I have volunteered to do a makeover of the gardens around the pond at our extension office. I am planning to put a bog garden around 75% of the perimeter of the pond. Thoughts being ease of maintaining good looks. I originally thought to just add a diverter valve to the output of the submerged pump. Pump low volume into one spot and overflow back into the pond at the opposite spot.

However, she said. After looking a bit closer at the pump and filter set up, I'm sorely tempted to pitch moving the filter outside of the pond. The pond is a relatively small preform, but access to the pump and current filter is not particularly gimp friendly. Possible certainly, but I thought to make it easier for ongoing maintenance.

Attached diagram (and sorry I am not a very good artist) attempts to illustrate my thinking. Basically, a stock tank would set inside the lined area of the bog and slightly overlapping the preform pond. Intake would come from a pondflex hose with a screen from the pond into the stock tank. The pump would be sitting on an elevated grate platform. Output from the pump would go to a diverter, with one part going to pondflex hose back into the pond for a small fountain and the main portion going through a tee for inside the stock tank. A through wall fitting(s) would gravity flow water out the sidewall into the bog.

The stock tank would be fitted with a removable grate just below the top edge. The grate would be planted with various aquatic rushes. Below the grate would be laundry bags of scrunchies, and other mechanical type filtration.

The preform pond I am guess-timating between 300 - 350 gallons. The pump I don't really know, it has 3/4 intake/output. It is more than adequate water moving currently. The stock tank would be 25 gallons and the bog about 75 gallons. The filtration in the stock tank would be mechanical filtration and I'm hoping would be an every other week type affair of simply lifting off the grate, pulling out the laundry bags and rinsing them.

If this was something I was doing in my own yard I would have no hesitation to jump right in and make it so. After all, it would be right there in my yard and if I woke up in the middle of the night with panic thoughts I could just grab a flashlight and walk out the door and check.

Someplace I can't check on it whenever I feel like, OK .... I'm a bit nervous and asking on here for you expert folks opinions.

I've tried to think of most risks. I've got the tank sitting underneath liner, so any leaks will be contained within the pond area. I'm thinking that the pump intakes and outputs will go through the stock tank sidewalls HIGHER than the pump itself. I would not want a power failure and restore to find the stock tank dry. Compression or barb fittings so the pump can be pulled out easily. The intake would be a simple dangly pondflex hose so it could periodically be pulled out and the filter cleaned.

Since I'm a bit of a noob, what do you all think I am missing? Advice, comments, feedback? Please!

Thanks,

~dianne