I had this problem myself for most of last year. It started after something scared the fish and in fact killed one of them. Probably a heron. My fish would not come out during the day at all for months. Eventually they calmed down and now they come out during the day again. So your fish may have been scared by a heron attack, especially if you do see herons in your area. If you see the herons, they almost certainly see your pond! The plastic heron may help, but you may also want to get a Scarecrow, which has prevented further attacks for me. Greg

Chubbypoptart The hole originally measured about 16 feet wide and 24 feet long and about 3 feet deep. The legnth shrunk a bit with building the falls and depth is a little more now, I think about 40" since the water is above ground at the surface. I ordered a 30x40 foot firestone pond liner which was an over estimate. We could have got by with a 25x35 foot liner. I think the cost of the liner was close to $900. My guess is 5000 gallons. The pump is 7000 GPH pump, I went bigger since the hose to the fall is over 20 feet long I thought I might loose some pressure. The pump was about $275.00. Everything else I scrownged or had. I probably spent another $600 on plants. So total price I guess would be about $2000.00 with all the odds and ends. As far as getting it smooth it was easy. Our soil is a sandy loam with no rocks so we just used a flat head shovel to flatten the surfaces. Yes, all dug by hand by my dear husband and son in law. Sanctified, I used Glover Nursery in West Jordan and Earth Systems on 9th east and about 7300 south and a couple online stores. I could not get the liner locally since it was so large. The rocks were collected from Stansbury Island, Skull Valley, the Delle exit off I-80 and west of Utah Lake. I think they found the red ones west of Utah lake. Don't blame you for not doing a pond in WVC, I hear the ground is rocky and impossible to dig in.

Hi scottspond, some how didn't think she would, Florida vs Manchester, no contest really ;-) The area I live in is New Mills, in High Peak in Derbyhsire. If it doesn't ring a bell, it's just past Lyme park, Buxton is about 2 miles away, Stockport 9 miles and Manchester 20 miles (all via road) Handily the railway station is about 5 mins away from my home, so trips to Manchester are pleasent through the countyside and don't require I use the car ;-) And in summer I get to hop on the odd steam trian, every boys dream. My Mancunian mates reckon I've gone "all posh" living here, as I was born and grew up in Fallowfield and went to school in Rusholme. Regards ChrisC.

1) Our pond will be semi raised. We are thinking of using concrete block for the structure and facing the outside with stone. The raised portion will only be 18 inches high. Will the liner be okay over the concrete with a regular (i.e. what the place we'll purchase the liner from will sell us) underliner. Thoughts, comments, vast imporvements? Don't waste money on underlayment....just get some scrap carpet and use that instead. Carpet protects the liner from the blocks much better than underlayment and it is free. 2) How large a pumphouse would we need to house an external pump and biofilter? depends on what kind of filter you will be using. Some take up a lot of room....some don't. Instead of using a 100 gallon tank, you could use two 55 gallon plastic barrels. Available used from many sources for around $8 each (or sometimes free) 3) How much do we need to worry about freezing? Some pipes will be exposed (must come out of ground to connect to settling chamber.) I am assuming that we will run things all winter. I'm in the mid-Willamette Valley, so we don't get frozen too often. If you are running the pond all winter, freezing won't be much of a problem. Water will freeze in small diameter pipes and drain lines though, so wherever your clean-out drains are on your filters you may need some winter protection. I just stack bags of compost on top of the lines and valves and never had one break. 4) We are going with a 2 inch bottom drain as all our fish will be goldfish. Would they be safe with a 3 inch drain? Will one drain be sufficient? It appears you are gravity feeding a settling tank and then pumping cleaned water back to the pond....right? Forget a 2" drain. A 2" drain will only gravity flow about 900 gallons per hour at the most. Not nearly enough. A 3" line will flow about 2000 gph and a 4 " drain will flow around 3500 gph. You will want to turn the pond over every hour (3500 gallon pond should filter 3500 gallons per hour), so size the drain to match your pump. The size of the drain has nothing to do with the size of the fish. When you set the drain, you install the dome cover so that there is only about 3/8" gap between the edge of the cover and the pond bottom. This will exclude most fish. If any DO go thru the drain, they will just end up in the settling tank where you can rescue them.