretending "not to know" there is no guilt, no actual connection to conscience. Denial of truth allows easier trespass.
in order for democrats, liberals, progressives et al to continue their illogical belief systems they have to pretend not to know a lot of things; by pretending "not to know" there is no guilt, no actual connection to conscience. Denial of truth allows easier trespass.
The way this tank is set up, it's about an acre with a small creek area (where all the pictures were). There's a concrete island a little closer to the creek side in the middle of the tank and the sprinkler is between the creek and island. It runs daily for about 4 hours, but that's the shallower side of the tank and the only place we found the dead fish. I fed the fish yesterday and catfish were jumping really good.
I used Tsunami this year on the weeds (mostly hydroplane looking, but absolutely loaded) and it worked great. I only treated the area around the island and creek, which is where everything died. Yea, it smelled like the coast got a few days, but turtles and buzzards whipped most everything out within a week.
This is what the weeds looked like originally and after spraying. Plus a pic of the catfish we added.
I used Tsunami this year on the weeds (mostly hydroplane looking, but absolutely loaded) and it worked great. I only treated the area around the island and creek, which is where everything died. Yea, it smelled like the coast got a few days, but turtles and buzzards whipped most everything out within a week.
This is what the weeds looked like originally and after spraying. Plus a pic of the catfish we added.
Well, it definitely looks better post-treatment. Not sure how anything could have even lived in that before. Pretty much a pond full of algae with a little water in it.
txaggie02 said:
Well, it definitely looks better post-treatment. Not sure how anything could have even lived in that before. Pretty much a pond full of algae with a little water in it.
The bass were absolutely thriving in it and we had bluegill out the wazoo. We had never stocked it with bass, only transplanted a few here and there over the past 10-15 years and they apparently took off.
AggieChemist said:
Most dead stuff in a giddingsag thread ever.
Doesn't look like algae but more like an aquatic plant, perhaps coontail.
Aeration is the single best thing for pond health. There are solar, windmill, and electric methods out there. I personally like and use airstone manifolds hooked up to a buried/ weighted airline powered by a septic pump. Not terribly expensive. Electricity usage is minimal
Do research on dyes. They work but will definitely change the ecosystem of the pond with the flora and fauna way down the food chain. I was about to do that but an article from some university convinced me to not make major changes to the water, unless absolutely needed
Aquatic herbicides work fine so long as said before, you treat in sections and probably not in the dead of Texas summers due to oxygen depletion.
Sorry about your fish, giddings
Aeration is the single best thing for pond health. There are solar, windmill, and electric methods out there. I personally like and use airstone manifolds hooked up to a buried/ weighted airline powered by a septic pump. Not terribly expensive. Electricity usage is minimal
Do research on dyes. They work but will definitely change the ecosystem of the pond with the flora and fauna way down the food chain. I was about to do that but an article from some university convinced me to not make major changes to the water, unless absolutely needed
Aquatic herbicides work fine so long as said before, you treat in sections and probably not in the dead of Texas summers due to oxygen depletion.
Sorry about your fish, giddings
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jpb1999 said:What type of dye did you use? I would like to read about it.TAMUallen said:
This year I used pond dye starting in June because last year we had so much thick algae. Added again in August and now towards start of September.
It looks pretty cool, as if we're in the Caribbean out in west texas BUT even better is that there's been no algae problem. Fingers crossed that there won't be a turnover problem as it gets colder
Sorry for all the pond questions... finishing up a pond near my house (half with concrete sides and half with vegetation side) and just starting to think through pond health, etc. Thought about the dye as it might look nice being so close to the house if there was enough benefit to it, but didn't want it to look weird or negatively effect any fish. Also thought about putting in a fountain/aerator but really don't know a lot about them yet.
Just something basic off of Amazon. Blue dye not black
A few triploid grass carp would keep the aquatics down, and would likely leave the floating vegetation alone. They might want to travel up the creek though. Does the creek flow into the pond continuously? As a bonus, they are fantastic to eat if they are doing too good a job on the aquatics.
mandevilleag said:
A few triploid grass carp would keep the aquatics down, and would likely leave the floating vegetation alone. They might want to travel up the creek though. Does the creek flow into the pond continuously? As a bonus, they are fantastic to eat if they are doing too good a job on the aquatics.
No. By "creek" I mean a 50 yard ditch basically that catches rain runoff. We talked about carp before, but aren't fans of having to get permits and permission from the government. This ain't china.
Your bass probably like the cover that vegetation is providing. Triploid grass carp don't reproduce, so no issues there. They'll likely leave the lily pads alone. Just need to find the right number to keep a healthy balance of vegetation. Grass carp aren't commies.
It doesn't look like you had an algae problem from the pics you posted. The coontail infestation was pretty drastic. Using a herbicide to kill 1/3 of the aquatic vegetation would produce alot of dead biomass which sinks to the bottom. The aerobic bacteria which decomposes this dead organic material uses up oxygen in the process. You will also have a spike in your NH3/NH4 levels which are harmful to the fish. On top of that since your pond doesn't have proper circulation/aeration, when it turned over the oxygen depleted water was too much to sustain adequate O2 levels for your scaled friends. Aeration from the deepest parts of your pond/lake will prevent stratification and thus prevent turnover from occurring. Next time, monitor your O2 levels,NH3, NO2, and PO4 levels and only kill very small amounts of aquatic vegetation/algae at a time and if you can manually remove the vegetation even better. My 2 cents from an old aquatic Science teacher.
So what would be considered proper aeration if we were already running a sprinkler in that specific area?
giddings_ag_06 said:
So what would be considered proper aeration if we were already running a sprinkler in that specific area?
So think of the aerator as a water mover and not necessarily blowing oxygen into the water from the bubbles. The air bubbles cause water movement by pushing the deeper water to the surface and circulating water in your pond. This essentially causes the deeper water to take air in from the surface. Running a sprinkler probably does not cause near the movement of water as the air being introduced in the deeper parts of the pond.
Where does the intake from the sprinkler come from? How much flow with the sprinkler? Is it a continuous flow or intermittent? How big/depth of your pond? Aeriation from a diffuser/air stone will displace more water for the amount of energy required to do the same amount of work with a water pump. How far away is the nearest electrical source?
Intake is from a pipe just off the island about 4' underwater and it puts out a pretty solid amount of water. I can't give you an exact amount, but a lot. It's on a 7 day a week for 4 hours per day schedule currently, but we've been running it 24 hours the past week after the fish apocalypse.C ROC N said:
Where does the intake from the sprinkler come from? How much flow with the sprinkler? Is it a continuous flow or intermittent? How big/depth of your pond? Aeriation from a diffuser/air stone will displace more water for the amount of energy required to do the same amount of work with a water pump. How far away is the nearest electrical source?
I'm guessing our issue is not pumping air closer to the bottom of the tank. Can't move the pipe down there because the filter would get clogged.
If you do install an aerator then let it run for several weeks before you restock the pond. A new aerator can really stir the water up initially and cause the same problem in an old silted pond.
What's the max depth of your pond? I have seen it where people i help out say there pond is 10 ft deep, but the muck layer at the bottom is close to 3 ft thick along with the silting in from runoff which makes there pond closer to 5ft. The good thing about aeration is that it forces air out so it doesn't get clogged like a water pump would.
giddings_ag_06 said:
So what would be considered proper aeration if we were already running a sprinkler in that specific area?
Just start sooner (when the weeds are smaller and not as many) and you'll be likely to have no problems in the future.
Currently, the area around the sprinkler is probably around 8' deep max I'd guess and the deeper part closer to 15' maybe. This tank was dug out about 60 years ago, but I've done some poking around on it and feel those are fairly accurate depths. It's a little over an acre in size and we have a pump to keep the water level up throughout the year.C ROC N said:
What's the max depth of your pond? I have seen it where people i help out say there pond is 10 ft deep, but the muck layer at the bottom is close to 3 ft thick along with the silting in from runoff which makes there pond closer to 5ft. The good thing about aeration is that it forces air out so it doesn't get clogged like a water pump would.
Hit a very small portion of one of ours with CuSO4 a couple of weeks ago. Hopefully, I dont go out to something like this over the weekend.
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