pondless waterfeatures?

does anyone here have a pondless water feature? would you consider one? any ways i ask because i was watching Rock Solid on HGTV and they were building a pond one probably 10' x 8' and 30" deep i thinking 'cool' then all the sudden the fill the bottom with aqua blocks and fill the the rest in assorted stone leaving maybe 6 to 8 inches of exposed water after filling...a nice waterfall spilling into it..why pay the extra to dig a pond that size just to fill it with stone? it wasnt a safety issue the ponds edge was maybe 4' from the edge of a large built in pool!

I saw that same episode! I shook my head!

the thing is thats better than $200.00 of rock ontop of the aqua block which is pricey and there was probably 16 or so of them.( i would have swiped some milk crates from behind 7/11.).. i see people doing this alot on landscape shows but small ones and they have small children,no pool etc..

i just couldn't figure out how the water was gonna stay clean or how you'd be able to clean the thing if necessary...

i guess you can use all the algecides, bleach, chlorine you want....no fish !!

ugh! But still....what a PITA! What if you get debris/leaves/etc? At some point it's just gonna turn into a mess unless you are ultra meticulous. Seems like bear of work to me.