yes the pump runs 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. i use a homemade prefilter that is a good bit larger than the one that came with the pump as it clogged way too easy. i have a pressurized filter with the bio- balls in it. the water itself is clear as gin. just that gookie stuff on the bottom and some string algae on the water falls, which doesn't really bother me much. the sides have a nice layer of algae on them also, but from my reading that is a good thing. my plants will eventually become clogged with the muck too. i have added 2 small bales of barley that is advertised as being sufficent for 1000 gals which is about what my pond is. i can't vaccum now because the toads have hatched and there must be thousands of them everwhere.

My first surprise was when I woke up to my pond down about a foot. I filled it back up and let it set without the pump running (wasn't leaking from the liner) and it didn't go down any. I then dug up the line from the skimmer to the water fall and it wasn't leaking. After that I tore the waterfall apart and discovered the water was going behind the falls because the water fall tub was slightly crooked. After that was fixed (6 weeks later)my pond pump quit and I had to buy a new pump. Then the dreaded algae bloom. I fixed that by filling a tall waste basket with filter material with rock and marbles in the bottom to keep it from falling over (like the last time I did that.) My pond was looking mighty clear and I looked out and thought I was seeing the bottom. I noticed both pumps had stopped and went out to reset the breaker. To my surprise the water was gone except maybe 2"x2' and my fish were dying. Three koi and three gold fish already dead. I ran and got a 40 gal. pond and ran the rain barrel water in it and put slime coat, water conditioner and peroxide. I put eleven goldies in that. I held up my white goldie till it started to recover. I discovered something had removed the tubing going from the extra pump to the home made filter. I then scrubbed down the pond took (5 hr's) and rinsed it a couple of times. Put goldies back in that evening. My pump and water falls are working and I haven't lost any more fish. I loved my koi and hated to see them go but I only have a 1400 gal. pond so think I will stay with only the goldies. I have had my pond about 4 years and this is the first time I lost any fish. Today I was emptying a rain barrel and discovered a goldie in it. Named it Lucky. I put it in the aquarium with my fantails. I feel blessed to have 12 goldies. I have learned some lesson's I won't repeat. It's been over a week now and thing's are looking brighter. If I had only remembered what GW member said about "never set a pump on the bottom of a pond".

Cindy, I like your home made grates for the end of your return pipes. I will have to remember that those in case I ever need something like that. I would do away with those but they do add friction to the flow of the system. Since these are DYI there are no exact measurements on these but I would guess that they are the same as 6 ft of pipe. So let's calculate the friction on your return lines. First we have water going from the drum into the 4" pipe. So we have 4 ft of the diameter of the drum and 2 ft of the 4" pipe for water to move from a larger pipe to a smaller pipe. The drum is large enough that four ft of it won't amount to any friction to worry about. But the 2 ft of 4" we will look at. Then we have a 45 elbow which is the same as 5 ft of 4" pipe. Then we also have 90 elbow which is the same as 12 ft of 4" pipe. Then we have the Ferco fitting. I am going to assume that the pipes inside the Ferco fitting are tight against each other and are in a straight line and this is the same as 4 ft of 4" pipe. Then we have the pipe expanding in the pond and this is 4 ft. of the 4" pipe and 2 ft of the diameter of the pond which will be about nothing. Then we have a 4 ft of pipe and a 3 ft of pipe. So each of the return lines are as follows: 6+2+5+12+4+4+4+3=40 ft of 4" pipe. So that short length of 7 ft of pipe is actually with fittings and changes in pipe sizes equals the same as 40 ft pipe. So the question is how much flow do we get by gravity through 40 ft of a 4" pipe with 1" of head? We actually get 3146 gph per return and we have 2 returns so the actual flow back to the pond would be 6292 gph. But I would guess that the head pressure is less than 1" so if I look at .5" head pressure we have flow for each return of 2156 or a total flow 4312 gph. So I would guess that when you actually take a good measurement of the head pressure you are going to find that it is a little more then .75 inch. .75 inch would have a flow of 5302 gph. Mike

Urlee, you're welcome. I'm so happy that you finally got them working. Now, you can collect more filters, they really are fun :-) I think if you give PSP8 a chance you will really like it. PSP8 has Scripts and they are even more fun than filters. If you download a Script, unzip and add it to the My Doc.../My Psp8 Files/Scripts-Restricted...folder. Joy