Aerator and bottom heater?

[brandonsdad02]

I do. It's when it gets so cold that the condenses in your tire making your tires low and it's so cold that your tire gets frozen with a flat spot.

 

[crsublette]

OK Charles, please forgive me, but do you know what a square tire is?

Heh, we do get cold spots on our tires, like Brandon describes, but nothing severe to be make the entire tire square. sounds crazy.

 

[waynefrcan]

Colleen, post # 122 here has 2 pics.

Thanks Charles for the explanation. The Pondtrade guy does mention this. Also the local guy info that started this topic.

"When the outside temperatures are 10 to 15° F or higher there should be an open hole in the ice where the bubbles rise. However, when the temperature drops lower the hole will “dome” over with a thin layer of ice. This is okay since you are pumping air under that dome. O2 is still being supplied to the area and the toxic gases and excess air can escape through micro pores in the dome ice."

 

[callingcolleen1]

My truck goes bump bump when really cold, until the tires "round out". I was just trying to be "smart" cause Wayne said that most people agree that the pond could only get 15 inches of ice on the coldest winter. Without a heater, it most likely would freeze to the bottom, during long cold winters. Now I don't know for how it will work with only his "bubbler", but I would imagine it would freeze quite hard.

 

[Craig58]

Charles: Ice on natural ponds is generally thiner around the edges. At least in the ice rescue classes that is what they teach. That might not be the case in our smaller man made ponds.

Wayne: It would be interesting to know exactly how deep your ice gets in the winter. I'm not sure how you can measure that without drilling a hole in it to measure it which I wouldn't advise due to stressing the fish. At your heater or air holes, you can measure the ice but it probably will be thinner at those points.

If you are pumping air into the pond and you can see air bubbles moving and dispersing under the ice, I don't think you need to worry about air or gases. You are putting in O2 from your air pump, so O2 is getting in. Any gases will escape. If gases couldn't escape somehow, it would be like pumping gas into a closed container, it would eventually blow up. Since our ponds don't ever blow up, the pumped air must escape. Which means any bad gases can escape too. With a pond clean of debris it shouldn't be a problem anyway.

You might get 2 feet of ice on your pond given the extreme weather you get. I don't think it will get much thicker. Ice and snow will serve as insulators. But you are the only one who can tell us. I think you have to be the fartherst north of anyone I know. I would be more comfortable in your area with a 6ft section in the pond but you have what you have now. It'll be interesting to see what happens this winter.

I'd go with the 1500 watt heater. Only because the ice gets so thick in your area I think you'll need that to melt through 14-24"of ice. But I would only worry about opening a hole if it is frozen over for over a week or two since you are pumping in the air.

My temps in the winter are like a sauna compared to what you get. But I don't think there is all that much difference under the ice.

I have some interesting temps today in the pond.

10:30 PM Airstone on 12" shelf.
Outside Air: 39.3 F
Surface water: 44.2 F
4' bottom temp: 48.3

Interesting because I wouldn't expect to see stratification until water temps are at 39 F or lower.

Craig

 

[crsublette]

Charles: Ice on natural ponds is generally thiner around the edges. At least in the ice rescue classes that is what they teach. That might not be the case in our smaller man made ponds.

Very interesting. Yeah, after I think about it a bit more, I would figure the soil or rock at the edges would be warmer so that makes sense except the ice always seems to first form on the edges in my pond instead of the center.

 

[Craig58]

BTW: the build up of ice is not relaed that much to how cold the temperatures are, as it is to the length of time that it is below freezing.

I.e. an area could drop to say 20F and another area to -40F. But lets say the 20F area holds that temperature for 6 months. Lets say the -40F area holds the temp under freezing for just 2 months. You'll have more ice in the 20F area than in the -40F area.

The thickness of the ice is dependent on how fast the heat from the water is lost and can be transferred to the cold surface air. The thicker the ice, the longer that heat transfer takes. At a certain point, it doesn't matter how cold it gets above the ice. In the first few days or weeks of freezing the outside temp would play a huge role. But as the ice gets thicker, the outside air temp becomes less a factor. That's because the heat transfer rate through the ice is the same. I'm sure there is a chart or formula somewhere, in some college text book or scientific paper that could allow us to plot the growth in the thickness of ice against the number of days below freezing. And I'm sure it will have a curve to it where are some point, the growth in the thickness is almost identical regardless of the outside temperature.

I would be willing to bet that once ice gets more than say 8-10" thick, it grows thicker at the same rate regardless of whether it is 20F or -20F outside. Obviously though, those areas that get extreme temps are also those areas with the longest winters too. Other factors on the surface might affect the thickness as well though such as snowfall, strength of sun on the ice, chinook winds, etc... In my examples above I'm talking about all things being equal except for air temperature.

Craig

 

[waynefrcan]

Thanks Craig, I agree the gases must escape somewhere, just not as fast as if a hole is kept open. Probably not needed but I'll get another surface heater.

 

[sissy]

good gosh reading all this makes my timbers shiver .Could you keep your Canadian cold fronts up there I hate when they come all the way down here . :wave:

 

[callingcolleen1]

Sissy, you will need a good winter "Parka" when you come up here! Hey Wayne, what's happening way up north in Edmonton?? Can you let us know if you can see SaNtA coming up over the north pole! Ha ha ha!!

 

[MitchM]

My pond has completely frozen over about 3 inches thick now, even though I have 4 bubblers going strong at about 1 1/2 foot depth. If I go out and listen for a while I can hear the pond "burp" every now and then, so the air is finding it's way out somewhere.
This is my first pond, so I hope I've got it right.

 

[sissy]

We hope so too .

 

[Craig58]

We hope so too .

+1

I just wish you had an unplugged stock heater in place for the winter that you could plug in every once in a while and thaw open a hole every few weeks.

Craig

 

[callingcolleen1]

Yes, fish would be more visible with a heater and a open air hole would be nice..... but if pond is very deep and not overstocked with fish, you might be ok. I prefer to have large holes open all winter, like to see my very big koi, so I can sleep better at night!

 

[waynefrcan]

Well it's -16C 3F today and both aeration spots completely iced over. Actually both iced over at 10F a week ago. One spot is a normal clear ice dome, but the other one domed over and is solid ice 5 inch thick. The aeration bubbles have moved about 3 ft away and created another small clear dome. 2nd pic at the top you can see a solid ice dome, that is where the aeration is. Below that is smaller clear dome, weird?

I have another heater on order and will need to open up some ice. ASny ideas? The pot thing is a bust. What about a propane torch?