Killed most of my pond today...

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I am so pissed at myself right now. Yesterday I put the hose in the pond to top it off, since some water had evaporated with this warm weather we had been having. Well, the kids got into a fight and I brought everyone inside and forgot about the hose. The hose had ran fully open into my 400 gallon pond for nearly 24 hours straight. I came to feed the fish today and saw a ton of dead bullfrog tadpoles from last year (that I didn't even know I had) and most of my fish lying on their sides. In the end, I pulled out about a dozen and a half dead tadpoles and five of my eight fish (including by largest Shubunkin) are dead. I immediately shut off the water and added an appropriate amount of dechlorination solution to the pond. Within minutes, the three fish that were left began swimming a bit, which is good. I added some pond salt to the pond, since I'm sure I flushed out all the dissolved salt from before.

The fish that are left have a cloudy white covering over their bodies, as do the tadpoles that are left. Does anyone have any other advice for me in salvaging what's left of my pond?

I really am pretty bummed I let this happen. Sigh.
 

sissy

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Oh my god .You need to get one of those water timers that they sell at lowes or any where .I have one and love it and think a lot of people with ponds have them .I'm not really sure since I have well water what you can do
 

addy1

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omg that is horrible, so sorry to hear. I know it is after the fact, like sissy says get a hose timer, it only runs for 30 minutes then shuts off battery operated.

I am not sure what to tell you to do except what you have done, dechlor and some salt. They sell stuff at petsmart, for adding to new tank water, it adds slime to the body, not sure what it is called, but always added it to my 175 gallon tank, when I did water changes. Maybe some of that would help.

from the net:
Affected fish may appear pale and covered in mucus. Some will exhibit redness (hyperemia) on various parts of their body. Fish may be piping at the surface for air and swimming erratically.

Chlorine can be "bubbled" out of water if the water is well aerated for several days in a container with a large surface area. Chloramine, however, is more stable in water than chlorine, and cannot be bubbled away. Chloramine has become much more popular than chlorine in public water supplies because, unlike straight chlorine, it does not produce trihalomethanes toxic to humans.

Severely affected fish usually die. Fish that are quickly removed from contaminated water may survive if they are not showing signs of respiratory distress within three to six hours following exposure. To try to fix the situation, the contaminated water must be immediately neutralized, or the fish must be removed to an aquarium or other vessel containing clean, chlorine-free water. A number of commercially available compounds quickly and safely remove chlorine from water.


These products frequently contain sodium thiosulfate, which inactivates chlorine through a chemical reaction in which sodium chloride is formed. Sodium thiosulfate is inexpensive, effective and safe (just 10 grams of sodium thiosulfate will remove the chlorine from 1,000 liters of municipal water with chlorine concentrations as high as 2.0 ppm). After the chlorine has been removed, the water containing the fish should be aerated well with room air or preferably 100% oxygen. Temperate (mid-temperature) species like goldfish and koi will benefit from reducing the water temperature to increase the dissolved oxygen levels.

Follow-up

Since chlorine poisoning is almost always an acute problem, follow-up consists primarily of supportive care for the sick fish and prevention -keeping chlorinated water away from the fish.
 
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Thanks for the advice and encouragement. I was thinking about taking them out of the pond and putting them in a tank temporarily, but I would just be putting them into recently dechlorinated water anyhow, so I figured it would be best to just leave them in the recently dechlored pond. I also added some of the 'pond starter' solution that contains beneficial bacteria that I added when I started the pond. Hopefully the three fish I have left will make it...

I didn't know they even made hose timers. I will soon be picking one of those up to avoid something like this happening in the future.
 

addy1

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They work well, has saved me more than once when watering my flowers, ow would end up drying up our well.
The basic ones turn off in 30 minutes, I think you can pick up ones that other times also.

Here is a link to home depot ones.

http://www.homedepot...tgry=SEARCH+ALL

I have a few of this one, it is mechanical vs battery run

6650640f-d036-43e9-8217-9d05fc7cd59.jpg


14 dollars per the net
 
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I don't think I ever filled a pond with a hose and remembered to turn it off. Lucky for me these were large ponds and it was caught after a few hours. Scary though.

Horse tough float valves are also useful and cheap. There 's also something called a "trickle water change" where a drip head is used to do water changes on a continuous basis and would also keep a pond topped off.

Damage
As for the fish the damage done isn't really reversible at least to the gills. Any fish that live may have a harder time for the rest of their lives in low O2 water so you could do your best to keep O2 up long term.

Short term
I would not add any salt or any slime coat products. These all work by irritating the skin to produce the slime coat. They do nothing to help the fish actually produce slime. Increasing slime coat is done to push away bacteria which is an entirely different problem. Irritating these fish is the last thing they need. It only stresses them more and can be the last nail in the coffin. They're already plenty irritated and producing as much slime as they possibly can.

You could move them to a tank and slowly warm the water to say 75F. I assume your pond is below 60F?. Warmer water makes their immune system work way better. Even at 60F the fish immune system is very low, and under 50F them have virtually no immune system. Feed a good food if they'll take it. You really need to watch water quality and O2 (add an air pump). Also net the top of the tank to keep them from jumping out. Keeping water quality up with water changes will be important as ammonia and nitrites are really going to be a bigger problem for these fish than it would normally.

I very much like your first instinct to leave the fish where they are. Better to do no harm then kill them with well meaning treatments. Only do the warm water tank if you really think you can keep up with it for several weeks. It's a lot of work. Otherwise go with your instinct and leave them in the pond. Watch the water quality and O2 however just as with the tank.
 

addy1

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I use drip irrigation on my potted plants and in my veggie garden here. In arizona all you do is drip irrigation, well if you worry about your water bill that is. Neat idea, thanks jw. Would love to do it, but it would be bad for our well pump, constantly coming on.
 
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Thanks for the advice everyone. I checked on the pond this morning and two more were dead, and my last one doesn't look good. I really don't have high hopes.

I really am pretty bummed about this. Of the eight fish in there, six were from a batch of twenty tiny comet feeder fish (six of them survived originally). They were all in pretty bad health (feeder fish, Duh) when I got them, and before yesterday, they were all doing very well and were in the 4" to 5" range. I also bought two larger 6" shubunkins at a pond store a month or so after setting up my pond once the feeder fish had stabilized. My kids each picked one out and named them. Now, only the largest Shubunkin is left... for now.

I'll be getting some new fish (and a timer) I guess. How long do you think I should wait to get new fish? I've been doing serial water testing (five tests thus far since my screw-up) and all the values are perfect. Will the pond have to re-cycle?
 

addy1

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The chlorine will have killed off the bacteria also, so I would say yes.
 

j.w

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Yep addy we have a well also and was wondering about the drip system making our pump over work. The pump might burn out while we were gone traveling and can't have that happen. Can't use the manual ones while gone cuz can't depend on anyone to turn it on so will have to lean towards the battery ones which I have but if batteries go dead then water could get stuck on. So how does this trough system work and any drawback to it? It looks as tho they clip on to the edge of a trough and so how does one use them in a pond w/ rock edges? I'm just looking for the best way to add water each day to the pond due to evaporation and to give the fish a refresh for maybe 10 - 15 mins on a low discharge. Kind of like a trickle but on a timer.
 
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Since I'm nearly starting out from scratch again (though, the one fish that is left is doing a bit more swimming today!), and there are several aspects of my pond that I am not happy with, I'm contemplating building a new pond (and then dismantling the one I have). I started a new thread on it here: https://www.gardenpondforum.com/topic/8965-new-pond-next-to-a-young-tree/
 

addy1

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jw I put my pond on an electric timer, the battery ones failed x2 stayed on, luckily we were home, new batteries too. So went to a sprinkler type system. Electric control, battery back up.
I have not set it up yet, but when we are gone, we have it turn on for 1/2 hour every other day just to add some water.
 

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