Thanks Cecil for the "welcome aboard". I will throw out a few questions and hope someone can guide me, as I say this pond stuff is all new to me.
How much should I feed the trout and how often?
It depends on your goals. If you want them to grow as fast as possible and as large as possible I would feed. Here's what I did:
If I planted small trout under 8 inches I fed them twice a day to satiation (feed slowly until they slow down). My larger trout I only fed once a day and they grew just fine. If you are feeding once a day during the hottest part of the summer, feeding in the morning is best as that is when you're oxygen will be increasing vs. in the evening when it will drop and decrease to it's lowest level just before dawn. However it all depends on your pond.
How much should I aerate?
It all depends on you're pond situation. Sounds like you have already found you can warm the water up too much by 24/7 aeration. If three hours a day worked good this summer you might want to stick to it. Or if you have a temp and D.O. probe you can do some testing and determine if you make any changes. Also night-time aeration is best as it keeps warming down.
How many trout will my 1 acre pond support?
Again it all depends on water temps, oxygen levels, and whether you feed or not. Feeding them will support much more trout than having the subsist on natural feed. I also believe - and Adirondack Pond may disagree with me on this- that fed fish have a higher survival rate.
Can I use a limited amount of copper sulfate to control weeds?
I assume you are referring to algae as copper sulfate is worthless on macrophytes (rooted plants). You may be able to get away with it if your water is hard but I wouldn't risk it myself. Trout are sensitive to copper sulfate as are grass carp.
Can I add well water to pond when the pond level is low?
Absolutely. As Adirondack pond said you may want to splash it on something before you add it to the pond. Actually the best thing would be to gravity drop it through some five gallon buckets filled with plastic media (I'll post pics when I get my computer back) and feed it into a hose to the bottom of the pond. That way you would add to the cold water of the pond without warming it before dropping it in. It would also already be aerated.
Is it ok to route spring water runoff into the pond?
If it's cold it wouldn't hurt anything especially if you aerate it somehow.
Is it best to only have trout in the pond and not add any other kind of panfish?
If you don't feed the trout the panfish will compete with the trout for natural feed. If you do feed them it probably wouldn't be a problem although personally I would go with all trout, so you won't be annoyed by nibblers that aren't trout when you fish for the trout. Also, since your trout won't reproduce it will be an easy fishery to manage if you stay with trout. It's possible as your pond ages the BOD in the deeper water will increase and make water quality marginal for trout. If that happens you can always switch to panfish. However going from panfish to trout is much more difficult to undo.
A downside to feeding it it will fertilize your pond and make annoying weed growth more likely, and could age your pond faster. However if you keep your trout numbers low enough it may not be a problem. A one acre pond could easily support a fun fishery of 50 to 100 big trout and not fertilize the water too much by feeding.
Not sure if you're aware of this but if you feed the trout it's not unusual to produce 10 lb. rainbows, 10 pound browns, and 3 to 4 pound brook trout in only a few years. Sometimes you'll get a few that will get even bigger if water temps and oxygen are good.
I appreciate any trout knowledge and experience that gets posted!!!
Just wish I could post some pics for you of the trout out of my pond! I have to wait to get my computer back.
