Merry Xmas...more pump problems..

Shewww!! The Christmas holiday is finally over. I ate and ate and ate. In fact yesterday I spent the whole day on the couch with either the flu or my stomach simply finally saying " no MORE"! I'm back to work, where at least I'm not in a constant state of grazing. Had a couple incidents happen with the fish pond in the basement over the long weekend. If you recall, the Wed. before Xmas there was an ice storm. Ice covered the trees and electrical wires. I sat at home that evening hoping the power would not go out. No air or filtration on the ponds or aquariums is a real concern for me. Well, the lights only blinked a couple times, sending all the clocks on every appliance and in every room into blinking mode. In an earlier blog, I worried about my filter restarting after being shut off for who knows how long, and sending Co2 into my pond in the basement, which the fish totally did not like. But this time, since it was only a mere blink, I thought there was no way the filter went down long enough to effect anything. Regardless, there they were all huddled in the corner again, clamped and acting like they had been traumatized again. So the only explanation was the submersible pump itself. It would have quickly stopped and restarted. Did it make some sort of noise change that scared the fish? Did it actually send some small amount of electricity into the water? It shouldn't have done that. But those 2 short blinks in the power had definitely effected the fish somehow. Even though it may not have physically hurt the fish, I know these type of things can stress a fish and stressed fish can more easily become sick. They are under a "watch" anyway since the Kojaku incident. Christmas day they still were not out of the corner. Hovering there like so many leaves blown against a fence. Saturday morning I do my routine check first thing in the am, and I'll be dang if the pump and filter are not running!!! The pump is DOA. This time I immediately flip my filter to the "back flushing" mood, so when it does restart it will not go into the pond but to the drain first. Not knowing how long its all been shut down,I immediately do a WQ check. Ammonia and nitrites are OK, so no immediate danger for the fish. Then, I pulled the pump to try to figure out the problem with it. After removing the cover, I tried several times to restart it, by just plugging it in, unplug it, plug it back in, unplug it.. No response. I can see the center of the pump is spinning, so the motor was working, but the pump propeller is not going around with it. So, once again, I call in the troops (husband, Harry) to help me. He tears the pump apart even further to find out the plastic propeller has worn so much that the motor rotor was just spinning inside the propeller. So I need to see if I can get a replacement part. But more importantly, what do we do for now? Got to have something. I have a spare pump, but its way too large for this little filter. Can we get some kind of tee in the line? So for the next hour we scramble around going through boxes of excess plumbing parts to see if we can rig up something. Harry finally gives up and makes the drive to town to buy a new pump. He comes back with a small sump pump and we're back up and running within the next 1/2 hour. A sump pump is not our preferred pump and most are not really rated to work 24/7 and some even have oil in them, but for now the filter is running and I'll attempt to go on line to see if I can get a replacement part. With the replacement of the pump, by this morning (Monday) they were again starting to come out of the corner and eat and swim as normal. Not sure if it's just my fish then or all fish, but mine seem to be super sensitive to anything "out of the normal" going on in the pond. A pump quickly switching on and off, an interrupted water flow, seems the least little thing gets them all upset again. So we're up and running again, fish again seem to be OK. It's only December, I have 5 more months of this to go yet....Bringing fish inside may be warmer for the fish, but definitely more work for the owner.