Temps are now 82 top to bottom. Since there is still no variance, I am going to take your advice again and start slowly cutting back an hour at a time now.
I'm real glad to hear that your temps have dropped!
I will be watching your thread to hear how the thermocline develops or doesn't. I am skeptical that you can develop one in your pond as my 1/4 acre pond is 10 foot deep and the deepest diffuser is set about 8 foot deep and I have seen no evidence of a thermocline in mine.
I know it's been said by some very smart people here that a thermocline will develop if you raise your diffuser off the bottom, but I can't help think that the rising water (caused by the bubbles) will drag water up that is beneath the diffuser and turn it over as well. Maybe my air system is larger than needed which makes the thermocline less likely...I can't say for sure.
At any rate, the thermocline is not that important unless you get to the point that the pond is just too hot. I feel for you folks in the south as you certainly run a better chance of overheating the pond. Using an aeration system in the south to increase carrying capacity may not be very wise. Using it for water quality and general pond health is great, but how would one not reap the carrying capacity benefits? I guess my concern is that if overheating is a strong possibility and you have aeration...wouldn't the fish population/sizes grow to utilize the extra DO water by default? Then an overheating event occurs and there is noting you can do...shutting the aeration off may bring the temps down, but there goes your DO...it seems like a vicious cycle.
I think Mike is onto something when he said "You may want to try to cut back on how much air is getting to each diffuser". I would consider keeping the 3 diffusers and maybe even keeping the overall flow, but move them to shallower water. If you can get a thermocline at, say 4 feet deep because your diffusers are in 2-1/2 or 3' of water...you have successfully reaped alot of the pond health benefits, but have not maximized the carrying capacity. This concept is really mimicking surface aeration which backs up what Mike was saying about surface vs bottom aeration.
I'm just throwing ideas around, if you can't tell.
