On Tue, 14 Sep 2004 23:57:18 GMT, "RichToyBox"
wrote:

The water fall is acting as a skimmer for the top pond and all the
dust,
dirt, debris that lands on the pond, plus any floating plant material
all go
over the water fall to the small pond at the bottom. The pump will
recirculate some of this stuff, since it will be dispersed through
the water
column. The bottom pond will fill with muck, mulm, fairly quickly
and needs
to be cleaned regularly. When I started out, I had a similar setup
to
yours, and then added a 1500 gallon liner pond to the mix, and then
the
amount of mulm built up very quickly in the bottom pond.

You really need a solids handling pump that you can put on the bottom
of the
small lower pond and then have the water circulated through some form
of
filter that can be easily cleaned, or you will be cleaning the bottom
pond
very often, or you will be building pockets of hydrogen sulfide gas
that
will kill fish, if you want to have fish in the lower pond. If you
don't
mind not having fish in the lower pond, then it can be a settling
tank,
setting the pump intake near the surface, and as material builds up,
turn
off the pump, use a shop vac or similar to clean the pond and then
refill
the bottom pond and restart the system.

*I was thinking about throwing in a dunk and saying to heck with fish,
but next spring i will have tadpoles again so i have to get this
right.

Solids handling pump........i will look that one up. Thanks

If i clean the bottom pond regularly, can i keep the 250 pondmaster
and waterfall? (will the fish live then)

I KNEW there had to be some explanation, thank you very much.

As always, juls/jammer

(i am sure i'll be back with more about this)