[chipmaker]

So, how many have ponds, and what type of pond? A natural dirt / mud bottom pond or a concrete, liner, preform/concrete / other type?

What is in your pond.....plants, fish, the dog on hot days or????

I have a 1+ acre pond in excess of 1.65 mil gal of water, to which I just increased its depth yet again another 10 inches, so I need to recalculate my total gallons. I had a heap of bass and bream and catfish, but they are pretty well all removed, at least the big bass and cats are, and have been getting replaced with goldfish varietys and Koi...........We never ate the fish and non one hardly fished it, and you just can;t see game type fish that well, besides they are kind of drab. I can see my Koi and goldies from the house now, and can get some of them to eat out of my hand......Awhile back I lucked up and won a drawing on a Imported Japaneese Koi......with free shipping. The fish had a value of $2,500.........and shipping was $85.00....great day in the morning when I was notified I won that fish.......Oh well it was a freebe, and now it is swimming free in the pond, that is if a heron does not get it.

Quite a few of my koi are now over the 2 foot mark and still growing.

I like the aquatic plants as well.......they don't require weeding or much of any care like daily watering. This past week I dug up a bunch of water lillys in a bog I was given permission to get them in, and divided the root tubers and wound up planting 75+ lillies in the pond all around the edges.......Last year when i seen these lillies most were either white or yellow, but there was also some red ones here and there, so hopefully I got some reds out there that I just planted. My main goal is to get as good of water quality and clarity without filtering, as it would be pretty cost prohibitive to filter such a pond. So I now have a good fountain that provides a lot of aeration, and has already reduced the algae so hopefully the lillys will put a hurt on the organic nutrients in the water that the algae feeds off of, as lillys are pretty heavy users of nutrients.......I intend to dye the pond again further reducing sunlight and lessen the ability of algae growth.......

Its amazing what plants can be adapted to aquatic use and still grow......I have the one side of the pond planated in Lousinana Iris and a hybrid Iris which is called a Gamecock which is so dark of purple blue it looks black.....the others are either blue or yellow. Lots of alligator reed, pickerel rush, umbrella palms, lizzard tails, and bog beans...and lot and lots of other types as well... There is just so many nice aquatic plants thats nice to have........

 

[slipshod]

Farm Pond

On my place we have a pond that was dug the sell the shale. It is over an acre, has an island , and is very deep. The bottom of the deep part has a lot of stucture where the shale was blasted. The pond is spring fed and the water stays quite cold even in the dead of summer. I have never tried to figure out how many gallons it is. Last year I removed all the trees that shadowed it and it made a vast difference as far as agae growth. The pond is loaded with bass, blue gills, and catfish. It was last cleaned a few years ago and the mud is staying out fairly well as the banks were left alone. I try to keep them mowed so I can see if any pesky muskrats are trying to build a home. They bring the mud in. Very unortodox method I use to control the muskrats, I dig them out with my back-hoe. We have a floating swim platform and three paddle boats on it. Sure like swimming there better then a pool, no clorine to burn my eyes.

 

[Kid Muddy]

We've got a pond on our property. It was dug by the PO and is around 1/4 acre. It has two small islands and is about 12 feet deep at the deepest and 5 feet at the shallow end. It's also spring-fed and we haven't stocked it with any fish. We were looking at one of those aerating windmills to keep the algae down, has anyone tried one of those?

Shallow end:

Deep end:

 

[AEGT5000]

What’s the difference between a big pond and a small lake ?

I just bought a piece of property in Florida. The back end of the
property has about 450 ft of lake frontage. The lake isn’t very big,
it’s only about 8 acres and about 10 ft deep at it’s deepest point.
One thing I liked was the water’s edge gets pretty deep in a short
distance (about 3ft deep, 10ft off the shore) so it has a clean
waters edge. I really wanted to be on a larger lake until I started
to understand what lives in these Florida lakes. We looked at a
piece of property on a large lake, but later saw on the news where
an alligator killed a full grown deer and dragged it back in the lake.

Anyway, I was thinking about stocking it. I figured it would help
with the mosquito population at the very least. There is a small
stream feeding it, at the far end. Do I need to aerate the lake ?
Do I need to feed the fish, if I stock it? How about building a
bulkhead ? Can a bulkhead be a DIY project or do I need the
“Bulkhead Guy”?
Help me out here, I’m originally from Queens. :1221:

 

[chipmaker]

What’s the difference between a big pond and a small lake ?

I just bought a piece of property in Florida. The back end of the
property has about 450 ft of lake frontage. The lake isn’t very big,
it’s only about 8 acres and about 10 ft deep at it’s deepest point.
One thing I liked was the water’s edge gets pretty deep in a short
distance (about 3ft deep, 10ft off the shore) so it has a clean
waters edge. I really wanted to be on a larger lake until I started
to understand what lives in these Florida lakes. We looked at a
piece of property on a large lake, but later saw on the news where
an alligator killed a full grown deer and dragged it back in the lake.

Anyway, I was thinking about stocking it. I figured it would help
with the mosquito population at the very least. There is a small
stream feeding it, at the far end. Do I need to aerate the lake ?
Do I need to feed the fish, if I stock it? How about building a
bulkhead ? Can a bulkhead be a DIY project or do I need the
“Bulkhead Guy”?
Help me out here, I’m originally from Queens. :1221:

I am a bit confused here AEGT5000. Is this lake part of your protperty or does it just border it, and the shore form your property line?

Odds are if its in Florida it is probably already stocked with fish........probably a mix of bream, and bass........You nonrmally do not need to feed the fish if its stocked properly. You normally add bream first. Bream fingerlings will feed on the various marine life. As they gain in size you then would add bass fingerlings. The bass fingerlings will start to feed on smaller bream as well as other marine life........bass eat predominately live food. Soon bream are reproducing, bass is growing fat and happy off bream and its a complete cyle keeping each other in check up to a certain point. You have to also harvest a certain amount of these fish, both bream and bass, or else the bream will eventually overpopulate, causing the new spawns to be stunted in growth due to overpopulation and competetion for food. In th end the bass also do suffer as well. They are nondiscriminate in their food be it a bream or another bass....There is a formula and tables used to figure out a stocking rate as well as a recomended harvest rate..........and in all honesty it needs to be followed or the fish and pond will show it with small ver populated fish....
Even if you put catfish in it, supplemental feeding is not necessary if your not trying to grow em ut and make em fat for harvest, they will do well on whats naturally available, but folks usually like to throw out feed just to see them eat. Bream and catfish will readily compete for fish feed.

Aerartion is a much debated subject. Water with lots of nutrients tend to get heavy blooms of algae which makes the water a green color. This is fine, its a healthy environment. Fish like the green water as it supports more food in the food chain..........people on the other hand do not like green water........Then to compound things, if you have a good healthy pond with green water, and you then get a couple of cloudy overcast days, this algae will die pretty darn quick......in as little as just 2 or 3 days of cloudy weather it can kill off the algae. So when thew algae is killed of, it sucks up oxygen in the water as it decomposes and turns brown colored. During this time, it is more than likely you will have a fish kill due to oxygen starvation. During the day even with overcast skies is not too bad, but at night when plants reverse cycle (they take in O2 and give of CO2 at night, but in daylinght they take in CO2 and give off O2) this compounds the oxygen level thats dissolved in the water thats available to the fish, which normally is insufficient. This is why most fish kills occur between 11pm and 6am ...its a proven fact this is the critical time frame. Normally the bigger fish die first followed by the smaller fish..They normally run themselves up on shorelines, and can be found in very shallow waters in large numbers which you normally do not see if conditions are right......It makes one stinkin mess.......So aeration does elimiminate the potential for a fish kill, but aeration of a 8 acre lake is kind of pricey to say the least.........BUT the larger the body of water the better things balance out and you have more leeway..........but any aeration helps, and also helps keep the water looking good.

Whe you say bulkhead are you talking a seawall or retaining type wall at the shoreline or an enclosure to corral fish in?

You'd be surprised at just how little an area of water it takes to make a gator happy........I get them up in my lower field on occasions. They come up in the river, and go into slews etc, and its not uncommon for them to migrate or travel up streams and into lowlands around here. I have had two in my pond already. One a 4 footer and the other a 9 footer. During summer months I can walk in the back 40 and find a few here and there in the marshy areas pretty easy. I don;t mind them catching a deer etc, its when they come up and eat your pet dog or kid in the yard that bothers me....About 4 years ago they shot and killed a gator in excess of 12 feet long in a drainage ditch in the city of MOntgomery, right near the main shopping mall.........but gators for the most part are not that much of a problem as compared to cotton mouths, which Florida and the other southern states seem to have in excess supply.
Just what part of Florida is your property in?
Regards

 

[chipmaker]

Kid Muddy
The windmill type work fine for aeration, but it seems that when you need aeration the most its just when the algae bllom is heaviest, and then you get the overcast days and the algae dies, and it seems the wind also dies as well....Is an electrically powered fountain or aerator possible? Much more dependable and efficient. I fyou want ot knock out the lage you have to reduce runoff into the water. It takes three things for algae to grow.....sunlight, phospates and nitrates..........Take any one out of the picture and algae ceases to grow...........Problem is many of the algaecides have copper in them which can be toxic to some desireable plants and also fish.........BUT, there is a product called Baraclear-80, which is comprised of sodium bentonite clay and aluminum sulphate (common alum) which is compressed into pettet form that looks like small mothballs. YOu throw this into the water and it sinks to the bottom where the majority of the nutrients are, especially the phospates.....The aluminum sulphate will convert and lock up the phosphates and make it unuseable. It takes phosphates to allow the nitrogen to be utilized by the algae. Sinc eyou locked up the phosphate, the algae can not uptake nitrates, so it will die..........The bentonite clay acts as a buffer and medium to disperse the aluminum, and form the pellets, and it also helps clarify turbid green waters.......Baraclear-80 is not harmfull to any fish or plants. Its commonly used in golf course ponds, amnd settle ment ponds etc to keep em looking good and algae free. Probably cost about $70 bucks to dose a pond your size from initial treatment to follow up treatments later on.....I have Baraclear-80 that I have played with on a small scale before seeing if it was worth the money and how true thier claim is in regards to controlling algae..............and it works. So now I have 125# of it ready to treat my pond with just as soon as I oxidize it again and dye the water. Then I will add the baraclear-80 and hopefull I should have nice relatively clear clean water so I can see my Koi in instead of the typical green waters usually found in the south.

 

[AEGT5000]

Chip,

Thanks for the reply. Sorry I wasn’t clear in my description
of the lake, I have a problem communicating, just ask my kids. :00000060:

Part of my property (about 3-1/2 acres) is under this 8 acre lake,
so about 450 ft of the lake’s shoreline is on my property.
The shoreline is about 350 ft inside the property line.
The balance of the property is about 6 high and dry acres.
The property is in Volusia county, FL.

When I said Bulkhead, I meant a retaining wall at the shoreline.
I’d like a clean and consistent separation of the water and land.

Thanks for the tip on the Gators, I feel much better now knowing
they can live in a half a glass of water and eat your dog and kids. :dogrun:
BTW..What’s a cotton mouth ? :1221:

 

[jodyand]

Chip,


BTW..What’s a cotton mouth ? :1221:

Its a poisonous snake :sterb025:

 

[AEGT5000]

And you southern guys Rag on us northerner’s because we get a little snow !!!

Reminds me of Die Hard One when Burce Willis says to himself:
“Come down to the coast, you’ll have a good time”

Alligators and Cotton Mouths? Looks like leaving the snow blower attached
when I'm cutting the lawn wouldn’t be such a bad idea.

Chip...
What about the DIY bulkhead ?
Sounds like it needs to be 10ft above water level, just to be on the safe side.

 

[Kid Muddy]

Thanks so much, Chipmaker, that's some great info.

What kind of fountain do you have in yours? I'm not sure about running wire down to the pond, I was thinking maybe a solar-powered fountain.

Now to go shopping for Baraclear!

 

[Ken N Tx]

So, how many have ponds, and what type of pond? A natural dirt / mud bottom pond or a concrete, liner, preform/concrete / other type?

What is in your pond.....plants, fish, the dog on hot days or????

I have a 1+ acre pond in excess of 1.65 mil gal of water, to which I just increased its depth yet again another 10 inches, so I need to recalculate my total gallons. I had a heap of bass and bream and catfish, but they are pretty well all removed, at least the big bass and cats are, and have been getting replaced with goldfish varietys and Koi...........We never ate the fish and non one hardly fished it, and you just can;t see game type fish that well, besides they are kind of drab. I can see my Koi and goldies from the house now, and can get some of them to eat out of my hand......Awhile back I lucked up and won a drawing on a Imported Japaneese Koi......with free shipping. The fish had a value of $2,500.........and shipping was $85.00....great day in the morning when I was notified I won that fish.......Oh well it was a freebe, and now it is swimming free in the pond, that is if a heron does not get it.

Quite a few of my koi are now over the 2 foot mark and still growing.

I like the aquatic plants as well.......they don't require weeding or much of any care like daily watering. This past week I dug up a bunch of water lillys in a bog I was given permission to get them in, and divided the root tubers and wound up planting 75+ lillies in the pond all around the edges.......Last year when i seen these lillies most were either white or yellow, but there was also some red ones here and there, so hopefully I got some reds out there that I just planted. My main goal is to get as good of water quality and clarity without filtering, as it would be pretty cost prohibitive to filter such a pond. So I now have a good fountain that provides a lot of aeration, and has already reduced the algae so hopefully the lillys will put a hurt on the organic nutrients in the water that the algae feeds off of, as lillys are pretty heavy users of nutrients.......I intend to dye the pond again further reducing sunlight and lessen the ability of algae growth.......

Its amazing what plants can be adapted to aquatic use and still grow......I have the one side of the pond planated in Lousinana Iris and a hybrid Iris which is called a Gamecock which is so dark of purple blue it looks black.....the others are either blue or yellow. Lots of alligator reed, pickerel rush, umbrella palms, lizzard tails, and bog beans...and lot and lots of other types as well... There is just so many nice aquatic plants thats nice to have........

Catfish can eat out of your hand also!!

 

[AEGT5000]

That's how big a catfish gets ???
It looks as big as a dog !

 

[Ken N Tx]

This is a small one down here in Texas!!

 

[Durwood]

That's how big a catfish gets ???
It looks as big as a dog !

Dang it ken, you beat me to it! :00000060:

Durwood

 

[ducati996]

Holy Catfish!! Chipmaker is that a channel cat? dont they attack your Koi?

Reminds me of my experience with a south american red tail catfish in my 275 gal fresh water tank. **** thing got so big it ate all my prized fish...Imagine trying to get a 3 1/2 fish out of a fresh water tank ? got swimming trunks?
If I didnt get rid of him, he would have grown out of the tank...in the wild they grow 4-7 feet. I have seem them in Florida in some of the outdoor parks
with nice ponds. You cant miss them, beautiful but voracious eaters anything that fits in their mouth is food, Like most catfish actually

If I only lived in a nice warm climate

Ducati

 

[AEGT5000]

Ken,

Looks like what they call "Fish Tails"

 

[chipmaker]

Cat fish can get HUGE......I was scuba diving in the one *** here and seen catfish that gave me the heebee jeebee's, they were so huge.........and they sure are not afraid of you when they get that big........

So far my catfish have not given me any problems with eating my larger koi, but then again i can't say if they eat any of my smaller ones or my smaller goldfish types. I keep my catfish pretty well thinned out as they are easy to catch......I guess about the biggest in my pond is about 22-25 pounds.......I can count them when I feed them so I know pretty well how many i have and what sizes they are. I do have 2 albino channel catfish which are pretty neat. Probably about 8-10 pounds or so.......

Kid Muddy........I have a electric powered setup for my pond. Its more than sufficient for my size pond and so far does a great job........Its a home made affair copied of a factory one I seen, but cost me about 1/10 the cost of a commercially made one, and I would put it against a commercially made unit anyday.......Took about 3 hours to make, once I figured out what I could use to keep from buiying any factory made items......

Solar is ok, but it only works when the sun is out, unless you soenbd a bunch of money for a bank of batteries and solar panels, but its certainly better than nothing........same for the wind powered ones, but my first choice would be electric powered if at all possible.

 

[chipmaker]

snip

What kind of fountain do you have in yours? I'm not sure about running wire down to the pond, I was thinking maybe a solar-powered fountain.

Now to go shopping for Baraclear!

Check out my website. It has a link to my pond project on the main page. In amongst all ther pond junk you can see my fountain that I made. I have a slew of different types of nozzles for it so I can change spray patterns and such....At christmas time we put red and green cover lenses in the fountains lights, and it was pretty darn neat looking. Right now the wife had me put yellow, blue, red and green cover lenses on the normally white lights, so its multi colored for easter..........It had all green color lenses for Sait Pattys day and all red lenses for Valentines...........
Things you have to go through to keep your wife happy! :banghead3