Pond Boss Forums Thread Like Summary - Low water

Hi guys, once again I'm looking for advice. I have a 4 year old very small pond, 1/4 acre. I have an aerator, but no well. I have catfish and HBG in it, a small number of LMB, and some darn bullhead snuck in also. North Texas heat and no rain has taken me down to ~2-3' of water. I lost a 3# LMB, 10 4#Catfish, and 36 HBG this week and I've mentally put myself into a total kill. It sucks to put fish in at 2", feed them for 3 years, and then net them out dead at 2'. That said, I've always thought that I can't put "city water" out of my tap into it or the chlorine and other chemicals will immediately kill them. A neighbor said that if I can set up a holding container and let the city water get exposed to the sunlight, the chemicals will evaporate off and I can then add it to my pond. I don't have a lot of options....no access to a well and triple temps in the foreseeable future. I've stopped feeding and I'm running the aerator full time. thx for any advice......

I have used "city water" in my pond "fish tanks" with no obvious ill effects.

Assuming normal chlorination levels, much of the chlorine should have evaporated out of the city water within the first 24 hours of holding it in a container or pit open to atmosphere and sunlight. If you could leave it 4-5 days, then essentially 100% of the chlorine would be gone from the water.

Also, if you could aerate the water in the container to continually move the bottom water up to the atmosphere interface, then the chlorine would be cleared much more rapidly.

Sorry to hear about your fish!

I'd imagine city water would be preferable to no water.

Great point FishinRod, I think ~10,000 gallons was $100, but I need to look back further and see if this was summer or winter usage. Luckily, I have two kids now off to college, so my overall usage should go down. Since I'm in somewhat of a crisis mode now, I ran water directly into the pond for 4 hours. Probably about 1000 gallons from my timed 5 gallon bucket timed test. It raised the water line ~1-1.5", so I'm probably not adding more than 1%. So if I can do this now to stop the bleeding and get through triage, I think I can find a 1000 or 2000 gallon tank to put near the pond to use in the future as a containment to store before releasing to the pond in case I need to do this again. During triage, if I can offset evaporation and maintain, I might be able to save the rest of them. Thx again for the suggestions and comments.

An Update - Thanks to all of you for your comments. I thought I'd post a follow up in case it's useful for others down the road. So I'll do a quick recap so folks don't have to read each post. North Texas, micro-pond, 1/4 acre, HBG, LMB, CC, severe drought with 105F days and found ~50 floaters mid August. So without a lot of options, I was able to run a 1/2" irrigation line ~500' from an outside garden hose. I ran it 1-2 hours per day for 2 months. It looks like the city water cost was ~$500. I was maintaining the depth at 2.5'. I also stopped feeding and turned the bubbler on except for the heat of the day (like 10am-5pm). This week we got 1" on ~Monday, 3" on Wednesday, and then another 2". With the first 3-4" of rain, the pond came up 4' and continued to rise to 8.5-9' now. I started feeding again last night and they were HUNGRY! So I've seen HBG and CC so far, but don't expect to see any LMB. I'm hoping to fatten them up now. Thanks again to everyone for the posts.