I think the truth is somewhere in between, but I lean towards your position strongly. The reason is, I had aquariums for years, with lots of fish, and somewhat limited filtration (although I did have it). I used subgravel filters in combination with moving water. The water got very "mulmy" but the fish did not tend to die or suffer too much. In an outdoor pond, a few fish may cause the water to move, and outdoor rains (such as in our area) ensure fresh water supplies somewhat regularly. Rain and wind here would also increase water movement on the surface of the pond, and enhance water circulation. This may be sufficient to process the fish wastes, if there are a limited number of fish. I certainly would not recommend filling the bottom of a liner pond with dirt or gravel! Nor did George suggest that (in his defense). I do believe that fish can smell--otherwise why would there be sprays to apply to fish bait? So I sure don't want to make their lives miserable with bacterial stink! I would rather err on the side of the fish! Since they can't speak for themselves, I should think health and happiness would be their wish? I could run a small stream of water out of a hose from our well, and also provide an exit on one side of the pond. This may be all that I need. I may experiment. But my master plan is to have a pump running water to a waterfalls, after exitting a filter barrel. :) Randy

I wonder if you only heard "extension cord"? An extension cord is not to code and not desired. However, I've often installed small ponds using conduit and run the pump cord thru the conduit to the outlet. Pumps can come with very long cords, 15'. Running the cord thru the conduit keeps everything neat and safe. Your contractor could get away with no conduct and just bury the cord because most are rated for burial. But conduct makes it easy to replace a pump later. Tie a string to the male plug, pull the pump out and the cord out thru the pond. Untie the string, tie onto new male plug and pull the string thru the conduit along with the power cord. Sounds like a good contractor and I can count on one hand the number of times I've said that. Having an outlet next to a small pond is something I try to avoid. They're a little hard to hide imo. If the pond is changed later it often has to be moved. But OK if needed. Now for the myths...and there are many. I'm assuming you'll have a few goldfish and aren't planning on koi. 5' diameter, 3' and you want simple. Good news is simple is also the easiest way to keep a pond. People on the web are bored and like to make pond keeping as complex as possible so they have something to talk about. Retailers like complex as possible so they have something to sell, and boy do they have stuff to sell. 1. If you're in a retail store to buy anything other than feeder goldfish or food you are going to make your life very complex. 2. Steep sides protecting fish from predators is a myth. It only sounds good and for many people that's good enough. Raccoons can pin a fish to the side vertical pond wall no problem. Herons, including Night Herons, have no problem jumping into a pond after fish or taking one on the wing. Plenty of YouTube videos showing that and I've seen Great Blues do it in an 8' deep pond (was a pool). 3. Marginal plants do not need to be submerged. When the label says submerged 6" or 12" they're taking about the max depth the plant can take. All marginals do much better in damp soil than submerged. And your life gets much easier too. String algae will often grow in and around the plants and getting it out is pretty much impossible. With no plants in the pond pulling out string algae is very easy. Plant pots on a shelf don't stay on a shelf. Little wind and over they go, dumping stuff all over your pond. And pots are raccoon magnets because looking under rocks for food is what they do for a living. If picking pots out of your pond every few weeks and trying to get the soil/media out doesn't sound like fun I concur. Water lilies and floating plants are the only plants that have to be inside the pond. In general these don't have the raccoon and algae issues. Completely submerged plants also, but these make life harder for you. 4. Plants do not add O2 to the pond, at least in any meaningful way. They consume O2 at night so the net result is water O2 is higher without plants. Not saying you shouldn't add plants, I'm saying adding them to increase O2 is a myth. Water Gardens are fine with plants because they don't have high fish loads. 5. Bio filters are almost never needed in a Water Garden. There are few enough fish that the pond by itself is bio filter enough. But buying an ammonia test kit is a good idea. Seeing a growing level of ammonia that isn't explained by water changes is when you need to consider adding a bio filter. Bio filters are easy to add later. 6. Mechanical filters (pads, sponge, etc) are pretty much worthless. Yes they will collect crap, and it does look like a lot when you clean them, but 99% of the crap stays in the pond. Way more effective in your size pond to just use a net and scoop around the pond bottom every week or so in the summer. You'll remove more and stir the bottom which helps break down small stuff. Emptying a new is sooooo much easier than cleaning these crappy filters sold to new pond owners. 7. Pumps are not required, but are very nice to have and does improve water quality. 8. Skimmers aren't just for leaves. Water surface tension allows dust to settle on the surface. It can make the water look dull. Skimmer fixes that. If you have a water falls it can produce foam on the surface and a skimmer helps reduce the build up of foam on the water. I like a catch basin under the fall to totally eliminate foam and makes the surface still for better fish viewing. Personally I think a skimmer is a good investment. I build my own so I can place the pump behind the skimmer basket for the basket acts as my pre-filter. I like the pump up high. Easier to check and a pump on the bottom can drain a pond if something goes wrong. 9 Shade does indeed reduce algae growth...but not enough that you would notice. Whether it takes 20 or 22 days for string algae to become a problem doesn't really matter. Or whether a pond is sea green or forest green doesn't really matter, the pond is still green and unacceptable. 10. You didn't mention it but plants also don't use enough nutrients to starve algae to death. Adding plants increases the amount of nutrients in a pond in almost every case thanks to the soli/media/fertilizer we add. One good thing plants do normally bring is string algae. Algae species battle each other different ways and one is by producing chemicals that make the water toxic to some other species of algae. They're why clear ponds stay clear although they almost never get the credit. 11. UV filters are sized to keep a clear pond clear. If you wait until the pond is green you might need a bigger UV, although with a bypass and slowing the water thru the UV they can often clear a pond. The most likely time you'll get green water is during the initial startup. If you can get some plants into the pond, even if only temporary, string algae will likely come along for the ride and maybe get the upper hand and be able to stop green water algae from ever getting started. That's hit or miss. Green water algae also produces a chemical to kill string algae so the plants have to be there when water is added. But if you don't want to screw around a UV is your best investment. They can often be turned off after a month or two. The UV kills the green water algae so no chemicals to stop string alage (actually all macro algae) from getting established. Macro algae will appear on its own, spores float in the air, but can have a difficult time growing in green water. Waterfalls can help macro algae establish even in green water sometimes. UVs can just be turned off. In some climates there are sometimes special instructions. When starting them up after being off for awhile it's a good idea to remove the glass sleeve that has the bulb inside and make sure that's clean. Also, these glass sleeves can sometimes cloud over, like a lime deposit but it isn't lime. This can happen after just a few hours of use. It's rare, but if water doesn't clear it's something to check. It's easy to clean off and surprising doesn't seem to repeat. I've only seen it once. The most important advice I give is to not believe the most popular "facts". We live in a much different age than even 20 years ago. There used to be a filter on info. Now everyone's fantasy is presented as fact. It's getting harder everyday to wade thru the mountains of crap info. I think it's actually probably impossible. And that is by far the biggest cause for ponds to be filled in.

Mike, in my post I said I did not use my lights to 'grow' plants, I said I use them to provide 'short night' response in my photoperiodic plants to postpone their bloom times. For that, I don't need 2K foot candles, I need 20 foot candles. For the purposes of determining the quantity of light your plant is actually getting you can't just spit out the wattage or lumen rating output of a bulb as rated on its package. For instance, a hundred watt, unshielded incandescent bulb, ten foot away from an object will only provide about 1.5 foot candles as measured at that objects surface. That isn't much, is it? So, you can't just say a lamp has X lumens and have that mean much of anything. That's the potential output of the bulb. What you are interested in are the readings at leaf level, measured in lux or light density and that is going to vary greatly depending on how far away the light source is, what design the reflectors are, angles, intensity at various points of the cone of the beam. Yadayadayada. And if you think you are actually doing much trying to supplement the natural light by hanging a few shop lamps from an overhead beam in a greenhouse with a flourescent tube in them............well, it's not going to hurt anything, but it probably has negligible actual benefit to the plant. So, if you are really needing to provide lighting by which a plant will actually grow.........then your supplemental growing light has to be quite close to the plant, or the output has to be considerably higher than you think if mounted from overhead beams. The only way to really tell is to meter it out at various points in a greenhouse. That's why I suggested the poster find out what intensity of illumination leafy veggies really take. If she/he can make do with natural light, it would save a lot of money, and I suspect they'll grow just fine without supplementation. That's why in all but special circumstances where high light levels are absolutely necessary for producing certain plants in a winter setting, most growers do not go the expense of installing supplemental lighting. It's expensive to install and it's expensive to run, unless you are just interested in starting a few seedlings or a very limited collection of conservatory plants.

Steve, most homes with an existing well or watersource use one of two pump types to create pressure water. If pumping from a stream, cistern, lake pond or shallow well, they use a AC jet pump. If pumping from a drilled well, they use an AC submersible inline pump. Both of these pumps types, hard start, that is the pump uses full power to try to push the full head of water. This causes a major initial draw of power, which in most cases, is either too much draw off the inverter, and a major drain of power. To add alternative energy to a on grid home, as back up power for the grid being down, requires a separate breaker panel, wired to specific circuits on the main panel. This is done because the alternative power array, and the battery bank are too small to run the whole house. Unless the well pumps are replaced, there is not enough power to run the well pumps, and as in most applications the well pumps are also the pressure pumps, there will not be running water, other than the initial amount in the pressure tanks, while the grid is down. They make however, soft start AC submersible inline pumps. These pumps have a built in valving system that allows bypass to the pump vanes, so the initial draw by the pump is easily handled by the inverter. These pumps are not cheap. I have not been able to find any soft start AC jet pumps. So, with an existing on grid house, to run the well pump during a blackout, will resuire in the minimum, replacing the submersible or jet pump, with a very expensive soft start submersible pump. Off grid homes are another matter, and I would suggest that the system be built around a 24VDC or 48VDC soft start submersible inline pumps, as these pumps are capable of providing both lift and pressure, (or if the well is close to the house, 120VDC soft start submersible inline pumps).