Aerators and farm pond...how much maintenance?

[KennyG]

Yes, the diffuser should be low in the pond. As I understand, optimum is to be a foot or so off the bottom. This encourages circulation along the bottom and minimizes muck covering the diffuser. For the ones I installed, I fabricated a metal frame to hold the diffuser above the bottom. Unless you have a very large pond, don't worry about multiple diffusers. They will cause a lot of circulation.

 

[John_Mc]

Yes, the diffuser should be low in the pond. As I understand, optimum is to be a foot or so off the bottom. This encourages circulation along the bottom and minimizes muck covering the diffuser. For the ones I installed, I fabricated a metal frame to hold the diffuser above the bottom. Unless you have a very large pond, don't worry about multiple diffusers. They will cause a lot of circulation.

My diffuser sits in a 5 gallon plastic bucket with about 6" of stone in the bottom. (stone was just something I had left over from a curtain drain installation). Diffuser sits on top of the stone, still well inside the bucket. This setup has been doing a good job of keeping the silt/muck out of the diffuser for 20 years.

The reason for the multiple diffusers is due to the long, narrow shape of the pond. I had also thought that putting on diffuser up near one end of the pond (which is also a good bit shallower) would give me something I could leave on in the winter to keep the pond open, while shutting off the other end so we could skate on that end of the pond.