hoovb, I have about 8 goldfish left that are 2-3" long. From a formula that I have found, it appears that I need 72" of fish for 36 square feet of surface water, so I am going to need more fish. I am using Stress Coat which is what everyone around here has recommended. The pump that a friend loaned me would not hold a prime and was a slow trickle. In desperation I rented a sump pump at 7:00 last night. I am looking at a shop vac that has a pump and you can hook your garden hose up to it to send the water where you want. This would serve 2 purposes: regular vacuuming and draining the pond when I need to. Slow will be fine in the future. No more deadlines for cleaning this thing out! LP, After getting real up close and personal with my water and the stuff on the bottom, I have a better idea of what is really down there. Lots of oak leaves, branches, and acorns. Until the leaves fell I plucked what I could find out of there about twice a day (I love my pond!) and then I put a net on when the leaves fell. The biggest problem is the way that I had my plants set on stacks of bricks to elevate them: there is no way to scoop out the bottom periodically with that kind of setup. Too difficult to remove (and then I would be wading in the water) and everything collects around them. I have some plastic tables and buckets that I could weight down with the bricks that I could easily remove to scoop in the future. Plus, I don't really want alot of plants in pots other than about 3 water lilies and a couple of iris. The rest will be floaters. I don't think that my water is as 'green' as it is 'brown' and very murky, and it really didn't stink as bad as I thought. More like a river or lake smell. The stuff I scooped out was pretty stinky, but overall the water was not so bad. I could not see more than about 4" before I stirred everything up and then it was worse. I let the 3" deep water that the sump pump wouldn�t remove settle overnight and it is crystal clear with a layer of what looks like dirt on the bottom. I'll vacuum what I can of that out of the bottom and move on. I guess I thought that was what was on the bottom and not all this other disgusting stuff. How naive of me. I am guessing that any dirt that winds up in the bottom is okay, but the other gunk is what I need to worry about scooping out. I am rethinking a filter, and wondering about the rate that the water is being pumped through the fountain. Don't I need to move a certain amount of water in an hour? I have about 450 gallons and the pump I have moves 210 gallons per hour, and I was planning to clamp it off a bit so that it would move slower since the fountain should trickle, not shoot water out. I am including a link so you can see. It just looks odd to have the water spraying out of an urn. I have tried to move the pipe down so it will hit the side of the urn before coming out, but it won't budge and I don't want to mess up the fountain. The way this is set up, with the higher wall behind the fountain, anything that I put behind there would be a bit difficult to get to, but an external filter could be hidden behind the fountain. There is only a hole in the brick wall that is big enough for the cord for the pump to go through and not much more. None of this may matter, but I have not really looked at filter setups, so I don't know. Could I eventually get the right balance to control algae with enough fish and floating plants. I don�t really mind cleaning this out every year or so with the right equipment and no deadline, but isn�t it better to not do a major overhaul like this if possible in order to build the right balance? Is that even possible without an elaborate system? So sorry that this is so long-winded, but I don�t know how to cut this down more than I already have. Thank you all so, so much for taking the time to read and answer my many questions. It has helped tremendously! Angela

I think MAYBE the height needs to be adjusted so that it is lower--I'm not sure as I am only looking at the pictures in the install manual. Does the stopper itself just "force fit" or "snap" over the rod that the nut is on? What about taking a very small dab of 100% silicone caulk and sticking it up under the stopper & down to the rod to hold it in place? Just a dab ought to work and not make it a "permanent" hold so as someone can still pull the stopper out to clean it & stick it back down with another dab later on. If the stopper just sits down on top of the rod itself and doesn't "snap" or "slip fit" over the rod, here's what I would do: 1. Remove stopper and turn it upside down. 2. Buy another nut the same size as the one that is on the rod and super glue or affix it to bottom of stopper in EXACT center of underside of stopper. 3. Once the nut has dried & is stuck securely to underside of stopper, then I would just screw the stopper with the super-glued nut to the rod itself with just a turn or two to hold it in place. It might even take 2 or 3 nuts stacked/glued on top of each other to "build up" the nut so that it can make contact with the rod to screw down. Hope this helps.... Jeanie

I had a disaster before I even put the liner in my newly dug pond! I don't drive, so had cycled from the aquatic centre with the liner rolled up in a rucksack but when I got off my bike and bent down, the liner fell out onto its corner and put a hole through two folds! It could only happen to me!! Considering I was building a 9' x 8' pond, I was mortified because of the expense, but I was actually really lucky because the holes were very near the top of the pond and one bit missed altogether. I repaired it with a strip of tape that they sell in aquatic centres for this purpose. It's about 2" wide, from what I remember, and it's got a very tacky side after you peel the backing off. I'm sure it needs to be dry, but you could ask advice. Good luck with the repair. I built my pond three years ago but I'm not going to tempt fate by saying any more!!

bsquared18, We have a fish pond with water lilies, underwater plants, bog plants, fish, frogs, and flowers/shrubs/trees surrounding the pond, and our water feature has nothing but a water fountain pump, but surrounded with shrubs and trees; clogged filters are the bane of my existence! Well, not that bad... I have other 'banes' : ) I have always meant to construct a screen covering for the small in-water pump at our water feature... I have screen too, as well as a tupperware container which would fit over the pump. I thought I'd make a structure of the tupperware by cutting squares on the sides, lining the inside with the screen (I think it'd stay inside if it were fitted well enough), cutting a hole for the outlet tubing and electrical corn and placing it over the pump (I'd also intended to glue rocks to the top to make it less noticeable and weight it down). *I've not gotten around to it*. I think the idea might be a good one with one caveat; the bottom of our concrete water feature is ever so slightly curved, so very small debris (leaf fragments) would still get in. The small in-water pumps we use (basically fountain pumps) have grooves where the water is pulled in, and those are a pain to clean out. Screen mesh would be easier to clean. I think one would have to be careful not to limit water flow, and to keep an eye on the mesh, but shaking debris or hosing it off mesh has to be better than trying to dig out tiny twigs and mucky debris from the pump grooves. You might have a better or easier way to construct a screen covering. Ours is aluminum, with some bend. Simple aluminum screen from the big box store (I use it in the bottom of my planters, with rocks, to prevent so much dirt from coming out during heavy rains). It's hot here, and we are rather busy with gardening, but I still plan to get around to this, eventually. If any of us here make something along those lines, let's make a friendly pact to share photos, how-to's, and results/experiences, shall we? I think when people work together to solve problems or make life easier, it's always beneficial.