Making a pond questions, mainly keeping mosquitos from breeding

[jaxs]

Whoever said "You can't make this stuff up" evidently never visited TBN.

 

[erikjohn67]

If you can your best bet is to fill in the depression so the water drains and does not stand. A pond needs to big and to stay relatively full of water to be able support an ecosystem that will keep the water from becoming stagnate, at least down here where I am at in the south.

When i moved to the property I have now 20+ years ago there was a pond in the front that would go from chock full to dry depending on the weather. It was a mosquito breeding ground between cycles and impossible to maintain the vegetation in it as well.

I filled it in the first year graded the area so it didn’t hold any water and haven’t had a problem since.

 

[Torvy]

Ducks and geese will not eat many fish...only really tiny ones and not typically on purpose...tadpoles may be at risk. Ducks are omnivores and mostly eat plants, but will also forage for other aquatic life, including mosquitos and their larvae if they can. Some other waterfowl, like Mergansers will eat more fish. Geese are more herbivores, though they will sometimes eat insects.

 

[Henro]

and end up with a pond about 12 feet deep and about 50 feet diameter.

WoW! Fifty feet in diameter an 12 feet deep?

My spring fed pond is probably only 75 feet in diameter and maybe averages at best 4' deep.

Lots of gold fish and other fish, and frogs too. Never worried about mosquitoes so they must not be an issue for us.

 

[SandburRanch]

You are on the right track with stocking fish from your area rather than importing some that might not adapt. I would go for diverse species and let nuture decide which floresh and which struggle. Give them a place to escape/hide from water fowel. We place Eastern Red Cedar ( Juniperus virginiana L.) in ponds we build for cattle. They have small,dense limbs that take longer to rot than most other trees.

And the eastern red cedar in the pond usually makes for good Crappie fishing .

 

[kenmbz]

We have blue herons here that would clean out a pond without areas for the fish to hide.
I have been thinking of putting in a 50x30x4'deep pond here and was thinking about a solar pump with battery.
Maybe using a liner instead of bentonite, though we have diabase here which might work well with bentonite.
I would have a runoff to some lower lying areas towards the front of my property to make sure it didn't go into the neighbors. Since I am on the side of a hill, filling it won't be a problem.

Let me know how you make out, my plan is till in the future as I have a lot of dead trees to handle first.

 

[jaxs]

And the eastern red cedar in the pond usually makes for good Crappie fishing .

That's true but unless crappie are fished heavy in a small pond and not returned after caught they quickly over-populate which results in non getting any size. The reverse is true of Appaloosa Catfish that eat everything in a pond and get huge. We forbid using live aquatic bait in our ponds because you never know what minnows will grow to be.

 

[etpm]

WoW! Fifty feet in diameter an 12 feet deep?

My spring fed pond is probably only 75 feet in diameter and maybe averages at best 4' deep.

Lots of gold fish and other fish, and frogs too. Never worried about mosquitoes so they must not be an issue for us.

If you saw where the pond is and would be you would understand. Whidbey Island has a topography that was sculpted by glaciers and their retreat some 15, 000 years ago. The result is that there are lots of deep and narrow cuts, kinda like small valleys, in many areas on the island. The island is mostly glacial till.
Where I have the small existing pond that rises and falls every year as the ground water level changes is one of these features. So there is a small valley with a small opening. Already the ponding area is about 7 feet deep, 20 feet wide, and maybe 30 feet long. If I were to seal the area so that water could not drain out it could easily fill another 3 feet or so higher before running out the lower end of the valley. If this happened the pond would get much bigger. But it would of course not be the same depth over the whole area. I am thinking of deepening some of the pond and using the material removed to put a small dam at the low end of the valley. If I did not dam the lower end the pond would get much bigger but would eventually be stopped by a natural dam a bit farther on.
We did not realize when we bought the property back in '96 that some of it had so much difference is elevation over such short distances. This is partly because it is so heavily wooded. My wife and I really appreciate this topography because it makes the trails we put in so much more interesting to walk on. And it gives us more exercise when we walk as we get older.
We also found a "Kettle". These land features are much more common on the north end of the island. Kettles are depressions in the land that are fairly circular but not real deep compared to the diameter. They are called Kettles because they resemble in shape the rounded bottoms of kettles that were hung above cooking fires. They were formed by ice "lenses", so called because of their lens shape, that were buried with insulating material as the glaciers retreated. So they stayed frozen for some period of time after the glacier retreated. Then the ice melted and left the lens shaped depressions. I suppose they could have called them Lenses. Or Lenticulars. Or Lentils. But Kettles sounds better. BTW, even though lenticular is a word I'm not sure lenticulars is.
Eric

 

[workinonit]

I dust my ditches with lime once a year. It's safe and easy to spread and it keeps mosquitos from producing.

 

[KennyG]

Regardless of depth, I would suggest aeration in an pond that doesn't have a constant and significant flow through. I've seen ponds that seem healthy suddenly turn toxic from buildup on the bottom and kill everything in the pond. Aeration will discourage mosquito breeding and promote aquatic life that will eat the eggs.