DesertPond wrote:

It's got a small 1" drain hole on the side, but with the pine needles
I figure I better have 2" just to keep from having to unclog it every
10 seconds. Picked it up for free from a friend who didn't need it,
really lucky, suckers are kind of expensive.

Pre-filter, like a box, inside the tank, which runs through the existing
fitting. This increases the surface area of the intake, and gives
redundancy, more than one surface to plug before it shuts off.