Thread: Disaster struck.

Ah mate i'm so sorry to hear the loss

Do you not have an external air pump on the pond?🐟

Sorry mate its a horrible thing to go though another member on here has recently been though the very very similar losing loads of bigger fish including the family fraves , this is another reminder to every one that running a separate air pump on the bd can literally be a life saver especially a battery back up model !

Sorry to hear this, what a blow for you.

I feel your pain Grommett as I had a very similar incident happen to me a few weeks back and to be honest I am still not over it. We went away on a Sunday and I had family staying over looking after the house and dogs. The day we went away they were working so there was a gap of about 8 hours where we didn't have anyone in the house. In that gap the hozelock connecting the water feed to the drum (mains clean not pump) which in turn starved the drum of water to clean.
When they arrived they messaged to let me know so I told him to reconnect and turn back on which he did, then the next morning I messaged to ask if all was ok to which he confirmed it was. Now it's important to add this is a young person with no knowledge of running ponds and this whole saga was entirely my fault. I should have called in the morning to go over everything but I didn't, he could hear the air pump etc so assumed all was well. He was also working in the day so out for periods.
Come Wednesday I got a call saying a fish was dead and others didn't look good so I FaceTimed him and looked at everything on the pond then saw the pump was displaying an error message, the same thing had happened as your and the pump had gone off to save itself so I was effectively just running air into the moving bed and no where else whilst no circulation too place in the pond. I should have FaceTimed him the Monday morning and regret it every time I look at the pond but as he arrived late and had said all was ok, I didn't want to keep calling and hassling like I was checking in so didn't.

In the end I lost 4 fish, my big 22-23lb mirror which was everyones favourite, more like a dog than a fish, the Karashigoi which was one of the first 2 fish I got and second favourite of my little girl and my two Showa, one being my favourite. the 3 koi were all over 62cm and I had managed to get everything sorted through spring (parasites etc) and got the pond ticking over lovely for what I believe may have been the best growth season yet and instead the pond looks empty, and I have spent the month since trying to get the rest of the fish back on track as the water was terrible and then had some parasites take advantage of the weak fish. It only seems like now most are on their way back apart from one of 2 small kohaku I got in spring which typically was the fish my little girl chose too, so I am just doing all I can to get that back to health and hopefully ok again.

Just to note, the hozelock has never ever disconnected like that before, and had it happened a day either side, even a few hours earlier or later, it wouldn't have caused an issue as someone would have been there to rectify it before the pump ended up cutting out, it was running on a low speed and takes a lot for it to be starved of water! I hadn't even considered that the pump would have been starved of water so as mentioned before I take full responsibility and am truly gutted. It likely happened within an hour or so of us leaving as when I saw the submeter on the picture he sent it had spewed about 7000l onto the patio.

As AJM has said, shows how something simple like a second air pump running through the pond can be the difference between deaths as had I had air going through the BD I likely wouldn't have lost anything and probably just had come back to terrible water quality.

So sorry to hear this @Grommet & @samp09

It really is a worst nightmare when going away and leaving the pond..... which seems to cope trouble free on the 350 odd days you are there!

You 2 are not the only ones - exactly the same happened to another forum member only last week, his drum wash pump packed up, then pump ran dry and fuses tripped. I won't mention names as he may not want to go through it all again by posting about it.

When I was on hols last year I left a strict set of instructions to my teenage son. One of those instructions was to make sure the main variable pump is still pumping by lifting the filter pit lid and checking the display. I had some foam on the pond surface and noticed on CCTV one day the foam wasn't going round and round like normal.
Checked back on CCTV to the last time he'd checked the pump and saw straight away what had happened:

He lifted filter pit lid and the sun was shining right onto the display so he cupped his hands to block the sun then put his head in closer to check. As he pulled away his elbow caught the pump controller's pause button and he was non-the wiser. Fortunately I tend to go away more in the winter months so no harm was done, but you can imagine the row that would have ensued had things gone wrong.

Have to say I am nervous about going away now. Bought my drum 2nd hand, previous owner had to replace the float switch a couple of times in his 3 year ownership. I've now been running the drum 3.5 years trouble free..... If its going to fail, which I'm sure it will one day, it will do so at the worst time guaranteed!

Once again, so sorry to hear about your Chag @grommet, its so gutting and I can imagine the pond looks empty without a big lump of chag waiting for feeding time.

Crazy how it all seems to happen and coincide with the ideal conditions for a nightmare scenario too - prolonged hot weather where no one is there in the know to double check daily and low oxygen due to the heat. We actually had a storm the night before with thunder and lightening too so I would imagine the oxygen was already being tested by that.

Originally Posted by BrucePondsteen

Ahh mate that’s awful news. Sorry to hear about losing those fish. That big mirror was a beast.

Thanks mate yeah it really was a proper character too, couldn't go near the pond without it coming almost over the coppin stones to try and get fed!

Originally Posted by dan87

It always does mate! Ime Something always seems to happen as your on or about to go on holiday!

I’ve lost a pond full of fish following a weird summer storm in similar conditions some years back, it was an air pump failure in my case which coincided with the heat/storm

I run 2 air pumps for this reason, one running the nexus and a small feed to the pond and another just running air to the pond drain

If you really didn’t want to run 2 air pumps you could upsize the one and run a tee off into a pond air stone

I got a second now and when I go away it'll go on the BD. Powercut will be the next one to strike when away!