Welcome everyone.
Today, we're gonna talk about installing bottom drains on top of
your pond liner, overdoing pond filtration, and
today we're gonna talk about the Pond Digger reality TV show.
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Today, we got some fun information on the show.
The first question comes from Elizabeth Arriano off of Facebook.
And she wants to know, actually, let me plug the Koi Keepers of America
again, they've been really good fans of us and
this is coming from that part of Facebook, on that group.
And she wants to know the disadvantages or
advantages of installing a bottom drain on top of the liner
as opposed to underneath the liner.
And I do see this done.
I do see this done quite a bit, and
I want to encourage you, I want to really,
really encourage you to put that bottom drain underneath the pond.
Here's what happens, if you put it on top of the pond,
you're gonna have the pipe coming across the pond, so
its gonna be unsightly to look at.
No one wants to look at the pipe coming across the side of the pond.
You just wanna focus on the fish and
you don't want any distractions from the beauty and the art of the koi.
So, first of off, that's a detraction visually, but
as that pipe comes across the bottom of the pond and
your bottom drain is down there, now you have an area for
debris to get trapped, fish poop, pollen, leaf debris,
whatever, can get trapped around the sides of that pipe.
Even worse, if that pipe were to raise or elevate a little bit,
the bottom drain could come up, and
then a fish could get stuffed into it, and that's not a good thing.
I've seen that happen as well.
So what people do to overcome the flotation of that
bottom drain is put some rocks and stuff on top of it,
which makes more places for stuff to get trapped, and
that's the whole purpose of putting a bottom drain in the koi pond,
is to try to collect everything and take it out of the pond.
I've seen it a couple of different ways.
I wanna make sure I tell you about this,
cause people are always coming up with solutions like, well if it's
gonna trap stuff then I could dig a little trench inside the pond, So
I don't have to see it and I can put the pipe across in that trench.
But once again, you have that trench in bottom of the pond where you
might try and hide the pipe, and it makes for even more solid waste
to get trapped down in there, and it will It'll backfire on you.
It's gonna be a place for nutrients to grow and for algae to get
crazy on you, so I highly, highly suggest you take the extra time.
I know you're nervous about making the hole in the bottom of the liner,
but I can make you reassured and
trust me that if you do it correctly,
you are not gonna have a problem and your pond's not gonna leak.
So, you know, look backwards and
see some of our videos on bottom drain installation.
We coach you step by step through the exact process so
you will be successful doing it.
The next question comes from Thailand.
I have a Sebastian.
He is originally from Germany.
He's over staying in Thailand right now, and he loves koi fish.
And he has a beautiful pond that he's working on.
And he is curious about overdoing filtration,
overdoing pond filtration.
Now, the rule of thumb forever is you can never have too much
filtration on a pond, an aquarium.
If you're doing filtration for fish, you just can't overdo it, and
I find that that is probably 99.9% accurate.
I really haven't seen a pond that's been overdone with filtration,
because typically, in an ornamental pond in the back yard,
even a large ornamental pond, say 15,000, 10, 15,
20,000 gallon pond, you're getting fish, you're feeding them a lot.
You're interacting with them.
They are part of your lifestyle.
You're sitting out in the gazebo and the fish are breeding.
Now you're having more fish.
So it's highly unlikely that you could over-filter the pond.
If you take this to the aqua culture world,
there's the potential to have maybe too much filtration in there.
I have heard some of the debates about it, but
I've never seen it come back into an ornamental pond in our backyard.
In fact, most of the ponds that we run into are under-filtered and
overstocked, or they're stocked heavily and
they're filtered maybe just a little bit below par,
so I don't think you can really go wrong with filtration.
You'd have to spend a great deal of money and
make some giant room for a small pond to make that work.
Literally, what happens if you get into the debate of it all,
the debate is like, well, if you have too much filtration media for
the bacteria to grow on, to adapt to your particular livestock load or
your herd of koi, then the bacteria is kind of stretched too thin, but,
honestly, the bacteria is gonna expand and contract according to how
big your population is and how much fish food you put in there, and
the temperature of the year, so I don't think you can over do it.
I really don't think you should worry about it,
but know in the background there is a small debate about that if you
really want to look into it.
The final question I got for you guys today I get asked quite a bit,
and it always honors me to see this question.
It makes me feel real good.
It says when are you gonna get your own television show on HGTV or
the Discovery Channel?
And if you've been following our career on Facebook or Instagram,
Twitter, you'll know that we've already shot a pilot episode for
a reality TV show.
We did it back in November 2013.
We produced it ourself.
We did it all in-house, and I've been trying, well, we've been
pitching the networks this whole time, and, as it gets longer and
longer, I've been trying to figure out how to get this out.
Do we push it on YouTube?
How can we share it?
I really wanted to share our hard work with everyone, and
no matter what, I keep getting a no from our producers.
The guy behind the camera right now filming this has been telling me
no and no and no.
Finally I got the green light,
the go ahead, to share the video with you.
To tell you just a little bit more about it,
it's a pilot that we did, and it was in Palm Springs, California.
It was fantastic, and we collaborated with some friends,
and things just came together really special for us, and
I was excited about it.
What you're gonna watch, that I'm gonna share with you,
is not the final product, cuz we're still pitching network television
and there's still a very real possibility that
we'll go on to the television network with the reality TV show, so
what you're seeing today is not the final product.
Once it gets accepted, it might have a change of music,
the cutting might be different, we're not sure how that's gonna go,
but I do have the rare opportunity to share it with you right now,
so I'm gonna give you a link right here.
It's for a limited time only, and I want you to watch it, and
just remember, this is the reality TV show part, fun, exciting,
kinda crazy, and it's very different than what we do on YouTube, and we
wanna continue to focus our YouTube efforts on being educational, and
bringing as much content to the masses as possible, but
in the meantime, have fun with our reality TV show.
Watch the episode.
Remember, it's a very limited time, because if we get something
going off, then we're gonna probably have to pull it down.
So I want you to watch it right now, and the question of the day I have
for you is I want you to know how you feel about the reality TV show.
Please give me all your feedback right here in the comments and
I hope you enjoy it.
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