Hi there... figured I would see all your guys/gals input on my natural pond.
OK: so I have a 1 acre ovel shaped pond about 10-12 feet deep in the middle and need to keep it open in the winter. I have NO wild fish in it BUT about 200 goldfish ranging 2 inchs-10 inchs and 6 lg koi about 2 feet long in it.
I am trying to find a way to keep it open in the winter so they dont die from the lack of oxegen. Looking for a afordable and easy way to do it.
I know they will die cause I put in about 200 wild fish 2 yrs ago (blue gills, perch, lg mouth bass, & crappies) and all of them where belly up the following thaw.
I know its spring BUT need to figure this out and purchas/install it before winter hits again!
THANKS!!!
We also have a pond, which is exactly like yours... an acre, and same depth. Ours freezes solid in the winter, but our fish don't die out. From what I was told it's not the freezing over that will kill the fish, because the ice will never be more than a foot thick. The fish will have enough oxygen and plenty of swimming space in a pond that deep even if the top foot or two is frozen solid. However, it's the snow cover that will kill them, because light can't get to them. As long as light filters through, the fish will survive. They go into a semi-dormancy state in the winter and don't eat much at all, and as long as there's light there will still be plants and other aquatic life to keep them alive. But not if it's covered in snow for several months. So, we plow half of our pond when we know it's frozen enough to hold the weight of the four wheeler, with the plow attached to it.
We have only had this pond for four years, because we purchased 100 acres of additional land across the road from our farm and it had this man-made pond on it. The owner said he didn't think there were fish in it because he had the pond dug about ten years ago and never stocked it with fish. The first year we owned it we stocked it with blue gills, crappies, lake trout and bass that we caught elsewhere and transported them to the pond. We have not fished in it yet,because it was just a mess of weeds around it and we spent a few years getting the weeds taken down and then mowing and landscaping and planting trees around it, but every spring after we stocked it we saw minnows in the shallow end, and now there are ducks, herons, sand hill cranes and geese that stay near it and we often see the herons "fishing" in it, so it's got to have enough fish in there to keep all these water birds around. There weren't any birds visiting it when we bought the property.
We are planning on fishing there for the first time in the next day or two. I'll let you know if we caught anything! I sure hope so!
We can't put any kind of aeration in it or a bubbler of any sort to keep the water open because there's no electricity available there. We talked to someone about a solar-powered pump of some sort, but he said it would need to be a honkin' big solar cell to provide that much power, especially since we really have only three or four days of sunshine during December and January.
