outdoor fish pond questions

Hello Everyone!
For anyone who has an outdoor fish pond: how deep is it, would or does a pond aerator do the job, are the fish healthy and edible, do you need a gizmo to prevent freezing in the winter, do you bring the fish inside during winter and how big an aquarium or fish tank do you need, any other questions such as -
does the winter snow melt sustain the pond or do you have to add water manually if the rainfall run off is insufficient?

Hi, George

Here are some of my favorite threads that might answer some of your questions and those of others:

https://permies.com/t/170923/Heating-fish

https://permies.com/t/94050/October-Snow-northern-NM

https://permies.com/t/95059/harvest-Brook-trout

I hope others will chime in with their experiences.

George Mogil wrote:Hello Everyone!
For anyone who has an outdoor fish pond: how deep is it, would or does a pond aerator do the job, are the fish healthy and edible, do you need a gizmo to prevent freezing in the winter, do you bring the fish inside during winter and how big an aquarium or fish tank do you need, any other questions such as -
does the winter snow melt sustain the pond or do you have to add water manually if the rainfall run off is insufficient?

I have one main pond, and others in the works. It is about four feet deep in the center, and roughly 30 feet in diameter. It is fed by a hot spring, so it maintains warmth in the winter, and is apparently just right for Blue Nile Tilapia, as well as the native fish, amphibians, and crawdads. It has grown up with cattail, cottonwood, willows, and even a few palm trees. Lots of visiting birds, and in my opinion, is the best work that I’ve done here. The pond is constantly refreshed by the springs, and discharges back into the creek channel for now. I just started a new shallow basin pond next to it, where I hope to plant wild rice, and that will overflow to irrigate pasture and crops. The existing “creek” was once an engineered irrigation ditch, as evidenced by old rusted flood gates, and I began a series of ponds along this (more to come!), and will eventually build check dams to fill these ponds that will be able to irrigate other areas.

George Mogil wrote:Hello Everyone!
For anyone who has an outdoor fish pond: how deep is it, would or does a pond aerator do the job, are the fish healthy and edible, do you need a gizmo to prevent freezing in the winter, do you bring the fish inside during winter and how big an aquarium or fish tank do you need, any other questions such as -
does the winter snow melt sustain the pond or do you have to add water manually if the rainfall run off is insufficient?

We have 5 ponds here on our farm..  A 25,000 square foot bass pond, a 4,400 square foot catfish pond, a 2,500 square foot catfish pond and two 1,000 square foot catfish ponds.  We do not use any aeration, no feeding and we allow the ponds to freeze over naturally and they stay frozen for 6 to 7 months out of the year.  The ponds are all 12 to 14 feet deep and manmade clay ponds.

We get an average of about 105 inches of snow a year which enough to fill our ponds many times over.  The water level drops about 2 feet in each pond by fall and then freeze over in October.  By April/May they are still frozen over generally but filled to the top and draining tens of thousand of gallons of water out the overflows everyday.  We have tens of thousands of fish in each pond.  You can literally catch bass as fast as you can cast your line in.  Most of them are only 6 to 12 inches length but there are plenty of them in the 18 to 20 inch range and some in the 26 to 28 inch range.  The catfish are smaller and more numerous but a little pickier at times with catching them, but very tasty fish.