Come in. Hello. Oh, Mr. peterson. How are you?
Good. Just here for my checkup.
Oh, fantastic. Go ahead and step over there and take off your pants. My what? Your pants. It's a processed exam.
Why would I do that?
It's an easy exam. Thousands die every year. Totally preventable. I just need to stick my finger right up. What do you think this was? It's not as easy as shopping on Joe Shrimpshack.com. I mean, there's great shrimp. Easy to do 24 hours a day. Even have a promo code of 15% off aquarium Guys promo code of checkout. It's not near that easy. It's just one finger. whoa, Mr. peterson, you just need to calm down. I'm just here to make sure that your six inch chilawood keeps working. Wait a second. This is Roy peterson, correct?
Roy?
No, I'm Jim peterson. Oh, Jim. No, jim, you're C. Four b. This is in the right room.
Well, that's really just like ordering from Joe shrimp shack.com.
Long name and even better, chillo would. All right. Also, don't forget about our favorite people that just had their prostate exam, the Ohio Fish Rescue. Josh and Big Rich. No, I'm just kidding. But Josh and Big Rich need your love and support, not because they got a bad process exam, but because they have the world's largest fish rescue that we can find. Go to Ohio Fish Rescue on YouTube, like, and subscribe to the channel and consider giving up a couple of bucks. They certainly need it. All right, guys, last thing. I swear we have a giveaway from Tenant Aquatics.com. Certainly go to the bottom of our website, aquariumgyspodcast.com. You'll see the giveaway link at the bottom sign up. They're giving away a free enigma pack. This is a $60 value. What they do is they take your information of your aquarium and send you a hand curated package filled with different leaves, sticks, barks, seed pods, all to create a tannin style ecosystem for your aquarium.
Certainly.
Go again, Aquarium Guys podcast bought on the website. Sign up. Thank you. Tan and aquatics And let's kick that podcast. Welcome to the Aquarium Guys podcast with your host, Jim colby and Rob dolson. Hey, guys, welcome to the podcast. Today we are super excited to finally get Ed the Pond Professor in. Ed, how are you doing today, buddy?
I'm doing great. How are you?
I am wonderful. So we were talking with Greg woodstock. He was so kind to what was the word that you used? Jimmy voluntold volunteered.
Yeah, Greg volunt told him that he had to do our podcast, and so Ed so graciously accepted. And we tried just doing this last week, and it didn't quite work out. So here we are on a Monday night on a beautiful Minnesota day, and Ed sitting over in the Chicago area having a beer. And so we're ready to get this podcast kicked off.
Absolutely. So, Ed, you have an extensive background all the way from. It says on your profiles at 1991 92 that you've been building ponds. Is that correct?
Actually, I started up with Aquascape in 1993. So I have a degree in zoology, which means I was basically just an outdoor kid growing up outskirts of Chicago, northern Illinois, looking for anything water based. With my degree. I actually specialize in limnology, which is the study of freshwater ecosystem. That's because I was always drawn to the water. That's where all the life happens. That's where all the animals would come. That's where I'd find fish, amphibians, all types of wildlife. And I was fishing for them, I was snorkeling with them. I would go scuba diving in these local lakes, and I just had a ball with it. And I started working as an environmental chemist, and it really was not what I had anticipated for kind of my career. So I started looking around for some other stuff and I got hooked up with Aquascape. And ever since I found him at 93, I've loved it because I've been able to design custom water features literally around the world. And I've helped to design a lot of our core products that actually give us the desired water quality that people are looking for.
That's fantastic. So 93 you started, you said, but did you do your own pond before then?
Actually, my first pond was probably back in the gosh. I'm going to have to go way back. it'd probably be like 1975 when I really started my first pond in a backyard when I was a little kid, and it was a tiny little thing that had some frogs and that type of stuff in it. And then since then, I've always had aquariums, and I just started layering on all these other pieces.
That's fantastic. Well, and what we're going to do is we're going to cover some of our news and updates, and then we'll get down and dirty to our pond conversation. But please join in with us again. I'm your host, Rob Zolson.
I'm Jim colby.
And I'm Adam Ellen Shire.
We have a new review there, Jimmy.
A review. We do good, bad, one star.
One star? No, five star review on Apple.
Really?
Thank you. To the mysterious person that just decided to type a bunch of stuff in their keyboard of his name.
Thanks, rob's. Mom again.
Yes, rob's mom. This is the best corn pockets ever found. Amazing content. Adam, Jim and Robbie are amazing hosts. Tons of great info for beginners into even the experienced wholesaler industry insights provided by you guys are great. Keep up the good work. He clearly hasn't listened to story time.
I was going to say he has a re episode. Yeah, exactly.
Out of all the episodes, that's the first episode. We have not got one message iota so far from that episode. We just released it last week from.
This recording on the re episode.
I'm waiting for feedback, but we have never had a more active discord since that episode went out.
That is true. We talked about stuff that get people talking about things that are happening in our industry, and it was actually pretty fun.
You enjoyed it. I just sat here sweating for you since that's my diabetic ability.
That's correct.
But check it out. We even did some custom artwork turning our normal podcast logo into a dumpster fire. So it was a lot of fun.
We do that best.
Well, again, thanks for the review, guys. And this week, as far as updates, two quick ones for myself.
What's that?
Charlie the catfish, which you soap donated to me. Thank you, by the way. No one wants it, but everyone gets it.
Yeah, it's kind of like giving that pair of pants back and forth at Christmas time.
So if you haven't listened to our podcast before, number one, start from the beginning. These are fun podcasts in evergreens, so they have topics that will last quite a while. But go to our first episodes and we'll talk about Charlie the catfish, how he lived through thick and thin, rode in a lot of back seats, and also survived for six months in black environment, no food and two inches of water. So amazing story about an albino channel catfish. But I have him now in your 90 gallon that I purchased from you. He decided to play Free willy. Free willy, my cat went to my wife in the morning, woke her up, apparently kept biting at her ankle, trying to drag her over towards the tank like lassie. Kind of like a lassie thing. But brought my wife to the fish, only for my wife to scream, wake me up and put the fish back in the aquarium. This thing has yet to die. It's got a death wish, but just can't somehow die.
And we've had this fish for a number of years now, quite a long time.
So if you have a rimless tank, don't put catfishes as the moral of the story. And then, second life lesson that I learned this week, I decided to clean out my 75 gallon tank or ReScape it.
What happened?
Well, it looks good, doesn't it, Jimmy?
It looks darn good.
I have a massive piece of driftwood I bought from a buddy, and it's literally covering the entire length of the 75 gallon aquarium. But I decided just to rip out all the plants into core and just start over to escape it. I totally forgot I put a placo cave in this thing. So I lift up the placo cave. Sure enough, there's a play go inside. Like, I don't have two in there. There's no way they could be breeding. So I tip it upside down to shake the play go out, and out come 300 babies pouring all over my tank. There's my roommate for you.
He's always wanted to be on the radio.
He does? Yeah, he does. So, yeah, covered my tank, and dojo loaches went nuts trying to eat these things. So I ran for my wife and roommate. We all grabbed nets and started scooping. I probably got 100 plus out of it, so I'm pretty tickled. All regulars in the tank, so if you have a placo cave, something's inside of it, treat it as though it has babies. Don't make my mistake.
Don't be as stupid and not know that you have two plecos in the tank. You didn't even know you had two.
I mean, what did I put that in two years ago? I didn't even remember they're in there.
How do you not know that when you shift lights off that they swim around? You don't look at your tank at night?
I mean, I don't turn on red lights and try to look for octopus like you do. There we go.
Rob'S tank is so heavily planted, it's so dang hard to even see the fish in there. It's like just a big old clump of plants down there, and so they're so thick, you can't see anything.
I'm hearing the jealousy in your voice, Jimmy.
That is correct.
He doesn't even try to breed them.
And he's got 300 pages.
Shut up. I just shut up.
Ate the damn thing.
I spend hundreds of dollars trying to freaking breed placing, and I suck at it.
And mine keep happening on accident, just non stop. Every time I have a batch, I just stare at Jimmy smirk and go about my day.
Yeah, but I haven't seen the notes yet. I am taking part credit of this because it is my pleco cave that I gave to Rob to use.
This is true. I completely forgot I had it. So now it's positioned up front so we can put a light through it to see, make sure there's no babies.
So what happened to the babies? They all get eaten?
No, I haven't been a ten gallon tank, and they're growing out the yolks because these things were so small, they're like glass, and they had yolks on them still. Now, as of today, the yolks are finally gone and they're coloring up, so I haven't lost any yet. Knock on wood. I call that a pretty good rescue.
So far, so good.
You got any more updates, Jimmy?
I've got nothing. My life has been nothing but coronavirus not it.
See, we can say that word because we're not on YouTube. smp's youtubers.
Yes, but I mean what?
They can't say coronavirus?
No. Otherwise they get demonetized. If they say the word corona. bam. demonetized.
Really? That's true.
Yeah. It's literally a robot that literally tries to listen for that word.
Yeah. I spent my whole entire day out in public, and now my company has required me to wear a face mask. And for those of you who have watched mash over the years, there's an episode where everybody was wearing face mask because of something, and everybody was going. Doctor. Doctor. Doctor. Hello, doctor. Doctor. So that's what we're doing now. Everywhere I go, we walk citizens.
Doctor.
Well, on that note, let's dive right in and start picking on Ed. So, Ed, you're a pond professional. Before we start in the deep dive of ponds, how are people and professionals around the nation trying to prep for this? Are they just telling homeowners to stay inside while we install your pond? Is that everything's moving back to late summer? how's it going to the pond industry?
That's a great question. So it's actually kind of been all over the board. So I'll start with us here in Chicago. So the Chicago land market, we were obviously shut down right in the very beginning when everything was kind of brought to light and everything just started happening. But they quickly realized that we kind of had an essential service because springtime is hitting and we're all outside. So there are small teams of people. We're not really going into people's homes. We're doing all that work outside. We could send them messages to all of our customers. We can get the information on what they're looking for to have done, and our team can come in and do it. Now, the thing that we kind of had to change was normally we would have two guys going in a service vehicle. Now we have them driving in separate vehicles, going to the job, and they're not really working on top of each other. They're both on the same property, but they both have their roles on the property to get everything done. So it's actually worked really well for us, and we're super busy, and it's because people are at home. So people we've been waiting all winter long for spring to finally hit, so people want to start getting back outside and enjoying their properties because you're stuck now. So we're getting actually inundated right now with calls to get water features up and running, get pump started, cleaning out filters, you name it. We're doing it with mass, of course.
Because you have to have those aquascape branded masks just to look good.
Absolutely. Of course.
I want to apologize. I picked on Greg when he was here because I really wanted to get in the meat of the conversation. So I gave him a lot of grief, pretended to be the odd man out and a lot of pawn questions, so I'm going to do the same to you. But just wanted to apologize to Greg. We got a great interview out of it, but I had to raise him a bit.
Greg got fired up.
Anytime Greg gets fired up, it's good entertainment.
Oh, my gosh. You know it. Yeah, he's got a very short fuse. Once he gets going, that's it. You're not stopping him.
Jim, what were some of the questions that you had saved?
Going right back to talking about being in the zone, and Greg kept on telling us that we're in zone what is chicago's zone? Because we can't be much off and.
Describe to our listeners that are new what these zones entail.
So the usda zone system is basically it's going to show you the minimum and maximum range of your temperatures. So Chicago is a zone five. Minneapolis, you're probably a zone four. So it's going to go off of the extension of that lowest temperature. Now you go all the way down into Central to South Florida, that's a zone nine or zone ten. So that's like a subtropical type of an environment. But Chicago zone five. I'm going to say you're a zone four. I think the lowest that goes in the United States might only be a zone three. And if you go all the way up to the Arctic, obviously it's going to be a one. But we don't get that bad here in the States. I think you guys are actually zoned three.
I was going to say we're zoned three here. Minnesota, we're a lot further up than Minneapolis. We're closer to fargo.
We're 200 miles.
Minneapolis, okay, yeah. Then you probably are zone three then. I think that might be the lowest number for the United States.
So what is hard for us in Minnesota is depth. We always think that just like you would drive on ice, that the ice can go two and a half feet thick in extreme situations like International Falls. So the average place in Minnesota that we're at foot and a half, 2ft at absolute worst weather season. Right?
Exactly.
And then you got to imagine that there's only so much space underneath. So we're assuming that oxygen depletes. So any pond that we have in Minnesota, that's 6ft or less, we automatically assume that there's going to be no fish in it just because there's no oxygen. So if we're trying to imitate that and plan around no oxygen, we have to put bubblers in the pond year round and plan at least a six foot pond. But what Greg was telling us is that's not the case, and that's a massive misconception. Do you have more details on that?
So, on my personal pond, and this was trying to think of what year it was, it was just a couple of years ago when we had a really hard deep freeze, at least for Chicago. So we had multiple days of negative temperatures. It was late January. We didn't have a ton of snow or anything. I went out into the middle of my pond, I drilled a hole and I had nine and a half inches of ice. Now, my pond was about three and a half feet deep. So I tested that same thing over at our office, and we stay between eight and ten inches of ice here in Chicago. So what actually starts to happen is you have water depth, obviously, but you also have that geothermal heating and cooling of the soil itself. So I have ponds that are 2ft deep in Edmonton, Canada, which I believe is the zone too. So there are brutal, brutal temperatures up there. And I have two foot deep ponds that actually have koi fish that live 365 days a year in those particular ponds. The only thing that we do is we have some sort of a bubbler and or a floating heater just to have that oxygen transfer between the atmosphere and the water itself.
And that's not just for oxygen, but that's gas transfer. Correct?
That is gas transfer. Correct. Yeah. So we're going to off gas everything. Hydrogen sulfide, methane, anything that's building up inside of that pond. Carbon dioxide is going to go up. And then we're also going to start diffusing some of that oxygen in. Now, the blessing is because we're dealing with cold water species of fish, they're not carnivores, so they're not actively feeding. They're not actively feeding during the winter months. The large Koi fish, when we get really clear ice, you could look through the ice and you'll see those large koi. They lay on the bottom and they don't move. Now the little ones, though, which is really interesting, they're much more active, they're going to be feeding on the benthic strata underneath, so they're going to be feeding on microorganisms, algae, growth, et cetera, that's growing in and on the gravel surfaces and things like that.
Even when the water is technically freezing.
Absolutely. It's amazing, but their metabolism is a little bit different. Now, whenever we do have a fish kill during the winter months, it's usually not like an entire pond unless something gets shut down. Like if you lose power, the pond freezes over, you definitely will have a fish kill that just eradicates everything. But typically, if we're going to lose a fish or two out of a population of 50 or 100 fish that might be in a backyard pond, it usually is going to be those larger ones that die during the winter months. And it's just I i don't know how to explain it other than it's just an old fish, it's kind of lived its lifespan. But those smaller ones are they don't have the same oxygen requirements. They're a little bit more resilient and they still actively feed during those winter months, and I think that helps them.
I had my own pond. It was 800 gallons, 1000 gallon, something like that. What I did is I had a small property in my small hometown and it was 44 foot wide lot, so it was real close, tight corners. So if I was going to put a pond in, I had to completely upheave one of my gardens. So the garden was next to the driveway and up against my deck. So I essentially cut it out of the square that it was in. So it was cement to cement on all sides. And I just cut the hole out and put shelves in and essentially had some sort of like modern esque looking pond and not knowing this amazing information because I had it at close to 3ft deep, I brought my fish in every year into a warehouse and put them on a trickle system. Now, you said that a lot of times the larger fish are the ones to go. Well, I had three, two and a half foot long koi and a bunch of small six inch coy that were donated because I rescue a lot of fish and the city normally notifies me when they're going to flush the lines. They decided to flush the lines, not put it in the paper. And I have my wintering system in a warehouse. That's cool. It's like 45 degrees on a trickle system, so I don't have to do water changes. All I do is keep checking on them throughout the winter and sure enough, the city flushed the water, water lines went brown and the little fish survived. The big fish didn't. It's like their gills consumed more poison faster than the small ones. So I don't know if that was that oxygen thing you're talking about, but it's happened to me, these rare circumstances, a couple of times in the past.
Yeah, it is really interesting. It is. The larger ones, and I don't know if they're just more susceptible, it's a little bit more fragile when you start moving them around. They definitely are more prone to getting any type of sickness or an illness. parasites and things like that seem to go after those larger fish a little bit more quickly.
Well, to play out for this some more, let's say an emergency happened and you were in a zone three, four or five and your bubbler went out. What do you do in an emergency? Of course, buy a new bubbler, but maybe that'll take a good long time before it will freeze over. Do you literally go out there, try to chip a hole and then have your wife run to petco?
Yeah, what you want to try to do? So fish, and I know you're familiar with lots of different species of fish, but they have a very sensitive sensory structure on them, so they have a lateral line going down the side of the fish, which picks up different vibrations and movements and things like that inside of the water. So water, because of its density, it has a high specific gravity, which is sound waves and things like that, travel through water differently than air. But when you start chipping away in that ice, it would literally be like somebody jackhammering your front door down. So it's like all of a sudden it's going to reverberate. And then eventually, if you have a stressed out fish, that's really going to push it over the edge. So what I would recommend doing is get some hot water, something like that, where you could actually melt a hole through the ice or come in maybe with a drill or something like that. A cordless drill, which I have done, and you could knock out some holes. But to chip away at it, that could be very stressful to any of those inhabitants. Which is exactly why you go to the Shed Aquarium or any of the major aquariums throughout the world. They do not allow you to tap on the glass. It just drives efficient, sane.
Again, just to explain this to listeners, the hole does not have to be that large. It can be, what, an inch around, half inch around? Just as long as the water is escaping and you put a few holes across the pond.
Yeah, exactly. So the only challenge is the smaller the diameter of the hole, it's going to want to freeze up a little bit more quickly. Again, that's why it's typically a little bit larger than that. But it does not need to be much. And it's because the fish's respiration, everything is really shutting down during the wintertime, the dissolved oxygen is going to be higher in colder water, the bacterial activity. So when you look at like a pond ecosystem, there are a few different things you want to think about. One is your bod, which is biological oxygen demand, and then the other is cod, which is the chemical oxygen demand. So the bod of a pond is the entire respiration. So that's the combination of the fish, the microorganisms, bacterias, literally every living thing, which is actually going to be quite a bit when you have a gravel bed, when you have aquatic plants, when you have sediments and mud in the bottom of the pond, there's things literally living in that stuff, and they all consume oxygen. So during the winter months, thankfully, a lot of those organisms are really slowing down dramatically. So the amount of oxygen being consumed during the winter months is very, very low. And the good thing is the dissolved oxygen usually is high because cold water holds more oxygen than warm water. And this is just one of the properties, one of the incredible properties of water that we have. Now, one of the things that I also want to stress when we start talking about this is if you were to keep algae growth growing inside of a pond, you will have algae growing through. If you don't have a lot of snow cover over the top of the ice, you're going to get some sunlight getting through that ice mass. And when it does, you will get some sort of algal growth. Now, algae is a photosynthetic plant. It's going to produce oxygen into the pond, which can be very beneficial during the winter months.
Yeah. Up here in the northland, we've always been taught that we need to take our fish out, we need to take them indoors. A lot of people just take and put them in a 55 gallon drum in the garage where it's pretty cold to throw an airstone in there and maybe feed them once a month. And that's what we've been taught since day one. And so when Greg got on there and told us that we could keep fish in our ponds at two and a half feet deep, we were going.
Oh, your head exploded.
That doesn't seem right.
Now, I'm Minnesota.
But Greg informed us that he was the pond guy and he knew what he was talking about.
Darn right.
And so that was a lot of fun for us. So, quick question rob's and I were talking about we have cattle heaters. They're a heater that you can float in the tank or in your pond that keeps the water around it so cattle can drink and stuff. Is that something that you could use to keep these ponds open? Is that what you're talking about?
Oh, yeah, absolutely. They do a fantastic job. I have been using them for decades now. The only thing with some of the cattle trough heaters is they might be 1000 watts. So depending upon your power consumption or something, they do take a lot of power to try to heat the water. So I try to go with some stuff that are more a little bit more energy efficient. If you can get to something that's maybe a 300 watt or something like that. Because like Rob just said, you don't need a huge hole that's four foot diameter. You just need something that allows for that gas transfer.
Well, that's what we were talking about because it's going to be very expensive because these things aren't going to turn off the whole goddamn winter up here.
Right.
What are we going to do at 47 below? Just no, we can't unplug it ever.
I know.
Got to run all the time.
And so we're looking at cost efficiency. Is it effective enough from a cost standpoint to leave these fish in a pond where you can just bring them inside the house? And that's what we were debating when we were off the air one day after we talked to Greg.
Now, one of the other things that you could do, which is really cheap and easy to do, is you could make a mini greenhouse. Take an inner tube or a buoy or something like that, something that floats, and you could make like a little plastic dome going over the top of it. And you would be amazed by how much heat is actually created just by sunlight coming through. Now, granted, you have to have sun, so if it's the gloomy days of winter where you may not see the sun for a month and a half or tough, but it does create a mini. That mini greenhouse actually creates a little bit of a microclimate. It just shifts it over a little bit. And I have customers that actually created greenhouses over their entire ponds and they stay free of ice.
That's what I was just thinking about. That would be a. Great idea because the pond I have in front of my house is 300 gallons. I always end up with about two and a half foot of snow on top of it. But if we had a greenhouse on top of that, at least the snow that we're getting is usually coming off the roof. It's blown off by the wind. And I was thinking, well, a greenhouse right now sounds like a pretty dang good idea. If that works.
Well, now you can farm pot outside of your basement. Jimmy there we go.
That's what we need to do.
It'll freeze in the winter.
Not with the green.
Yeah, see, it's funny how I didn't know that.
So the other question that we got, that we went over with Greg is I always come from a different perspective. I've done trying to do pond research, and I always started with the natural pond for learning from a young age of the hard way. I didn't have a lot of gurus to go to. I didn't think, hey, there's these great pond experts in Chicago. I should have called years ago. And I have tried to see what natural ponds there are. And if you hear natural pond, you're thinking, farmer dug a dirt pond. And there's a ton of problems there. It's got a dirt bottom, it's impossible to maintain. It's just there for recreational purposes, for, say, cattle or something, whatever purpose it is. So when we think about the cattle.
Water skiing and stuff yeah, right.
So when we think ponds in Minnesota, I try to get my information from experts, or what I thought was experts on ponds from places like Koi clubs. And they have a completely different pond than what you guys suggest. So these guys, they're essentially digging square swimming pools and they have these crazy, insane filtration systems like rotating drum filters, and all they do is stand in their garage looking at these giant filtration systems and everything is in a giant square foot swimming pool. It just kind of hurts my brain trying to think of this. And then I see your guys'ponds and it's completely different. So I went into the details of trying to fight nature versus your guys'method. And if you can just give an overview of the difference there, because that really hurts my brain just trying to filter it to having a complete natural pond. So what does your system start with?
So our system so what we're looking at is more kind of biomimicry techniques. What we're trying to do is set up an ecosystem. So if you set up a natural ecosystem that you have symbiotic relationships between different substrates, different types of plant material, different types of animals, and if they work symbiotically together, you're not going to have any issues. The problem comes in when you start talking about these strict koi ponds. That's more of a monoculture. So when you start thinking of monoculture, think of a golf course. It's perfect green grass that's highly, highly managed versus a natural prairie. So a natural prairie is you have minimal input. You might burn it once a year. You have that big thing that you do, but you kind of just let it do its thing. Now, you might need in the beginning to do a little bit of maintenance here and there to kind of control some of the stuff. But once it gets up and running, it gets easier and easier and easier over time. So that's really what we're trying to do. So we're setting up a system. You could have a variety of different types of organisms living in it. You could have koi, you could have native fish, you could have tropical fish during the summertime, whatever you desire. It could be frogs, turtles, amphibians, you name it. So we're setting up all these different habitats and homes inside of the system. Now, when you look at a natural pond system, obviously you're going to have deep water zones and things like that. But the majority of the life actually occurs kind of in a narrow area where the water meets the land. That riparian zone is really biologically diverse. There's all types of plants, there's all types of animals that require this little area for their survival, for habitat, for food, for shelter, et cetera. So what we're trying to do is kind of have that on a small scale. We want to set up an ecosystem two and a half feet deep. If we can go deeper, great. But it's not as critical as a lot of people may think. We're going to put in a rock and gravel substrate. So the rock and gravel is going to protect the rubber liner. It's also going to look a little bit more aesthetically pleasing. And that's because we want to mimic what we love. And we love going to lakes and rivers that you have beautiful, clean, clear water, you have rock, you have gravel, you have sand, you have aquatic vegetation, water lilies, all these things kind of working together. That's kind of the look that we're going after. So we're going to put different types of stone material in there. The other important part of that is when you put in a gravel layer, just like in a fish tank or any type of an aquatic environment, it's going to be home to different types of microorganisms. So there's going to be bacterias and copepods, rotifers, tardigrades, all types of stuff that lives either directly on the gravel or within the interstitial spaces of the gravel itself. And all of those organisms are going to feed off of organic waste, leaf debris, uneaten fish food. So they're going to colonize that substrate and they're going to help do a lot of the work for us. So I'm not overstocking these. Now, again, this is not like an aquaculture system where I'm strictly trying to raise as much biomass fish as possible. I want to have some fish and I want to enjoy it, but I'm not overstocking it. So I know that's an important part. But the beauty is when you stock it with the right mixture of fish, they're actually going to go in and they are benthic feeders like koi catfish, plecos, et cetera. They're going to feed on that gravel substrate and they're going to be cycling some of those nutrients. So those little organisms that are living in between the gravel will become food for the higher fish species and it just kind of works its way through the entire ecosystem. So it's a different philosophy, but it's really easy. And I know in today's world, people are looking for they want to have fun. For the people that want to have these incredible filter systems and insane koi fish and breeding them and everything, hey, more power to you. I'm not knocking that at all. I think it's fantastic because we're all trying to do the same thing, we're just going about it a little bit different way.
You said two and a half to 2ft deep. It really doesn't have to be that much more. But is that just water depth? And then underneath you have, what, six inches of gravel, a foot of gravel? What do you want in that? Essentially, that biological media, that gravel bottom. How thick do you want that?
So typically the gravel bed is two to three inches. It's enough just to cover up the rubber membrane and protect it from uv radiation. When you start going really thick gravel beds, you will create anoxic zones. So these anoxic zones are going to become there's no oxygen in them. And that's where hydrogen sulfide and that's where methane gases and stuff will start to kind of happen in those areas. Now, not to say I don't want some of that, you just want to be conscious of it. So I love aerobic zones where you have lots of oxygen and good flow and everything. But having anaerobic zones is actually an important component of a natural system because just like in nature, there are species of bacteria that will actually complete the nitrification cycle by taking nitrate and putting it directly back into nitrogen gas under anaerobic conditions. So it is kind of a slower process, but it's an anaerobic system and it is important. I just want to be conscious of it. I want to have the majority aerobic and then a small amount of that anaerobic stuff, which is usually trapped behind some of the bigger boulders and stuff like that. Now, another area where I'll go with thicker gravel beds is if I'm creating a beach or something like that, and this would be for little kids or adults that want to wade in and out of the pond and they don't want to step over a series of boulders and shelves and things like that. I'll just have a very gentle slope and I'll load it up with six to eight inches of riverstone to create a nice gentle slope for people to walk into. Now, when I do that, one of the things that I'll kind of be conscious of is that anaerobic zone. And I will have a series of small underwater jets where I take one of my pumps and I'll split off of the pump and I'll steal a little bit of the water and I'll discharge it through a series. Of small pipes that might be buried inside of that gravel. Just so I have a little bit of additional flow flowing through that gravel bed.
You're cheating.
I am cheating, but it does great results.
All right, so I'm going to go to the questions that just come to my head. So forgive me for these, but when you're trying to do that two to three inches of gravel, it's really hard in pond sand. Not sand, not sand. Two to three inches of gravel across the pond. It's really hard to keep it even. Number one, just if you had a completely flat or bull pond. But you have most of these ponds that have shelves. So how do you address the gravel need for these areas that have shelves? You can't expect all the gravel to stay on that shelf when coy are rummaging around in it.
So the koi are amazing at moving material. So they are going to pick up gravel, they're going to move it around, and it's because they're feeding, so it makes them happy. So if you look at the morphology of that fish, so you look at the structure from a biological standpoint, that koi fish was designed as a bottom feeder. The mouth is ventrally located, means it's pointing straight down. It has those little barbells, which are sensory structures on the side of its mouth. It's always searching for food and cracks and crevices and all types of things. It'll pick up gravel and they could come in and completely move a section of gravel off of a shelf. And then it's up to us as pond managers to periodically put that material back on. Now, they usually work with gravity, obviously, so they're going to take the gravel off of a higher shelf and they're going to knock it down to the lowest level. So usually what happens is those middle shelves might get some spots where the koi have moved. That gravel will go down. During our periodic cleaning, which is usually a big main cleaning is only once a year. We'll take some of that additional gravel that was moved to the bottom, we put it back on those middle shelves. Now, an easy thing that I do to kind of set that gravel depth is when I'm installing my boulders in front of that vertical lead. So imagine that shelf kind of coming out at a sharp 90 degree edge. I will set my boulder so it's two to three inches above the level of the shelf. Adjacent to it. So now it creates like a little curb and it sets the right depth for the gravel that I want on the shelf. So if I set my stone work properly, that's going to set my level and then I have to just come in with my gravel and I fill it up so it becomes level with that curb and it kind of holds it all in place to kind of.
Make it a little tray there on your shelves.
Exactly. Yeah.
Got you. So the other thing that you said in that last comment was you don't want to leave the tarp exposed because of uv exposure. Explain that to some of our listeners.
You can. So the problem is, when you leave it exposed, you have more of a two dimensional surface. So you have a smooth rubber membrane which is going to hold the water in place. It will get a bio slime on it, but it's flat and smooth and it becomes like greased ice. You step on that stuff and you're going for a ride because you physically cannot walk on it once it gets that bio slime on there, because it's a petroleum product, it's a rubber membrane and you get that stuff growing on there and it's just brutal. So from a safety perspective, I like to cover it up with a rock and gravel because it gives me something better to walk on. The other thing it does, it creates a three dimensional surface which exponentially increases the surface area inside of the pond for microorganism growth, for algal growth and things like that. So now we have 360 degrees around every little piece of rock and gravel in there. I mean, it's a factor of 1000 times more, which when you start talking about aquatic systems, that's the name of the game. So the more surface area you have, the more stable the environment comes. Now the other thing that becomes important with covering it is heat and also the longevity of the liner. I'll start with the heat one first. So the black rubber liner, if you've ever installed one that sounds like I know you have put a rubber liner out in the sun during summertime, that stuff is going to be 150 degrees. It gets smoking hot, like it'll literally burn the skin off of you. I mean, it just attracts that sunlight. So if you have that black rubber lining inside of the pond in summertime, it's actually going to increase the temperature of the pond itself. So warmer water is not a bad thing during the winter months, but you don't want it in the summer. So during the summer months, you want to keep that water cooler because it holds more dissolved oxygen, it's less stressful on the fish, you have less PH swings, et cetera. All these different things happening. Now the other thing is the longevity of the liner. So the liner itself is designed to last 20 years in full sunlight. 20 years is a long time, but as soon as you start covering it up and hiding it from uv radiation, it all of a sudden doubles. So now, instead of a 20 year lifespan, you go up to 40 years. And I could talk about this from experience because I have personal ponds in the ground that I've done that are 27 years old, that I've gone back and I have ripped them out, not because they failed, but because the customer wants to make a modification. The rubber lining is as good as the day we install it. There is no cracking. It still has all the exact same properties that it had on the day that it was installed. So there's really no degradation at all that's happening. The main thing that destroys them is uv radiation.
So there's a couple of rumors that I get, and for those that have not had koi or had a pond, skin cancer in koi is a real concern. If you keep your koi in direct sunlight at all times and there's no shade, no tree, no building break, skin cancer can be a real thing. But there's also a rumor that if you have just a bare bottom rubber liner or just a white sand bottom with not a lot of depth, that you have an increased risk, increased probability of skin cancer. Is that true at all?
You know, I have not heard an increased risk, nor have I seen it, so I don't know if I can answer that 100%. But I do know I have seen skin cancer issues from fish, and it is because we're keeping them in relatively shallow ponds. So a two to two and a half foot deep pond, it might be within local building codes and regulations as being a safe installation. But if at all possible, I will go deeper if I can. But by keeping that fish growing in that shallow system without any cover, that sunlight, it's brutal. And you will have skin issues and it's always going to be on the dorsal side of the fish. So I have definitely seen issues with it, but I haven't seen an increased risk of it in kind of a bear liner or in a sand situation.
Well, while we're on the subject, just to let beginner, listeners know, a lot of times I'll get these people that have made small ponds will have small goldfish in them. The common goldfish only gets, what, 810 inches? So they'll have small ponds with a few goldfish. And in the peak summer months, they'll randomly lose fish and they just don't know why. They'll say, I just did a water change, or they're trying to address it somehow and I go to their place, complete direct sunlight. It's a foot and a half deep summer peak algae consumption, direct sunlight. The water heats up and there's no oxygen left in the water. This could be overnight. So having a bunch of aeration having some sort of partial day sun break, even if it's up against a building and half the day it doesn't have sun, some sort of tree close by, even building an awning. For you listeners trying to build a pond, make sure you have some element of shade in it. If you're going to have fish or get crafty and have under a bed cover, whether you have extensive lily pads, whether you have a lot of the floating plants or a shelf that you would build on the inside of the pond. Now, do you guys ever install shelves and do you advocate using underwater shelving?
I do, yeah. Normally I love creating shelves and habitat. And again, this goes back to me growing up on my passion for water, scuba diving and snorkeling. When you're a scuba diver, a snorkeler, when you dive down underwater, you're looking under things for fish. You're looking under rock outcroppings, you're looking under a tree that has fallen or a log, or you're looking within the vegetation. They're prey for things. Things want to eat them. So it could be birds from above, it could be other bigger fish. So they want to be associated with the structure. They like to have a roof over their head just like we do. I mean, imagine sitting on a patio in full sunlight all day long. You're going to be miserable. You're going to want to be under an umbrella. You're going to want to have a tree associated just exactly what you just said. It's the same thing. Fish, we have to design these things for the particular species. So I love putting dead fall into a pond. I'll take logs, I'll take driftwood and stumps and stuff like that, and I'll elevate them off of the bottom to kind of create a little cave or a pocket underneath there where the fish could actually escape from potential predators feel a little bit more comfortable. They stay cooler, they stay out of the sunlight, and they're going to be able to feed on other stuff that is associated in and around those areas. So fish, caves, deadfall aquatic plants, everything you just mentioned, I love designing and building those.
Now I've got a quick question for you, Ed. Going back to having like, lilies and stuff, do you need to take out the lilies, come freeze up time, or do you actually leave them in to weather the storm, as they say, for.
The winter, it depends on the species. So I like to have the majority of plants in my pond. I'd like to have 70% to 80% of them as perennials that are native to the specific area that I'm working in. So there are water lilies that will grow in zone one. Well, maybe not zone one. Zone three, definitely zone two, zone two. So there are definitely water lilies that will grow in shallow marshy pools and things like that. And they do a fantastic job. There is a huge amount of aquatic vegetation that can be utilized in and around the perimeter of the pond and they could be frozen solid. It's like picker or rush irises, cat tails, all types of reads there's, all types of the amount of quantic vegetation is insane. But that stuff can actually be frozen without any issue at all. And I like to keep things as minimal as possible from a maintenance perspective for our customers. So the more I could tell them to leave it in there, the better off they're going to do. And I think the more happier they're going to be with their pond. Now, I do have customers that love the tropical stuff. So you put in a tropical water lily that grows down in Florida or in the Amazon or something like that, they are going to bloom like you have never seen blooms before. They're going to be incredible. The leaf patterns and everything are just going to be spectacular. But as soon as that water starts to drop down below 50 degrees, they're going to be gone. And those would either have to be moved indoors or you treat them like petunias or something like that, and you get rid of it and you get a new one in springtime.
So answer this even further. In Minnesota, we have a lot of different aquatic species for lily pads. We have generally two that are in Minnesota. And always contact your local dnr before ever harvesting any type of plants because cat tails you can't touch in ditches. There's a lot of different rules and regulations, but I don't think you can.
Touch the lily pads.
If you ask permission from the dnr, you'd be surprised what type of answers you get. So contact your local dnr, make sure you're ethical before you just to start invading places. But there are two main lily pad species in there in Minnesota, and they're defined by their color. There's yellow and that is vivacious. Stay away from the yellow lily pads. Although they look pretty, they grow everywhere and they will absolutely take over an entire bottom of a pond. Aim for the white lotuses that you'll see in Minnesota. They are literally across the entire state from bottom to top and much prettier. Lot slower growing, a lot friendlier to the bottom of your pond.
Yeah, you very seldom see the white ones. You see the yellow ones everywhere.
Right? And also be aware of semiaquotic species. A lot of people don't realize that just their normal gardening plants. Like a purple iris. Irises love being put in halfway into water. I've planted a lot of beautiful purple white irises and excel half submerged.
Yeah, absolutely. Now you bring up that was a great note on the two different species of lilies available. The yellow one is called Newfar and it is super aggressive. Yeah. I highly recommend do not put that in because you will have nothing but that living in your pond. It'll be shore to shore and it'll do fantastic, but it's going to be a beast to get it back out of there. So don't even mess with the white one. Is a Nymphia species, so that is a true water lily. Those will do great. Much more slow growing, not as aggressive. Now, another good species of plants, plant that works in ponds along the perimeter is standard impatience. impatience that people put in their flower beds. You tuck them into little cracks and crevices in between stones right at the water level and they will explode. They look phenomenal. They will totally soften up the edges. They will flower like crazy all summer long and they're super low maintenance.
Otherwise known as the common touch me not.
Excuse me?
Yeah, I had to double check this before I said that.
Touch me not.
Yeah, touch me not is a common name for impatience.
Rob hasn't been touched in a long time.
I didn't want to bring that up.
But now that you did, don't fondle your flowers.com. Don't google that.
Hey, another quick question I got for you, Ed. We're talking about water depth of this stuff and I heard you touch on certain areas, you can only be so deep because of insurance purposes and stuff. Can you talk a little bit about that? I mean, I know you're not going to have a six foot pond in your backyard inside city zones because of different city laws and stuff.
He's calling State Farm right after this. Yes.
There definitely is certain regulations and it depends on where you live. So in the Chicago land area, as soon as you start going more than 2ft of depth, they actually consider it a swimming pool. So you need to have a six foot security fence going around the entire backyard property. You need to have self closing gates. It's treated as a swimming pool and all liabilities associated with that are transferred over to it, which is one of the big reasons why we try to stay at that two foot level. Now, where I personally live, I live out in the far, far suburbs of Chicago and I'm in farmland, so everything by me is farm properties and I could dig a pond that's 30ft deep and no one's going to care and they would just think it's normal. So definitely check your local areas according to see what their policies are.
So a lot of regulations out there within cities, but if you're out in the country, apparently it's have at it.
Yes. Now when you start, the only thing that does become common is as soon as you start having a recirculating pump, you need electric. So they might be a little bit particular on making sure that you have a certified electrician. hooking up the electrical supply for your pumping system to make sure that there's a gfci outlet so there's no risk of electrocution. Mixing water and electric is obviously always dangerous. So you want to make sure that.
You know you're doing and always call go for state. I mean I don't know what would be in other states. Is there a different name for it? I always just refer to gopher state, but it's essentially the state's version of looking up underground lines. I tried to dig a pond, almost killed myself by hitting the main electrical line for the house.
And that's because you're a dumbass.
I am, I really am. It tastes like metal by the way.
Yeah, these guys are professionals. They probably do that before they even start digging crazy stuff.
Yeah, I mean professional, right?
We always do. So as soon as we get a contract with a customer, we send out that service where they check for everything.
Now if someone's looking to get hold of you guys in the Chicago area and put in what is an average price of an average pond? I mean I know it goes all over the board but just give people.
There'S California versus Georgia, I mean there's different economies but what's an average price for a pond?
Yeah, definitely there's a range and there's obviously different things associated with that. The raw materials from a pond perspective for the main infrastructure, the liner, the filters, the pumps and things like that, it's fairly steady throughout the country. What gets thrown off is going to be your labor rate and then also the stone that you're going to use as well as the digging conditions. So digging a pond in an area like way out west, if you're out in Colorado or something like that, where you might hit bedrock that's literally six inches under the soil, that's going to cost a lot more money to obviously break through solid rock. You might be better off building up instead of digging down. Digging in Chicago is very easy. We just have clay so excavation is super, super easy. Now on the flip side, the rock in Colorado is going to be really cheap because it's all over the place. The rock in Chicago is actually expensive because we get it from Wisconsin, Minnesota, Missouri, we're shipping that stuff in.
So let's make this a little bit easier on you. Let's say no rock because say that I found my rock. Say I got a guy that will give me some rock. Let's just go liner and let's go elements, right liner, skimmer pump, water output. Just the bare necessities here, just the.
Bare necessities for a pond kit is going to be about $1,500 and that would be 1000 gallon pond. Now that's your liner, your underlayment, your skimmer filter, your biological filter, your pump, your piping system, your underwater lights to view in the evening time, all of that fun stuff. If you want to do the labor yourself and you want to dig it and collect your own rocks, you can get it for $1,000. You can have one heck of a pond. System.
There you go.
Jimmy.
We're doing Christmas in July this year, right?
We're doing Christmas in July.
Yes.
I'll be drunk somewhere in a beach.
Excellent. As long as the beach is my pond. And you paid for the $1,500 of.
Equipment, there's going to be no beach open.
That's right.
So, going on the basic elements again, because you gave us a list of what's needed. Now, the thing that you guys got it up escape that I think is so fascinating, other than your natural approach, which is very refreshing, because I see that I've literally been told by these expert Koikeepers, and don't get me wrong, these guys are fantastic in the Koi market, they have five digit Koi, so they're doing something right. But I think they're doing it the hard way. And they tell me don't have rocks in the bottom. That's just creating more bacteria, like, whoa, whoa. That's what you want. So it's a little backwards for me. So learning this is definitely a curve. So you want two to three inches of gravel. And you guys have this amazing skimmer that's applied through aquascape. Tell us more about the skimmer. Greg was going into some details on that and some of the original designs.
So some of the original skimmers and biofilters were basically using garbage cans and cattle troughs. We were using a plastic container that we would modify. We would take it into our shop, we would cut it, we would modify it, we would add in inserts, we would make watertight connections where we could attach rubber liners directly to them. But we started understanding the flow dynamics, and I think that was the most important part, how the water interacts with these units. And then from there, we started layering on other filter pads. We started understanding the way the water comes into the biological filter, and it swirls around down in the bottom, which allows the sedimentation process to occur. And we don't want the filter media directly on the bottom. We want to have that sedimentation zone allow the water to spread out, flow evenly through the filter media, the biological media. And then we wanted to exit back into the pond as a waterfall, which will help increase dissolved oxygen and kind of completes the cycle. But in those early days, we were doing a little bit of everything, and it took us many years to actually fine tune the recipe. So, again, think of this as a recipe for a meal or for a cake, or whatever you want to call it. It doesn't start out perfect. You're going to screw it up more times than you're actually going to succeed. And we screwed up a lot of pounds in those early days. But the beauty of it was we learned from our mistakes, and we started fine tuning the design and understanding the necessary flow systems, the necessary pipe diameters, and all those different pieces and how they interacted with one another. To give us a repeatable result.
So one of the things that beginner pond goers do is they dig a hole, put a tarp out and just drop the pump in the center. And that pump only has a small sponge on it. And maybe in the spring that's going to work out for you for at least a week. In the summer, you're going to get a lot of algae growth and that thing is going to clog up daily. And then in the fall, it's going to clog up once an hour because leaves are blowing into that pond consistently. And you don't really want to cover the entire pond with a basket. So the skimmer, just to give you listeners a mental picture, is you guys have that container, it flows into the container in a loose grid basket and catches the leaves, the big debris. Then it goes to a secondary sponge to protect the pump and then it goes to the normal pump head. So it's a genius application for those that have been frustrated with this over and over again, trying to clean out the pond. Just putting a pump in the bottom, it's way better. But the big thing that, you know, changes on this, because you're having that natural bed of that two to three inches of gravel, you are putting this up as a skimmer. So you're catching the leaf litter before it falls in most situations. And you're not having to worry about having some sort of complicated floor drain, which I've been told is a must for these ponds. Do you guys not do bottom drains at all anymore because of this?
We do not. We don't do bottom drains. Now, I will have water discharge points. So I will have areas where I'm discharging water from a pump into the bottom to help increase flow or to keep solids and suspension so they could actually be swept towards the skimmer, where they could be removed and or managed. I don't do bottom drains for a couple of reasons. One of them is when you're drawing water off of the bottom of the pond, the bottom of the pond has the lowest dissolved oxygen and that's because it's furthest away from the atmosphere. Very simple. So the water in contact with the atmosphere has the highest dissolved oxygen. This is super easy to do. You check it with a delayer. Water managers do it on a daily basis. So the top water is going to be saturated and you will see significant decrease the deeper you go down towards the bottom. By sucking that water off of the bottom, you're taking the lowest dissolved oxygen water. It might be nutrient rich. You're going to send that low dissolved oxygen water to your biological filter. It's the last place you want to go with it. And that's because a biological filter is an aerobic system. It needs food and it needs oxygen. So you're inhibiting the growth of the bacteria and microorganisms inside of the biological filter because you're not giving them the necessary dissolved oxygen they need to flourish. So we live right now, basically close to sea level. Imagine going up into Denver and trying to run a marathon, let alone I couldn't do it here. If I went up there, I would be dying. And it's because the oxygen is different. It's the same thing in a pond. Why would we want to feed organisms that need high oxygen a lower amount? Now, the other thing is, if you were to have a rupture, and it happens in a pipe, if you have a leak in your return system going from your filter back into your pond, you're drawing water off of the bottom of the pond. You will drain the entire pond down to nothing and your prized koi fish collection will be sitting high and dry. And it happens every single year. By having a skimmer system, you're taking the highest dissolved oxygen water off of the surface of the pond, because the skimmer sucks in water from the top four to six inches. If you were to have a rupture in a pipe, a leak in your stream, your waterfall, anything, the skimmer will only draw the water down four to six inches. Your fish will totally be safe. So it's different ways again, it's a whole different way of thinking about how cond actually functions. The other thing is if you try to mimic nature, so if you're mimicking a natural system, water does not get sucked down into the bottom of a deep pond. There's not a hole in the bottom of a lake in Minnesota. There might be an outflow that goes into a river that's basically a skimmer. So you have an inflow coming in on one side, the lows across the surface, and it's going to go out basically at the top. It doesn't go down. So, again, I'm trying to think of things the way nature does them, and there's reasons behind it. I shouldn't say there's reasons. Things have adapted according to it. So the fish species that I'm trying to have have adapted to a certain life, and I want to mimic that life for the benefit of that species.
You should have said the word species. What is the craziest thing you've seen somebody keep in their pond? Has it been swordtails or plateaus or alligator guard?
That's 12ft. Come on, tell us.
You named the fish. I have seen it. So I have gone with everything from alligators cappibaras I've done tapers, I've done otters. I have done all types of fish from, obviously, the koi species. But musky, northern pike, bass, blue gill, era, pima the largest fish, the largest bony fish freshwater species on the planet sturgeon, red tail, catfish, paku, jamu, the shovel, nose, cats. All types of discus, barramundi, you name it, I think I've done it.
And when he said somebody's running discus, where was that located at? What state got to be Florida.
Discus. They're in South America. That's going to be out of the country. I've not done discus here in the States.
No one's got that type of thick wallet. He said, arapaima, that's the upgraded version.
Of pond would be kind of cool. Yes. arijuana as well. Yes, I do have Arijuanas.
You got any questions? Adam?
No, I'm just listening and learning what.
What he's he's got no questions.
No questions, usually.
Adams we're like 37 episodes in and no questions.
No questions.
Finally, I'll take it a couple of others that we have from listeners is maintenance. Again, Greg tries to advertise. How would you like to have this amazing natural lifestyle that he likes to put and only do minimal maintenance? And he's trying to explain the maintenance. So it's not necessarily day to day maintenance that we have questions about. It's seasonal maintenance because again, spring is by far the easiest. You essentially look at the pond, try to clean debris and then just get it going. And there's not a lot of leaf matter. You're not mowing your lawn a ton of times in the fall. What do you have to do to prep for winter? Are you scooping leaves? Hiring a pool boy? Are you letting the skimmer do the work? How natural are you keeping this, just leaving the leaves in for the winter?
So that's a really good question and there's not a perfect answer for it. So I like removing the majority of leaves. I do like leaving some in there. And that's because leaf debris is organic matter. So it's a food source for something. So by actually having a food source inside of the pond, it kind of keeps the biology actually happening inside of there. So you're going to get bacterial growth. You're going to get like the shredders and stuff like that. So you're going to get different animals that will actually shred the leaves up snails and stuff into crayfish. They're going to shred it up into smaller pieces, which actually become food for microorganisms, which become food for your fish. That's kind of an important cycle. I don't want an abundance of leaves because if you get too much and they're too thick, it will become anaerobic. They will start to decompose and they could suck that dissolved oxygen out of the pond. And depending upon the species of the tree, they may release tanic acids into the water, so it could change the PH. So now you go from a clear water system to a black water, and that's because you're making tea, basically. So you're letting leaves sit in water, they start to decompose and they lose these tanic acids and tannins into the water. And it creates this blackwater ecosystem, which is actually kind of a cool ecosystem. The Amazon River basin or Rio negro River. That's a blackwater river. There's blackwater rivers in Minnesota, Wisconsin, you name it. They're common and around and it's an important part of a system. So I do like that look. I like a little bit of tanic acid in the water. I think it kind of creates that natural appearance. But I do try to remove an abundance of leave during the fall months. Now, some people will go as far as completely putting a net over their entire pond. So instead of a green house, they're going to put a string up a net over the entire thing. They'll put it up usually right around Halloween and then late or early November, and they'll take it down after Thanksgiving. After the majority of the leaves have fallen down, your skimmer will become overloaded. So it will start pulling in so much leaf debris that it will literally become impact with them. They'll just be jammed inside of the basket. So you're going to constantly be cleaning that skimmer basket out. But it's a few week period where it's really bad. So we try to explain it to all of our customers. We do have services where we can do that, but it's actually very simple. It's almost like having somebody cut your lawn. You have to empty the bag periodically, so the skimmer is going to do a majority of the work, but you will have to empty that catch bag every once in a while.
How do you deal with lawn mowing around the pond? Just let them go in and try to collect it and let the skimmer.
Collect it typically around the edge of the pond. It's usually going to be more flowers and stuff like that. So I don't actually have a lot of turf grass that goes right down to the edge of the pond. And if they do, I'll either have them collect the lawn clippings or try to have them blow the lawn clippings away from the water. So if you do get any lawn clippings or anything like that inside of the water after you're doing your work, it's very easy. All you have to do is go back and check your skimmer at the end of the day, and the majority of that material will be captured inside of that catch basket, which is a perfect way to finish the day off, because then you can kick back. You could relax, you could open up a beer, feed your fish, relax and enjoy the rest of the day.
I have only a couple more questions from our fans. We got one that they want to know. The gallons per hour ratio in a tank. They want you to do it once an hour. Average aquarium, if you have a lot of bioload, twice to three times an hour. If you want high flow in a pond, what are you looking for? Gallons per hour movement?
That is a good question. And it's kind of a tricky one because the smaller the system is, the higher the turnover rate you want to have. Bigger the system, the lower the turnover rate per volume. And that's because an aquatic ecosystem becomes more stable with a greater volume of water. So the water temperature is going to stay more stable. The water chemistry or PH, everything, dissolved oxygen, everything becomes more stable with that higher volume. So on a typical small backyard pond, and I'm just going to throw out a number, I'm going to say it's 1000 gallons of water. I'm typically turning that over a minimum of one time and usually more than that. And it's not necessarily for filtration. It's more for aesthetics. So our customers one of the big things when I'm designing and selling a water feature is people love the sound of a waterfall. So I'm always trying to design the feature not only to have certain types of aquatic animals, but I'm trying to have a desired sound as well as look from the stream, waterfall, cascades, rapids, whatever you want to call it. And that usually takes more water flow. So what I try to do is I try to split the system in half. I'll have half of the water going through the filter at any given time. So that's giving me the desired water quality. The other pump is what we like to call the party pump. That's what you're going to have on. That could either be hooked up on a switch, it could be on a timer that's going to go on periodically throughout the day, or when you flip the switch and it's going to give you that extra wow factor that's going to create that really that loud waterfall. It's going to be a big crashing system that has that whitewater type of an effect.
So what you're trying to do is you're saying that you're an audio specialist when it comes to this water, that you're trying to get somewhere between calm and relaxing and stay far away from I have to pee.
Exactly. There is a fine line in there where you could actually create a waterfall that is super annoying that no one's going to want to sit next to it. It's going to be loud. It might not sound right, and you hit it on the head. We are audio specialists. You have too much treble sound in a waterfall, and it's kind of annoying. Too much bass sound. It's a little too soft, but so they kind of balance each other out. You want to have that right mixture and that experience that comes with understanding the flow rate, how deep the water is. How deep the water the water is flowing over a waterfall. How deep the pool is at the base of the waterfall. Is it shallow? Is it crashing on top of rocks? Is the water spread out? But we like to blend different sounds together to create that desired effect.
Sorry. We're going to ask you after the podcast if you know about the Brown note. jimmy's looking at me like, what the brown note? The mythical noise that just makes you crap your pants the moment you hear it.
Oh, my ex wife yelling at me.
See that's the brown note?
Yeah. That one we haven't talked about here for a long time.
Here's my question. Say somebody wanted to do a pond for arijuana in southern Minnesota.
What would you recommend for that move?
Yeah, I mean, I know I could probably be okay in the summer. It would it would be fine. During the summer, you could try heating the water. So if you really want to do it, do a greenhouse over it. Now you could really control that water temperature and you still would probably need supplemental heaters for it, but it definitely can be done, especially if it was in a greenhouse or in a conservatory. There are people that have these rooms and set ups where you could easily have that type of a fish. But to do it truly outdoors, you're going to have a really narrow window where that fish is going to be happy. And they're a pretty good predator too. So they're going to clean house, they're going to go in and they're going to start eating everything in there. Well, I just wanted them to pick off the birds that are a little flying. I got a nice arrow.
I just figured it'll wipe them out.
You're like that a new age old man like quick crapping on my lawn.
Adam has got four young children and we end up nicknaming one of them nubs because they lose a finger or something. No, I won't leave that out there.
With them just to pick the top three. And I remember what the audience wanted to know. They wanted to know the obvious things not to do and some crazy things not to do. So if you could pick maybe the top two obvious things not to do that you hear about all the time and then maybe like one or two of the things that you've heard that are like the craziest stories that have been done to a pond.
Sure. Oh my gosh, there is so much stuff. So the first thing that pops into my head is people want to place the pond in the far corner of the property that kind of collects water during the springtime. You're opening yourself up to a lot of headaches. So when people want a pond, they want something that's going to be beautiful. They want something that's going to have fish and wildlife and they want clean water. You put that thing all the way in the back corner of the property where it's hard to get to, it's far away from the home. You can't see it on a regular basis that periodically floods. It's going to be a water quality nightmare. You're going to have all types of runoff going into it and you will be fighting it forever and you will literally probably just completely forget about it. So whenever I'm designing, I try to keep it nice and close to the home where you're going to see it on a regular basis. So designing it and thinking about that pond adjacent to your kitchen, wind right by your patio, right next to your porch, where you're going to spend time. I always try to think about the interior space as well as the exterior, because even if you're down in Florida where you have good weather year round, you spend a lot of time indoors. So you should always be thinking about designing it and placing it in a place that you could see it no matter what you're doing if you're indoors and or outdoors. So I think that's one of the number one things. Some of the other stuff we kind of talked about already. One is depth. People are going to say, I want this pond six to 8ft deep. You don't need a pond six to 8ft deep to hold your feet. You have an eight ft deep pond. Your koi are benthic feeders. That means they feed on the bottom. They're going to be 8ft deep and you are rarely going to see them. So you're going to want to keep that pond relatively in that shallow. That two to two and a half foot range where you could actually see the fish interacting on a daily basis. Now, another big one is people say, I want a massive waterfall. I want a ten foot high waterfall in my backyard. You do not want a ten foot high waterfall in your backyard. It will be obnoxious and it will cost a fortune because you're going to have to do stone work ten ft tall. You're going to need a mountain soil in your backyard to pull it off. You're going to need plants. You're going to need a bigger pump to pump the water up that high. So people have these grandiose ideas, but they have no idea what it's going to take to build it, to maintain it, what it's going to cost or anything. So finding a professional, do some of the research online, talk to people that are in the industry and get ideas you're not going to see. We will do ten foot high waterfalls, but they're going to be on a property that has a natural ten foot slope in the backyard. And now all we're doing is we're making it blend into and we're carving out the soil on that existing slope that we had to work with. Some of the other things, you know, logistics, you know, when you talk about building, what is it going to take to dig it, what's it going to take to move materials in and out of the property? You know, an average pond is going to have five to ten tons of stone, but five to ten tons, I mean, 10,000 to £20,000 of material, let alone all the stuff that you had to do to dig it. You know, you're removing thousands of pounds of soil, then you're bringing thousands of pounds of rock back in. So kind of understanding the bigger picture of what it actually takes to pull these things off. And you don't need it as big as you really think. You could make a huge impact in a small space. It could be cost effective and it could be a ton of fun. So starting out on a smaller scale is also really important. I know it can be a little bit more work, but when something goes wrong on a small scale, it's going to be a small problem. It's going to be easily fixable. It's going to be not that expensive to fix it as well. So you want to walk before you run type of a thing. So you want to dabble around people that are great aquarium keepers. That's a perfect stepping point to start getting into a water feature because now you can go from a 100 gallon aquarium, which is huge, to 1000 gallon pond ten times the size. So now all of a sudden you have that basics. You understand what it's going to take from a filtration standpoint and what it takes to keep all these animals. And now you could start expanding it out and it opens you up to a whole new group of animals that you could have fun with.
So now for crazy stories, do you have any stories of something that happened in a pond or some crazy beyond belief way that a pond was designed?
So thinking about other animals that might feed on fish, I have ponds out in well actually it could probably happen by you up in Minnesota. But black bears, you're in a rural.
Area, we have a lot of black bears.
You create an aquatic habitat and now all of a sudden animals can come and they could clean up pond out. River otters, black bears, mink will come into a pond. So you want to understand what you're building and what you're kind of getting into. So I've actually had customers say that black bear actually destroyed their fence, got in their backyard. He didn't have koi fish, he had trout, but it cleaned out all the trout out of it.
I feel like that's on him. If you're going to have trout in there, you're just asking for a bear to do bear things.
Crazy stories from an installation standpoint. Well, I should say I don't know about crazy stories, but dangerous type stuff. You talked about digging. So I was doing a pond and I don't want to it was for the city of Chicago. It was actually part of the Shed Aquarium. And we were getting a locate service for underground utilities because we were digging down 8ft deep for a big pumping system. So it was more the pumps had to go that deep. The water was only actually going to be six inches deep, super shallow because it's in a public location. And they came back and said, this entire area is clear. There's nothing here. And we went down at about 6ft deep. I hit three two inch electrical cables that actually fed the Shed Aquarium. It fed Grant Park, the Field Museum, and the adler planetarium. And hopefully we did not break them because I think someone may have been seriously hurt and it would have shut down power to a significant portion of the Chicago lakefront. So, I mean, just like stupid stuff. How is that even possible? How do you miss a 30,000 volts, two inch main line that feeds all this critical stuff? It was just a big okay sign on the ground that says it's good. They got a smiley face that says okay. So that means we could just dig whatever we want. And it's just like, it's just unbelievable stuff. I've lost excavators in buck. You're going on properties and we're doing some big natural ponds, and you go out in springtime and you have really poor soil conditions. I buried excavators four, 5ft deep where we have to bring in bigger excavators to haul them out, which cost thousands and thousands of dollars a screw up. But it's just because the conditions were bad and the soil conditions were poor. We get machines stuck all the time. You name it, it happens on us.
I figured there's going be to like some statue of elvis peeing into a fountain, but actually they don't have any.
Weird stuff like that. A lot of our customers, they love just kind of that natural riverine type system. And we do a pretty good job, I think, interviewing them of how we like to work and show lots of pictures and things like that. So all of our screw ups are actually by us. We screw all of our own stuff up bad enough.
So how long does an average pond take for you guys to put in? You guys are professionals, you know what you're doing. You come in, how long does it take you?
It's going to be like the jetsons. It's going to be a week in, week out.
So a basic 1000 gallon pond we will do in a day. We will come in with a team of five to six guys and we will excavate it. We'll bring in £20,000 of stone. We'll make a complete berm, a waterfall, set everything up. You will have a functioning water feature in 10 hours.
And how far do you guys travel from the Chicago area? How far do you travel over the United States.
Personally? So my role with aquascape now as my pond professor role has kind of evolved over the years. The longest employee next to Greg himself, I tackle more specialty type projects and unique things. I have done projects all over the world. Greg and I were just in Australia a month ago. We did a pond in Australia, which is probably the farthest one I've ever done. I've built in Africa. I've. Built in South America. I've built throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean. I've been to Europe. I have been pretty well traveled, actually, in projects that I've done.
So you have a suitcase and you guys will travel?
Absolutely. If there is somebody in need, we're the ones to call.
Well, perfect. So go to onquiscape.com and you can also find the Pond Professor right on your YouTube page. And I believe that is just labeled Ed the Pond Professor, is it not?
It is. You got it.
Excellent. You'll find a link in the show notes, please, like and subscribe. He has some crazy definitely some crazy videos going on there. Even almost lost a toe. I see one of the headlines. We'll have to get that story later.
Yeah, that was from a fly river turtle. So that was kind of a funky.
Little he's got all eleven toes.
All eleven toes. We've asked you a lot of questions and still we have not asked you the most important, most important question. And you knowing as the pomp Professor and stuff. So if you're on a desert island as a professor, is it marianne or is it ginger?
It's got to be marianne. There you go.
That's the right answer. Thanks, man. I appreciate it.
And for the rest of you, that's an old ass gilligan's Island joke for people that are confused. Right now.
I am very confused.
Are you?
Yeah.
No. That has been an ongoing debate since the beginning of time.
Well, Ed, thanks again for coming on. And don't forget, Aquascape.com, you're training online now because you're training quite expensive to get training for being a pond professional, even get certified. That is now being offered online until the end of the month due to the emergency with COVID I know this is going to be aired after the fact, but you guys are just a fantastic resource. I highly recommend aquascape training. Is that correct?
You got it.
Wow. I'm good with my urls today. Well, thanks again, Ed. And again, if you guys like what you hear on the podcast, number one, support our sponsors. Number two, you can donate directly and support us on our website, aquarium Guidespodcast.com. You can come join, listen to the show live on discord. We'll have have you in. That's where we record this. And above all else, you know, go check out what they got at aquascape and save your $1,500 to dig your own pond.
Thanks, guys, for listening to this podcast. Please visit us@aquariumguyspodcast.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 the sleep.
Can I listen to in my tree house?
In your tree house, in your fish room. Even alone at work.
What about my man cave?
Especially your man cave. Yeah, only if adam's there no with feeder, guppy.
No, they're in lurking.
You imagine loving frank's like a mother.
Frank.
Well, I guess we'll see you next time. Later.