Hello Pete,
Good to see you back on the forum...been a while, can imagine your schedule with the baby coming...good luck to all of you.
Have indeed figured to check with JohnPTC, he gave some basic info, but so far, nothing much I got from MFK. Would have figured much more response, but ok, we keep both sides going and might slowly pickup in the replies.
Anyhow, for the pond, I've read indeed that round is better.
He is in his temporary sandbag pond, planning on the bigger one.
The pond will be liner, so it's easy to round the corners.
My plan is to have a planted area on one side, where the water is flowing through the roots of the plants. Thinking of course gravel, with plants initially in nets/pots that allow the roots to establish through the gravel.
Water then flows from a large spray bar in the plantbed and keeps everything just under a couple of inches of water. Flows over a 'dam' into the main pond. This bed would be about 1 x 4 meters, with the main pond being 6-7 x 4 meters.
I will use a truck liner similar to what I have now, with fitted metal rings so I can keep the liner in place.
Back and sides will have a meter high steel-net/mesh-wired fence to hang orchids and other plants, while at the same time keeping the fish in.
This morning I installed a quick'n dirty filter. Just inlet at the top, outlet at the bottom and PVC frame with mosquito-net and tieraps. Filter floss on top, cover and clamps, and to my amazement, once startet with a pump, it keeps running by itself even though the inlet is about 1 meter above the level of the pond.
Will post some pictures later at home. Still need bio-balls to fill up the bottom-section, but this looks promising and the next one sure will be the filter you talked about. Great way of cleaning and amazing amount of surface-area.
Anyhow, back to work...so far so good.
Cheers,
Luc
