Hey, guys, let's kick things off with our sponsor. joe's Shrimp shack is not just some of the best shrimp you'll ever get. It's also the place to get all of your shrimp accessories. The food alone. He provides the shrimp king line. And if you haven't tried the Shrimp King line of food, I highly suggest you get on over to Joe Shrimp shack.com and get some of that delicious food. You might even eat it yourself itself. You just don't know. And with promo code Aquarium Guys at checkout, you're going to save so much money, you're going to buy more. They have every variety you ever can imagine. Shrimp king products. Check it out again at Joe Shrimp shack.com. Also, don't forget about the Ohio Fish Rescue. We're still getting updates about tracy. Every day is a little bit better. You can find in our show notes the GoFundMe that we've raised and again, it's over $6,600 that we've raised towards medical bills. But that's just a drop in the bucket to start to get them covered and going. Certainly consider donating to the cause to help our friends at the Ohio Fish Rescue. Welcome to the Aquarium, guys. Podcast with your hosts, Jim colby and Rob dolson. All right, guys, welcome to the podcast. I'm so excited. This is a milestone in the Aquarium Guys venture. We're going to be doing the pond podcast with none other than Greg Whitsock himself, the pond guy. How are you doing, buddy?
I'm doing great and looking forward to Spring, which is coming here before we know it.
Awesome. kidding. This on March 6, springs right around the corner. If you're not pre planning for your pond, you already have one. That's that's literally the only flowchart I have in my office right now.
Either you got one or you don't.
That you got one or you're setting one up. You that's it. You're be part of the club.
Peer pressure.
But everybody I always say, everybody wants a water feature. They just don't know it yet.
Right? I am your host, Rob olsen.
Hey.
And I'm Jim colby.
So before we dive in and get to the most desired interview, we got a couple of house cleaning items. So I got a question here I've saved from one of our listeners. Specifically, maybe I can get help from you, Greg. Hello, corian guys. I'm from Ontario, Canada. I've been listening to the podcast for a few months now. Love it. Keep up the great work tips on aquascaping with geodes. Have you guys ever tried it before? Can you make your own example? Crushed glass coated with an aquarium safe resin on a rock surface. Thank you for your time. And Jim, keep rocking the Diggery Dew.
I rocked her. Diggery do like oh, no.
Excuse me. I want you to diggerie do, too. See, I don't know where this is going. So, Greg, if you don't have a listen to our podcast before Jim decides to rape our listeners ears with a diggery dew from time to time.
Oh, yeah, I bring the digger reduce paid for the people and they love it.
Are you guys sitting next to each other or are you guys in your own house?
We are sitting next to each.
We're looking at each other and it's not a pretty sight.
He's throwing things at me. It's frankly not fun.
And we're not wearing pants.
I mean, that's a default, though. Every podcast. That's why you do a podcast is because YouTube with pants.
Nice talking to you guys.
Yeah, no, we've talked about this before. All the pretty people are on TV and the rest of us are on podcast.
So it was made for radio.
That's right.
So, Greg, have you used geos in any pond scapes or anything else? What's your experience?
You know what? That's a bit alien to me. So I have not ever actually even encountered that question in 29 years of running the business. That's a new one for me.
These Canadians, I tell you. They're from Ontario.
They got some good questions in. I've used some geodes in some aquarium escapes, and generally when I do it, I try to do some homework because there's no book on this. There's no guide that people are selling geodes purposely to put in your aquarium. And the worst thing I'm worried about is will it dissolve in an aquarium environment? Meaning when I put normal aquarium salt in a mixed with a heat and water. So over time, some of these geodes are made of a material that will literally dissolve and maybe even poison your fish. That would be my number one concern in the Minnesota area, we're known for amethyst. Mine. It's a purple gemstone. It's very, very pretty. It looks like a brilliant purple quart. I haven't had issues with it. I personally have tried my best to look up how they dissolve. They really don't in the experiences I have. But if you're going to pick a geo, do your homework, see the mineral and material that it's made of and know that each geo is not just one substance, do your best to try to get it identified by a professional if you're really concerned and putting it in an expensive tank. And once you've done your homework, feel safe that you're just putting another rock into your aquarium. Do the same procedures of washing it and treating it so it doesn't have bacteria and decay to bring into your tank like some invasive bug. I've had great luck using geodes, specifically amethyst in the past.
And because of anthus, because we're from Minnesota, it's prince, baby. Purple rain. Amethyst makes sense to me.
We'll put a copy of purple rain right here.
There we go. Right here.
That's jim's favorite song.
He cries every time, buddy.
We're 200 miles north of Minneapolis, and I've got one good prince story, and I got to tell it.
You better.
I got to tell it. A few years ago, when I was married to my first wife, we went down to Minneapolis and we went to a place called the tijuana Yacht Club. We went there. It's kind of like your local elks club, you know? And there was a band playing and they said, hold on, we're going to get off the stage, but don't move. 30 people came on stage, moved the equipment around, and Prince came on stage in this little club. And he goes to me it goes to me. No, he says to everybody, he said, all right, I'm going to play some new music. He said, if you like it, I want to know. If you don't like it, I want to know. He played three or four songs from his new album, and he finished it up with Purple Rain. And then he left. Meanwhile, we're all drinking beer, mesmerized, and we're going, holy crap. I can't believe this happened to this little club.
No one believes you to this day. No, it all happened. It was some drugs.
It gets better. Of course, we've been drinking beer and everybody's like, I have to use the restroom. So we went upstairs to the restroom. We thought, there's going to be less people up there. After Prince got done playing, we are up there. Myself and Steve hagen, my friend Steve, probably about six foot three, big guy. I'm pretty, pretty small.
So three urinals you guys are like, as dudes do, go to the opposite end.
That's right. And we are there, and this big, big, large black gentleman came in and said, guys, don't move. And we went, crap, we're going to get rolled. And Prince came in right in between us and unzipped, and he's looking at.
The wall and did you guys hum Purple Rain?
No, steve and I are looking at each other because Steve can see over the top of Prince because Prince is so small. And I'm looking at Steve. steve's looking at me. And Steve goes, Great set. Prince goes, thanks. He zips up, washes hands and lift. That's my print story.
So what you're saying is you mysteriously went in a bar where Prince, quote unquote, should have played, and then you had to pee with Prince.
I got to pee with Prince? Yes. For those of you who are thinking, did you look? No, I didn't look. First thing my ex wife said, did you look? No, I didn't look. Okay?
To be fair, that is the obvious question no one should ask.
No one should ever ask. No one should totally off topic again. Let's get back to it.
Well, let's get to let's get to actual ponds and aquarium.
There we go.
Topic, shall we? Well, Greg, I apologize for the story, but thanks again for coming on.
It's a great story. You know, it if you haven't listened.
To podcast before, as you can tell, we we like to have a little fun with our information on the podcast. Again, can't say enough. Thank you for coming on, but let's start with what got you into the hobby of or the lifestyle of ponds game.
Well, this has been a lifelong hobby. It started off keeping aquariums as a kid with my dad. I mean, I was basically born into an aquarium keeper's home. My dad was a passionate aquarist. Ever since I was born, I had a huckleberry finn life catching turtles, fish and frogs in Southern Jersey. The New Jersey Pine barrens outside of Cherry Hill, New Jersey. My dad came home and informed the family that we were moving to the flat barren cornfields of wheat in Illinois. And I was not too excited as a fifth grader to know that I was going to be going across country to a new school. And actually, my mom said the first thing I said to her, which I don't remember, was, you expect me to give up the Eagles and the phillies and the sixers and flyers for the Bears and the Bulls and the blackhawks and the Cubs? I officially became a full Chicago fan of 85 with the 85 Bears. But they promised me that I could bring eleven of my pet turtles with me in summer of 1982. I put them in the bottom drawer from the freezer in the back of the station wagon, filled it with about three inches of water, and sloshed eleven pet turtles across the country to wheat in Illinois. And the second day I was living there, I went in the backyard and started digging a hole. My mom freaked out. It was too big. It was too close to the house. I went to the library. Rob, you might not remember this, but Jim, you certainly will. The days before the internet, only place you to learn stuff is a library. I got a bunch of books from England and a few from Japan about koi pond to build a pond out of concrete. So went to the home center and got rebar rods, construction sites, and my dad and I rebar rotted up and concreted up that first pond, which proceeded to leak, turn green, and even my prize turtles migrated away. And that was the beginning of my odyssey, starting in 1982 with backyard water gardening.
There's nothing like failure to get things going, is there?
At the time, I just didn't know what I didn't know. But what was fantastic was that became my classroom, because every summer I'd rip the thing out, rebuilt it for two years. I tried to fix the crack concrete. Of course, that in zone five Chicago, or zone four Minnesota, where you guys are at heaving and thawing, and after two years not being able to do that, I put a rubber liner down. Didn't have a fish safe liner, killed my fish. My pumps were clogging up, so I used the garbage can to put the pumps in, used laundry net for my first skimmer basket, my impound filter was for an aquarium place that was getting clogged up. So I used 80 gallon rubber made cattle trough. And of course, those are the prototypes to our skimmers and biofalls today, which we sell all over the world. And it all became because of my backyard classroom.
Yeah, it's just totally amazing how you need to fail many times before you have success. Some of the best information I've ever gotten, some of the best advice I ever got from somebody is easier to learn from other people's mistakes than your own. It's a lot cheaper. I know that for a fact. But there's nothing like hands on to learn what you want to do.
Well, I got to tell you, too, a lot of the things that I was reading, of course, I was reading books from Japan and from England, it was false and inaccurate information. For instance, the concrete. You should never build a concrete pond. Freeze thaw cycle area. And why would you want to build a concrete pond just about any time when you can do a flexible liner and contour to the sides, you know? But I learned this stuff through trial and error. And actually, one of my motivations when I started my business was to kind of right the wrongs, because I got tired of people telling me that in zone five Chicago, you can't keep coin a two foot deep pond. But that pond today, by the way, that's 37 years ago, that pond is still there in wheaton with koi that live year round.
You owe year round and 2ft, yes, 24 inches.
You'll only get six, seven inches of ice in a zone, zone five Chicago, because you might go on an ice fishing on a lake, but the lake is 50ft or 100ft deep. A backyard pond that's 2ft deep, the earth keeps the water up. So you're not going to get more than six or seven inches of ice on a 24 inch deep pond in zone five Chicago, or eight or nine inches of ice in zone four Minnesota.
That's interesting. I've never heard that before.
I mean, when I go in the.
Lake, I imagine that, yeah, once again, misinformation that personified and, oh, you can't keep fishing a two foot deep pond in cold areas. Well, I've been doing it for 37 years. You can if I go on a.
Lake around here, where we're at in Minnesota, we get 1618 and even, like, record 20 inches of ice in my area. By what the measurements you're saying I could have a three, three and a half foot pond with no problem?
Well, you could have a two foot pond at a backyard pond. The ground insulates the water, so you'd don't have you will never get more than eight or nine inches in zone four. If it's a 50 or 100 foot lake, you'll get two or 3ft of ice up there. People will drive their pickup trucks on it. But in a backyard pond in Minnesota, you're only getting eight or nine inches of ice.
Well, still, but giving more inches just for living space. Because even if it goes, like you said, twelve inches.
I have never seen a backyard pond with twelve inches of ice anywhere in the world. siberia. But I haven't built one in siberia, so not too many people in siberia building ponds. No, you don't need it. This is why I'm doing these podcasts, right? Because misinformation need a zone for Minnesota. A 24 inch deep pond will be perfectly fine for your fish because they'll survive in the other 14 to 16 inches of ice.
You've inspired me, sir.
And they just hibernate anyway, so they're not doing anything but laying on the bottom sleeping anyway.
That's correct. They go dormant. Now, you do have to keep a hole open in the ice because you need oxygen exchange. So you will have to keep a hole open in the ice with a bubbler or heater. But a 24 inch deep pond in zone for Minnesota, you're having no problems. And of course, you can go deeper if you want, but you don't have to, is the point.
Everybody up here in the northland has been taught for 100 years that you bring your koi in, you put them in a hole, you put them in a big garbage can or a big cattle trough in your cattle trough in your garage and you throw a heater in there and try to keep it at about 50 degrees.
In the gadda, Japan, and where I just was in October, that's the mecca for Koi. I mean, literally, that's where basically the Koi hobby originated, or the Koi breeding originated for the hobby of Koi. I would compare that climate probably to northern Minnesota. I bet you they get more snow in the god of Japan than you do in Minnesota, which is saying something.
Wow, it's a lot of snow.
Yeah, it's high up. All I know is I've seen pictures of cars driving, and the snowbanks are higher than the vehicles.
Yes. Pretty sounds pretty familiar.
It's amazing what the insulation can do. It gets 40. Was it like 47 below this year? Was the peak?
Yeah. Actual temperature.
It still can insulate. It's incredible. What do you recommend as either you said heater or bubbler? Is it a certain gauge of bubbler you use or just essentially any pond grade stone with any pump?
If you have a lot of big fish and you have a lot of debris or a lot of dead lily leaves or things like that, you're going to need more supplemental oxygen than if you have a clean pond and smaller fish. In fact, how I discovered this as a 14 or 15 year old kid was my first two winters that I had my pond. I just had a heater in it with a small hole open for the cattle trough heater type of thing. Back in the day before we invented and made pond heaters. But one year after year two or three, I think it was year three, my fish got bigger and all of a sudden they started to go belly up because there was a lack of oxygen and they required more oxygen because they were bigger fish. They went from three to four inch sized fish to ten to twelve inch sized fish, and all of a sudden they didn't have enough oxygen in there with just the heater. And what was amazing was that was even though every one of the fish was upside down in the pond on its side, I threw an aerator in and they all sprung back to life.
Wow, that is incredible. Almost like the hibernation saved them somehow.
They were cold and everything else. So when you ask a question like that, it depends on a lot of factors. So what we recommend is that people start off with some supplemental oxygen with aeration systems as well as a floating heater for when you get 47 below and you want to be able to still keep a hole open in the ice.
That's amazing.
Inspired me. So I had a pond in my last property. It was a smaller pond, probably, what, Jimmy, 700 gallons?
Yeah, 700 gallons.
Essentially.
I replaced a larger garden bed against my driveway and it worked really well. It was close, about 3ft deep, and I could have totally kept my fish in there. I should have, I kept bringing them.
In, but instead he went on about a 300 gallon horse trough and put in the basement.
Got a 300 gallon horse trough, brought them in. The basement was cold as it is, so they hibernated downstairs. So it worked out. But I could have saved so much work friend money. Greg, again, I'm going to be trying to do a pond this next summer or spring here, coming up.
Nice. Well, you know, I am a pond guy, so I can hook you up.
Who better to talk to? I've heard a lot of conversations with DIY filters, natural escapes. What is your preferred filtration method? I'm assuming natural, but I've also heard a lot about these rotating drum filters. What's your personal preferences?
How long do we have for this podcast?
We got all day. We can make it a four part.
Okay, I'm just going out of like.
The most demanded questions we've gotten from some of our fans.
This is my 37th year as a hobbyist, my 29th year running aquascape. aquascape is the largest supplier of water feature products in North America. We also supply throughout the world as well. I just got back from Australia last week, got a great group of certified oxygen contractors down there. So the only products that I would actually promote is aquascape products, which our bottle is your paradise, our passion. And now it's becoming reconnecting people with water. The way nature intended it. I believe in an ecosystem based approach to water features. Where there's a five part beautiful pond recipe, the only two parts that I sell are the last two parts. So when I'm recommending a two foot deep pond in zone four, Minnesota, I don't make any money off of a 24 inch deep pond. Whether you build upon 4ft deep or 24 inches deep, this is completely up to you. But I see more problems with people putting a four foot deep pond in or a three foot deep pond and then having the walls collapse than I do in a 24 inch deep pond, if that makes any sense. So let me just go give you the aquascape ecosystem philosophical approach, which is a five part ecosystem approach, which is the first part is rocks and gravel. So just like in an aquarium, we put rocks and gravel throughout the entire pond. That becomes a bed, a surface area for beneficial bacteria to colonize and break down the organic waste, the fish waste that sinks to the bottom, some of the dead lily leaves, things like that. So rock and gravel throughout the entire pond covering the entire EPDM rubber line. So rocks and gravel is the first part. The second part is the plants. So the plants are part of the nitrogen cycle, they're part of the ecosystem. They remove the nutrients out of the water that feed the algae. And so we put plants in. And the third part is the fish, which obviously, once again, they're part of the nitrogen cycle and they're part of the ecosystem. So the rocks and gravel, plants and fish are the three parts of the five part beautiful pond ecosystem. The fourth part is your filtration. We always recommend a mechanical filtration, which we have skimmers I invented for this industry out of those garbage cans and my laundry mat back in 1982, 83, 84. The second part is the biological, which is the biofalls, which is the base of the waterfall unit. So the bio falls is a solid container that sits in the ground. The first one of those were rubber made cattle troughs. So the filtration part is the fourth part of the ecosystem pond. And the fifth part is the heart of your system, which is the pump and the plumbing. If you have all five parts of that beautiful pond ecosystem in place, you'll have success. Unless you put rocks and gravel, plants and fish, a mechanical filtration system with a skimmer, a biological filtration with a bio falls, the right size pump and the wrong size plumbing, or the wrong size pump, or the wrong size biofilter, or there are not enough too many fish. So any part of that five part ecosystem, if you don't have it in balance, that was what leads to problems. So majority of our calls at aquascape and for our certified cutters is people that have built a pond that doesn't have that five part recipe in balance. And so our job as technicians, our job as designers is to design a functioning, healthy ecosystem pond that starts with those five basic parts in proper size and components to make a beautiful ecosystem.
So I'm looking through and your skimmers are fantastic. You can go right on Aquascapeinc.com, and he has all the products on the pages. And your pond skimmers, the design of this is phenomenal. It literally has a nice trap. You think of it almost like a skimmer, as like a traditional aquarium skimmer. But this is so much more.
So what you're looking at is something that I got put in my backyard in 1984, because my pumps were clogging up on the bottom, so I just made them out of a garbage can. But you're looking at twelve generations or 13 generations from the original garbage can later. We're pond hobbyists ourselves, so we design products that we want to use ourselves. And everything that we design is designed to improve the consumer's experience with water features, which is why just this year, we debuted our smart app. So you control the entire pond by your phone? When I started my business in 1991, there wasn't a single manufacturer of professional pond equipment, not just in North America, but the world. And now we're the top professional water feature manufacturers in the world. And we primarily sell professionals that are selling it or serious diyers.
That's fantastic. I'm just looking through and I'm trying to remember the ponds that I've done in the past. You put a lot of people that are beginners don't put anything in the bottom of the pond. So there's none of the biological bacteria building up. But then also you have just the pump head, which has just the one piece of sponge covering the pump head. After an hour, gets clogged up in full. This, using the skimmer method baskets, the large materials you have, really the solution to capturing every piece at the beginning of the pump.
It's like having somebody cut your lawn for you and you have to empty the bag.
It's better than sliced out jimmy.
That was my next question, was how much maintenance is this for the average hobbyist who buys one of these fantastic skimmer filters? How much work is it for them to take care of on a daily or weekly basis?
So remember, that's a five part ecosystem pond. So an ecosystem pond, properly balanced, like we design and sell, will be less maintenance than the same area planted in grass on an annual basis.
Wow.
Yes.
I want to make Jimmy on my lawn now just so I can have less work.
We don't do water changes. I never do water changes on my ponds. We let the water fill up from the rain in the cycle. From that way, in the fall or the early spring, when the little parachutes are coming down, we might clean the skimmer out once or twice a week. In the summer, we might go once a month. How long does it take to clean a skimmer? Five minutes on average. Eleven foot by 16 foot ecosystem based pond. In normal conditions, not full sun, not full shade in a forest, you're looking at five minutes of work a week.
So this basically is a set it and forget it type of product.
It's an ecosystem. So it works with nature, not against it. When you were talking about the drum filters earlier, this is hilarious to me because it's a whole different approach. Let's fight Mother Nature, not work with Mother Nature. The aquascape ecosystem philosophy is let's work with Mother Nature, not against her. And so we set up a system with those five parts of that beautiful pond recipe so that it basically maintains itself. Now you're going to have wind blown debris, then you will have to empty the bag out. But what we would see is people go out of town on vacation, they don't add their water treatments. So we make an automatic doser. So the doser does it for you. And now with the smart app, you can actually program it. So you could literally test the conditions on your phone that would be on there. You could literally program your automatic doser to add your bacteria. And this is the thing. And obviously it's ecosystem to work the same way in an aquarium. To add a little bit of bacteria every single day is better than adding a capful once a week because every time you introduce new bacteria, it causes spawning and breeding in the other bacteria. So we used to have a small little every single day and we put a bag in there and once a month you got to change the bag out. How long does it take to change the bag out? Two minutes.
Around here, we mourn our dang yards every five or six days. Every day that you're, you mow your yard, you should go over to your pond, check the bag, check the bag, clean it out. And it's just going to be part of the ritual that you do every week.
And then once a month change out the automatic ghost bag of beneficial bacteria.
This is too easy. So how many years did it take.
You to develop it?
You said since 1991 or so.
Well, I started off as a hobbyist in 1982. I was in my backyard in 1990, messing with my backyard pond. And the Ups guy delivered a package to the front door. I heard the doorbell ring. I yelled, Come around back. The guy came around the back and of course, where was I? messed with my pond and in the waterfalls or something. And he said to me, this is beautiful. How did you ever buy a house with a natural spring on it? He thought it was always there, which is of course, the ultimate compliment.
I was just going to.
Say, it's the best compliment ever there.
Yeah.
And I said, no, dude, I built this myself. And he goes, oh, my God, could you build me one? And it was like, ding and ding. Light bulbs went off, and like, man, I can actually start a business with this stuff. And so I ended up remember telling my mom and my dad I remember it was my dad in our hobby because he was an aquarium guy. But I told my mom first because I knew she'd be like, oh, that's so nice, honey. And I said, All I need is a strong back, a wheelbar on a shovel, and my mom gave me her support. I told my dad, and that Christmas, I already had a strong back from playing football. And that Christmas, I got a wheelbarrow and a shovel at the Christmas tree, and in 1991, Escape was born.
Got a wheelbarrel for Christmas.
Wheel barrel is shovel beneath the Christmas tree.
Most people would think that's kind of a sad story, but that's probably a great story.
I'm just saying it's better than the was it Red daisy BBC?
I mean, my first summer I put in, that was three months. It was June, July, and August, and I put five water features in. People ask where I get it from. I got one from a classified ad in the newspaper that cost me $80. I got another one from a business card and a picture at the local rockyard. And then those coupons sold me three more to friends and neighbors of the first coupons. And I built five ponds, $21,000 in sales, bought a pickup truck, and went back to school with $11,000 in my pocket.
God, that's a good summer job.
That's a nice start.
Yeah.
Holy cow. That is fantastic story. What city was that in that you were living at the time?
10 miles from where I'm at right now, which is St. Charles, Illinois, the water garden capital of the world, officially wheaton, Illinois, which was 30 miles directly west of downtown Chicago.
I got so many more questions, but let's start with Aquascape. Before you were talking about Aquascape and how you can get certified. Please tell us more about those programs.
Well, listen, I'm a manufacturer upon equipment. I've got multiple patents from skimmers and biofalls, the whole ecosystem philosophy approach and everything else. But how I make money is I help people succeed in their business. So, basically, Aquascape is a franchise system. Without a franchise fee, anybody can buy our products. You can go on Amazon and buy our products at Aquascape. You could go to your local garden center. You can hire a contractor that would put it in. But the Navy seals, the best of the best are certified occupancy tenders. The majority of them are strictly water features. Some of them also do full service landscape design build. But the majority of the certified occupancy competitors are guys, and they're listed on our website, there's a couple of hundred of them, and they just do water features. So we have an entire training program. We have the Aquascape Academy seven times a year. I got one next week, I got two next week. Actually we do those all in the off season, and then in the summer, we do our annual training, which is a big blow up ash with 6700 people. And that's pondimonium.
Pondimonium, of course, sounds like bureaumonium.
People come from all over the world to the mecca, which is St. Charles, Illinois, and it used to be the pickle capital. So I say we're moving up in the world as we're now the water garden capital, and we teach them how we actually ourselves build ponds. So we are the only manufacturer of water feature equipment in the world that builds water features every day. So I was literally right before I got on this podcast call with you guys, I was talking to Ed Blue, the pond professor, who you definitely should have on your show, who's been with me for 27 years, and Brian helfrich, who's been with me for 25 years, that runs the local market construction. And Ed is our large, unique products and director of product development.
Absolutely, we definitely need them on the show. The certification process that you spoke of, I'm assuming that how long does that take to get certified? Say a business is listening right now. They've used some of your products in the past and they want to get certified. What does that take?
It depends on how motivated you are. And you have to have done three water features. You have to have submitted all the photos of those water features, you have to have the testimonials from the customers, and you have to finish an online course, and you have to come to either the Aquascape Academy pondimonium or a combination of both. So usually a season. So if somebody starts off and they're motivated, they can put in three water features, they can get customer testimonials, they could take the Aquascape. Anyone can take the Aquascape Academy. You can go to Aquascaptraining.com and you can learn about the pond ecosystem. You can learn about the fish and the plants and the ecosystem approach@aquascaptraining.com. So usually it's a season, so one year for a new customer to become certified if they're motivated. And a lot of times people start with this and a couple of years after starting, they really want to focus more on water features because it becomes the most enjoyable aspect of their business, and they ended up becoming certified after that. So that's the process to get certified.
So a quick question about you're talking about the big event that you have in the summer. Is it a weekend thing? Is it a couple of days or.
Pond ammonium is a Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. So I think it's like the August 25 through the 29th.
And so to get invited to that. How do people need to be?
Well, we're a B to B supplier, so we deal with B to C consumers in Chicago, which is where we build ponds locally as our R and D department. That's where Ed and Brian kind of specialize and travels the world. They basically just go to pondimmonium.com. This is probably good for your podcast. A lot of people are doing this as a side hustle. In 1991, I was this summer job for me at Ohio State University building ponds, and I built $21,000 in ponds in one summer. So we have a lot of firemen, we have a lot of police officers, we have a lot of school teachers that had their summers off. In fact, I just interviewed Jeff oggy of Long Island, who's been a school teacher, shop teacher for 19 years and started being landscaping. And now he's strictly a certified conduit early building pods.
So, yeah, you never know where this is going to go when you start these little hobbies.
It's like we started a podcast, we had no idea where it was going to go.
And you learn to plug along and learn from other people. This is incredible. I'm so overwhelmed by so much information here that we're getting from you. It's incredible.
Well, this is 29 years, guys. We're 37 is obvious, right? What aquascape is. Our first goal as a business is to help our customers succeed at building, selling, and retailing water features. And then we've created a learning network where basically, like, if you're in Minnesota, you would find another certified Aquasc contractor and you can apprentice under them. They'll meet you for coffee and people say, well, why would a competitor, why would somebody want to help their competitors? I'll tell you exactly why. Because the mantra of the certified competitor is, ponds done right, customers serve right. The vast, vast, vast majority of water features are built incorrectly because of the false information that's out there. I have to have a pond that's three or 4ft deep in Minnesota, for example, like we've already covered, and then it gives a bad rap and people have bad experiences. They don't build an ecosystem pond. They use the wrong size pump or the wrong plumbing, or they don't use rock and gravel. And so a certified contractor wants to get more people building ponds done right, customer serve right. So that there's more good word of mouth, because I'd rather deal with the general public that has a good perception of water features than people saying, oh, I hear they're a lot of work. Yeah, they are a lot of work if you don't build an ecosystem based approach.
And there's so many different pieces just from learning from the conversation, just the parts that I picked up. I'm part of the Upper midwest Koi Club, and they have competitions yearly. I mean, these guys do raise them up here in the north in Minnesota, and these guys dig eight 9ft down.
Let's talk about koi freaks.
So much different people than, like, an ecologic pond that we're talking about.
Yeah, okay. I don't keep marine tanks, but I guarantee you some of the fried guys out there. I mean, here's how I would define the difference between a koi person and a water garden person. I actually saw this as a cartoon once in one of the pond magazines, and it said, how do you know the difference between a koi pond tour and a water garden pond tour? At a water garden pond tour, everybody's sitting around, they're drinking a glass of wine or having a beer, sitting, looking at the fish and looking at the plants and listening to the waterfalls and seeing the birds come down and bathe in the stream. At a koi pond tour, they're in the garage looking at filters.
That is so accurate.
Accurate. These guys, like the one I went to, I'm not going to give the name, but he's very well known. He's won quite a few awards in different areas. And he has, like, three massive almost, I think it's like eight foot deep pools. They are flat walled. There's nothing in them. They're bare bottom. And he has one of the largest filtration trays that I've ever seen in my life. It's just massive rotating drum filters. And there, like you said, you're fighting against nature.
I would throw up Ed blue's aquascape wetland filtration system against the most advanced koi filtration system in the world and let them do water testing, and I guarantee you our wetland filtration will blow his drum filters away. In terms of the amount of nitrates in the water, ammonias and everything else.
100%, because you're only as good as the tap, and essentially it's better than the tap after you had a fully cycled completed biological system, a wetland filter.
Is the way nature made. That's the way, like, Michigan is filtered it's through wetlands. And so you're replicating nature, and you cannot beat that into submission by trying to put in bells and whistles and listen. What I don't like, and this is where I get a bit archie bunker on things. Jimmy would understand this, you know, as a you know, is people telling me, I can't do it. This is what I do. I've sold a billion dollars worth of pond products in the last 29 years to people successfully building ecosystem based bonds. I've been to God of Japan. I bought fish in the God of Japan. How many of these hobbyists that have how many of them have been doing this their whole lives? Their beer salesmen or their cfos or whatever they are? This is my life. I am the pond guy, and I am not the smartest tool in the shed, but I have guys with limnology degrees that have developed our filter systems, like Ed, the pond professor. And so one of the reasons that I started vlogging and I have Greg, what's like the pond guy on YouTube is. I'm like, I'm just going to go out there for all of these naysayers and these people that say, I'm just going to showcase the customers that are living with these ponds all over the world, including Minnesota, Australia, England, wherever. I'm going to showcase occasional ponds and we're going to interview the customers that have these ponds, ask them how much work it is every week. Ask them what they do with the fish in the winter. And we have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of logs with over 1000 ponds showcased on our YouTube channel. Watch that and tell me why I'm wrong.
He just made a great, interesting point, Rob. Just like when we're interviewing my friend Sean and he says, I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed, but I surround myself with really smart people and this is exactly what Greg has done.
Also, listen. I built the world's largest business for professional water feature contractors. I'm a contractor. I just wanted to have a pond in my house that worked. It didn't work. I read the books, I went to the things and it figured it out on myself. I decided to work with Mother Nature and I've been doing it for 37 years. And when people tell me it doesn't work, I say, show me the evidence. Watch my vlog. Go to our website and talk to the people that own the pond. How much work is this, Mrs. Jones? Oh, it's not a lot of work. I empty the skimmer bag. Boom.
These are all people who don't even know what the dewey decimal System is in the library.
So I'm laughing because the only reason I know is because I've been trying to get these library card drawers. You guys lived in that whole era where you had the cards you have to pull out.
Yes.
Those little systems at the library cost a ton of money. Right now I'm a card collector as well. So I'm trying to get furniture to put my cards in securely. And those little dewey decimal Card System holders are few and far between. You can see them go to auction for thousands of dollars. That's that's why I know the system.
What the dewey decimal System is, right? Everybody in this day and age think they can just go ahead and watch a one YouTube video for seven minutes and become an expert on stuff. And it just drives me freaking insane too.
Well, you know what Mark twain says.
What's that?
Be careful for when you argue with fools. bystandards might become confused with who's? Whom.
That is pretty damn accurate.
So why do you guys want to wrap this up? What else can I do to help your listeners and you guys understand? Because this is like I said, I've forgotten more than I know right now, but I just have to keep it simple. Stupid philosophy. And I just really have a passion for this industry. I have a passion for helping people. I appreciate you guys having me on this podcast, but I get frustrated by the misinformation that's out there. So thank you for giving me the platform for him to help articulate some of the things that aren't as complicated as people make them out to.
No. And going through like you did really nailed a long list of my questions. We do have a few more and a couple that actually started just from the conversation that I thought at the top of my head I can't stress enough, like you said, on the bottom, you see rocks and gravel on the bottom. To have the biological media to build in the pond. It just blows my mind that that's there, because I keep hearing people do floor drains and all kinds of so.
Here'S the problem with the bottom drain. Where do 98% of leaks happen?
Right.
In the bottom?
Well, no, 98% of leaks happen when you pump the water out of the main vessel and recirculate it through a waterfalls or a filtration system. So when you're pumping the water from the bottom and you get a leak in one of your fittings, or you get a leak in your waterfalls because your aquatic plants block up the stream or whatever, then all the water goes out and you're very expensive koi. You wake up the next morning and they're all laying their dead.
Just your favorite ones.
Exactly.
I've had two friends dig them up.
When you pump from a skimmer, you take the water from the top six inches, right?
Yeah, I've had two friends had to dig them straight up the ponds out. Just because they're leaked and ruined and they have to completely redesign the pond. It doesn't make sense at all. So sand, again, does not allow a lot of biological material to build up. So you're strictly a rock and gravel connoisseur. So where do you use a sand media in a pond?
I was just at an Aquacy Ecosystem pond in Australia last week. That's 3 million gallons and is at the largest folk festival in all of Australia. It's called woodford. I just shared the post, actually, ironically, yesterday, and Greg wit's, like the pond guy on Facebook. On the Facebook, and it's a 3 million gallon pond with a giant beach area. Of course, the rest of the pond is rock and gravel, but the beach probably goes 100 foot long, probably 6ft into the pond at a nice slope and an angle. But the rest of the pond is rock and gravel.
That makes sense.
And by the way, how do you filter a 3 million gallon pond? Very careful. You can't do that with drum filters. You use a giant wetland filter.
That's your only option that I would think of.
And here's the last argument, just because I'm on my soapbox, please, for all of those people that put koi in Settle Street or concrete belt ponds. If you went to the zoos in the, you would see a lion in a cage, bars and concrete. And now, of course, they have natural looking exhibits and they have waterfalls, and the animal is in a much more natural environment. gentlemen, I know that you are aquarium people, but I'm going to ask you this question. I think you're both going to get it right. What are on the sides of every koi's mouth?
Barbells.
Barbells. What are those barbells used for digging.
In the bottom of the pond.
Have you ever been to, like, an Embassy suites where they have the Koi pods?
Yes.
You can just sit there and look, and everywhere there's gravel. You'll see the fish rooting around everywhere. There's not gravel, which is concrete pond. They just float there like a lion in a cage. That's just concrete. The fish are completely more active in an ecosystem based pond with rock and gravel and plants than they are in a concrete or a liner pond with just a bottom drain. It's literally a night and day difference between the activity level of a coin that's in a pond with gravel than a coin that's in a flap on a pond.
That makes total sense because they're doing nothing but foraging all day long looking for food.
Amen. This is not rocket science stuff. I played football. I got this stuff figured out to.
Not go in the nitty gritty, but go to some other questions. Do you see many people do the conversion, such as like you did with big rich people, have those indoor pools? Is that becoming more and more of a thing where people literally take those and try to convert them to a more it's not natural, but at least like a gravel bedded pond.
How I found ritz, ironically, was Steve poland's video, and then he mentioned that he was wanting to convert a swimming pool. I'm like, oh, my God, I can filter that with a wetland, but that's a reverse wetland under the pond. His swimming pool was 12ft deep. We just took the bottom 4ft of it in the deep section, put the snorkels in the centipedes, and the stuff that Ed, the pond professor, developed, we put that on the bottom. And by the way, guys, how clear is that pond? 365. Crystal clear.
I think there are the two videos. When he just fed, there was only a little bit of pieces in it.
And it gets clear right away because it's an ecosystem based philosophy with rocks and gravel. It's less conversions and it's more like the recreation pond at woodford at the largest folk fest from Australia. Recreation pods are a huge trend because in Minnesota, in Chicago, and pretty much everywhere besides Florida, Arizona and California, you can use a swimming pool three or four months out of the year. Why would you want to not have a recreation pond that you can enjoy 365 days out of the year. I'm sitting here right now as I'm talking to you in my headset, looking at probably ten Canadian geese swimming around in my crystal clear, 600,000 gallon aquascape recreation pond. That is beautiful. 365 days of the year. Where a swimming pool? You use it three or four months out of the year in most places.
I guess the only other question is just the fundamentals of ponds that we have. where's the place where you don't want to put a pond?
The number one thing is, first of all, when it comes to success with water features, and if you haven't already figured this by my contiguous nature yet, if you want to be successful with ponds, do not give the customer what they ask for.
Smooth.
You sound like Delta Airlines. Right there. That's Delta Airlines.
I'm sorry, delta would not be associated.
Delta was the number one recently on customer service. Guys I know. They're based in Minneapolis. We're top.
Yeah, that's what we do on a weekly basis, and it's not ever happy.
Well, I fly. My entire life is flying. The first rule of successiveness is not to give the customer what they ask for, because here's the two things that they usually ask for. Can you put it in the back corner of my property? Because it always holds water. You don't want it there. Yes, I do. No, you don't. Yes, I do. No, you don't. Because then we're going to have surface problems. We're going to have roll enough problems. You want it where you could see it, because even outdoor loving people spend 95% of their time in their house. So you want it up close and personal, right next to the deck, right outside of the kitchen window, the living room window, up close and personal. And the next thing that you don't want to give a customer is a five foot high waterfall in a flat backyard. And when customers say they want that, we say, no, you don't. They said yes, we do. They said, no, we don't. And you say, do you want a volcano spewing lava or do you want a natural looking waterfall?
Now, that's a thought.
I want the volcano, actually. And then they'll point to a picture and they'll say, I want one just like that. And I'll say, yeah, that's 2ft. What? I go, yeah, that's a two. That's a twelve inch waterfall there and a twelve inch waterfall there. That's a 24 inch high waterfall. You don't want to have a flat yard unless you want to bring in two semis of soil with proper slope over angle. And so I see people build these volcanoes spewing lava, and I see people put ponds in the lowest corner of their property. Gets all the runoff and the drainage and everything else, and of course, every other thing in the sun that people say, can you make water flow upstream? Maybe you could, but don't try to do it. And never, ever, ever make a waterfall off of the roof. And if someone tells you to do that and it leaks on the kitchen table, it's your ass in a sling.
We got a friend that made a request for a waterfall off of the roof.
We got to give him exactly what he wanted.
If you've been in this business for 29 years, you've heard everything. And my first rule is not to give the customers what they asked for, which is to give them what they want up close and personal. A slope, proper high waterfall, slope over angle. An ecosystem based pond that works with Mother Nature, not against her. Some of the basic principles. Aquascape is a franchise system without a franchise fee. When you think of a franchise, it's replicateable. But because each water feature is put in a different setting, every stone is different. Even if you use the same types of stone. Each water feature is a unique work of art, one of a kind custom creation. But the process, the 20 products and 20 steps remains the same regardless of where you're building it. And then you can control your systems, and then you can have people that work for you. Because I'm not out there everyday building ponds, but when I'm done, it's not just got to say Mrs. jones's pond, it's got to say Aquascape ecosystem pond. And so I build these ponds to work. I build them so that the customers are going to enjoy them. And I don't give a customer necessarily what they ask for, but I always give them what they want, which is a beautiful, low maintenance and enjoyable water.
Feature in my backyard. I've been looking about putting another pond. I have one in the front yard, one in the backyard. I was so concerned about having too much sunlight in the backyard. I get sun there probably eight, 9 hours a day. What do you suggest for that? Are you just doing a lot of plants to help them?
No. Listen, every condition is a little different. Is it full sun? Is it full shade? Is it partial? But I would not be worried about it. That would not worry me. A full sun pond? Yes. You'll have more blooms and you can put more aquatic plants in there. We might do a vanishing edge on something like that where we have underground storage basin so that you don't have the heating or necessarily the amount of sunlight if there's water underneath the ground. And an aqua Block system. But every system, everything that we design is with our same components, but they're is going to be different conditions like sun or leaves or things like that. You won't have any problem just building an eleven x 16 pond in your backyard, 2ft deep with plants. Now, if you're going to have nutrients in the water, you're going to have a lot of sun. Then we would definitely put an iron gen on that an iron gen is a probe that has copper in it that releases a little bit of copper and as long as you have allergy, it'll get absorbed by the algae and it will break apart. What you don't want to do is put the iron in a pod that doesn't have algae, leave it on, and then the copper builds up and getting absorbed by the fish. This is why we created the iogen to make a consumer's experience that has full sun or whatever and gets more string algae than somebody who doesn't.
But that particular product, you want to wait to see if you have a problem before you buy that.
If I was building a pond in full sun, it's a new pond and I know it's going to take a couple of years to get the eagles, I would always just put an iogen in it. Big deal. Just target out when you have allergy and turn it off when you don't.
Okay, so for the listeners, can you also explain the vanishing mechanism that you're speaking of?
Basically there's an underground cistern which holds the water. So we actually created it when 2008, when water restrictions were coming in in California and things like that, where we capture the rainwater that falls under the roofs and goes into an underground system that keeps the pond topped off. The nice thing that we discovered through that process was if you have water that's under the ground, if not exposed to the sunlight, the water parameters are going to be easier to control. And so if I've got a full sun pond, a high fish load, things like that, what I'll do is I will put a raid water capture, underground cistern, vanishing edge in that pond that will allow the water parameters to be more stable than one that was in full sun all day long.
Now that sounds like it uses an auto top off mechanism like you were trying to explain.
You don't have to have once again, that's an app. So all of these things, we travel for a month every year, no problem. We'll put an automatic fill valve on and it's just a little, small, little valve that goes in the back of the skimmer box.
Got you.
This is really not that complicated. This is the key. When a designer who's been trained goes into somebody's yard, they need to understand all of these components and how everything fits together and works together, because they've seen similar situations. We always say, I know we have a lot of hobbyists that will probably listen to this. We always say, if you want to save money, hire it done. If it's a labor of love, do it yourself. Because what happens is, how many waterfalls have these people built? Zero. The majority of people go out there and they stack rocks and put a pipe on the top of it that once again, looks like a volcano spring lava. But. If you understand the philosophies which water eroded away the soil and expose the stone, all of the soil that you dig out of your pod becomes your berm. You erode away that soil with your shovel. You put your liner down, you put your stone in, you foam the rocks in between. We never use concrete because concrete cracks, and we build you a natural looking waterfall 24 inches high in a flat backyard. Or if you have a slope, you can build it 30ft high over a 60 foot run if you need to.
So what is the largest pond that you have put in for somebody if they come in and say, I want the biggest pond in the neighborhood?
Well, my backyard I am the pond guy is the biggest that I have personally built, and that's a million gallon pond. I've got a four acre property, and one acre of it is water. The liner in the main body, which is connected to a smaller pond, was 180 by 220 and weighed £5600 and took 22 guys to get muscle into place. The pond that I just built, or the pod that I didn't build, but we supplied the products for at Woodford in Australia, was 3 million gallons. And that's the biggest aquascape ecosystem pond in the world. And it gets used by thousands of people that come to their folk festival every year.
That is incredible. Earlier, when you said you had Canadian geese swimming in your pond out back, and we're up here, northern Minnesota, we've got Canadian geese around here everywhere. Everywhere. And by the way, they're delicious. And to have them swimming in your pond, I mean, that's incredible. Nobody around here has a pond big enough for a mallard duck to even land, usually.
You guys need to come to aqua land. We do. We need to go visit to come down to Chicago, come down for the aqua Summit. The aqua Summit, I think, is August 25. It's our pre Pride ammonium thing, and it's for the industry. It's going to be a lot of youtubers podcasters, things like that. So you guys could certainly talk about podcasting at that and get to see pandemonium and get to experience aqua land.
I'm going to say, I think I'm going to be in Chicago on that weekend. We're coming down for motley crude. Death leopard. Joan jet.
I went to that concert last year at wrigley Field. Yeah.
And we're going to wrigley Field this year to go see it. We're doing meet and greet with poison and we're going to be down there. I know it's. Towards the end of August, you'll be.
Dressed like a rocker, ready to go to a pond.
That's right.
Come to aqualand. We'll give you a basket. You could swim in my 600,000 gallon pond, put a scuba tank on. You can go through the underwater cave.
I will bring my flotation device, which usually is a half drunk or half drank beer bottle. I put my thumb on it, and it's a flotation device.
I've never seen you, but you kind of remind me of Dubbears from Saturday.
Dubbears?
Yeah.
It's pretty accurate.
Very accurate.
Pretty accurate.
He just needs a better mustache.
I don't have a mustache anywhere. I used to have a porn mustache, but that's gone now.
So what can I wrap you guys up with here?
All right, last two questions I got from listeners is you said recreation pond is the biggest thing right now. It's really transitioning. People are concerned because you treat your normal pool with chemicals and whatnot, and there's dos and don'ts, whether you swim with clothing that has been soaked in soap in a natural pond, recreational pond. What's the real concerns or don'ts that you would do for swimming in there? Of course, you don't want to dump any chemicals, but no lotions, I'm assuming. Or is the biological system really going to take care of most anything that they're going to be wearing in a normal person?
Well, that's an interesting question. Like I said, we were in Australia, and one of the recreation pods at one of the conjurer's houses down there, he actually swims with angel fish and discus, which we know are kind of a more finicky fish. And we were putting on sunscreen because we were in Australia, and it's so diluted at a 30,000 gallon pond, even with five, six guys swimming in it, we didn't see any detrimental effect for discus and angel fish that were swimming around in tropical recreation pond down under. So I've had my pond, my million gallon pond forever and bug spray and everything else. It's just an organic thing. We just go in there. Now, if you're at a folk festival with thousands of people sitting into it, maybe I guess it could be that way. But I don't remember any problems being reported from that folk festival either. So it just gets so diluted in a giant pond.
So how many people come to that folk festival? I'm not familiar with that.
Well, either was I until they built this pond there. It's the largest folk festival. It's called woodford. W-O-O-D-F-O-R-D woodford Folk Festival in Brisbane, Australia And they get a half a million people a year to go there.
Oh, my Lord. So is that like a week long thing that they have going on down there?
It's a couple of weeks. It's a month of December. It's in the middle of nowhere. And they were talking about a big swimming pool, and they're like, Why would we do that? It would look natural. And that's when they hired waterscapes of Australia. Dr. candley, and he designed that and built it with a whole collaboration of certified oxygen contractors down there. Yeah.
That sounds like about a 50 person project for a month or two, huh?
Yeah, it was a lot of people there were a lot of guys that would work on it. What was fun was when we went back down there in February, a lot of the guys that had built it was the first time that they'd actually got to swim in it because they weren't there when it got finished.
How'S the water coming to that a pond. Is that a natural pond?
They drill the well? They did.
Okay, that was my question. I figured they had to have something extremely big or had a Pacific spring that came through or something like that.
But it's a lighter pond. It's an EPDM lighter pond. It's just a lot of seams.
Okay, new question. I just came from West Virginia building aquarium basement, and I saw in West Virginia thousands of springs everywhere. Have you ever built a pond based upon a natural spring on someone's property?
Yes, you could build a natural pond, but we wouldn't build a natural pond with liner because you would get hydrostatic pressure pulling it up. It just recirculates. We build a vessel that holds this watertight vessel. We don't put outside water into it in terms of like a natural spring that would come in at 52 degrees or whatever. If you are going to do that, you would just dig it out and just have an earth and pond, which they do all the time. But if you're going to have a liner pond, you wouldn't want water coming into it.
An earth and pond. You do some sort of clays for the basin. Try to hold more water as much as you can.
It's basically apples and oranges. An earth and pod is a farm pond. You don't have the water quality. It's a constantly fluctuating system, an ecosystem. Lighter pod is a controlled unit. So many problems with earth and pods out there with water quality. They use a lot of chemicals to kill the algae. They have to get dredged. You have to get an EPA certificate. All of these homeowners associations are in courts over this because 30 years after they moved into their neighborhood, now the pod is going to be $2 million to dredge it. It's just a nightmare. And they all look like crap, the most of them.
Good information. Another question that we have is how was your time behind the scenes for nat geo on Palm Stars?
Oh, my gosh. We get to that at the end. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right?
We hope so.
Gives you better premise on YouTube, hopefully.
Yeah. Well, everything happens for a reason. I say that was one of the hardest things I ever had to do, because every day I woke up, I had a boss. I've been self employed for 29 years. I think you got a little bit about my personality in this conversation. And I had to be told every day what to do. I got handed a script. I said, well, that's not how we would do it. We wouldn't be worried about hiring this wire. We would just cut it and splice it and oh, no, it's got to be a big deal. It gave me a whole new perspective on Hollywood. Reality TV is scripted TV. Everything is controlled, everything is scripted. And that process that lasted a year, 2013 pod Stars debuted in 2014. It only had one season, which is the majority of shows, by the way. It only had one season. And it was a challenge because I had a 33. Very nice girl, but her way of dealing with me was to hand me a script every day, and I really hated it. I'm not a scriptable person.
Yeah, you seem to fly fast and fly high.
I'm an entrepreneur. I'm a self made guy. I've been the owner of my own company for 29 years. And the way that they dealt with me was to tell me how to build pods, which was not a fun experience, but it doesn't kill you, makes you stronger. And now I get to go out and shoot videos all over the world for YouTube or the Pod guy on YouTube. And I absolutely love my job, which is what I say every time, because I just get to look at beautiful pods, talk to homeowners, and see cool contractors making custom work of art designs.
Now, another question we always ask every one of our guests is, is your family really supportive of what you do? Because it is amazing how many different answers we've gotten over the last year.
I'm on my third marriage and how this is going. Fish are really killing.
Yeah.
My wife is missing because she's dead in a grave somewhere shallow. Is your family supportive of you or are they with you or they help you out? Are they involved in the business?
So it's kind of funny. This is the whole nature versus nurture. I have two boys, 19 and 17. And I would have never, ever been in my house as a kid growing up if I had a one acre lake in my backyard. They grew up with it. A lot of their friends thought it was cool, but they could care less. Neither one of them are going to be following me in my foot tracks with my footsteps with Aquascape. However however, I do have a nephew who is now 14 years old, and at ten he finished the Aquascape training, the axem Academy. And of course, I built him upon. And so, who knows, maybe my nephew will do this. And my wife, the biggest worry with her is that I have a one acre lake at her house and she didn't want the kids to drown. So both kids were swimming across the pool by the time that they were one years old.
I can feel that in Minnesota we have a right by passage. You cannot graduate most schools around here in elementary school without completing swimming lessons. So me, I was put a life jacket on and thrown into a 60 foot deep lake. And that's how I was learned to swim. That was just because mom didn't have to worry about me jumping in the lake when she wasn't looking.
I'm turning 50 this year, and I don't really care what's going to happen when I'm 100, because I'm never going to retire. And when you find something you love to do, you never have to work another day of your life. And that's exactly how I feel. I have a business this that allows me not to work in it, but to work on it. And the majority of my time is spent promoting the wonderful world of water features. And that's why I appreciate you guys having me on this podcast today.
I appreciate you being here. And again, to find your information, you can go to Aquascapeinc.com. Is that correct?
Yeah, Aquascapeinc.com. Greg Whitsock, the pond guy on YouTube. Pond Guy. Greg whitaker, the pond guy on Facebook. And I also have my own podcast at the same thing. Greg was like the pond guy.
Well, perfect. We'll have those links in the show. Notes, please, like and subscribe. And again, thanks for having beyond, buddy. We really appreciate it.
Gentlemen, it's been a pleasure. You guys are a lot of fun.
All right, we will get some feedback from all of our listeners. I'm sure there'll be more questions and maybe we can do this again sometime.
And hopefully we get to see you in August.
Absolutely. Upon emotion.
All right, podcast out. Thanks, guys, for listening to this podcast. Please visit us at aquarium guyspodcast.com and listen to us on spotify iHeartRadio itunes.
And anywhere you can listen to podcasts.
We're practically everywhere. We're on Google. I mean, just go to your favorite place, Pocket casts subscribe to make sure it gets push notifications directly to your phone. Otherwise Jim will be crying in his sleep.
Can I listen to it in the in my tree house?
In your tree house? In your fish room. Even alone.
Or what about my man cave?
Especially your man cave.
Yeah.
Only if Adam is there.
No.
With feeder guppy. No, they're endless.
You imagine loving Frank sucking mother frank.
Well, I guess we'll see you next time. Later.