More Pond Woes

Well, it's been about three months since we fixed the leak in the vinyl liner where the rat had chewed a hole.

I had the exterminator out, we put out rat bait boxes at strategic spots, and after two months of setting the bait, what happened?

That's right -- another rat chew on the waterfall liner, except a bigger hole, and harder to patch.

Today, when my pond servicer was here, I decided to look inside the bait boxes. There are 4 of them in all, and I checked 3 boxes. They were installed two months ago, but just about all of the bait is gone!

This means that Clint's comment about the bait lasting about 3 months was off, a little. It looks like I am going to have to check the boxes every month.

What a bad year for rodents!

Clint also says you can tell what kind of year it will be for squirrels and rats by noting the number of acorns falling, the abundance of pecans, and the availability of the fruit harvest. When conditions are optimal, you get more rodents.

Also, the winter was very dry, and that makes the rats show up more -- especially in an aquatic environment like a pond. Likely, the bait drew many rats from the neighborhood.

We will be installing new bait next week. A pain it may be, but I'll have to check the boxes more often, and add more as necessary. In the meantime, Alice says that the patch she put on the liner is probably going to fail before too long. It is very likely that I'll need to get part of a new liner, up to the point where the dropoff on the waterfall is. This is likely going to cost $175 - $200.

Schnauzer Babe, You are Falling Down on the Job!

Meadow, climbing on my waterfall.

Well, I did indeed have a leak in my pond's waterfall, and guess how that happened?

A rat chew! Rats squeezed into a slight opening along the margins of the vinyl waterfall liner, made a nest, and eventually got bored, and chewed a hole in my liner. According to Alice, this happens sometimes when we have had very dry weather.

I knew that, in the past, some kind of "wildlife" was underneath the rocks in my waterfall, because Meadow sometimes would go over to the waterfall, and paw and snort frantically. We were able to look for the leak very specifically once I told Alice that Meadow was interested in the right side of the waterfall.

Meadow, girlfriend, you're supposed to be a working dog where rodents are concerned!

Below, right in the center of the liner, you can see the hole where all the water was going. Luckily, the hole was in a place where the liner could be patched easily on both sides. Leak is now gone.

The pond also got a good cleaning, with a serious dividing and cut-back of its plants. Below are two pictures, (1) the empty pond, and (2) the pond cleaned and re-filled, with everything looking bare! It will take a while for it to green up again.

And I am happy to say that many, if not all, of the mosquito fish survived the winter.

Water Loss in My Pond

To the right: The pond at the Gaylord Texan Resort in Grapevine, Texas

For several weeks now, I've been having increasing water loss from my pond. All my usual remedies haven't done anything to slow it down.

I'm losing 1.5 to 2 inches per day from the pond. I'd like to blame it on last week's horrible weather with its snow and ice, but the problem actually started weeks before that.

I do have a gunite and plaster constructed pond, and how and why it became a pond is a story that you can read from the earliest posts in this blog. Could it be that I have developed a crack in the gunite? I may not know that until we get spring weather and I can drain my pond.

I tried to cover the basics of water loss in a pond in this summary , but I may not know everything.

I wish everything looked as nice as the pond in the above photo. Sigh....