I am learning my pond as it is only the second year with air and plan to gradually shift from it's current schedule of 7am to 2pm as the temps tease that 80 degrees that Mike mentions. I will start to shift the schedule back by an hour or two at a time until I get to 9/10pm to 7/8am.
Last year when I switched more abruptly, the fish's feeding of pellets turned off and it took several days to start back up. We'll see if this gradual approach works better as my water is well into the 70's and the move to night time air is quickly approaching.
As far as the aeration system muddying the water...I only ran one shallow diffuser during the winter for a couple hours a day and between that one diffuser and plenty of inflow, the pond stayed muddy with only 12 inches of clarity (secchi disk reading). Now that I have been running 7 hours a day and the inflow has backed off, the pond's clarity is up to 18 inches. This 6 inches of improvement has come about in just the last week or so. My three diffusers are about 20 inches off the bottom with no substantial base plate. I don't know what conclusions to make at this point, but inflow definitely muddies it up and the diffusers seem to keep it stirred up until the inflow stops.
