If I understand your setup correctly, you would put in plants such as water
hyacinths, water lettuce, water celery and such in the prepond. Basically
the kind of plant you want is one that has the green above water and the
roots floating in the water. The more roots the better. Do not put in any
gravel additional gravel. The roots of the plants will both suck up the
fish wastes which will cut down on the algae and filter out the dirt (which
is what causes the foam) and these plants do not root into soil or gravel
but float in the water. This would be your veggie filter. You can find it
described lots of places if you do a search. To me it is the best system
for keeping a nice clean and healthy system. Your prepond is a bit on the
small size for a veggie filter and your size pond. You might want to take
the lid off of your trash can and put floating water plants in there as
well.


"Rick" wrote in message
news
my pond is about one month old, it is about 1200 gallons big. i have a
1500GPM pump and the filter that goes with the pump, (from lowes) the
pump
is in the pond and the filter is on top at the start of the water fall in
a
black trash can that i cut in half. i dug a hole put the liner in and put
the 1/2 trash can on the liner, put the filter in sits in the trash can,
this way i can put the lid in the trash can and it all looks nice because
you only see the top of the lid and it is protected from the weather. four
one inch holes allow the water to drain into the top of the water fall
witch
keeps the filter only half under water fore easy cleaning. the top of the
waterfall is a small 2x2x1/2 pre pond with a little gavel on the button
to
hide the liner. it then goes down the rest of the water fall into the
pond.
i put some gravel from a small creak in my pond and my kids put some
little
two inch fish that they got from the creak in the pound. i don't know what
kind they are but i never seen them any bigger then four inches long in
the
creak. i also have 3 koi (three inches long) my son though would be a
nice
addition. oh and lets not forget the fore or five crawdads that came with
the gravel. i also had 2 ducks but after the destroyed all my plants that
were just starting to grow nicely i had to find them a another home. my
plants are now recovering.
So now that you know the history, probably more than you need to know. my
problem is that at fist i had a lot of algae, so i put an all natural pond
water treatment by Nac Court Products Inc. in my pound. it started to
clear
up and i could see the fish and the plant baskets in the water. now
however
i have foam on the water and it seams that it is getting worse by the day.
this morning the hole top of the pond was covered.
things that i have learned today reading in the group is that i was
cleaning
my filter when the gage on it showed that it was time,with tap water. i
know
now to use pond water. also would it be a good idea to plant some plants
in
the top little pre pond? and should i just fill it with gravel when i
plant
them so all the water goes thru the gravel.
so how do i get rid of the foam and how do i get clear water with as
little
maintenance as possible.
thanx for your time Rick.