Dzguy,
Many ponders on this sight swear by bottom drains, but I personally don't think they are absolutely necessary for ALL ponds. My pond is about the size you are considering and I do have rocks on the bottom. The thing is, you will have to siphon the pond about every other month to keep it clean. I do it monthly. I don't mind doing this as this is my hobby and I love spending time on my pond. If I had to do it again, I'd probably get a bottom drain just to minimize the cleaning part. BUT, I don't have one, and I don't plan on putting one in since it's considered a "small" pond. If I ever move and build another pond in the future, yes, I would probably get one.

Rocks on the bottom - I do believe they are not a good idea, but I do have them because that's the way the pond builders made my pond. I do love the natural look it creates, but it comes with the side effect of having nooks and crannies for debris. And again, as I mentioned earlier, I siphon (vacuum) the pond to get it all out. It does make cleaning harder, to be honest.

I love my pond the way it is and accept that it is not maintenance free due to the rocks and missing bottom drain. I would personally recommend getting a bottom drain if you don't want the maintenance. If you don't mind the plain black bottom look, don't use pebbles, either.

My fish have been very happy. I've only had the pond for 8 months and my koi and shubunkin have already reproduced many times. I started with 5 fish and have close to 20 now (They spawned three times last summer). I will give most away due to the size of my pond, but as long as the water tests well and the fish are active, spawning, and eating well, I am happy.

Good luck! It is definitely a fun hobby and the experienced ponders on this site give wonderful advice.
Loretta

dzguy-
Sounds like your system will work, but you will have more regular cleaning to do if you have no BD. Whenever I open the drain on my settlement chamber, and see all the fish waste, etc, that comes out, I'm glad I installed one. I redesigned my system last summer and it worked beautifully. Just a bd to settlement chamber full of water hyacinth, overflow to pump trough, up to 1/2 whiskey barrel skippy filter/waterfall. No filter material to clean.
The WH prevents any debris still floating in the settlement chamber from flowing into the pump trough, and the shower scrubbies/lava rock in the barrel do the rest. I rinse out the barrel contents at the end of the season, thats all...nice clear water all season long!
~Kevin

I don't have a bottom drain either and have no plans at this time to put one in. However, to help reduce the amount of debris on the bottom of my pond, I'm adding an external filter this spring made from a single 32 gal trash can (that's all I have room for). It will have two plastic pump filter-cages attached to the tubing and placed in two locations in the pond for better coverage. The return will be a small waterfall.

For large ponds, I think bottom drains are very, very beneficial, but in smaller ponds where the owner is willing to perform the extra time to maintenance, rock bottoms and no BD can be successful. I just don't have room in my small yard for a settlement chambers, vortex, etc. So hopefully my compromise will be help keep my pond cleaner. I also have a Pondovac 3 to help with debris removal.

Thank you all! I've changed the plan to include the DB. Now I have to rearrange to add another tub for settle chamber between the skimmer and the Bio tub. I can not wait to continue with the digging. Unfortunately we have rain for the past two weeks. It has only lighten today. Hopefully by this weekend, the group will dry enough for me to dig.

Another question before I get to work on the settling chamber, can I put media in this tub for more BIO? Does it interfere to the waste to settle?
Thanks,

DZguy