Pond Disaster Averted

I am sitting in the waiting room at the doctor's office ( I am just getting my colesteral checked. ) writing this post on my PalmPilot. I will upload and send the log to the BLOG server when I get to the office. I thought the Dr. office opened at 7:30. It opens at 8:00 so I have a few minutes to kill.

On to the topic at hand. Last night, on the way home from work, Karen called an said the pond had drained (again). She said ther was a few inches of water so the fish were okay. She unplugged the pump and waited for me to get home.

The pond did this earlier this year when a pipe broke while we were away for the weekend. The pumps emptied the pond in no time. We lost all but two fish in that episode.

This time, Thanks to Michelle, we cought it early enough that the pond didn't drain compleatly. I cleaned the filter and began filling the pond back up. I had barely enough de-clorinator to treat the 1000+ gallons of water and dumped in every last drop.

As you might imagine, it can take a while to fill a 1000 gallon pond with a water hose. Now I have made, in the past, the mistake of leaving the hose running too long, effectivly washing away all of the de-clorinator and killing all of the fish. So not wanting a repeat of that disaster, this time I set the timer on the stove for 20 minutes so I would remember to turn the water off. After 20 minutes the timer went off and I checked on the pond. It still needed a few more minutes so I went back inside.... You guessed it, I forgot about the water. Some time later, after dinner was done and homework was checked, Tyler and I were looking up stuff on the internet and it hit me. I won't tell you what came out of my mouth but it wasn't an expression of joy. I jumped up, ran out and saw a soupy back yard.

You might recall that I earlier had used all of the de-clorinator on hand. So I hopped in the Volvo (using my new remote to open the door), ran to the nearest, and probably most expensive pet store and purchased $22 worth of de-clorinator.

To make an already long story not as long as it could be, as of this morning, the fish are fine.

The pond drained because a piece of filter material came loose and cloged up the filter outlet causing the water to want to find other places to go, e.g. Not in the pond. I'm going have to work on my filter design a bit I think.