Pond Sucking up Gravel from bottom drain and poor waterfall output

[texmaster]

Hi guys,

We've had this 10x6x4 pond for about a decade and today I noticed the waterfall was about done so I figured time to clean out the Aqua bead filter. But when I took off the lid on the debris bin I found a bunch of gravel so I can only guess its pulling that from the bottom drain. I cleaned it out, ran the bead filter until clean but it was still running about half pressure. So I primed it and again the waterfall was almost non existent. So I opened it up again and sure enough it had sucked down another 1/2 of gravel. I emptied that out and tried again, even greased up the o ring on the catch bin and its still at a trickle. Looking for ideas at this point.

The pump is a

Sequence 5800SEQ21​

 

[WaterGardener]

Have you always had gravel and a bottom drain? In my mind those two things are not compatible.

I suspect that the bottom drain is clogged with gravel. You may need to get in the pond and clean it out by hand. Or you might be able to vacuum out the bottom drain with a pond vac.

 

[GBBUDD]

Have you always had gravel and a bottom drain? In my mind those two things are not compatible.

I suspect that the bottom drain is clogged with gravel. You may need to get in the pond and clean it out by hand. Or you might be able to vacuum out the bottom drain with a pond vac.

find a plunger and place the pond vac onto the plunger where the pole would go in and if not already drill out that so its now so when you hook up a vac it has a seal around the pipe.