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Well, we're at the tail end of our patio pond video series, and
we're gonna introduce fish into the system today.
I'm gonna show you a couple of tips and tricks.
But before we do that, I wanna tie up a couple of loose ends.
I wanna make sure you understand how our emergency overflow system works.
And I wanna show you how we fine-tuned our manifold assembly,
cuz I didn't drill quite enough holes in there.
I'll show you how we modify that.
And I do wanna cover how big the bog size is compared to the pond size so
you can use it on other applications in your landscape.
Let's get started.
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Let me explain the emergency overflow system to you.
Now we have our three spouts.
Remember this is our main feed and the water from the active bog
is fed through that manifold where we drilled the holes, water dumps in through here.
Now most of the water is coming through here, because my client just wanted a real subtle
tube you know, pouring back into the pond, real quiet water feature.
Now, this spout right here is, that's where our emergency overflow is.
So, if, in fact, the, the pond gets neglected a little bit and the roots
take over that manifold, then not enough water's gonna come pouring through here.
So what's gonna happen is, the water in the pond is gonna start to lower.
And the, and the water inside the active bog is gonna start to increase.
Now, if we didn't have this overflow system, literally, the,
this bottom pond could drain down to where all where the pumps start to suck air and
the excess water would just come spilling over the top.
So when we put that elbow on the inside, as the water starts to rise because we neglect
the manifold, water will come through this spout and pour back into the lower pond.
Now, when the homeowner comes home, he is gonna hear the excess water.
He's gonna see that the, the overflow spout's gonna be pouring out water,
and he's gonna know he needs to do some maintenance.
So I'm gonna demonstrate this by putting my hand over the bottom of this tube,
and I'm not gonna let the water come through.
And it's gonna start to increase inside the active bog and
it's gonna come through our emergency overflow system.
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Now, if you'll notice,
the water in the bottom pond has dropped over a half of an inch.
Now all that water is up in the active bog.
And it starts to fill up.
And as the water, gets too high,
it spills into our elbow and then it comes through the emergency overflow.
Now, when the homeowner and he walks around the corner,
he's, he's automatically gonna hear that the audio is much louder than he wants it to be.
And he's gonna know he needs to do some maintenance.
The next thing I want to address is how we had to modify the manifold assembly in here
to accommodate the flow rate once we got the whole patio pond system started.
I do want to address the fact that it's been two weeks since our last video shoot,
when we planted all these aquatic plants.
Now after that shoot,
we threw in half a dozen goldfish in the bottom pond immediately.
I had the home owner start feeding them right away.
And look what's happened in only two weeks.
Come in close and let me show you how we modified the, the manifold assembly.
Now, if you remember when we drilled this originally we had just this center line
right here all the way down the manifold.
When we kick started our system, it just couldn't handle the flow rate, so
as you can see I came in here and I drilled holes all the way down the entire manifold.
And so basically I,
I've tripled the amount of holes in there and now the flow rate is working perfectly.
Let's talk about the relationship between the,
the size of the bog filter and the size of the pond.
Because, in this application, the bog filter and the pond are exactly the same size.
What I want you to know is, if you're gonna take this bog filter technology and
apply it to other aspects of, of your pond installations,
is you really only need 10% of the surface area for your active bog to match the pond.
So for example, if you have a 300 square foot pond in your landscape,
you wanna add some filtration to it,
you only need 30 square feet of an active bog to help benefit that pond.
If you take that formula, 10% of your active bog matches your,
your surface area, total surface area of your pond, you're gonna have amazing results.
Okay, it's time to add some fish to the pond.
It's really our grand finale.
I wanna make sure, I'm gonna give you about three tips and
tricks on how to add these fish to the pond.
First of all, you wanna get your bag of fish from a reputable dealer.
Preferably some quarantined fish, and you're gonna want to float this bag in,
in the pond for about 15 minutes.
And what that does is,
it acclimates the water temperature from the bag of water and to the pond.
Now, I wanna make sure you don't do this with the sun beating on this bag
because the oxygen can be depleted inside the bag very quickly and
be a dangerous environment for the fish.
Now this guy's been in here for 15 minutes, and I'm just gonna open up the top.
And I'm going to start adding some water into the bag from the pond.
And what that will do is it will start to acclimate, you know,
the, the chemistry of the water, like the alkalinity and the pH.
And that's gonna help make the transition a little bit easier.
This rubber band is being a tricky one.
Now, we chose Wakins for this pond.
It's a really cool goldfish.
It has a fancy tail, and they have some neat color patterns.
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Cuz this pond's really too small for Koi.
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Maybe, maybe if you wanna grow up some baby Koi, this would be a decent pond if your,
your main pond was they were spawning in there and you wanted a spot.
So do you need a neat pond to do that in.
Now, if you were gonna have, if you were gonna raise Koi in here,
I might suggest changing the copper spillways to something like PVC.
Because Koi fish are a little more susceptible to the copper
than the goldfish are.
So, once we've added a little bit of water into here.
[SOUND].
As I said, the chemistry starts to, to match up.
And then, if you really wanted to, I guess you could get a fine net and
you can take the net and place the fish into the pond.
But I'm just gonna use my hand like this.
And you might think, hey, well why don't you just pour the whole bag in there,
it'll be real easy, you wouldn't have to touch the fish,
you wouldn't have to net them or anything like that.
But what we don't wanna do is take this, this bagged water and
put it into our pond, because you know, the,
they might have gone to the bathroom on the way over here, which would increase the pH.
And it's just, we're gonna, we're gonna assume it's dirty water.
So we're gonna take the fish and
just scoop them out gently by hand and introduce them into the pond.
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And then, we'll take this water and we'll discard it.
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So, we have our goldfish acclimized into the patio pond.
And the final step for me to do is to put a wood trim around the top, and
what that's gonna do is gonna hide that black tub, and
it's gonna provide a little shelf for putting,
say, a little stature, or maybe a potted plant of that nature, around the patio pond.
Now the good news is we're gonna come back in thirty days, and we're gonna shoot some
footage to show you how the bog filters developed in that short of time.
In the meantime, if you have any questions regarding acclimizing fish,
please post your questions in the comment section below.
And I'll get to each and every one of them as soon as I possibly can.
I'm Eric Triplett, The Pond Digger.
Thanks for watching.
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