I can't see how you filling up the barrel to the point of overflowing it
would happen, unless you decided to top off the barrel at 4am in the dark.
Unless you get monsoon kind of downpours a rain induced overflow isn't going
to be like a river that will flush all the fish and plants out of the
barrel.

You're worrying over what is really nothing significant. A half oak barrel
is about 20 gallons. Even if you dumped straight out onto the lawn, it's not
going to amount to much more then a patch of wet lawn. In a day or two it
will dry out.

Try it as an experiment. Fill up the barrel with water, then tip the barrel
over, and wait 10 minutes, then see how all the water has been soaked up by
the ground and everything is okay. The ground can soak up a lot of water, so
the worst case of the barrel cracking or tipping over and draining water all
the yard is really a minor concern.

Sameer

Erk, serves me right for not marking my threads some how, as I asked
this question again in another thread that I found while searching
through Google groups. Thanks a bunch for inserting your logic and
experience into my question. It's much appreciated for a newb like
me.

Although, I will say that I have had a successful time with planting
stuff in the soil. I have two rosemaries (one which has gotten really
large the past four years since planting and is finally blooming), and
a rose that blooms a lot (even after it had previously looked very
dead last year). I was surprised at how much easier it was to work
with aquatic plants, since both the water lily and Obedient Plant seem
to be alive and well!

Now I'll just have to watch the fish, and see what tonight's rains
bring for tommorrow. I suspect they might be ok, too, just lowering
metabolism for possibly cold water. They haven't keeled over
yet...and I'll soon know why if they do and learn from it (ammonia,
temperature, stress, etc....seem more picky than plants). I'm pretty
positive about the whole deal, though. Gave some few scraps of gold
fish food for whenever they find it and am searching for information
about gold fish from the web and the aquaria goldfish newgroup
wherever I can find it.

I'll avoid tapping at the sides of the container to see if they're ok
in the meantime. They are moving around and I also saw fin movements
of the dark one (mistake!) after about three or four hours. They seem
to be hiding by the Ludwigia on the ground (those plants also seem to
be doing well).

Daniel Phillips

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