filter, cleaning and planting help please - long
 

Well the pond is finally clear...YIPPPEEE.....this however has led to a new
question. As I can now see the bottom of the pond instead of just feel it
with my feet while planting and rearranging I am seeing that there are areas
in the middle around pota and structures that seem to have an inch or two of
sludge? How do I clean this or should I leave it? My SO wants to leave it
as we would like to see if the frogs can be wintered ove as opposed to being
dead bodies every spring, but I am sure there is other stuff we should do to
provide winter areas for the frogs. Winters here get down to -30c with
2-3'of snow on average, pond is 15'x21' with sloping walls on 3 sides and
straight drop on the other. It is lined with EPDM and has a 12" garden
border around it, I would post pictures if I could figure out how. I also
need help with planting marginals as there are only a few crevices between
rocks and I have a few plants that need only 2-6" of water cover and the
side slope far too much to allow planting on them...is there a way of
tethering baskets or the plants themselves(I find the baskets to be annoying
visually). Also how often should I transplant as there is a basket of iris
here with roots that flow about 3 feet out of the basket which looks wrong
to me but then again I am a gardener not a ponder (until now)

Finally does anyone have any idea for dividres we can use between the layers
of filter material? We are using what I call lighting grid, but it is very
brittle and tends to break at the least provication. I would like to find
something with more flexability in an approximate 12x15 size.


Sorry for the long winded message and thanks in advance for your help.

Elaine