Several Reasons for Aerating your Pond or Lake

Why Aerate with a Pond aerator?

Aerating puts oxygen back into the pond. Adding pond water aeration is not only beneficial for your fish, who need oxygen to survive, but will also improve the overall health of your pond's ecosystem. Here are the reasons you should be adding a floating fountain or floating aerating fountain into your pond, and the importance of aeration:

1. Aeration significantly reduces pond muck. As your pond ages, nutrients collect at the bottom of the pond and it becomes muck. Not only is muck unpleasant to see, but it can also give ponds a bad odor and provide a habitat for leeches. Aeration is important because it combats muck and other decomposing debris by increasing the dissolved oxygen and by mixing up the water. This pond water aeration encourages the colonization of beneficial aerobic bacteria that eat up the nutrients to reduce existing muck build-up and prevent it from accumulating.

2. Aeration significantly improves water quality. Nutrients not only accumulate at the bottom of the pond to become muck, but they can also be suspended in the water causing your pond to look murky. By reducing the muck and excess nutrients, increasing oxygen, and circulating the pond water, you will significantly improve your water quality and clarity. Also, aeration will reduce algae and weeds since there will not be as many nutrients for it to grow.

3. Aeration helps dissolved oxygen levels. Oxygen is needed from pond water aeration to maintain your fish environment, but it is also needed to support beneficial bacteria. Aeration is important because without oxygen, your pond will go into an anaerobic state. Anaerobic bacteria are not as efficient at breaking down organic material as their aerobic counterparts. In addition, anaerobic bacteria produce carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide when digesting this organic material, producing the rotten egg smell in the pond. In contrast, beneficial bacteria produce a harmless gas when breaking down muck and debris. Aerating the pond increases the amount of dissolved oxygen in the water creating a healthy aerobic system.

4. Aeration eliminates thermocline. Thermocline is the transition between the warmer, surface water and the colder, deeper water. Aeration is necessary because it circulates and mixes the upper levels and the lower levels of the water to eliminate these stratified layers, by moving the cooler water to the pond's surface so it can become filled with oxygen. The warmer, oxygen-rich water than moves to the bottom of the pond to feed your beneficial bacteria. With all this circulation, the water temperature of a properly aerated pond, upper and lower, should be no more than a few degrees difference.

5. Aeration reduces the risk of a fish kill. Fish die from time to time, but when many die at once, it is often linked to low oxygen conditions in the water. In the winter, the gases released when organic debris is decomposing can become trapped when the pond freezes over and reduce the oxygen available for your fish; if enough oxygen declines your fish will suffocate. Aeration is important because it will induce fresh oxygen into the pond and help to keep an area open in the ice to allow for gas to escape. In the summer and fall, turnover events due to stratified water can cause a fish kill. During a turnover event, a stratified pond rapidly mixes, depleting the oxygen from the surface water as it combines with the bottom oxygen-starved water. Pond aerator will eliminate the thermocline and prevent spring and fall turnover.