Small update on the pond... no changes to the build but I did get a new inhabitant.
This guy is still in here, and doing well I might add. He almost never shows any stress patterns anymore. I guess the larger area makes him feel more confident.
And here is the new guy... fingers crossed he does well. There goes my attempt to keep this a mainly local biotope. Oops.
Note to self... don't add any more large toothy fish known to be destructive. If any of you are familiar with dragon wrasses or harlequins, this guy i caught last month is that times 100. The fangs on him were intimidating. Never did i think it would try to bite the liner. Needless to say I woke up to the pond 1/4 drained on the patio. After inspection I found some bite marks on one of the raised creases of the liner. I thought ok, ill drain it and patch it. So I ordered some liner patch. Over the course of Saturday, It kept slowly draining so I figured there was obviously another puncture some where. Well I found another smaller hole about 6 inches over and 3 inches below. Unfortunately it still was slowly leaking over Sunday and Monday.
At this point I was honestly considering just trashing the whole thing. With a 200 gal reef in the house, 2 little kids, working full time, I really don't have the energy for more hassles and headaches being well aware of all the work it's going to take to drain it. Removing all the rocks and disturbing the semi established mangroves, removing all the sand, etc...... but I grew attached to the system and the fish, especially the queen trigger. So Tuesday and Wednesday I started kicking around the idea of scrapping the liner idea and going the epoxy plywood route. Was set on buying pond armor materials. But after draining everything, removing the styrofoam, I realized it would be too much of a headache.
When I built the pond, I used the cheaper osb type ply not the smoother finished stuff. And I went kinda overboard with the screws, so to fill in all those holes and make sure the textured surface of the osb was 100% sealed...hmm, not so sure about that. So I gave up on that idea.
So I finally decided I'm going to give it one more shot, especially since I didn't even completely finish the project. I AM going to give the liner 1 more shot, especially since the wrasse is removed. This time though, im using the 45mil rubberized liner (similar to shower pans for those that are in construction) as opposed to the the 20 mil liner I used prior which was much more rigid (kind of like a thick rigid trash bag). Its costing me $140 for a liner the size I need, as opposed to $40 like before, so almost 4X more, but I really don't want any more leaks and I hope this resolves it.
Knowing queen triggers is say it was more like the trigger that bit holes in the liner. Triggers will bite anything and everything in the tank. Unless you actually saw the wrasse doing it, both are sus.