Great experiment. I once had a solar aerator stop after days of no sun. Then on the first sunny day I checked on it and saw my buoy was still frozen in. I thought the aerator was down but when I got closer I could here it was running. There was dome of ice holding my buoy up and a 30 foot circle of air under it! I was surprised by this to say the least. I grabbed my ice drill to see if there was air pressure under the ice which there was! The odds of this were slim as one crack in the ice would release the air, then water, and it would open up an area. As I stared at the dome I realized several benefits of what was happening. First the safety of having solid ice over it. Secondly I was thinking about how open water becomes super cooled when aerating in the winter. I have noticed the fish avoid the area and stay in warmer water near the bottom. The dome was insulating the aeration area.
We did not come to the same conclusions. It is our belief the doom of ice is a real detriment to O2 transfer and added more unpredictability to thin ice locations and thus created more danger.
