Sorry to hear about your loss hb. It happens to the most careful ponder. I know the shock you are feeling. When I had my first pond I placed my pump in a huge flowerpot buried in about 9 inches of lava rocks. I woke up one morning to silence. The pump had quit. When I pulled it out of the lava rocks there were four of my beautiful long flowing finned shubunkin's heads and pieces/parts stuck to the intake of the pump. Nothing can prepare you for it. To keep a hole in the ice this winter I placed my pump in a mesh bag I made. In the bag I had plastic scrubbies to stop the pump from getting all gunked up. When I made the mesh bag I put in a drawstring that could be tied tightly to be sure it was not "fish accessible." When I pulled the mesh bag up yesterday (still tightly tied) I placed it on the grass. It had that unmistakeable "dead fish smell" to it. When I opened the bag there was one of my 5-6" goldfish stuck to the intake of the pump. Those darn fish find a way to get into the smallest openings. Wouldn't surprise me if the fish had something to do with the prefilter coming off. Sometimes I think they are more crafty than mice. Jenny

The prefilter I use is similar to an Adam's filter. It has helped to keep my pump from getting clogged and needing the daily maintenance it needed when I first bought the house (and pond). But what really has made the difference for me is getting into the pond in the spring to clean it out by hand, scooping out all the muck. letting it settle, then coming back and doing it again, and then a third time. This included pulling out (for good!) all the hundreds of small rocks that the previous owner had on the bottom where the mulm would sit on top and inbetween. Now because I started with a sparkling clean pond, the prefilter catches the little thats left or it settles to the bottom around the prefilter. I just go out daily with a fish net and scoop the area on the bottom where I start to see a little mulm gathering. This takes about 1 minute every day. Because I maintain it daily, theres so little mulm in the pond, my prefilter catches easily whats there, and next to nothing goes to my skippy. But last year, when I didn't do such a great job at cleaning the pond in the spring, my skippy ended up with about 4 inches of muck by the end of the season. I won't allow that to happen again. Its the spring cleaning that leads to the entire summer of pond cleanliness for me.

hawkiefriend, What are you pumping to? Do you have a filter set up outside of your pond that you are pumping to or is the mesh bag and whatever is put in it, going to be the only means of filtration. If it is just a pre-filter requirement, then you don't really need anything inside the bag, as this is a mechanical filter. But you don't want the bag to collapse around the pump and possibly cause a plug up. Was this "bag" actually designed to be used as a pre-filter, or is it one of those laundry bags with the wire frame? If it is the only means of filtration, then filling the mesh bag with pot scrubbers, will do the job of providing surfaces for the bacteria to colonize. The "scrubbies" [nylon bun shaped type] will act as the bio-filter material,just pack them into the bag, as many as you can. Be sure you do not block the pump's intake with anything. A "scrubbie" placed in front of the intake, may plug up with gunk, but the "scrubbie" it's self, should not be sucked into the pump, unless it completely unravels, which is highly unlikely. All that a pre-filter is there for, is mechanical filtration, to stop hard objects, like pea gravel, bits of twigs, etc, from being sucked into the pump's impeller and doing damage. Hope this helps, "Horton"

mwp, that type of basket screen's purpose is to prevent the pump from sucking up pea gravel or anything hard that may damage the pumps impeller. The scrubbies will screen the water even further and become a small bacteria colony. It will probably require weekly cleaning, by washing it out with a blast from the garden hose. I use one in a small sump, that filters water to a pond statue that spouts water into my bog type pond/garden. I clean it about twice a season. The main pond water is drawn from the pond, through a bottom drain and surface skimmer. It then passes through a mechanical filter pad located in a 50 gallon barrel sump. I pump out the silt and other sludge from the bottom of this sump barrel once during the season and again in the fall in preperation for winter. From the sump barrel the water is pumped to a home made filter system [ Rubbermaid totes], after which it returns back into the pond via a small waterfall. The water in my ponds is crystal clear all year round. I use bird netting, pot scrubbies, furnace filter pads [the blue cut to size ones] and last, quilt batting to "fine tune" the water before it returns to the pond. My pond capacity is around 2000 imperial gallons and the filter system capacity is around 125 gallons in total. "Horton"