Pond water testing

[iowabucks]

Hey everyone, a friend of mine has a very small pond on some property he bought. Looks nice, but it's at the end of a housing subdivision and is very small. At least it's secluded. We put some catfish in it last year from the Mississippi, but assuming they made it, we doubt there's much more in it. It's about 7 foot at the deepest. It has steep hills on both sides which i'm guessing doesn't have much vegitation. The water is very muddy because of that. It's only about 75 yards long by 20 yards wide. Probably will never amount to much in terms of fishing but he wouldn't mind stocking it with catfish and bluegills someday.

I wanted to find out who does water testing? It seems to me i saw a post somewhere that made it sound like a pretty simple processs.

It does have a leaky damn and a cattail infestation, so we are going to start draining it today if everything works out to fix the dam. Figured i would take a water sample today just to see how healthy the water is in it now.

I wanted to try and start a thread on this to ask a few more questions once we get going so i'll probably have something going with pics in the fishing forum later.

 

[Monsterbuck]

I'm not sure 7 feet is deep enough. You might do some research to see what the recommended minimum depth is for Iowa. Was thinking it was over 8 feet.

I'm not sure what you are wanting the water tested for. The DNR would be a great source for information and in some instances will stock a pond for free.

 

[muddy]

7 feet deep means that if we ever have a "normal" winter it will freeze out every year more than likely. Ice and lack of oxygen.

 

[JNRBRONC]

As stated, probably needs to be deeper to prevent winter kill, or make sure there is open water year around to allow the gases from rotting vegetation to escape during the winter. They sell little windmill things to do this, but it seems the coldest nights in January are usually without wind. A bubbler system might work if you can run a air or electric line down there.

Also, when stocking a pond, the order of fish species introduction is important. Bluegill first, let them spawn a time or two, then cats and bass.

Structure is another consideration. Might want to drag a tree onto the ice during the winter for next year's structure. I hate the idea of introducing snags, but it gives the little fish a chance to hide from the bigger ones.

An alternative would be dumping some riprap concrete in.

 

[Liv4Rut]

We have a small pond on our place that is about 6 feet deep that the bluegill survive every winter. I think it is pushing it though. On our old farm we had one of those windmill bubblers in the center of the pond and it always kept about a 15 yard diameter open in the middle. Also kept the algae down in the summer.