Hi In my own experience the only thing that will stop water plants is cold . Even that just slows them down. Now is the best time to rearrange your plants . The heat is a plus . I always recommend growing "Everything in pots and even in large pools just two or three varieties. Of course the advantage is that all that growth means they are pulling all kinds of stuff out of the water. I like floaters because they are so easy to harvest and make great mulch for terrestrial plants .No chance of them growing without a source of moisture. Sandy You have my sympathy lol Ever so often I have that problem. I keep terrests in pots around the edge of my above ground and the about twice a year the coons knock them in lol. One solution I've found is to put rocks in the bottom of the planters making them heavier . gary

Very nice. Really like the rock shoals, DW has a very good eye. Using big rocks is smart. Once algae covers the rocks a bit they tend to disappear a bit, bigger rocks disappear less. Some things you might want to consider... It looks like there are some gaps in between rocks that could be filled with a little bit of mortar. I know the look you're going, you want natural not mortared rock wall, so you don't want to grout them all. But when they're underwater things change. Just like in natural gaps will fill with muck. And you won't be able to see these gaps as well even with no algae. Not a big deal but imo, better to fill with mortar. You can still leave deep gaps, but they can be filled a bit. At least as far as I can tell from the pictures. Not saying this is important at all. The cracking mortar isn't a big deal of course. For other readers... Reducing water in mortar reduces shrinkage. Like dry mashed potatoes. Two 1/2" coats would reduce shrinkage. Or doing small sections. Each section shrinks and then an adjacent section is done. The shrinkage crack would happen where it's thinnest, over the folds. You can fill the larger cracks, like say more than 1/16", if you liked. This is a good idea to lock it all down, but not super important. What is kind of important is to wait 3 or 4 weeks before filling with water. 4 weeks is best. You can wet it down right away, a little standing water would be OK. There is a lot of debate on whether keeping cement damp is needed. 30 years ago it was a requirement. Cement never stops curing and it does need some moisture. So to me, in summer, I do think it helps. And it's so easy being at the bottom of a pond. The 3 or 4 weeks are needed for the crystal structure to form enough to be fairly waterproof and to completely enclose the lime. If you add water too soon the lime can leach out and weaken the mortar a lot. People fear the lime leaching out and causing high pH and can be a small issue with uncured cement. But the weakening of the mortar is of more concern imo. Before filling the pond hose down everything. Mortar, rocks, liner, until there's a few inches of standing water. No reason to scrub anything or use anything other than water. Let that sit for 12 hours or longer. Pump out that water. Now you'd be ready to fill the pond. This wash down gets rid of dirt and mortar dust and gives any surface lime a chance to dissolve into the water. Some people might tell you to wash the mortar with acid to "remove the lime". An acid wash has the opposite effect. The surface of cement reacts with CO2 forming a kind of "rust" called calcite. The CO2 can be in the air or water. Calcite has a pH of about 7 and helps seal the cement beneath. An acid wash would dissolve the calcite leaving fresh brand new cement with a surface pH of 12. Formation of calcite is also why you don't want a lot of standing water during the cure. You want CO2 in the air getting to the cement.

Ernie, very interesting... my water has been cloudy for awhile. I've been using quilt batting both in the skimmer and the falls. When I rinse it out... the skimmer batting is green but the falls batting is brown. Seems like the algae is getting filtered at the intake end but the brown stuff (what is it? dirt?) is finer and gets through to the top. BasilB

Give them a little credit, just like your dog or cat they will move away from anything strange like a sweeper. It does come with a bag that attaches to the exit hose so if you do happen to catch a unsuspecting small tadpole or dragon fly larva you can toss it back, no worse than it was. This vacuum works continously unlike some of its predecessors or shop vacs that some people use.