I am at the same place as you with the exception that you will warm up sooner than I due to your warmer climate. And, I am at the same experience level as you with regards to aeration in the pond. My intentions are to maximize my air run times while avoiding any overheating of the waters. I will be bumping my runtimes up as the summer comes on until I hit 24 hours runtime or the water gets to that 80 degree mark. Once I hit 80 degrees, I plan to start to shift my runtimes towards nighttime only. I suspect that I will hit the 24 hour mark and eventually I will start cutting the hours out of the hottest part of the day until I get to the heat of summer and by then I will be only running from 9pm to 9am (or thereabouts).

I think making minor adjustments is best so that the fish are more likely to feed regularly, but last year the heat came on quick and I switched to nighttime rather abruptly...the fish slacked off feeding for several days.

I would think that you could pick a runtime amount (somewhere between 4 to 8 hours) then as summer comes on, start moving the runtimes backwards by an hour at a time until you are aerating during the cooler temps (nights).

Right now, I have been running my air during the warmest part of the day to speed up the warming of the water, but once the air temps get warmer than 80 or so, I will start cutting those hours off. You could simply start bumping your hours away from the hot times of the day.

That's my strategy...right, wrong or indifferent.

Fish on!,
Noel