What are some stupid* things you've done (that DIDN'T hurt fish or pond?)

[Mmathis]

* "stupid" = not well thought out in advance

I'll start. I had some clear plastic round ornaments that I wanted to float in the pond so they'd look like bubbles. Got bored with that, so decided to put some fish food inside one, thinking that the food would slowly flow out and the fish could self-feed.

Imagine my horror when next I checked, to find that the ornament WAS FILLED TO CAPACITY WITH GOLDFISH! They swam through the tiny opening to get at the food, kept going in, kept going in, and kept going in. They couldn't get out. I was able to free them all, no injuries, but just grateful I found them when I did. Silly fish! STUPID Mom!

I don't recall how many fish there were in there, but more than I would EVER have thought possible.

 

[Carolyn22]

Turtle - that is so funny! I love that.

Dumbest thing - why do I think DH has done a bunch of things and said to the kids 'don't tell your Mom'? I know when we were setting up this spring, I caught him spraying a paint can over the water to see if it would spray. The paint landed on top of the water - yes, I did have a fit on him and no, none of the fish were impacted.

 

[jupiter1]

While building a fence to hide the filter systems droped a pluged in electric drill into a running 70 gallon skippy filter . Much to my suprise no harm to the fish in the pond and after a few days drying the drill still works.

 

[j.w]

I dug my first pond in a little corner area right up next to the front of our house and was halfway down to the depth I wanted the pond to be and ran into big septic pipes. Decided to just let the pipes be covered w/ the liner as a big hump in the middle and dug lower on each side of the pipes. Left it that way for a few yrs and started wondering what would happen if we ever had trouble w/ those pipes what would I do w/ the pond. Sooooooo not wanting to take any chances dug a new bigger pond on the other side of the walkway w/ no septic pipes. Actually came out better by getting the bigger pond but just should have done so in the beginning as my back would not have been put through the double trouble of it all.

Old pond:



New pond:

 

[Waterbug]

Composted "cold" charcoal from the grill. Pretty close to burning down the shop.

Cutting a cast iron sewer pipe under a house. The rate of cutting slows down...wondering why when there's the sudden hissing of escaping gas. Pretty close to blowing up my friend's house.

I remain the luckiest person on the planet.

 

[HTH]

I talked about culling fish on Ko Ko's! Does that count ?

 

[addy1]

I talked about culling fish on Ko Ko's! Does that count ?

most likely, never been there, but sounds like they don't like the word cull

When digging our pond, I ran into something stronger than dirt, kept hitting it with the bucket, finally decided to climb down see what I was digging up.................our septic tank, we had no clue where it was.......... Luckily no damage to it. The stream waterfalls right over the outflow pipe, I found while digging the one corner, luckily learned by then to be a little gentler when the sound of the bucket hitting something changed.

 

[Mmathis]

Turtle - that is so funny! I love that.

Dumbest thing - why do I think DH has done a bunch of things and said to the kids 'don't tell your Mom'? I know when we were setting up this spring, I caught him spraying a paint can over the water to see if it would spray. The paint landed on top of the water - yes, I did have a fit on him and no, none of the fish were impacted.

Thought of you today as I was spray painting some PVC pipe. I made sure to stay away and downwind from the pond

 

[HTH]

most likely, never been there, but sounds like they don't like the word cull

It is a forum where people are very attached to their fish and can not imagine anyone murdering one. A nice forum really with nice people etc. But it was very much the wrong thing to say.

 

[JoaniePA]

I have a small water pump with a hose running from it that I use to weave between rocks for a dripping effect on one side of the pond. I was doing some maintenance and had unplugged the pump, pulled the hose out from the rocks, and left the outflow end in the garden. Hubby came along and saw it unplugged. Trying to be helpful, he plugged it back in. You guessed it, the pond emptied over night and we found all the fish hunkered into a pool of water at the pump level. Thank goodness the pump wasn't sitting on the bottom of the pond!!

 

[Tradewinds]

My floating water plants would always drift to the skimmer inlet. I thought I would stake them on the other side of the pond with a bamboo stake. As I was trying to push the stake into solid ground I released, just in time, that my pond has a liner. Glad I stopped before poked a hole in it. :ugh:

 

[sissy]

well stupid here just hit a branch on my tree mowing and knocked me backwards right off my riding mower .good enough .Nothing to do with the pond but a good one :cheerful: and not gonna try that again

 

[Dave 54]

As a young boy staying at friends of my Mum and Dad ( before the divorce ) and playing with their son a boy of my age , I ended up doing a header straight into their goldfish pond trying to get a ball bavk out of the water without them knowing it had been their much to say both of us got grounded for the day.
I often wonder if this is where my love of fish comes from lol.


rgrds

Dave

 

[koiguy1969]

left water going on water change...got sidetracked and forgot...caught it before any problems arose tho!
was testing waterfall, and got called in for a phone call...lost track of what i was doing and pumped a couple hudred gals of water under my liner. bought a "drill motor" pump, wiggled a hose under liner and fixed it fairly easily.

 

[HTH]

left water going on water change...got sidetracked and forgot...caught it before any problems arose tho!
was testing waterfall, and got called in for a phone call...lost track of what i was doing and pumped a couple hudred gals of water under my liner. bought a "drill motor" pump, wiggled a hose under liner and fixed it fairly easily.

I think I floated a liner once. But I have left the hose running enough times to loose count. Last time was last night. We had pulled enough lilies out to lower the water level maybe 5 inches. I woke up at 3AM and ran out to turn it off. Water is chlorinated and I run the hose into the water agitated by the air so the fish do not sit with their nose next to the hose.