Pond Boss Forums Thread Like Summary - Aireators in the heat of summer in TX 1/4 acre

Need help with my Airmax system in TX.
Last year I was instructed by Airmax to run 24/7 in the deepest part of my pond.
Well long storey short and painful.
Major bloom
89 degree from top to bottom
5 lmb over 5lbs floated.
15 hybrids gone.
HELP!
THX RANT OVER

It is best to aerate at night and perhaps just a little after dawn during high summertime temps. This allows stratification during the day. If you schedule the start say around midnight ... a good portion of this heat will dissipate. If the night air is cooler than the pond, aeration under this condition will cool the pond.

OK, but aeration isn't the biggest problem you face. Sounds to me like you have a very large standing weight of fish in BOW. You are going to need to manage that aspect or the pond will manage it for you with fish kills like you observed. Going forward develop a plan that institutes a yearly minimum harvest and that will keep your standing weight below critical thresholds of carrying capacity.

I'm not familiar with your aeratrion system so you need to make sure that it is large enough to give you one complete turnover during your scheduled nighttime run. The easiest way to figure that is to moitor the water temps. When you start the system up from scratch you will see that the lowest water temps will be cooler than the water temps at 18" deep. Once the water temps from 18" deep to the very bottom are within a couple degrees of each other...you pond has been turned over. That legth of runtime is the minimun that I would run. This way you are not just bringing up dead water and mixing it with the upper good water daily (or nightly). I also try to set my nightly start time to coincide with the time at which the outside abmient air temp drops below the water temp at 18" down. This helps guarantee that you are cooling the water not heating it. Likewise with the stop time...once air temps get above the 18" water temp, it;s time to stop the air. This maximizes the aeration runtime and minimizes the heating of the pond. We all know that the weather changes day to day, so I just set mine up to be close to the weeks weather and adjust as the weeks go by.

JP makes a good point about the pond's bio load or standing weight.