so in today's video i'm going to give you guys a really quick update on what's been going on with
my do-it-yourself backyard swimming pond you guys know that it was back august 2020 that i
built this only nine months ago so there's not a tremendous amount to update but today i'm going
to show you what's new what's changed what's to come but first i kind of want to talk about what
actually inspired this now you guys know at one point i swam around in my 2000 gallon aquarium
you know this is something i've always wanted to do and i think a lot of aquarium hobbyists
dream of being able to do that and i got to admit it's a tremendous amount of fun but what i really
enjoyed also doing was getting to swim with and finding wild stingrays or snorkeling with
sharks or you know getting to swim around and discover some wild cichlids and see what their
habitat looks like but the tipping point for me was definitely when i went to camp cannons
and i got to swim in his swimming pond which is tremendously nicer than mine of course
and way bigger but this was definitely the tipping point where i think i even said in the video
i'm doing this so i did just that got a little mini excavator started destroying
my yard and i'm talking i destroyed my yard but i had a vision and the overall end goal
uh was going to be beautiful and useful and very practical i just was going to do this a lot better
my way dug a hole and built a frame out of two by sixes and some plywood which was going to
basically be almost like a below ground swimming pool but uh filtered and ramped like a pond
and of course stocked with one on the bottom put in some foam carpeting just to protect the pond
liner from any rocks or sticks or anything like that that's definitely a must and then of course
oh drug in this massive pond liner i gotta say not only was it burning my fingers
because of the sun and it being black in the heat but it was incredibly heavy but we got it done and
i gotta say that was probably the hardest part and the most the most painful uh and from moving
on from here i thought i don't know what i'm doing but i do want a deck i thought it was funny if i
had like a little plank that went from my regular porch or deck you wanted whatever you want to call
it to the pond so i built that and sometimes i talk like a pirate when i'm walking it on my plank
and from here i had no clue what else i was going to do i didn't really have much of a
plan i was just kind of winging it but you get to do that when wood is a regular cost uh from there
of course i knew i need to have a fence around it my bylaws stayed i gotta have a fence and
um just so nobody could fall in so i just use some privacy fence some four by fours and i also
put some lights around the top and i thought you know this looks really good of course way
better than i thought it was going to be but this season i thought i'm going to make it far more
natural looking and far more outdoorsy feeling i guess but before we got to all that uh of course
we had to add the koi in and at this point they were only like two or three inches maybe
if that and i think we had a little i think we had around 20 of them 24 of them something like
that and a lot of people didn't like the blue dye that i added into the uh pond from actually fritz
makes it and this uh keeps algae down it allows it's tougher for predators to see the actual koi
and of course they are out far more often i found just because of that added security
after the winter past well time to clean it up and get some things done to it it was a bit of a
mess but we did it we were able to clean it and i i knew we're gonna start making some changes here
the koi made it through the winter no problem whatsoever but they didn't really put on any
size because of course we're not feeding them so they were almost identical in size as to
when i got them however it felt like they were bigger they just weren't um from there well
first and foremost my grass grew back which was beautiful and and nice to see finally
um i added some some flowers and a waterfall and some privacy fencing it added a new ladder
and i doing this all in between literally building and planning out a public aquarium
so a lot of my time is just so restrictive right now but i do feel we're still getting
a lot done on the pond and doing other things and you know truly enjoying it um
but uh i think that uh oh yeah remember the waterfall from the 2000 gallon added that to
it i shut it off so we could try to see the fish and get the koi to come out a little bit more but
i was so restricted of on time i tried to do this yesterday but of course it was pouring rain out
and i mean all the rain was falling all at once i don't know if we'll get rain anymore for the next
five years because it all came down yesterday um and started to overflow uh the pond but that just
overflows through the filter so it's not that big of a deal um you'll also notice that there's like
a a heater there now whether that metal box that's technically a propane heater that i'm going to use
maybe in september to see if i can prolong the season because last year it seemed like
well of course we built this in august but it was like two days later it felt like like two months
later that the the pond was no longer usable and i had to start winterizing everybody and
so we'll give that a shot but i just don't think it's going to have too much of an impact
the pond is 16 feet long eight feet wide six feet deep and holds around 5000 gallons but we do have
a problem with the koi they're not that big oh you know what we should do is kind of talk about um
how this uh aquariums actually run this is a pond i guess you'll notice in the back though
i also built a fire pit uh that's been nice i was going to build out the deck even further but
the cost of wood i could literally almost buy another house instead of building up a deck so i
was like well i do want a fireplace again so built that out and it's really nice especially at night
time you have a fire the lights are going and whatnot uh as for filtration and and maintenance
and stuff so that's where some people don't like how i set it up versus i really like it because i
don't want to spend all day every day working on this pond i want to be able to actually enjoy it
do a couple little things maybe top it off but i don't want to spend every day cleaning it so
we do have some hidden doors that you guys will remember and underneath there
is the weir or overflow that's built into the side and that goes to a canister filter that allows for
ultraviolet sterilization of the water it also has mechanical and biological filtration
and we have two of these one of them is built into the pond properly
and the maintenance that i do here is really simple is i just pull out this
mesh net that catches all the leaves or whatever might be building up in the pond and skims it off
dump it out and the other one is actually on the outside of the pond now i was going to build
this into the other side of the pond and i already have like a trap door there and whatnot which is
accessible from both sides but i decided this is way better all i have to do is turn the valve
and you know these are like little squeegees that scrub the brushes on the inside the uh the sponges
on the inside and i wait till the water runs clear and then i close the valve and that's it that's
my maintenance and nothing else um so i mean it can't get any easier than that as for vacuuming
the bottom of the pond well that's where it's even better and the reason why i like it even though
it's an eyesore you can see the hose going down to the bottom of the pond you can see the pump
you can see the output the output allows me to change it and do whatever i want to it so i could
do more surface agitation but when it comes to like vacuuming the bottom i just move that pump
around and it sucks up all the debris into the filter which i just backwash out and that's that's
it added a new ladder that looks pretty good but yeah it's just it's such a unique feature to have
at my house and i think it's just beautiful and um you know we'll see what happens over time but one
of the things i got to do is figure out what we're doing with these koi they're hiding constantly
um not constantly i mean when i come out first thing in the morning and i want to
sit with them and enjoy them they're out but if i want to you know quickly film a video to show
you guys the koi yeah it's very rare that i can actually get them on camera so that's
kind of the downside i'm think thinking they're obviously only you know three inches long it's
they're just hiding in the folds of the corners of the uh pond for the most part they do eat they
don't come up to eat off the surface anymore they're eating it off the bottom which is fine
i think what i'm going to do is one of two things i got a friend that's got six really big koi i
might trade him for my babies because he got what kind of wants to downsize and i've only had these
guys for nine months we can't expect them to be monsters um or i just bring them into the gallery
and grow them out till they're like a foot long or so and then add them back to the pond i was also
thinking about maybe we just go with sturgeon but you know now that i have these koi there i don't
really want to get rid of them and the temperature of the pond at right now today i believe was like
23 24 degrees celsius which is not warm enough to kind of swim in but it's it'll get there i think
for swimming in it i'm looking at probably mid july august and then you know i can kind of enjoy
swimming in it but that is the update for today's video i hope you guys enjoyed it and maybe got
inspired maybe you want to do this yourself it looks like a lot of work but like i said
um in the first season i just did the ground work got a lot of the stuff the basic things completed
and then this summer is when i kind of like tried to beautify it and
i think i did a good job but i'd love to hear what you guys think in the comment section below
anyways as always thanks for watching i'll see you guys in the next video