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.
I don't find it an easy task here in E. Texas when I want to keep my water temps down and keep the pond aerated. I am still experimenting each summer when it comes to keeping my water temps below 87. First off I would move your diffusers off bottom in the deeper water depths. I set mine on a platform/table where the diffusers are around 26 to 28" off bottom. This will or can give some cooler water temps right on bottom. I also run mine from midnight to 6am. But during our hottest time of the year the ambient temps can be in the high 80's at night. It's better to run them then instead of the daytime temps that are running 98. You can also set the diffusers at the mid range depths of the pond. If the pond is 10' at it's deepest you can set them at 5 or 6' depths and this may also give some cooler water temps deeper than where the diffusers are set. And like I said I keep experimenting in an attempt to keep my water temps down but aerated.