Leaves, hot weather, and babies

Well, it's almost mid August and I can already tell Autumn is just around the corner. It's that "blankety..blank" Walnut tree! It's already loosing leaves by the buckets full. Every morning I come out of the house and the skimmer pump is gravitating for water. The basket is full of leaves and Harry begins to complain that its too labor intensive. I keep reminding him that its doing its job of collecting leaves, so its not like its mal-functioning or anything. And, I'd be happy if it got them all. I'd empty the basket 2 or 3 times a day (which we will be doing in another couple weeks) happily if it got all the leaves. But for every leaf it collects there is one in the bottom of the pond. And, Walnut leaves and the walnuts themselves will turn my water brown. Yuck! No matter what I do I hate this time of the year. Walnut trees are the last to get leaves in the Spring and the first to loose them in the fall. Combine that with a rain storm nearly every other night and you get leaves falling already in August. Harry loves fall, cause it means cooler temps, hunting season, and less bugs. To me it means the flowers are all dieing, the leaves are making a mess of everything, and days are getting shorter. None of which I like.
Everywhere you go people are complaining about the weather. Too much rain..and the heat. Well it has been really hot. Temps in the 80's and 90's for almost 3 weeks now. That is pretty hot for Iowa. The fish don't like it either. My pond temps were only about 76 degrees this morning. I thought they would be worse. I'm sure in lots of full sun ponds the koi are stressed by the hot water. Harry has been doing water changes a couple times a week which helps to cool the water too. This week he actually installed air lines to the bottom of my DIY biofilters. Something I've been hinting for him to do for awhile now. Totally surprised me. Only thing is my air pump will not run both the biofilter and the pond aerators at the same time. So, now I have to shop for an additional air pump. He was really surprised at how much crap it kicks off the bio balls, though. We've also been looking at building a sand/gravel filter to help with removing the fines in the pond. We've decided to put it off till next spring. There is always something bigger or better, and he is getting tired of my suggestions of "add ons" . But, he's the first to like clear water and beautiful fish, so that helps. He won't garden, but he loves the ponds. Don't know what I'd do without him. We're also already planning on installing an additional pond in the basement. Wish I could find a heated, with well water, garage locally. I'd move them all to a rented garage if I could for the winter.
This year for the first time, we're seeing babies in the pond! He called all excited about seeing perhaps a dozen or more 3-4 inch fish in the lower pond. They usually get sucked up in the bottom drains and ran through our pumps. But this year, for some reason we've managed to keep a few with out even trying. We'll see how they survive... I'm not optimistic. 12 out of a million eggs. That's not very good odds. But they must be real survivors.