New member here. read a lot of the threads (very helpful - thank you!), but never posted.

we have ~1/2 ac pond in central KS. Lots of clay soil. we re-graded the land and added rip/rap rock to the pond inlet a few years back -- most of the watershed channel now has vegetation and there's a lot of native grasses that have grown up over the rip/rap, so heavy rains don't typically mean a lot of clay runoff. In fact, the area where the runoff comes in will be crystal clear. until it mixes with the coffee soup mix of the rest of the pond water anyway.

current pond color is creamy-coffee. This morning we added ~210 lbs of alum (mixed/dissolved with water in 5 gal buckets and drove around in a jon boat dumping it in). Tested the pH after the alum treatment (with pool strip testers) - 6.5 - 6.8

do have an aerator that sits about 2' off the bottom. Turned it off just after we finished the alum treatment and plan to leave it off for a couple days.

couple questions:
1) enough alum? pond is somewhere between 8' and 10' at deepest, so I'd guess around 2 ac ft. of total water. I did add 50lbs or so a couple months ago before I realized you really need to do it all at once. don't know if that matters. Have another 100 lbs if we need to add more.

2) do we need to add hydrated lime? (have 100 lbs on hand) pH looks ok, and I do see a lot about fish kills with hydrated lime that seems worrisome.

3) if we do need to add it, safest way to add without killing fish? have bass, catfish, some perch, and a few grass carp (not many anymore - most try to leave when the pond overflows into our neighbor's pond)

when we finished the alum treatment I pulled two jars of water and added a pinch of lime to one of them. watching to see if it increases settling time. No real difference so far.(other than the jar sample pH readings anyway)

thoughts welcome! thanks