Thanks! Those are great pictures. I can't see any trace of the bin or milkcrates and it looks beautiful and natural.
Well, sadly the bin is visible again now, which brings us to the answer to your next question...
Did you completely cover the lid of the garbage pail? If so, how deep did you bury it? How often have you had to dig it up to open the lid for pump cleanout or maintenance? Have the sides caved in at all due to differing pressure or shifting rock?
I buried it about 10 cm below the bottom of the milk crates, so any goop would end up in the bin and settle.
However, soon after filling the pond, I realized that I really liked the pond level to be a good bit higher than I had originally planned. And since I had enough liner at the edges, I was able to accommodate that higher level. But that left me with a problem: my trash bin wasn't tall enough! This meant that whenever I opened it to service the pump, a lot of the gravel on top of the intake bay surround fell into the bin.
So I took another old trash bin of the same type, cut the top off, and slipped that inside my existing one to raise the height to just above the gravel. I still end up with some gravel slipping in between the two overlapping bins, but not as much. But that means that the lid is once again above the gravel.
What I'll probably do is use construction foam and rock dust to construct a fake rock shape on top of the lid, such that it looks like just another rock in the intake bay. I'll post pics of that once I do it.
Lesson: make sure your pump vault is tall enough to stick out at least a 2-3 centimeters above your rocks to avoid having rocks fall into the vault. If I ever redo my intake bay, I'll install a taller bin, and probably dig it down a tad deeper than the present one.