And another question...

My water garden is 3 barrels, with homemade spillways from HDPE pipe.
They're about 2" deep and 2.5" across and steeply sloped. There will
be a lot of flow through the spillways because I need good filtration
for the shebunkins I really, really want to keep. I also have 5 gold
white clouds in quarantine that I want in a different barrel. However,
now I'm concerned that small floating plants and all the fish are all
going to end up in the bottom barrel.

Is my guess right? I've sucked up white clouds a with siphons just
cleaning tanks because they like to ride currents so it seems like the
white clouds will certainly travel. If so, what would be a good way to
keep some fish, frogbit, and fairy moss in each level? I was thinking
of gluing some fiberglass window screen over the spillways with silicone
but realized that the mesh would probably get clogged very quickly with
dead plant leaves, small floating plants, and so forth. If flow on one
of the spillways stops, the bottom barrel will be pumped empty (guess I
need a float switch!) and bad things will happen.

Is there some trick that I don't know or do I need to change my design?
There aren't fish and plants in the barrels yet, so errors are
recoverable at this point.

--
__ Elaine T __
__' http://eethomp.com/fish.html '__