jclimber, I've have a setup very similar to what you are talking about though my pond is only half the size, still large for an ornamental pond with goldfish. I have a Savio Skimmer with two pumps, one goes to a rapids effect at a small, small stream that feeds in under the biofilter fall, and, the other one pumps into the biofilter. I also have an upper pool and a lower pool separated by a wide but short water fall. The Savio Skimmer (full size) is located at the other end of the lower pool from the waterfall. My two magdrive pumps work fine. Laguna brand 3900 waterfall pumps. That all said, I would take ccoombs advice, no doubt. The number one problem with my pond is keeping the detritus and other junk off the bottom. In fact, you never can keep it off the bottom. The detritus is so fine that you only stir-it up if you get in to clean the pond. So my advice would be to go with the bottom drain setup but still use a skimmer box for the top floating stuff. Thanks for the btm drn link, ccoombs; I hadn't seen that... and thanks for the explanation of the bottom drain (not for draining, necessarily) because when I first heard about BDs that what I thought for sometime! I like the suggestions for saving money. If you can afford the time, better to make your own... esp. underlayment; I actually think old carpet (go dumpster diving at a carpet store) is superior to the underlayments I've laid hands on. Here's another suggestion: I'd get the rock out. It would be one thing if they were in the water atop the liner, but rolling liner up over them is just taking up space. Plus, you could use those big ones to help landscape at the edge. So it occurred to me when you talked about getting an electrician to bring a circuit out to the pond that this electrician is going to have to pay someone to trench. Most places are under the National Electric Code and that means burying the cable 30" or more... they're going to want to use a trencher. If you're going to have to get a trencher in for that you could save by getting a mini-excavator (rental from any tool/equip rental shop) and have it equipped with multiple bucket sizes... most come with options. get a slender bucket for the trench work, wider bucket for the rock. If an excavator can't lift the rock it should be able to beat on it enough to crack it smaller and scoop it out... of course, you could just pay someone to remove the large rocks. Whatever you decide make sure you have 'em mark the area for underground utilities. I really like your setup though. You never did say if you planned to have fish, what kind? Is that a german sheppard!? He/She will love the pond!

Trachyhead: Those are fantastic palms! Thats great growth in just 4 years!!! VERY NICE! I think given time, Frmmi's palm will look just fine too. In the end, its more about the care its given by its owner, than it really is where it came from. Ive rescued enough "damaged/ defective" plants in my lifetime, that no one else would want, to know that. My tiny, beat up, nasty, ragged looking, last on the shelf Red Abyssinian banana is now a healthy as a horse 5 foot giant (for a first year plant) since it has been under my care. =o) Jimhardy, I couldn't agree more. The fact that some here seem to bash others just because they got their palms from other sources, rather than from THEIR preferred company, makes me NOT want to get anything from that "preffered" company. CP does look like a great business, but some of their customers, while trying to praise them, have actually done them a disservice here IMHO.

I find that on average, 1 to 2 watts per gallon is good for terrarium plants. That's based on using compact fluo's, using the 'incandescent equivalent' wattage rather than the actual wattage. I have no idea how many lumens that is, and I'm not sure if I kept that info., since I sold my large terrarium. You'd probably want to go with closer to 2 watts a gallon in order for your tillies to have enough light to bloom. The spectrum of that light is entirely wrong, however. You want something like natural sunlight, that is, 6500-6700K. 10,000K is way too blue, and would make your tank look very cold and dim (the human eye doesn't see blue light very well). That bulb would be good for a fishtank, because blue light penetrates water the best. It would look very weird on a terrarium though, and 40 W is more than you need for a 10 gal tank. I'd keep looking, or ask the seller if they have 6500-6700K bulbs that can go in that fixture.

miesenbacher I havn't seen any pictures of your container grow outs, why is that? I guess you haven't noticed. Do you think I haven't done it? I have a veritable container garden on my deck of five-gallon SWCs that includes tomatoes. These are the two New Big Dwarfs I'm growing this year soon after being set out: Red Robin last year: Celebrity last year: Planted Rutgers determinates in 5 gallon SWCs two years ago. Three years ago planted four determinates in 5 gallon SWCs. Four years ago, planted at least four, maybe six, full-sized indeterminates in same 5-gallon SWCs. Very unhappy with them. For those plant-roots, the container size was too much like Chinese foot-binding. The topic of this thread was growing in a 5-gal bucket. Not, what is the best size container to grow in! Well, no, not exactly. Here was the question: My question is - should I do it in 2 steps - ie - move it into a medium size container, and then when it is bigger into the bucket? I have read that plants should not be in a container that is too big, don't know if that applies in this case. So this long thread progressed from there, including a discussion of container sizes for various tomato plant-sizes. I'll say it again. I grow determinates in five-gallon containers, just not indeterminates, which don't do as well as in the open earth. But people can grow tomatoes in anything they want -- they may not HAVE any open earth for indeterminates so choose to grow them in five gallon containers. In those circumstances, I'd grow them in containers, too, though I'd find a larger container than a five-galloner for most indeterminates to support the massive root system of a large mature plant.