Bumping this down. Brenda

Waterbug - I like your bottom drain suggestion! It solves my problem of not wanting to pipe UNDER the sewer line. I can pipe ABOVE the sewer line. Or city is pretty old and small. And in many ways still functions much like the original farming community. We still have cattle grazing on the main drag through town. Though the city/county/state have been fencing water retention ponds recently so times they may be changing. Sandy - I've got one of those UV resist stock tanks in my veggie garden. Like it alot. Hunting high and low I couldn't find one to fit the space I had available. I just wasn't willing to take out more live oak roots. (Both alive and live oak). I only had space for a 12 x 18. I figure it is a major improvement over the pumps in a black plastic box sunk in the deep end of the pond. What a pita. I'm using nested 12x18 totes. The bottom has the pump and plumbing, the top will hold filtration pads. Output from the pump goes (1) spitter (2) fountain and (3) 35'ish gallon bog pond bio filter. When I've got it all put back together, this time around the fountain basin will be overflowing into the pond. So I am thinking I can use the fountain basin also as a bio-filter. Maybe bio-balls. Keep in mind that our native soil is sand. Sand and more sand. I am moving the fountain a few feet. So I 'cut' away compacted sand trying to keep the sand base as undisturbed as possible. This time around I am using 2 8x16 cinder block. The two make a base that is equally wide as the fountain base. Settling the base was one of my first tasks. I've had 8 gallons of sand sitting on top the base while I work on the other parts. OK, lets talk water retention. My old liner is one of those PVC liners. Are you talking about water retention between the two liners? Or under the old liner? I've made the pond bigger and deeper this go around, so the old liner doesn't cover the entire cavity. I was mostly interested in covering roots and exposed retaining walls. Should I poke a bunch of holes? Heck, it is already collecting sand, so striping the very bottom in the root free zones shouldn't be an issue. Thanks for the suggestions guys and gals. ~dianne

The good news is that copper is toxic to hair algae, also known as blanket weed and string algae, at concentrations as low as three parts per million. The bad news is that above this concentration copper is toxic to fish. However, copper is toxic only in its ionic form and copper ions readily precipitate out of solution at pHs above 6.8. So if you can keep the pH above 7 you may not kill the fish. The toxicity of copper ions to fish increases as water temperatures increases. It is especially a problem during hot summer months. Copper can cause oxygen concentrations to drop, which may result in fish kills. Pond algae is a major source of oxygen production and by removing it this source of oxygen is also removed. Copper is also toxic to invertebrates, such as snails, and also most of the zooplankton in a pond (daphnia, rotifers, etc.). If your water is low in alkalinity, or if you have a heavy algae bloom and no aeration, copper must be avoided.

This is a picture of where I want to put the pond.I currently have a drawf weeping cherry three in the middle on a stone ring. Thank You!