I have a puzzling issue with my pond. My husband and I moved into our house 2 years ago, this is our second summer with a fish pond that already existed when we moved into the house. Anyway, here's the puzzling part. Twice last summer and now once this summer our pond has suffered HUGE water loss in a matter of 24 hours, 2" water left on the bottom. The two times last summer, we caught it fast enough to get water back in the pond and save the fish. This past time, we weren't so lucky, 3 died and 3 remain. I don't know the exact size of the pond but if I had to guess, I'd say 150 gallons. There isn't a leak, neither slow nor fast in the liner. We're seriously at a loss as to how this happens. Any ideas?
Signed,
Nikki in MN

I see you were finally able to post!

My 1800 gallon pond has been almost emptied a few times as well. In my case, a huge dog moved some rocks at the top of my waterfall which diverted water away from the pond so the pump pumped water out. Despite 1000 gallons lost, the area around the falls seemed to be barely wet. What kind of pump and filter system do you have? Do you have a waterfall, fountain, etc.? Could it have been diverted? I'm assuming once you refill the pond, it retains water fine then?

Ponds can lose a lot of volume when animals drink from them or splash around in them. To lose almost 150 gallons in a day though seems extreme unless you had a herd of grazing animals come through or a large animal splashing around. Any bears there? Once, our deer drank my 153 gallon pond down about 4" in one day.

the same thing happened to us the weekend of the 4th of July. I think what happened in our case was some plant matter got hung up in my spitter pump and clogged it just enough so that the spitter wasnt quite making it to the pump. We got back on Monday and there was about a foot of water left in the bottom of the pond. Luckily, no fish loss, we only lost some water lettuce.