I've lost every single fish in my pond! I don't think it was the heat, water temp was under 70. I added water this afternoon as I've had to do nearly every day with this heat and evaporation. The only thing I can figure is there was a spike in the chlorine level. I just feel so sad and guilty.
I'm crying
Awe! That's awful. Could anything else have been sprayed in or poured in the pond on accident? How big is the pond? Maybe after you check the water balance, you can get new fish and maybe leave water stand in something before you add it if that was the problem. Sorry about your fish. :(
I am soooo sorry!
I know how you feel. I lost my two fish after a bunch of toads invaded my pond for mating. I think something happened to the oxygen levels.
Sorry to hear this!
It happened once to us years back.
Cloramines were the culprit.
Before you add any other fish get your water tested or get a kit and test it yourself.
Ric
Bless your heart. Do test the water, and give it another go. This was not your fault -- it's your learning experience. (Don't you hate learning experiences?) But -- been there, and I know how you feel.
So sorry about your loss!
I find it difficult to believe water added to account for daily evaporation could have had enough chloramines in it to kill a pondful of fish unless you left the water on for a very long time overflowing the pond, not just filling it.
At a temp of 70, I also doubt it was oxygen depletion, that water should have had a good saturation of oxygen at that temp unless there were other very serious things going on- like something wrong with the filter or just no water moving.
Do you happen to have A LOT of rocks in your pond? Large pockets around rocks will be anaerobic, if you put the hose in and stirred some of that up, it would have released deadly gases and created a low oygen situation, that can kill a pond quickly.
Something went wrong.....it wasn't just the water from daily evaporation. I hope you can figure out what it was and have a happy pond again!
Thank you everyone for your kind thoughts and suggestions. I will get a testing kit when I go to the city Friday(none in my small town). I just don't understand it either but I'm not getting any more fish until I do. This was just too awful!
Hello neighbor! I always lost my outdoor fish as a buffet for the raccoons. We stopped putting out fish after our third attempt to keep the raccoons out failed. Do you have problems with raccoons, and if so how do you deal with it?
AWWWWWWWWW, I am so sorry to hear about your fish loss :( How things are just wonderful one day and horrible the next! I am confident you will find out what happened! The neighbor came over when we were not there, saw some wasp nests and started spraying everywhere!!!! The gh was next to the tubs where I have the ?? BABY FISH! I found out about this after I came back and walked over to see how the babies were doing only to find a film covering the top of the tubs, I don't remember much except running over to one of the kiddie pools and scouping the water out and bailing out the babies water!!
I am so sorry. I have lost fish before , so I know how heartbreaking it is. Especiallly when you have had them for a while and named them. I have lost fish to snakes, herons, significant water loss. Hopefully, I have all those issues covered. My pond is now netted with deer netting, keeping out the varmits as well as the leaves. I also have a sensor in the pond which shuts down my water features if the water falls below a certain level (more than once I have lost most of my water due to disconnects to my filter or some other similar issue). I also have a hose in the pond with replaces water as it evaporates. S0 now, for the first time, everything is stable, the fish are growing like crazy as are the plants.
You did not mention if it is well water or city water. If it is city water it is the chlorine. If it is not city water it could be spike of some chemicals?? One of the guys like Mike, Scott and ?? will tell what happened. They seem to have an answer to all problems. I like reading their solutions or predictions. I am sorry about your loss. i lost all my fish last summer 2005 due to O2 deprivation. There was a storm at night and lost power. Bellie
Me again, I made a big booo---boooo I thought I was on Gareden web!!!! Bellie
My water comes from a community well. I don't know how it's treated or monitored but I'm going to find out. Thx
That is the most common way to kill fish. I have one of those giant 60 gallon barrels that I put water in for a day or two before I add it to my 2300 gallon kio pond. I pump it out of the barrel with pump. I also try to keep some dechlorinator around in case I have an emergency and need to add municipal water.
We never add water without adding dechlorinator (municipal source only).
...But that didn't help when I got distracted one day and left the water running. I killed 5 Koi and two Shubunkin that day. I returned and saw them in distress and dumped the remainder of the dechlorinator in and started dipping them out ...franically running them across the yard to another temorary pond we had set up, crying all the time. I saved a lot of them, but it was the ones that I couldn't save that I think about even now. The large ones weighed about 5 lbs each, we had gotten them when they were 3-4" long.
My neighbor set up a tiny poly pond this year, and bought some small goldfish. They survived for a few days but died. She felt so bad. Later she told me she had not been sympathetic enough to me when we lost our fish, but now she knew just how I felt.
Oh boy, now you've got me wondering if I left the water running too long. Darn, I don't think so but it's possible. When we leveled the pond I had to remove more than half of the water and I didn't even think before replacing it from the hose, but that was at least two weeks previously. My water has never smelled of chlorine so I just don't know. I'll pick up a tester from Pet Smart tomorrow and monitor the water for a week or so before I even consider getting more fish. Seven of my fish were distinctive and I'd named them and I talked to all of them. I hate to even look at my pond right now.
My two cents, worth nothing.
I read somewhere about purchasing an undercounter water filter that removes like 97% of impurtities including chlorine and chlorimine. Mount that to a board to keep it upright. Pick up a 6ft extention garden hose. Hook up the garden hose to the filter and the extension hose into your pond.
I really think this would help. I will look for the site tomorrow and add to this thread, anything needed to make this contraption work.
Oh Katy! I'm so sorry this happened! What a horrible loss for you.
Yes, testing your water is the only way to go. You might need to make sure your filters are adequate for the pond and fish. Also, I'll look for the link where someone posted to me about an in-hose water filter. It removed chlorine and chloramine as the water comes through the hose. And it's not very expensive, either.
Here it is:
http://www.pondbiz.com/home/pb1/smartlist_32
This message was edited Jul 28, 2006 8:40 AM
I just ordered the chlorine filter from PondBiz. At that price more than worth the piece of mind! I bought PH testers from PetCo in Olympia and the pond water tests out fine. They didn't have chlorine testers and couldn't tell me where to get one. I did pick up a bottle of de-chlorinator but I have the receipt so I can take it back. I really like the security of this inline water filter. Thank you so much for the suggestion Irish and Pixydish!
Glad you got one, Katy. I haven't even ordered it yet! But I better get to it. Snapple is the one who pointed that out to me.
If your pond water tests out fine, it was likely the chlorine. Because Chorine is so volatile, it's unlikely that you would still show any in the water. It evaporates very quickly.
Now you be sure to let me know if you are interested in any shubunkins. You know I have plenty.
Thanks Melissa. I got a message this morning that it's shipped already so I'll probably take you up on that! I'll Dmail you next week. I bought a 25# bag of black aquarium gravel while at Petco and got it in the pond last evening. It levels the pump and makes it much more stable so I'm pretty confident it won't tilt now and pump water out of the pond as it did once last year.
Oh Katy, I know how that is. Twice I have had tubing come apart and the pond was almost completely emptied be the time I got home. I finally bought a sensor. When the water drops below the sensor (I have it about halfway down the depth of the pond), the pumps shut down so the pond wont empty.
KatyMac - I see we're neighbors. I live on the Westside of Oly.
Hi zhinu, good to "meet" you!
rylaff, where did you find a sensor? Does it just go between the power and the pumps?
Melissa, thank you very, very much!
My DH used a float valve, the kind used in a toilet. He has it attached to the hose and if the pond water drops below a certain point, it automatically turns on and a small stream of water fills the pond. I'm going to get one of those filters to put on the hose it's connected to, but so far I haven't had any trouble with the chlorine, because my pond is so big I can get away with it a bit.
I got the sensor from AZPonds. You can put it at whatever height you want. If the water level drops below the sensor, it shuts down the power to the pumps.
I have a couple of large ponds. When it got really hot here week before last, I lost 10 trout in one day! When I fetched them from the pond, they were all about 20" long, and together weighed 30lbs! That was a loss! Then a few days later I found 3 others! And I thought the Osprey was bad! I recirculate the ponds through a 4-fall waterfall, but clearly need more oxygen. I'm going to install a windmill, I think, to drive aerators in both of my ponds. Hopefully that will help. Now the goldfish are doing fine!
Ouch Bill, that's a big loss! My sympathies are with you. You think the heat affected the oxygen level? My pond is pretty shallow and I never thought of that. And the temp didn't ever seem to get that high.
my ponds are rather large - the bigger one is 125'x65'x8' deep. And yes, I think when it got over 100, it just sapped the oxygen. I should have pumped more water/air into it. I did that last year and no problem. But this year I forgot.
Bill, that's not a pond, that's a lake where I come from! LOL
You need to Add Stress Coat to every time you add water . i use to be a big Breeder of Angel fish Paul