.

I also use a one-way valve (the black thing in the picture), because I did not want the water suctioning immediatelly off back into the pond in case of a power shortage, since I have flowers in the pot.

I mostly used stuff I found in the plumbing section of Menards. The connector from the pvc pipe to the plastic stuff is called a nipple I think, and that was from the "make your own sprinkler system" section. I used a 1/4'' piping for the input, and a 1 1/4 inch piping for the output, which is the only thing that needed a hole drilled.

You can see my beautiful diagram on left. The spotted thing is my makeshift sieve. You can see the input goes through te sieve and then makes a "swirling motion" in the planter - see Jim's page for more info on that. The blue things are the scrubbies that one would use for cleaning the kitchen, which were not too cheap but I got about 8 for $1, and ended up buying about 6 packs of them - but my filter and pond are small.

The output goes through a few rocks and makes a very, very modest waterfall into my pond. This picture is back when I had soupy water - now I send 1/2 of my water into a trickle filter, and also have a mechanical filter.

Since installing this a few months ago, I have made some changes. A problem with this design is that the flexible tubing was making a kink where it needed to bend. I bought another elbow piece and used that below my one-way valve. I then had to cut another hole in the pot for the input. But the work was well worth it because now I only see flowers in the pot - there is no tubing in sight. (a large flat rock is covering the input on the pond border, and the rest of the input is hidden under the same straw as is around the plants around my pond.

Oh and - I got some pond bacteria from Petsmart which I injected into the filter when I started it up. I add more in every so often. This, together with my mechanical filter and my trickle filter, (and the water plants), have kept my pond water clear for over a month now.

This project was pretty cheap. I got the plastic planter for about $3 from the Dollar General. The scrubbies were about $6 also from there. Plastic pot for the inside was free since it came with some plants I bought for around my yard. Some plumbing glue that I used to glue the connections (especially around the planter hole) was around $2.50. The most expensive thing was the output tubing and these flat silver things that I used to screw it onto the pot - that was around $10 total but I have a lot of that stuff left over now. Also - the total for the connectors was around $6-7. This is a total cost of just under $30. I think this is about the same as buying one - but it won't look half as nice and you won't be half as proud of it! :)