PL, I knew exactly what you were talking about, because when I pulled my pump, I planned to zip tie it to a milk crate, keep it off the bottom, and sink it to be my "bubbler" to keep water open. Well, I didn't have a crate, and I made mistake of leaving pump on my deck. Got crate, zip tied it, sunk pump, no working. :-( Pulled it out, checked pump, would not run. (Turned out it had a chunk of ice wedged in the impeller, but I didn't realize that yet.) Had to cut zip ties, take pump apart, needed phillips screw driver .... Decided to get out new extra pump, pond was icing over fast as I worked that evening, but the new pump had the full cage around the whole pump, like you're talking about. It also had the smaller cage to use on the inlet if using in a skimmer or smaller area. So, I knew what you were looking at and why you were confused. I was the SAME WAY before I had pump in and running and seeing how things work. I'm one that I need to see it work! There are tons of videos other ponders have posted on this forum to let you SEE how things work from the beginning to the end, besides all the wonderful pics that people post. This forum has built my pond! Glad you were able to figure things out. I was surprised at how closely KoiGuy described it to what I said. And, knowing how much KoiGuy has helped me along the way, along with many others, it made me feel really good.
In the end, I waited long enough and got the phillips screwdriver from the barn, took apart the original pump, found the ice chunk, voila, pump worked! The new pump was going to be harder to zip tie like I wanted to, so procrastinating and trying out the new pump made me realize slow down, fix what you have and go from there, which is what ended up working out. Pumps are easy to take apart and clean out. Don't assume they are junk when they quit working or slow water pressure, they just need to be cleaned out.
