"Hi Comettose, Thanks for your advice re the pond; the shop vac which you are using--what brand is it? You mentioned water change, how much water do you discard when you backwash the pond? A few inches e.g. 3 or 4" or more in the Spring. What source do you use for your aquatic plants? I am unfamiliar with Thalia." I just ran down the basement to see what brand and it says 'ShopVac'. 14 gallon capacity. It is red and black. My neighbors gave it to me. It is on wheels and sits in a partial container (can't explain that too well). 10.5 amp motor. It has a long hose and there are small wedge attachments, brush attachments, etc. It shuts off when the holding tank is full and I unscrew a cap and all the water and leaves/gravel shoots out around my pond plantings. You have to be careful with it - it will suck up fish or frogs (not that I've done that) but it does have powerful suction. If my fish or frogs get nosy and try to swim near the suction tip I move it away. It is easy to move around the pond as it has a handle on top and I can pull it along on the wheels. My pond is approximately 8 x 10, about 19 to 21 inches deep. When I do a partial water change I take it down anywhere from 3 to 6 inches. I bought my Thalia a few years ago at Lowe's. It needs a really big pot as the plant itself is 3/4 feet or taller and the bloom stalks shoot up six feet. The flowers are purple and smell and look something like lilac. The bees like them. The base of the stems are reddish and the leaves sort of blue/green. You can buy Thalia at Lilypons (online). It is a native plant. There are tropical versions too, but mine is hardy as I leave it in my Zone 7 pond all winter. I'll search around for a photo of it. Here is a link that might be useful: ShopVac Link

I stacked a row than packed the dirt behind it (really well stomping on it and wetting it down and such) stacked another row then packed the dirt behind it and so on and so forth till it was up to the level I wanted. I had no filtration last year and I have high ph so my pond plants that I wanted to be the filters did not do great. I had algae issues and while the water was pretty clear it was never as clear as I wanted. Rather than spending a bunch more money on plants this year and having the same issue I decided to go with the skippy filters. I am going to plant them and the little bog at the top of the falls heavily but not worry as much about the plants in the pond this year. Within 5 days of running the skippies, my water is crystal clear. It has never been so clear.

Lovely pond. Watergardening is a lot of work, but well worth it in the rewards their beauty brings. You've done a wonderful job, and it looks like everything is thriving. I see what looks like a koi near the bottom left corner of the second pic. I love that wooden fence next to the pond also. Does it separate the pond area from the rest of your yard, or separate your yard from your neighbor's? There appears to be a gate there, so I'm guessing it's your yard? Just a wild guess on the fake rock. Is it the large one in the top left corner in the second pic, possibly concealing a skimmer?

Waterfalls are designed to provide aesthetic appeal, some oxygen, and to create a circular motion in the Main Pool to direct floating debris into the skimmer. Falls don't add much O2. Directing pump output directly into the pond creating a current moves more water to the surface where gas exchange happen. Falls only improve gas exchange in the sense that you need moving water to create a fall, it isn't the falls directly. That's just kind of nitpicking in your case because you sure shouldn't have any O2 issues at all. It's only in high fish load ponds that a keeper would rather use a tangential pond return to create a stronger current than have a falls. But a person can improve total gas exchange and still have falls for the same costs. I call this a waterfall catch basin. Installed: The idea is to direct all the water from the falls to the pond bottom which pushes low O2 water at the bottom to the surface where gas exchange happens. It also calms the surface of the water making fish view better. It also catches foam that can be produced by falls that float around the surface. You still get the look and sound. Falls don't really direct stuff to the skimmer (although many web sites say different). Skimmers work because of surface tension. The Helix skimmer can house a submersible pump beneath a single blue matala pad, but it is my understanding that external pumps in flooded suction applications are more energy efficient and last longer being they are not constantly submersed in water. I've never noticed any difference in life span. Some pumps last a month, some seem to last forever. My best lasting pump was a 900 GPH mag drive. Raccoon pulled it out of the skimmer once and I found it laying on the ground the next day still running. Put it back in the pond and it ran fine. Submerged pumps are made to be submerged. A mag drive for example doesn't have any seals to wear out. Energy efficiency I don't think has anything to do with external vs submerged. Pumps vary a lot in that regard. So you can find cases where one or the other wins. Where you really win energy wise is picking the right pump. Low head when appropriate for example. But also the size. ...into one or more plastic drums filled with possibly lava rock and/or a series of matala pads to enhance water quality. This is a really old type filter. There are much better. I would not bother. I don't like cleaning mats, especially when they don't improve the water. I think you'll falling into a trap that I and pretty much every other pond keeper falls into. Laying awake at night dreaming of magnificent filters and clear water? Most filters do nothing, yet many owners will say the reason their water is clear is because of their filter(s). This is especially true in the DIY world. They see what they want to see, that their invention is the best thing ever created. Get yourself a UV filter, installed, sized and maintained correctly and you'll never have green water, 100% of the time. Longer term water can get a little crappy. Water changes takes care of all these causes. In fact, there is a newer type system a few people are using that's based on the oldest fish keeping practice, 24/7 drip water change. A drip emitter runs 24/7 into the pond and an overflow takes away the extra water. IMO there is no better system based on what keepers have long said about normal water changes. If the overflow is directed to landscaping that would normally need water there's no extra water cost. People using this system have also not seen green water but too early to tell if this is always true. My next pond will be 24/7 drip for sure. By running the 3" pipe under the Upper Basin, I can keep the water in it protected from freezing. I don't think pipes can be protected from freezing since ground freezes to some depth and the pipe are above grade at some point I assume. Freezing pipes in ponds aren't generally an issue because they're open to the air. Closing them will valves can create a problem. ...submerged oxygenating plants. They produce O2 only when the sun is out. At night they consume O2. The net result is they are a negative. They're also ever difficult to keep alive. The drums I mentioned are only to be used to cut the discharge velocity to That can be addressed by changing the pump size or simpler ways. If you really want drums then cool. I used to love drums, had them all over the place. I slowly got over the thrill of lots of complex plumbing and started removing stuff. Turned out I didn't need any of it. I'm not saying you shouldn't have complex...it's fun for awhile...you learn a lot...but there are other options. You mentioned two pumps: one for the skimmer at 2000 gph (more or less) and a 2nd one pulling a slip stream directly from the pond, mid-depth. I have a single 20A circuit for power. I agree that I want the weir floating and not being sucked full down and so two pumps might work better, but there would be no filtration for the 6000 gph pump to supply the waterfalls. That concerns me. Why the concern? You mean no pre-filter? External pumps can have a strainer pot before the pump to protect it. But a mid level pickup normally will be pretty clean water. Submerged pumps can be placed so clogging is reduce. Placing them on the bottom is bad imo, get empty the pond. The helix skimmer is rated at 8000 gph and I might be able to use two of them side-by-side with a 4000 gph pump for each. What about that? I personally wouldn't. It would work of course, but then you have 2 skimmers to clean out. Extra $500, extra install time, another thing to go south. I like simple. If you want 8000 GPH for aesthetic you should absolutely have 8000 GPH. Ponds should always be built to want the owner wants...it's the whole point for building a pond. But if this is mainly to create water flow for filtering or driving stuff to the skimmer or because someone said a falls should have 150 GPH per inch then you have options. For example, I had a pond once that was 7600 gals, 6 connected ponds, 2 skimmers, one waterfall, all driven with a single 900 GPH 42 watt pump. The waterfall was 2' wide, but the water sheet was less. Much higher fish load than you, no bio filter. Aesthetics totally aside, this functioned fine technically. Water was clear to 4.5'. It took me awhile (several years) to figure out how it get the water clear (this was before UV filter were cheap), but it is possible with a lot less flow. One thing you might consider for example is making the 3 outer pools into a single pool and maybe going for 1 waterfall. Again, I really don't want to talk you out of your vision...just not sure if aesthetics or technical issues are driving the design. I know it's partly both, but is there room to down size the pump? 8000 GPH for this type of pond is a lot. Which is fine if that's what you want. The plants, the bio filter stuff...if you want all that because you want all that then cool. I love stuff like that. But don't be fooled into thinking this will all give you clear water or make water cleaner or improve fish health. Plants add more waste than they remove in total. There are certain things some plants do remove, like nitrate, which is cool. But with a couple of goldfish you are never, ever going to come remotely close to having a nitrate issue. Plants like the Iris will need to be fertilized, which will add nitrate to the water. Not a problem, but don't believe people that say these kinds of plants remove waste. Waste water treatment plants do use vegetation to reduce some chemicals. But these are huge and nutrient levels very high which they're only trying to knock down. Backyard ponds aren't in that ballpark. Also, you mention that Helix 8200 is a high head pump, I wasn't aware of that. How can you tell? The max head is over 20'. A low head pump the max head will be 10-15'. There are even very low head pump schemes where the max head is an inch or two. You also see the difference when you compare GPH per watt, although pumps vary because of other things. Lower head pumps should be higher GPH per watt, otherwise they're really bad pumps. Lastly, I was not planning on any compressor for subsurface air. I'd prefer to rely on natural oxygenation and purification of the water, if practical. Your pond doesn't come close to ever needing more O2. For comments on the plumbing I'd need a diagram. Text is too hard to follow for that. But in general, I'd just pump directly into the upper pool. Like make 2-3' of total pipe, maybe one 90. Instead of a drum you can just build a rock/block.brick wall inside the pool, on top of the liner...I should draw this.