55 gallon plastic drum attached to Shop Vac with black hose. Bottom hose is from a pool hose attached to the pool vac head.

Ok now I need some more explaining on this one. What is the drum for? I see that the water looks like it gets sucked up by the vacuum and then goes in the drum but where does it go and why in the drum? You sure have a bunch of nice setups and your pond is lovely

If you use a wet/dry Shop Vac to vacuum the pond, it fills up in a hurry. This allows you to pull a lot more up before having to empty it. We have only used it once and it worked fine but was a bit of a pain to handle as it is so large but does work.

Does it suck small fish up?

I suppose it could but they usually are at the other end of the pond.

Esther,

That is an outstanding idea. I can see how well it cold work for even doing quick partial water changes. I would imagine, to drain the 55 gal drum you would turn off the shop vac after turning the valve off. Then take the vac hose out of the water, and lay it down where you want to run the water off to.

Have you thought about putting wheels on the 55 gallon drum so you could move it around and water your gardens with the pond water?

You could even stand this 55 gallon on it's bottum end, and add a PVC pipe inside that would reach down to the bottum which would still allow you to use it inline with your shop vac, and then hall it around on a dolly.

Happy ponding,

Rich

Yes, we do use the dolly to haul it. Pete became more into constructing this than we actually use it. LOL. We used it once after he made it and it worked fine and didn't use it last summer.

I really like that idea, and I'm going to take your idea and make one like it. I have the large shop vac, and everything else I see in the picture is redily available locally.

Thanks again,

Rich

Don't forget to reinforce the sides. At first we didn't use many slats but the sides began to suck in so he added some more. Now it's fine.

Esther,

Thank you, I was wondering what the ribbing was for. At first I thought it might be to keep the drum from rolling away. Isn't it funny we often have adapt things to make them to work better?

Happy ponding,

Rich