Lori's Blog
Lori's Blog
15 Apr, 2008
8 comments
pond ecology...
After wintering my fishes successfully for the last five years, this crazy winter finally handed me a challenge I did not meet very well. It was early March, usually the last hurrah for winter blasts but this year it fooled me completely. I was under-the-weather, feeling ill, and lady nature saw fit to dump another 58 inches of snow…(that’s two inches shy of five feet!) on top of what we already had…and my fishes in their pond were buried under all that precip. If I had been well I would have managed to keep a hole in the ice open with my little bubbler…but I couldn’t get out my back door for two days! and the dig down to the ice was daunting. when I melted my way through the ice the smell that emanated from the water was putrid and I knew I had smothered all my sixty-or-so fishes… It has been a painful process as the snow melts away…I removed all the floaters and hooked up my pump…and I’ve successfully drained my pond down to the last two feet of water…I’m doing the cleaning chore at this cold point because the weather man is calling for 70 degree F. temps by this Friday…and I need to get this smelly phase of the cleanup overwith before then. So I’ve decided that along with the cleanup I’ll be able to do some maintenance on the liner, add the parging and bricks to the wall and affix the spitter and hook up the recirculating pump. Then I need to finish the waterfall I started to construct last summer.
I have three little fish which I have wintered with my nymphaea so they will feel like kings of a mighty ocean after the crowded conditions they were used to in an aquarium.
I started with five fish now I’m back to three. Live and learn.
I also think that overcrowding played a role but I just had nowhere to take my extra fish…I didn’t want to sell them to a pet store as feeder fish…so I kept an eye on the water level and hoped for the best…I heard that they stop breeding when overcrowded…dreaming? probably.
I will take some photos…before and afters
More blog posts by Lori
Comments
15 Apr, 2008
Poor u Lori :( When i 1st built my pond it got so badly flooded from outside the pond & the garden soil Ect went into the pond &my 5Subunkins got an Skin Infection & became ill so i moved my pond after that &kept my Fishys in a Bucket of Good Antibiotics4 two whole weeks &they Survived this awful Ordeal so i no urs will also do well :)
15 Apr, 2008
We had a very strange winter, Jacque... I think perhaps the thaw we had in January started all my problems...One of the rocks at the edge had slipped into the water and in doing so made a kind of shute that run-off from my flower bed cascaded into the pond...then it froze...and then we got all that snow... It was a combination of many elements that added up to disaster. My poor fishies....
I'm waiting for the frost to melt off so I can go outside and start the cleanup...I'm really dreading this...but it's necessary to get it done now before the forecast summer-like temps arrive on Friday. Cheers!
Hel and Janette: Thanks for the words of support...when I think of all the work ahead of me....arghhhh.
16 Apr, 2008
Oh, Lori, what a dreadful thing to happen!
Thinking of you and hoping the clean-up operation is going smoothly. Please keep us posted on progress :-)
17 Apr, 2008
Hi Xela...will do... got to buy some hipwaders...that will be worth a laugh when I post the pic.
28 Apr, 2008
well I ended up with rubber boots...wellies instead of hip waders and luckily my pump worked smoothly through it all. I could have learned my lesson first time through but I decided to add more area to the pond...and as a result more digging and liner splicing. I never learn..They say the definition of insanity is repeating the same behaviour over and over expecting a different result...
..found a good bargain on cap stones for the pond wall at the local landscaper, and managed to remove a rather large boulder buried just beneath the area I wish to extend the pond to... So if this is progress folks...it is progress as I know it... ttfn
Lori
Recent posts by Lori
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17 Jul, 2008
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8 Jun, 2008
- Learning the Value of Scale in a Garden Plan
1 Jun, 2008
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17 May, 2008
- revisionist history...
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For The Brave
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Joined 29 Mar, 2008
Yorkshire/Deryshire border
Helofadigger
15 Apr, 2008
Sorry to hear about your pond troubles Lori it must have been very disheartening to find your fish dead and I can well imagine the horrible smell you had to deal with. I wish you well and hope your trio of fish enjoy their new home.Hel.xxx.