I've had several pondless water features and they are an absolute joy. As long as you have power near by they can be very easy. Smallest -------- Bury a 5 gal bucket, or smaller, so the rim is slightly below the surrounding ground. Place small fountain pump in the bottom of the bucket. Remove any filter. Connect a length of hose to the pump out flow. Put some bricks around the pump to form a opening around the pump. Buy a piece of pond liner. I like EDPM but anything will do since it is protected from UV. The piece can be any size you like but the bigger you make it the less splash will be a problem. 3'x3' would cost less than $10. Cut a small circle in the liner maybe 4" in diameter. Position the opening over the bucket and kind of push the liner down into the bucket. Fill in the bucket with rocks which will hold the liner in place. More gaps between the rocks the better. Put dirt under the liner so it slopes to the bucket. Can be flat, slope away is no so good. Berm around the outside to create a lip. Test with water to make sure the water ends up in the bucket. Cover the liner with more rocks, any size and shape. Build your water falls anywhere you want on top of the liner. Med to Large ------------ Basically just like a regular pond. Dig the hole, cover with pond liner. I like EDPM. Cut holes in a 5 gal bucket to let water in. I use a hole saw, 1" or so. Soldering iron will work, torch, or even matches. Nothing fancy. Bucket goes into the pond ideally so the top of the bucket is just below where the rock surface will be. Brick in the bottom of the bucket, pump on top of the bucket. Plumb the pump to wherever the water feature will be. Remove the pump's filter. It serves almost no purpose in a regular pond and absolutely no purpose in a pondless feature. Put the top onto the bucket. I like the screw on type. For snap on I'd just lay the top on for easy access. Fill in around the bucket with good size rocks, hopefully larger than the holes in the bucket. Fill in the pond with rock. I like 2" river rock, sometimes called drain rock. Build your waterfall anywhere you like. Pretty easy to move it later if you think it can be improved. Build it so it will drain when the pump is off and you won't have algae problems. Plants ------ In both setups you can add potted plants that like wet feet. A few plants can really improve the look. Water Source ------------ You can just top off with a garden hose as needed. Or for top of the line... I put a livestock water tank float valve in the pond. Less than $15 at feed stores. I connect that to a sprinkler valve on a timer. I set the timer for about 2 min each day. Water is only added if the float is down enough and the sprinkler timer is on. So if the float fails the worst I do is overflow for less than 2min which is fine. Here in Phoenix 2 min a day is more than enough. Pondless features use very little water. Electric -------- You want GFI protection. For top of the line... Another nice thing is a remote switch. Cost like $10-15 at Home Depot etc... One end plugs into the outlet and the pump plugs into the other end. Little remote control to turn it on and off. Just make sure the plump isn't too large for the switch. For crazy cool... I use an Intermatic lighting controller. I set it to start the pump just before we wake up, off when we go to work, on just before we come home, etc... Way cool but pricy at around $150 for everything. Maintenance ----------- I've been running 2 of these features for more than a year and I've done nothing. For most ponds zero maintenance means a few hours a week. But these pondless deals I've done zero, nothing. I haven't added a drop of water, the auto fill does it. I don't even turn them on and off the timer does it. No string algea since it isn't on 24/7. Most of the water is in total darkness so unicell algae doesn't really grow very well. No exposed water so no mosquitoes. You can put a clorhine tablet in the water once a week if you want but I not had the need. Leaves are no problem. Rake them of the top like the rest of the yard. Birds ----- Birds love the sound of moving water. If you make a place for them to bath you'll have lot's of birds. An easy way is to place the bowl from a bird bath on some rocks and run the pump hose into the bowl. If you drill a hole thru the bowl at its lowest point to run the hose thru you'll hide the hose. No real need to seal the hole since a small leak is fine. When the pump is off the water will drain out back down the hose so the bowl is empty and no algae or mosquitoes will form.

I have a pond that is about 800 gallons. I don't have any kind of filter in it. Just alot of pebbles on the bottom and it seems to work. I also have a small waterfall and it seems to work just fine. I don't think i would worry about a waterfall filter until you found you needed one. I made the waterfall from a mountain of clay i dug out to make the pond. I did it in 3 sections. Each section you make you have to use a seperate piece of rubber. The top section is a small pool (about 5 gallons) that the water pumps into. From this the water runs over a lip and down about 4 feet of layered slate. It them dumps over another ledge and into another small pool (about 20 gallons). It them dumps from this pool into the pond. If you just keep your slate and stones on top of the rubber it shouldn't leak if you layer your rubber over top each other going down. If you want the ribbon effect of water running over the slate you have to put the slate under the cut rubber to stick out over the edge with the piece of rubber going over most of it. you cover up the visable rubber that's over the slate with rocks to hide it. You might have to put another piece of rubber under the origional rubber if the water is going to run backwards under the slate and leak out. I had to do this in one section only. All the other pieces are o.k. You can also get some foam spray stuff from the garden store that is suppost to seal these slate pieces together and that way the water won't run between the slate pieces. It would seal it i think. I hope this helps.

1sst, thank you very much for the info. My current pond that I have in my yard was with the help of many people on this forum. It's been 5 years now since my first pond and I'm now looking at adding more (a stream from one pond to another). I know from the work on my first pond that it takes a lot longer than 48 Hrs, It took me 2 days just to dig a 5' x 9' hole 30" deep. No matter how old you get, you just look for easier ways even though you know it's too good to be true. Thanks again eh

That's pretty much how my bog works! Except because of the way we built ours, it's a challenge to get the water level below the gravel level, (waterfall is a little bit too high >.<). The bog water level is above the gravel in a few spots, and it becomes a string-algae-covered mess. But... I still love my bog =D Only thing is I wish it was bigger! Plants take off like nobody's business! We have a triple pond setup -- bog is at the top, then a waterlily/frog habitat, and then a small goldfish pond -- all told about 700 gallons. Note this year we will be expanding the lower pond, and our bog will likely be too small, but we have plans for a supplementary waterfall filter. Here's a photo from last year from our 2nd story deck. In the photo, bog is at the bottom, middle pond is top right and lower pond is top left. The pump sits in the lower pond, then tubing brings it around to the bog via perforated PVC and the water cascades down from there. We put in a check valve in the bog piping to keep backflow from occurring during a power outage, as well.