I have finally begun real planning on revamping my WTF vivarium. I made a quick (very crude) sketch of what I want to do so far.
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Not sure how readable this is so I'll explain. Basically, I want to make a stream that flows from one corner of the tank to the other. I have a small pump that was used in a cat fountain that my jerk cat decided was more of a toy than a drinking bowl. So I kept the pump from that to use for this. I'm not entirely sure if it will have enough head though? In the water fountain it pushed water up about 3 or 4 inches so I'm assuming it wont be a problem. The idea is to get tubing that will come to the surface and either use some sort of elbow joint to push it down the river or make a dome over where the water shoots up to stop it and bring it back down to the river if that makes sense? The river will be a pvc pipe cut in half. I also want to create some sort of filtration attached to the pump... like a sponge or something? Really need help with that one.

I'm going to use two layers of screen on the false bottom to prevent particulate from getting through. I want to use the water under the false bottom for the pond as well. So I'll just stop the false bottom where the pond is and then use smooth pebbles to hide the false bottom and create a place to climb out of the pond. And this might be a dumb question, but since the substrate above the false bottom is going to be higher than the pond water what can I do to block it off from going into the water and still make it look good? And under my false bottom now the water is really dark brown colored. I'm assuming this is just from the coco fiber but I don't want my pond water to look like that! Solutions?

I want to use some sort of soil on the bottom layer for my plants. I think they would be happier with that. And then I want to do a layer of coco fiber and top it off with live moss. Are they any recommended types of moss? And I want to find a nice fern to put in there. Any good suggestions? And I was considering adding some duckweed (that Bill awesomely sent me for my cray tank) to the pond area to add some biological filtration and a cool look. Is this something I should avoid or should it be okay?

I'm sure there are a million more questions I'm not thinking of right now but this is a good start! And I haven't even gotten to the background planning yet! There's a reptile expo in Manchester NH on March 30th. I'm hoping to get a good deal on supplies there. Building will start after that!