Are those garden hoses connecting things? That's got to be a huge part of
the initial problems. Chuck those and replace your plumbing with more
substantial hose -- larger diameter and beefier kink-free stuff. You should
also use real plumbing connections -- either slip (glued) or screwed
together using teflon tape to get a good seal.

What size pump are you running and where is it located?

It's very hard to tell what's going on with your filter from the pix. Is
that an oversize wash sink? What's inside of it? How is it set up?

Looks like a relatively small pond, so it shouldn't be a major problem to
upgrade a few of the components and achieve something worthwhile.

"lu" wrote in message
om...
Gosh, I'm glad I found this newsgroup.

I have been wrestling with a pond for a couple
of years now. (+ a year or so ago I took on
some koi for a friend.)

runonsentence
It is such a struggle to clean the biofilter,
(rocks and pea gravel), super-mucky mucky mucky bottom,
the hoses for the falls clog up or leak weekly,
(the water is pumped by two pumps, I added one last year,
and it splits to the biofilter and then to a set of
hoses, see pictures), http://www.keoughnet.com/pond/,
there is rampant plant growth in and around the pond,
have to add water periodically with dechlorinator.
/runonsentence

I don't know if it's even habitable(sp?) to the fish,
although they seem fairly happy.
There were koi in it right before I inherited it's care.

I want to tear it down and rebuild it possible using
a more user-friendly filtering system and container-plants,
maybe more zen-style.

Any suggestions out there? I searched this group
and found a few posts on rebuilding, temporary holding tanks, etc.

I am just lost and frustrated with it. I want to give the fish
and the pond the love they deserve!

Thanks!