Filtering Dry Hops Etc.

I recently bottled a beer that i dry hopped with 3 oz of cascade pellets. When I transferred the beer to my bottling bucket I zip tied a muslin bag tightly around the racking cane. The siphon kept getting clogged and it and I constantly had to restart the siphon, which them seemed to aerate the beer a lot. I then removed the mesh bag from the cane and put one at the end of the hose going into the bottling bucket, which didn't work at all. I only got about 3.5 gallons of beer before it would not siphon anymore. Before I tried siphoning, I attempted to cold crash at about 45'F (The coldest place i could find). So my questions are:

1) Is there a better way then a muslin bag to filter dry hops?
2) Should the bag be zip tied loosely on the raking can?
3) Are leaf hops better for dry hoping?
4) Is a cold crash at 45 cold enough?
5) Do hop particles in bottle beer give bad flavors?

IMO (if you are down with the internet lingo) dry hops are best at 5-7 days. They should drop fairly well after that, but if you bottle condition, the hops should fall out with the yeast in your bottles and NOT cause a problem. I have never had any trouble racking around hop bits for my bottle conditioned beers.

I put my hops in a mesh bag with several marbles. The marbles make it sink and they free up space to make sure the beer flows through them. I tried several times to just drop them in, just too messy for me.

I just bottled a beer with 3oz of dry hops. After a week in the carboy they were almost all on the bottom. I attached a paint strainer bag to the bottom of my siphon and it worked great. I used rubber bands but needed more. It was tough to get back through the neck of the carboy. It kept bunching up and was a pain.