Dear Waterking, Try posting this on discussions and you will get replies. This is the photo sharing portion of the board. If your pond does not freeze you will be fine without a waterfall. If it freezes then you will need to keep a hole in the ice with a heater, water pump, air bubbler ect. Regards, Lisa

I did it! =] I was near tears when I came inside at dark-thirty last night. I asked myself how could something I enjoy so much make me so miserable and it hit me like a ton of rocks, lol. I was trying to create hubby's vision - not mine. And really, just the thought of tryin to get in his head is beyond scary, lol. Sooo...I was at the pond at 6:30 am, coffee in hand. I ripped out the mess, peeled back the liner & started on MY vision. Two hours later I was contentedly sipping my second cuppa joe admiring my work when hubs appears. Wow, he says, that's awesome! Did you do that??? Didn't know whether do laugh or cry. *chuckle* I spent the rest of the day adding fill dirt & top soil & planting the stuff I potted up to make room for the addition. Got the trench dug for my water line from the lower pond to the skippy which hopefully will go in tomorrow. Now if I can just put the brakes on hub's [armchair quarterback] enthusiasm. He's impatient to get the 3 ponds flowing together. Buttttt...my lower pond is crystal clear & the 2 additions are in full bloom...algae bloom, that is. I had to threaten him with a shovel to stop him from draining them to get rid of the algae, arghhh! Ah well...this too shall pass. I have a brand new waterfall/stream that doesn't look half bad. Nothing can stop me now, lol. I am a ponder! *grin* Couldn't have done it without y'all & your collective expertise...many thanks. I'll post pics of my humble lil watering hole as soon as it's up & running. Now I can get back to planning The Big One. Maybe next year.. blessings all around, digger

I pulled on my chest waders and went into the pond to clean off my lilypads and blossoms. Tons of aphids! Who knew the little guys could swim...shortly after washing them off, they swam, or floated right back on! I pulled out the damaged or dead leaves, and will spray them with the hose a couple of times a day. My mosquito fish will eat them, but they can't keep up. My big fish ignore the bugs. By the way , the reason I use waders is because I have "Backswimmers" living in my pond. Those are bad bugs; they have a bite like a yellowjacket. Imagine an amphibian attack group that checks out everything entering the pond. Scary, and the only way to get rid of them is scim them up and smash them.

I have been trying to remember some of the more unusual containers I have seen on this forum and the first one that comes to mind is an old claw tub. It was in the middle of a wildflower garden and was quite interesting. It brought to mind old victorian houses for some reason. Wooden horse troughs show up nicely if you have access, otherwise I suspect they might be rather expensive. Galvanized wash tubs and wooden half barrels with liners and very large urns that have an overflow into a gravel filled bed (sometimes this is called a pondless waterfall, no fishies in this one), a bucket tipped and pouring water into another larger bucket or tub for a start. I gave a talk to a group of older people living in a group of condos with only a small patch of concrete in the back, and showed them a small water garden in a 15 gallon plastic ice tub. I put in three plants including a small black magic taro and a small pump and fountain from Harbour Freight. The filter came from Lowes although I showed them how to make a filter out of Tupperware. I got a letter from them two weeks later and they had all put in a water garden. None of them was like the other and they were all very pleased to sit on their concrete slab and talk to their neighbors about their water gardens. A friend has a monster flower pot that she sealed on the bottom and it attracts lovely little frogs. I thought it was terracotta but it is plastic foam. She changes the way it is set up every year. She sometimes puts a fishie or two in it but doesn't want to let them get too big. She uses an aquarium bubbler and does a complete water change from her well every week. OK, that's all I can think of right now. What do the rest of our ponders remember? Oh, yes. Look up Adam's Filter. It is the same principle as my tupperware filter only a bit larger. Don't use clear tubing. It clogs up with algae really fast. Sandy