Do NOT place your pump on the very bottom of the pond....

[Mmathis]

.... for those of you with submersible pumps, that is.!!


ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS raise/elevate your pump! Put it on a crate or a concrete block, hang it from a bridge or deck -- be creative! But don't put it on the very bottom!

If your pump is on the bottom, and you have a major leak where water is being pumped OUT of the pond, you WILL empty the pond and the fish will die!

If your pump is raised, you'll still lose water, and your pump will probably fry, but at least your fish will have a little water they can survive in until you can rescue them!
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My pond is generally around 2 1/2' deep, but I have a "well" in the center that is 4' deep. My pump sits on a shelf at about the 2' level. So if my pond drains, there is that "well" that's about 2' x 2' by 18" deep for the fish.

This morning, found the pond almost empty [a human error factor], but the pump wasn't sucking air yet, but was close, so there was still a good bit of water at the very bottom. The fish are fine, and I know what I did wrong. It was a fairly slow drain, so there were no fish trapped anywhere.

SO GLAD I KNEW TO KEEP MY PUMP RAISED OFF THE BOTTOM!

 

[JohnHuff]

I always read about that. Scary situation to hear it from one of us. What happened if you don't mind telling us.

 

[JBtheExplorer]

Yeah, for some reason when I built my pond that thought hit me, so I always keep it one or two levels higher than the bottom. A bit of water will give them a fighting chance.

 

[sissy]

I hang mine from a pipe that runs across the pond and been doing that for 3 years now ever since I gave up on the crate of lava rock .

 

[mrsclem]

I have mine in the dollar store hampers hanging on the side of the pond.

 

[Priscilla]

Yikes! One more thing to stress about! Placing pump on crate NOW!

Thanks for the advice. Please share what happened you.

 

[sissy]

Burned out a pump and it was during a blizzard here and pond only had a foot of water in it and i thought me fish had frozen to death .Hoses out in the middle of the night to refill .My one fish knocked the pump sideways and it was squirting water out of the pond .Even went behind the liner and ballooned it out .It can be scarey .I think ce had a hose come loose and she lost water also

 

[j.w]

I had mine sitting on a big brick and then recently when putting in new prefiler attached to tubing to pump it is now sitting on the bottom. Moving it to the plant shelf now..............wait what good will that do if prefilter is on the bottom attached to the tubing? So now I have to figure out how to get the round prefilter to stay on top of something but still be easy to lift out of pond for cleaning. The prefilter needs to suck up the gunk off the bottom so moving that to a shelf would not work. Maybe put grate in pond covered w/ fiber cloth w/ brick inside and prefilter on top of that so it can't roll out...............this is getting too complicated

 

[dieselplower]

I have my pond set up so that if a hose comes loose, the water will just return to the pond. I have my pump on the bottom. Hope I dont regret it!

 

[Nepen]

This happened to me twice... and I still didnt learn from it, still have my pump sitting at the bottom. I'm going to put it up today.

 

[Sunshine]

I had mine sitting on the bottom for years until I heard of someone draining their pond that way. Mine sit on crates now. I also had Tiki torches around my pond until someone said theirs blew over and the fluid went in to their pond and killed their fish. It looked so pretty at night with them lit, but they are gone now

 

[haver79]

Kept mine on a crate last summer thanks to this forum. Great advise!

 

[Priscilla]

I have my pond set up so that if a hose comes loose, the water will just return to the pond. I have my pump on the bottom. Hope I dont regret it!

How do you have this set up?

My pump is on the bottom, but my hoses are completely dodgy, I couldn't find the right size, so I bought a smaller size and squeezed it on, huge possibility of the hose slipping off the pressure flo or the water fall bucket. If that happened, how would the water flow back to the pond?

 

[Mmathis]

I have my pond set up so that if a hose comes loose, the water will just return to the pond. I have my pump on the bottom. Hope I dont regret it!

How do you have it set up?

 

[Mmathis]

Since you've asked, and it IS another good learning experience....

I never put an over-flow in my 100 gal Skippy filter. But then I never run the pump at 100% [unless I'm keeping an eye on it], so never thought that an over-flow would be a problem. Well, last night I had turned up the flow into the filter, and forgot about it. Basically, the filter slowly over-flowed during the night....