I think experience and design are more important to maintenance than
cost. Especially if the ponder is doing the installation labor. Jim
built our ponds in several stages. He learned a lot from the group
and from the web and from the mistakes he made when he began.

For instance, if he had built the pond along the lines of his first
ideas, we would have lava rock filters with blue ac filter
prefilters. He would have to clean them all the time. As it is, the
slow-flow berm ponds catch the muck and need draining once a year. It
is cheaper to have a slow-flow pond with no prefilter than to change
out ac filters!

Time needed for maintenance is different from time spent on the pond.
Jim is forever looking to see how this or that is growing and he is
always coming up with something or other to change. I call that
puttering rather than maintenance.

Phyllis