Aerator and bottom heater?

[brandonsdad02]

I was watching this show on discovery channel called Bearing Sea Gold. They would cut holes in the ice and dive in the water to get gold. Anyways towards the end of the season they were showing where the ice was starting to melt and the air bubbles coming up from the divers were escaping thru the ice but there was no hole in the ice where the bubbles were going. They showed a animated thing of it and showed that the ice looks solid but it had thousands of tiny air bubbles in it and thats how the air was escaping.

 

[callingcolleen1]

Mitch you have a very large pond (6000 gallons), and that is twice the water capaticy of my three connecting ponds, (roughly 3500 gallons between the three). Heating such a large pond is just not cost effective, and in Medicine Hat, our bills are pretty cheap compared to others in the province. Even still, I do not plug that 1500 watt heater in unless the ponds are starting to ice over completely. I do agree that the heater does not raise the temperature of water much, rather it stops the ponds from completely icing over. I have had many at times 90% ice coverage, and everything seems to still flow fine, the pond water ways will make a ice shell over the spillways, but under the ice the water will still flow.

Larger ponds that are deep, should winter better. If the pond is not overstocked with fish, and with the bubblers that you and Wayne have, you could be fine. The only problem is it will take longer to melt in the spring and you won't really know what's happening to the fish until all the ice melts.

I do plan to make ponds bigger, as I have slowly been doing over the years. I do also find that I heat the larger ponds less, as they take longer to freeze hard, and hold the temperature better. Here in Medicine Hat we get "winter breaks" in the form of Chinooks, which is so very nice I must say! I see that you and Wayne get longer colder winters further north. Do you or Wayne get Chinooks at all??

 

[callingcolleen1]

Temperature right now according to weather network, Medicine Hat -5c, Water Valley -9c, Edmonton -10c. Medicine Hat overnite low of -11 and you and Wayne will have lows of -18c.

 

[MitchM]

One thing that concerns me is that we will have at least 6 months of ice cover.
Although when I talk to ponders in Calgary, many of them keep their fish outside, in shallower ponds than mine.
1st year jitters I guess.

Yes we do get chinooks here. We are about 300 meters higher than Calgary and we get the warm upper level winds about 1 hour sooner than they do.
I see the Medicine Hat airport is around the 700 meter elevation mark, about 300 meters lower than Calgary.
We also get a great view of the chinook arch, but I don't imagine you can see that from Medicine Hat.

 

[callingcolleen1]

It's pretty flat here, sometimes I can se the chinook arch, cause I can see far off on the distance. Not too often though. So do the other people that have ponds use just the bubbler too? I think I heat ny pond more than necessary sometimes.

 

[MitchM]

No bubblers, but they say they put a sheet of 2" rigid foam over their ponds. Smaller surface area ponds though and only 3' deep.
I would think that ice provides the same insulation.
The other ponds I have seen are while my wife and I go on the Calgary Hort Society tours.

 

[crsublette]

I think the insulation difference between ice and styrofoam is the layer of seperation. The water a few inches below ice will likely be very close to 32*F. With 6" of styrofoam, then the water a few inches below the styrofoam will likely be not as close to 32*F. I have mostly seen floating styrofoam done when small greenhouse tent structures were to help reduce the surface heat from escaping; it is much like the purpose of mulch used during the transition between Fall and Winter.

 

[MitchM]

Do you think that if styrofoam was used that there would be any ice formation at all?

 

[MitchM]

I think that even if some type of rigid foam was used, that ice would form along the outer edges and that as the winter progressed, the ice would eventually work it's way under the foam.

 

[crsublette]

I would think it would depend on many variables. Ground frost line in particular. In my area, ground freezes only down to about 8 inches only if it is a long, hard Winter in my area. So, I would think you need at least 10 inches of insulation to completely prevent it from freezing over. However, if you are actively heating with inline heaters or bucket heaters or typical pond heaters or combination or a greenhouse tent then this makes using less styrofoam to be more effective. In the context of this thread, the styrofoam would likely have to be quite thick so less practical. Ice couldn't achieve this type of insulation without bringing the shallow water near the ice close to 32*F.

 

[MitchM]

Yeah, frost line here is 4 feet for building construction and 8 feet for buried water lines.
Even at that the city still gets broken water mains during cold spells from the ground freezing and cracking.

I don't see a pond freezing over to be a bad thing, other than it prevents gas exchange at the surface.
In a deep enough pond, the pond will benefit from the heat in ground below. The ground temperature is usually around 45f below the frost line.
With a solid cover of ice the pond won't be subject to water loss from evaporation or heat loss from evaporative cooling.
One bad thing about air bubblers under the ice is that you are introducing cold surface air into the pond water.

 

[Craig58]

One bad thing about air bubblers under the ice is that you are introducing cold surface air into the pond water.

I agree with that. I keep my air pump inside a heated garage and have plumbed the line underground to the pond. The airline is only exposed to the outside air temps for a few ft where it comes out of the ground right next to the pond. I don't know how much that helps because of the distance to the pond. But it has to be better than having the pump outside.

Craig

 

[MitchM]

My concern with pumping warm, more humid air through lines that pass through a cold zone would be that there is a chance that the moisture in the warmer air could condense and freeze within the airline where it passes through really cold air.

 

[addy1]

I have my air feed into the pond around 15 some feet from where the fish hangout, also only about a foot down. The fishes winter area is 5 feet deep. Any exposed air tubes have pipe insulation stuff over them.

 

[crsublette]

My concern with pumping warm, more humid air through lines that pass through a cold zone would be that there is a chance that the moisture in the warmer air could condense and freeze within the airline where it passes through really cold air.

Can always find something wrong. If the air in your garage or storage room is that humid, then ya got more problems than air lines freezing. Would be pretty easy to insulate air lines since they're so small. I use pretty simple 1" insulation wrap around my frost free spickets so that the water doesn't freeze in single digit weather as the spicket is slowly draining; also can get wraps with a heat trace wires in them.