Thanks to everyone for all your insight and advice.

We did not expect to be able to keep the trout all year. We know that they do not thrive in warmer water temps. We stock them occasionally just for fun, and this time it was one of my Christmas presents to my husband. Our pond is spring feed. Although I am not sure, I suspect that our pond is built at a spring site, as well as having more than one spring running into it. Even in the hotest part of the summer with drought conditions, our water level doesn't normally drop more than 6-8 inches and I can't recall it ever being more than a foot low in the past 17 years that we have had the pond. I was concerned because we have never lost this many trout all at once before. I was also worried about losing other species of fish as well if we did not determine the cause of the problem.

It appears that our diffusers were not installed properly. They are currently on the bottom. We will need to raise them up some. We have turned off the pump until we can remedy this situation. The instructions we were given with the aerator was to just throw the stones out into the pond. We actually stretched out the air lines (one is 75' the other 100') using our canoe and then dropped the diffuser stones in the pond.

Any advice as to how far off the bottom they should be?

It will be the weekend before I can take any temperature measurements. Our pond is on our farm in PA and we spend the weekends there, but during the week we live along the Potomac River in WV.

Thanks again!

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