Louisiana Crawfish: Oxygen Management--Flood-Up Through December
By Mark Shirley
LSU AgCenter Extension Crawfish Specialist
BOD stands for Biochemical Oxygen Demand. Scientists use this laboratory test to measure how fast oxygen is consumed in water. High demand occurs when large amounts of rice straw or other dead vegetation is decomposing in a crawfish pond.
The bacteria and other organisms associated with decaying vegetation consume large amounts of oxygen and the warmer the water, the more rapidly oxygen is consumed. That is why oxygen levels in crawfish ponds often get critically low in the fall following flood-up.