ADVANCE WARNING: This will contain boring pond maintenance stuff, a small lesson in fluid dynamics, and one small animal murder. Feel free to skip.
So both our pumps for filtering and aeration simultaneously failed yesterday which was a bummer. Now submersible pumps that run 24/7 and are magnetic impeller driven (all parts that water can damage are permanently sealed) are awesome things I in general, but in praticality they are a pain in the ass combination of fiddly bits, magnets, and weird spooky fluid dynamics. They also need to ALWAYS be attached to a filter at the intake end because weirdly solid matter like leaves and rocks behave in a way that water doesn’t (I’m so sciency)so getting solids in the water flow tends to be, well, bad.
The pumps usually have only one moving and replaceable part which is the impeller. This is a mini propellor sitting in a semi sealed section which is only accessible by dragging the pump from the bottom of the pond, clearing of the years of built up algae to try and actually find the working screws… opening the only panel bit up and finding out what the hell is going on. It’s messy, unpleasant, and an extraordinarily good reason never to own fishies unless your an idiot. There’s also stuff about non oil based lubricant types to avoid pond infection but it sounds too sexy so I’ll spare you that.
So pump 1 (which drives the bell fountain, the one that creates a fancy bell made of water, was a simple fix. I say simple but I mean forking annoying but let’s keep the polite fiction. Once I did get it out of the water and ungummed it from algae (technical term) there was a large clump of what can only be described as a concentrated mass of leaves, leftover fish food, and no small quantity of fish poop congealed within the pump that had somehow sneaked past the filter and formed what I can only describe as the aquatic equivalent of a fatburg. It was most pleasant but thankfully easily removed with only mild nausea and squickness.
Pump 2 however had deeper issues. I had recently had to replace the tubing betwixt the pump and the filter in a vain attempt to use the word betwixt in a sentence. Also to extend the hose so I could locate the filter in better location. I mean it’s all about the fish feng shui. Now here’s where fluid dynamics some into play. As a non marine engineer I’d not taken into account that adding roughly 4 times the length of host betwixt the filter and pump would basically cause the pump to act like it was sucking a McDonald’s thickshake up a two story long straw (both in the suction needed and the headache at the end). End result, I needed to redo all the work while the fish constantly laughed at and mocked me. Goldfish can be cruel.
So what about the murder? You’ve read this far so you deserve it. Firstly it was NOT a murder of the mocking fish though they deserved it. On finishing my riveting pond repairs it stirred up lots of water when they restarted… and I discovered the tiny lifeless corpse of one of my new mosquito fish (we have 5 in the pond). On closer inspection (I’m a specialty coroner ichthyologist now) I discovered that it had had its belly ripped out by one of the clawed or beaked happy animals living in our backyard. WE HAVE A MURDERER! I shall be investigating the footage and enhancing to see who dunnit. More CSI equipment is not available at this time though the cat is keen to help with the investigations if more corpses show up for some reason.
That’s all for today. Pond life forever!