ELG Pond Issues 2013-2018

Resources

Water Tests

Between 2013 and 2014, we limed.
Between 2014 and 2015, we applied a biological treatment.
In 2015, the Spring was not running, so there is no Spring pH.
Between 2015 and 2016, we applied dye and fluridone.
In 2016, we applied dye and one liter of Sonar RTU as a fluridone "booster"
    The watermeal stayed away in 2016, but there was a slimy algae bloom in August
    50 pounds of food grade diatamaceous earth was applied in late August.  Algae went away by late September, but that could have been time too.
In July 2017, we applied dye and 100 pounds of diatomaceous earth against the 2016 slime.
    The sample was late at 05July, due to cool and rainy conditions throughout June.
    In late August, the slime had not returned.
In July 2018, we repeated dye and 100 pounds of diatomaceous earth
    There was a little more brown algae than 2017 in August 2018, but also a lot of pollen, and it was hard to tell them apart.
    120 pounds of lime were applied each month from Jan to July 2018.  It did not seem to affect the pH, which was similar to recent years with good rain.

Over time, it looks like the major 2013 liming raised both pH and hardness.  Hardness is falling steadily rose in 2018 after several months of incremental liming.  pH is now self sustaining around the bottom of the band, after falling way low during the drought years.
Not sure what caused the big change in nitrogen 2013-14.  Doesn't seem like liming would have done that, but the bacteria was not ordered until Oct 2014.

See below for extended discussion of Nitrogen reference ranges.

Blog

Summer 2017

After a cool and rainy June, the annual water sample was taken on 05Jul2017.  After the sample was taken, half a gallon of Aquashade dye and two 50 pound sacks of Diatamaceous Earth (DE) were applied.  The water sample shows that 2016's DE had no obvious affect on pond pH, which seems to be varying randomly beween 6 and 7 (slightly acidic).  Hardness continues its downward trend, along with other mineral measurements not shown on this graph.  Organic Nitrogen was not filled in this year, but Inorganic Nitrogen has nearly returned to pre-lime levels.  The state agronomist is recommending lime again, as she did in 2016.  See the report for full details.

As of 20Aug2017, no bacterial slime has emerged, so maybe the early DE treatment was a good idea.  Watermeal has not returned.

Summer 2016

One liter of Sonar RTU was applied as a "booster" and the watermeal stayed away!
Booster: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B004XWS5DU/ref=od_aui_detailpages00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

A slimy blue-green algae (aka cyanobacteria) layer bloomed in August.  50 pounds of food grade diatamaceous earth (DE) was applied and the bloom was gone by mid September.  It may have been time or the DE.  If Hardness goes up in 2017 it's because of the DE.  The DE was purchased on ebay.  It was $50 for a 50 pound sack, free shipping.  The sack was marked as an animal feed additive against caking.  Local feed stores do not have pure DE, but a mix of DE and "bentonite", which is clay.

Fall 2014 through Spring 2016

This report emerged from a Pond Committee meeting at Art and Marion's house.

17Aug14 Skimming

The first time we skimmed the pond, we pulled the watermeal up with seives.  Today I tried a couple of other things:

Buckets
This is a good, low tech solution.  By pushing an empty bucket down into the water and carefully pushing the lip down just enough to let the watermeal flow in, we can collect a lot of plants quick with not too much extra water.  The bucket in the pictures is 5 gallons with no handle.  I picked it for its color since I was taking pictures.  On a real workday we could use smaller buckets and set up a brigade.
This is the bucket at first:

This is the water going into the bucket.  It makes its own little current.  MP4 format, 6MB:

FillTheBucket.mp4

This is the bucket full.  The watermeal is more concentrated inside the bucket than on the surrounding water:

Vacuum
Wet dry vacs do a decent job too.  It seems to me that a few big vacs would outdo a bunch of buckets.  I experimented with the ones I had here, but something like this guy ($100 from Home Depot) would be the workhorse:

http://www.homedepot.com/p/Stanley-10-Gal-Stainless-Steel-Wet-Dry-Vacuum-SL18014/204226957#specifications

This one is 5.5 HP, which translates to 4100 Watts (google: 5.5 HP to watts).  That means you could run it off a fairly big generator like my 6500 Watt unit:

A smaller vacuum could be run off almost any vehicle given a big inverter.  This one from Amazon is similar to other ones I've used and seems to be the top of the price/performance curve.  3500 watts equals 4.7 HP, so this one won't quite power the big Stanley vac, but most wet vacs are weaker than 4.7 HP.
http://www.amazon.com/Power-Bright-PW3500-12-Inverter-3500/dp/B000NHS9R6

I tested the vacuum technique with two small vacs I had on hand.  It seems to work well.  the small yellow vac filled up in about 30 seconds, and the big one took about a minute.  Towards the end, I figured out how to float the nozzles so only the very top of the water flowed up the vacuum hose (see the RugCleaner film below).  In both these photos, the watermeal in the bucket is much denser than it was in the water I was working on, which "proves" that we can skim watermeal without pumping the pond dry. 

You can see how the suction worked in the films.  MP4, about 3 MB each:
Small Vacuum Suction
Rug Cleaner Suction

Disposal

So we go down the hill and scoop a few pails of water.  What then?  We could just toss it in the woods over the dam.  Or, we could strain the watermeal out and let the water trickle back into the pond, aerating itself on the way.  The trick is finding a really big strainer.  I think something like this would work, maybe lined with landscape cloth.  It's $30 at Home Depot, measures about 4x8 feet flat and 2.5 feet tall:

http://www.homedepot.com/p/WM-Bagster-Dumpster-in-a-Bag-775-658/202228840

If we put this up on the bank and dump the buckets into it, the watermeal would mostly stay in the bag and the water would mostly flow back into the pond.

We could also line a pickup bed with landscape cloth and get the same effect, but just drive the watermeal away when the job is over.

Cleanup
A few minutes with a hose and everything is back to normal.

14Aug14 Oxygen Tests
Email to Pond Committee

In our ongoing discussion and learning about the pond, I have raised the issue of oxygenation a time or two.  I finally decided to buy an aquarium O2 test kit ($25 for 60 tests) and see what I could make of it.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001EJ3DQ4/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

The test is pretty subjective, because the last step is matching color against a printed strip.  Depending on how I read it, the O2 level at 18 inch depth was 4 or 6 ppm after yesterday's full day of sun, and 2 or 4 ppm this morning.  I need to figure out how to get deeper samples, but I don't expect them to be any better.

These extension service links from TX and KY explain why the O2 changes overnight, and have the same O2 guidelines: 4 ppm is the lowest reliable O2 level for fish.  They stress at 3 and die at 2.  My kit only goes down to 2 and it's possible that it shows 2 for anything 2 and under.

http://www2.ca.uky.edu/wkrec/RecreationalFishProduction.htm

http://www.extension.org/mediawiki/files/2/2f/ManagementRecFishPondsTexas.pdf


So I'm still against adding fish, because I see it as throwing them in there to die.  No progress on cheap aeration yet, but I didn't want to start anything until getting some initial data.

For the record, I'm with Trace on the standpipe, and believe that a new open top standpipe would strain some-to-most of the watermeal off the pond surface, as long as the pond level is up.  But I'm skeptical that it can be fixed without draining the pond and disturbing the dam.  The folks I talked to about that were clear that dam work is not a job for amateurs.  But if it's possible to slip a new plastic pipe inside the old metal one, I say let's go for it.

I ran into Scott and Audrey when taking this morning's sample.  Scott is currently enthusiastic about an herbicide treatment against the watermeal.  That came up in my reading too but I always assumed the group would be against it.  It's about as expensive as a load of fish, and has to be applied by experts, but it seems to be safe for the fish and widely used for clearing ponds of duckweed and watermeal.

12Jul14 Received second year water test report

Full report here: http://www.gluelogix.com/ELG/Pond/ElgPondWaterTestResults_2014.pdf

Thanks to Scott's work liming the pond, the pond's pH is now in range.  We want 6.5 to 9 for a fishpond, and the new reading is 6.8.  Water entering the pond is still acidic, so the lime is making all the difference.  The Nitrogen is also way down.

There is still work to do.  The watermeal is back, but I have not seen the red tide or weird white blobby things that were there last year.

15Aug13 received soil test report

The recommendation is 3 tons per acre.  I called Scott right away.  Since we estimate the pond to be one half acre, the prescription is 1.5 tons.  He is going ahead.

01Aug13 email from Carl Matyac PhD, County Agent

This is a standard soil test....no charge.  Will be going to the lab first of next week.

Late July 2013
I took my time building the sample scooper and fixin-ta go take the samples.  When I finally did it, the mud took 2 weeks to dry enough for their lab process.  I couldn't exactly leave it out in the sun to dry, given the weather this year.

Larry,
We measure NH3 (ammonia) and report NH4+ (ammonium). The relative proportion of NH3 to NH4 depends upon pH (i.e.: whether it is ionized (NH4+) or unionized). Ammonia becomes more toxic as pH increases (NH3 is formed in basic waters); NH4 is more prevalent in acidic waters. Generally, NH4 <2.0 ppm and NH3 <0.1 ppm are acceptable. Please contact the fish specialist through your extension office for further assistance. I don't know anything about pond management and just provide what my references say. 

Brenda R. Cleveland, Chief
Plant, Waste, Solution and Media Section
NCDA&CS Agronomic Division
Brenda.Cleveland@ncagr.gov
919.733.2655
 
E-mail correspondence to and from this address may be subject to the North Carolina Public Records Law and may be disclosed to third parties.
 
 Please don’t print this unless you really need to!


-----Original Message-----
From: Larry Martin [mailto:Larry@GlueLogix.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, July 09, 2013 7:07 PM
To: Cleveland, Brenda R
Cc: Carl Matyac
Subject: Re: Solution Report (S000692)

Hello, Brenda -

Thanks very much for adding reference ranges to the Agronomist Comments 
section of my lab report.  I will work on getting pond bottom soil 
samples in to the Orange County Extension Office.

I see in your expanded comment that NO3 <3ppm is favored for fish 
production.  Can you tell me what the equivalent ranges are for NH4 and 
Urea?

Best Regards,
Larry

Larry Martin
www.GlueLogix.com
Design, Test and Support of Computerized Systems
desk/cell  USA 919.342.0201
skype      larry.martin.gluelogix

On 7/9/2013 3:29 PM, brenda.cleveland@ncagr.gov wrote:

Dear Larry,

I have been out of the office for the past two weeks, and am now catching up on my emails.
Unfortunately, I am an engineer, and I know little of invasive species in ponds.  I would have hoped that your local extension agent had some helpful information for you.  But, I recommend asking him for references.  Surely he has contacts at NC State or other Extension agents who are experienced in biological water quality issues.

Best of luck to you,
Pete

 The desired total alkalinity level for most aquaculture species lies between 50-150 mg/L CaCO3, but no less than 20 mg/L.

Nitrate-nitrogen concentrations above 3 mg/L are indicative of pollution. Phosphate
concentrations as low as 0.01 mg/L may be sufficient to increase plant and algae growth.

any measurable amount of ammonia-nitrogen above 0.1 mg/L can be detrimental to the pond’s health.
Nitrate-nitrogen concentrations above 3 mg/L are indicative of pollution.

17Jun13