Ditto on agreement with doing a bottom drain. My lily pond has a bottom
drain installed and all the piping ready to go in the area that a future
filter will be. In the meantime, come spring I have to drain and shop vac
out all the muck that accumulated from the season before. This is a fairly
fishless pond and I'm amazed at the muck... and I dead head and remove pads
regularly so the muck is from accumulated algae and stuff blown in. It took
6 hours this spring to do the clean up. Whereas the fully stock koi ponds
with a bottom drain, require no draining and just a little vaccing of the
slow areas, takes less than 30 minutes to do the spring startup on them.
~ jan


See my ponds and filter design:
http://users.owt.com/jjspond/

~Keep 'em Wet!~
Tri-Cities WA Zone 7a
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