Welcome to the Aquarium, guys podcast with your hosts, Jim Colby and Rob Zolsen. Hello, all. I, your host, Rob Zolsen, am here today doing a mini episode. I would like to do a one that doesn't even have an episode number. This is just a bonus episode. I want to do a follow up to an event I just went to called pondemonium. So here today with me to enjoy a bit of a hangout session for this not normal episode is Michael from all things fish. Say hello, friend.

Hey, Rob. How you doing today?

I can't complain, friend. And that's all things fish on YouTube. You've been on the podcast once or twice before, but we'll have a link in the show note. But what's going on in your world, my friend?

Not a whole lot. Unfortunately, work has me away from my tanks for a little bit, so I pawned off those duties on the wife, and I'm sure she's doing a mighty fine job. I just don't ask for pictures because the less I know, the better.

I'm glad to hear that you do the same thing as me. Like, what's going. Did you feed the fish? Yep.

That's all.

I just give me acknowledgement. I don't want pictures. Oh, look at this one. It's doing terrible. That's exactly the things to defile it in the I don't want to know category until I get home.

Right? So the. The work trip was kind of sprung on me last minute, so I left about 150, angel or not angelfish, rainbow fish fry, and a bunch of nanoluteus fry. And I told her to feed them, and I'm hoping for the best.

Just watch. You're going to come back with even higher yield than you normally get. And you ask her what the secret is, and she's like, I don't know. And then you're going to be just kicking yourself trying to figuring it out.

Hey, if. If that's what it takes, then maybe I'll just leave town more often.

Well, pondamonium. So I went to pandemonium with my friend Derek Schumann from Dee's fish company. And please, this is where I would have you interrupt for anything along the way for questions, because I'm doing a bit of an after action, because I want to give people an idea of something that most people won't be able to go to and a little bit of an insider's view on something fun. So I have a friend named Greg Wittstock. Greg Wittstock is probably most known from the wider public for his YouTube channel called the Pond Guy again, notes. The link for that will be in the show, notes Greg Wittstock and his team from his company. He's the CEO of Aquascape. It is one of the largest, if not the largest, pond product company in the world. So if you want pond liners, pumps, filters, overflows, some of the best things, some things that they've only designed and have the patents on. I've been a big fan of Aquascape even before I was friends with Craig Whitstock and a customer. They do a great job for fountains, all different types of stuff. They have a massive catalog, and you can even find the catalog online. And this is something that you don't necessarily have to, you know, be an insider to purchase. You can get a lot of these products on Amazon, and they have different programs for local fish stores, but more importantly for pond creators and contractors. So Greg Wittsnock, he has a YouTube channel, and he does all different types of content traveling around the world, building ponds, because he's been building ponds for many, many years. Definitely an expert in the field. I think one of the ones that is kind of a keynote that people know of is the pond for Shack Shaquille O'Neal that he did actually with the Ohio fish rescue, that I think donated a bunch of koi for that pond. Otherwise, I think he's done a lot for, like, Logan Paul. There's been a lot of different people from around the world, and he has a massive network and team of people that work with Aquascape and other youtubers like Ed, the Pond professor and many more. So I've had him on the podcast to talk about ponds. We had one episode in the past, and I. I, uh, I wasn't exactly that nice to him. Michael, on the, on the, uh, the podcast, I don't know if you got to listen to that episode.

So I have listened to that episode, and I don't personally, uh, no, Greg, I watch his stuff on YouTube, and it's, uh, well, I don't keep pawns myself. It's definitely very impressive. But what exactly did you do to him when you had him on the podcast?

Well, for those that see him on the YouTube channel, it's his Persona is that person, like, he's not putting on necessarily the biggest face for his YouTube content. You know, people definitely amp it up and want to be professional and act, maybe not necessarily how they would act in day to day life, because they want to put content on the, on their channel. And that's not being fake. That's just making sure that you're being the entertainer that you are. So when you see Greg on his YouTube channel, he seems like an extraordinarily energetic guy. He is that person in real life. I promise you, he is every bit of that person, and probably more in real life, honestly, than he's on his YouTube channel. So me knowing that he's a extraordinarily extrovert and definitely motivated by his passion for the Aquascape life, as he. He calls it. When I had him on the podcast, I like to be able to get the most clear, brutal, and concise answers. And sometimes I'll ask dumb questions on purpose, even though I know better because I have listeners that are beginners on the. On the podcast. So, of course, if you go back and listen to that, I purposely razz him and rile him up, asking him dumb beginner questions that really get under his skin. But it made for a fantastic interview when we had him on the first time on the podcast. So I don't regret it. But I did not expect, you know, keep in touch with Greg after that first interview. So definitely, definitely made my day. But the. The gentleman is very much that same energy level that he is on his YouTube channel. So throughout the years that I've known him, he's. We've stayed lightly in contact back and forth. And Dee's fish company had a customer that came in and wanted to buy all of the koi. One, they didn't know how many koi there were. Two, they didn't know the price of the koi, and they said they just needed them all delivered to this address tomorrow. And that's. We mentioned that you don't even know the price or how many we have. And they're like, we don't care. Do you guys take visa? And we're like, okay, sounds great. We at least made sure that they had a pond running, and they said, we sure do. I'm glad you checked in, but please bring to this address. Don't be late. So I get my pickup. We load up all the koi, and it was, you know, we have a ten foot pond, display pond. So we had a quite a few koi and quite a few large koi that had been there since the beginning of the store because they were display koi. In our neck of the wooden in northern Minnesota, we have ponds, but it's not necessarily a huge hobby. But we went out to this place, and it was a very wealthy person, and they had a complex. And just to give you an idea. The complex and buildings that were built there were built around water slides that they hired the people from Disney's magic kingdom to go build from their private property. So it kind of gives you the idea of the prestige, the, frankly, the money that this customer was willing to put into their property to make it what they wanted. And they have a very nice, large pond, but they hired a landscaping person to do it. That's never really done koi features or anything for fish. So when they built this massive pond, the filtration wasn't correct. It was made to chemical dose. It only had a sand filter. There was nothing for biological media anywhere through the pond. Everything was bare bottom. It was. There wasn't any plants. And all they would do is just dump, dump chemicals. And they were starting to lose fish pretty aggressively. So we told them that we can do maintenance on it. We'll do our best to change this pond into a natural pond. And immediately I knew that we couldn't do anything but band aid it. Like, we'll start a cycle, we'll get biological filtration going, but this was built wrong, and we'd like to get it rebuilt. So I seeing this, seeing the gentleman pick up the phone, call my buddy Greg Woodstock, and say, hey, remember that walk, escape lifestyle and all these people you do on the YouTube channel? I would love to talk to your team, got in touch with the team, and we'll see where that goes. We gave the customer the contact information, gave him some of the background. But, you know, throughout the years, Greg's invited me to this thing called pondemonium. I've looked into it a few different times, and it is one of the, if not the largest pond conference you can go to in the world. And it's right that his headquarters in Chicago and St. Charles, a suburb of Chicago on the west side, and it's at his headquarters called Aqualand. And if you want to check it out, I highly suggest going on to the YouTube channel in the comments. For Gray Woodstock, the pond guy, it's breathtaking, but we'll get there. So I took the offer. Derek and I went, and we had a fantastic time. And I just want to share some of the details thus far. But before I go too far, I've been talking for a little while here. Michael, do you have any questions about what I talked about so far and anything that you think that the audience would be missing out on?

So you mentioned that said the customer walked in and just wanted all the koi. They called up a truck with all.

The walk in they just called, I want all the McCoy. It's like someone calling a deli, I.

Want all the ham, give me the meat. So how much, just how many koi exactly was all the koi? At the end of the day, I.

Think we counted it up and it was like pushing 40 koi. All different sizes.

All different variety of sizes, I'd imagine.

Yeah, everything from small to, I think the biggest one was probably over 2ft for sure.

And, uh, so. So then they called you guys for help after you had delivered the koi. Like, dad, they started losing koi from.

Oh, we showed up because there was already dead koi and they were having, they were going to be having a big party and they wanted to make sure that everything's perfect. And the people who call this is not the owner of the property, it's the property management. And they just replacing, like, if someone comes in, let's say, on a party, and breaks a vase or destroys a couch, property management is the one that's required to either have maintenance come in and fix it or be the one responsible to replace the couch. They're the ones that take care of everything. Of course, the owners, you know, he has people for this, so that's just what they were doing. They just called up a place and say, I want all the koi. And we showed up and we said, hey, you, you're the ones that take care of this. You need people to take care of this. We can take care of it for you.

Okay. All right. And then, yeah, so you bring them all the coy, you start working the right direction towards getting this thing back on track. And you called Greg, obviously. First person that would come to mind with regards to pawns, I'd imagine for sure.

Now, there's other people that I have in regards to pawns in my life that maybe some local people, maybe some people just out of state, but when you go up to a place like that, you see, you know, massive water slides recreated from Disney's water united. Was it natural kingdom? Something like that. You get the vibe that, well, only, only the best will do. So I pick up the phone and only call the best and hopefully that works out in the end. Fingers crossed. If not, I mean, if it does, we'll let you know in the podcast here. And if we're allowed to talk about it, then if they're going to make a. Make it on the YouTube, so otherwise, you know how private parties are, they get the anonymity of not putting it on YouTube if they don't want us right, right. Generally, if you spent enough money, they won't publicize it. They'll keep that stuff a secret.

Funny how that works.

Yeah, money. Money talks. So any other things that die, I feel like I should be noting out here.

So I'm just trying to visualize what you guys are working on here. How big is this pond? And just exactly, I mean, did they literally just throw a rubber liner in the ground and call it good, or what are you guys working with?

So this is what a lot of Aquascape works with? Unfortunately, yes. They build new ponds, and that is probably a core of a lot of the businesses that Aquascape works with. But when you have people coming in and you get leads and you try to make a. A name for yourself with maybe new businesses or someone that started a business that use Aquascape products, you deal with something that someone else didn't do correctly, and you have to now go fix their problem. So this, they called up a company that was a landscaping company, and they're not used to doing water features. And if they do a water feature, it's normally just a simple fountain in front of a bank. That type of vibe, right, where all you would need is a pump, a fountain. And then they would chemical treat it with chlorine bleaches and all kinds of other stuff to make sure there's nothing that ever grows in that pond. And all you would do is just maybe flush out one sand filter. So that's exactly how they built it, not knowing that this guy wanted fish. Or maybe they told them they want fish, but they didn't know any better in any other way to do it. So they build this pond. They don't use the correct liners. The liners, by the time we get there, is already cracking after only a few years. It doesn't have any real filtration, biological filtration at all. It's bare bottom liner. There's really no gravel to speak of. There's no. Just like in an aquarium, you need a biological bog. In a pond, an aquarium, you would use biological filtration, whether it's media, moving bed, pot scrubbies, sponges for the. For it, or an undergravel filter. Ponds are no different. In fact, ponds are. They just need that much more filtration. So generally, they would creates, if you want a natural pond, some sort of biological bog, a waterfall. But before the waterfall, they have pre filtration, where they would have meshes. And, you know, anything that they could have bacteria grow on, there was none of that. And above all, else, no plants because they were chemical. Treating the pond with fish in it. So yeah, it's absolutely as bad as I can describe and more.

Sounds like they didn't exactly have a setup for much success there at all. Unless you want maybe just a clear puddle of water.

Yeah, they're imminent of actually cracking open and starting flooding the yard. And as far as size goes, I'm trying to pull up. They actually had the gentleman measure it because we were trying to send specs to the aquascape team to do an appropriate quote. And I am terrible, ladies and gentlemen, with measurements. So if I look at something, I'd be like, what is that, 4ft? And I'll be like, no, that's 14ft. And I don't understand why I don't have perspective in my brain, but I would say it was. I don't know. I have a pickup. I have a, you could say a small s ten pickup, a Chevy s ten pickup. And it was probably three and a half or three of those long. Three and a half of those long. Okay, so not a small pond by any measure?

No, not at all.

Not at all. And here we go. Nope, I don't have the. Oh, here it is. Measurements. We have nothing. Never mind. I lied. So, yeah, that at least gives you perspective. And that's just on one of it, it had a waterfall above it that had another basin. But it's quite a large pond. And I can again, put pictures in the discord to share with you guys because I do have permission to share a couple of those pond pictures we actually posted on Dee's fish go fish page, on the Facebook page. So it is already publicized. But moving on to this pandemonium event. So we get invited to this pandemonium event and it happens once a year on aquascape. And generally it's to get to this pandemonium, you have to pay $1,400 that's listing on their website for access to the tickets. And then it would be a three to four day conference, depending on what you all choose to go through. Because there's pontoors first day, there's breakout sessions, award ceremonies, there's a lot to go over. But I'm going to go through some of the details. We went in on some of the first day here and I have them in my notes here in discord. So we get there is pond ponium.

Is it largely geared towards people that build ponds themselves or people that are interested in setting up a small backyard pond just to keep a few fish in?

It's geared for people in the industry. If you want a pond or a landscaping business or you want to do a pond servicing business, this is the event for you. This isn't necessarily where you would go to show up for. If you just want to build your own, you can certainly learn things here. But this is where you get ideas for products, best in class, ideas for the industry, where you do sales, coaching for different things, all different types of breakout sessions for that specific corner of the pond market. So that's this year, I think they had about close to 600 people that were showing up. So it was quite large to put everybody into the event center room with tables and, and enjoy it. But we get there, they start going over immediately the new product releases. And just to go over some of these, this is, again, aquascape stuff. And this is now a. I have permission to share this. First thing is when you have ponds, you don't generally have dirt bottoms. You would have tarp bottoms, and then you put gravel or certain biological media, but you don't have dirt bottoms because of how the gas exchange would happen. So when people want to do potted things, they just use plastic pots if they want to do like lily pads or completely submerged plants that want to grow up through the top of the pond. I. And you can, when you buy these, you buy in bulbs and you put the bulbs into a pot, or if you even go to like a menards or Home Depot sometimes, depending if you're not in Minnesota, you can go and they'll have these in small pots where you just drop the pot in and it just sprouts out from there. It already has a little bit of fertilizer in it. It already has a little dirt. And that's how you grow lily pads, cattails, any of the type of aquatic plants you have. Well, the problem is, is when you grow these, you have issues where the roots will stunt out. You only have so much dirt and you only get so much growth from these plants. So they introduce a product where instead of using plastic pots, like the industry wants, or corrugated pots, which would actually release all the sediment out of the pots, they made these, I want to say fabric, but they call them geotextile pots with handles that are much, much bigger than anything in the industry. And when the plants grow out, they can actually grow into the fabric, this geotextile fabric of the pot. So it's like having a incredibly sturdy tote bag with a, almost like a wool canvas. It's very weird because I got to actually try these. See these in ponds with growth. And see these at the product table. And they have all different sizes. And the. Yeah, the material that they're made out of, it's very unique. So it lets oxygen actually go through the pot itself. And they had ones with the traditional plastic pots planted the same time with these cloth. Plastic pots or cloth. Excuse me, cloth planting pots. And the growth was, I'd say, twofold. Like, you'd see just immense more growth on these things. So I thought it was a kind of an easy, no brain solution that everybody should try to try to use on these potted plants. So. And, of course, handles. I know I've used a couple ones in the past where I'll put them in the pond, especially get to the fall, and it gets cold, brittle, and brakes. These actually come with tote bag handles. Next one was the fountain bowls. So aquascape has a whole lineup of. Not just for pond products, for, like, you know, pumps, fountain heads, tarps, but they have a lot of decor for outside of ponds, just for, like, other water features that they would have, that would not necessarily include open water. So they used to have stackable bowls that would flow into each other, and people would use these, modify them to make massive sculptures and features. So they have, instead of just having one bowl, they have two bowls or five bowls or ten bowls, and they would stack these and out. In the first event center that we had, we walked out and you'd see a tower of just these bulls from one guy that essentially had a. The idea of just using all of these singular bowl products, putting them all together to make one giant feature out of essentially more of a lower scale retail product. And these bowls are, I would say, well, I have measurements here, 32 inches in diameter to 60 inches in diameter. So give you an idea that these are pretty big outdoor dishes that they manufacture themselves. Well, now they just make them so they're not. We don't have to cut things out of them because they were made for originally a single purpose. So you'd have to stack them as essentially a patio pond. Now they add it so you can add in accessories, and you just have a vanilla. Vanilla bowl. And they were showing all different types of creative things that people have done with them over the years and why they made just the modular bowls instead. So people didn't modify and break the product to do what they wanted with them.

So these, like, plastic bowls that they're working with, or I guess, what material is it made out of?

These are actually done by hand with these fiberglass sheets from the presentation they had. So they do fiberglass layers, and then it's some sort of compound on the outside. So it more looks like it's supposed to look like some sort of clay slate, but it's definitely more of like a carbon plastic esque material. I don't really know how to describe it, but I had my hands on it. You can hit at the side. It's very fiberglass shelled, and then has a coating on the outside that makes it look kind of like stone. Okay, very.

Would you say it's aesthetically pleasing?

Worked out for. Worked out for some of the crazy things that they were trying. That was the thing that I love, patio ponds. And a lot of people in the area. Jimmy got me into patio ponds pretty big. And I know that I'm going to go home now that, and probably pick two of these up just for rice fish projects. They're using them for pond aesthetics and even putting biological media bags into them for smaller ponds. Me, I'm going to use them as the pond itself and probably use them as a breeding scenario for rice fish. Honestly, I wasn't going to do with the ones before because they look very easy to work with. And they made it with that fiberglass material, so you can drill with it, so you can put. And they have these special bulkheads, because, again, they're curved vessels. So they have these special bulkheads they made so you can bulkhead the bottom, bulkhead, even the curved sides. And they have these. I don't. Not rubber, but these gaskets that are made just for these bowls. So you can do all different types of crazy arrays with them. So I thought that was fun.

That sounds like it gives them a lot of flexibility then, right?

Otherwise, aquascape comes up with a lot of different, you know, singular water features. Like, you've probably gone to a bank fountain and seen like a, you know, a stacked slate sphere or a slate stacked urna, and they'll be, you know, maybe a foot, two foot. Now they have, you know, eight foot high stacked urns, five foot high stacked spheres. Out of popular demand, they want to just everything bigger. So they finally, finally did that, came with a few new colors. They made better fake rock accessories to hide more of the electrical work. And even do they took from the aquarium idea and made underwater fish hides for your pond, literally the same hides that you would go to, like, a local fish store find, like, one hole in one side, one side on the other, and it just looks like a fake rock. They just made big versions of these to host koi and other pond specimens out of, again, popular demand. He's like, hey, we see these in the aquarium. Why can't we have them in the pond world? And ironically enough, after all of the product reveals of the new year, the one filling in the room of contractors, which I thought was the funniest, is having a rock pad. So there's different padding that you can use in pond layout. So when you grab a tarp and just put tarp against the ground, you think, oh, the ground's soft enough. But as Michael and I both know, in our areas in the winter, when that ground freezes, it's hard rock. And when freezing happens and stuff shifts, that tarp again gets pressure between the ice on top and the hard stone, like dirt below. And you need some sort of insulation to protect it. And even in the summer, it gets compacted and still there's rocks in it. And you want to protect your liner from, you know, you stepping into it, or you want to put an object into it, or you move a rock into your pond. So they'll put padding underneath your liner. A lot of times they'll use straw and sand mix, but that only lasts so long. You want to put an actual polypropylene, I think these are made out of, and they're thick liners that lasts longer than the tarp and they generally go underneath. Like, think of it as a carpet pad. You lay down fresh carpet in your house, you put it on a thick carpet pad to make your carpet more spongy in your living room. This is the same way the pond works. You put down a pond pad to make sure that you're not going to puncture holes in your liner later down the road. So when you have this liner down, you'll have these special pads that you put big boulders on. And what they did is they just decided to punch out handles, finally. And when you have a boulder, you know, the size of a person, how are you going to move that? You can get a backhoe for sure. But how often does people have access to a backhoe? So it ends up like four dudes that are, you know, cussing and swearing and huffing it, and they're trying to roll a boulder into a pond, doing a lot of damage, or they literally all get hernias trying to get into a pond. So they just decided to take the same, you know, rock pad punch, you know, six holes in the sides. And now they make it team liftable that this massive boulder can sit in the pad. The pad can, you know, lift you know, 500 pounds or better, and you can all, you know, have four to six people team lift this massive boulder into place, and then you just leave the pad there. You don't have to take it away. And this product announcement in the room of contractors and waterscapists and artists had, I swear to God, a standing ovation. They literally just got up, slow clapped him. They were screaming. Yeah, Greg, they just lost their minds. Like they just discovered the cure to cancer.

I think it's far more entertaining to watch, you know, six guys try to roll a boulder around while they attempt to avoid hernias myself. But I'm sure they were very excited that they didn't have to worry about that anymore, big time.

Last thing that they had on their list was from Aquascape for their product release announcements was a different way to do fertilizer. So even I know this because I've dealt with different fertilizers in ponds. When you do lily pads. Lily pads, people don't understand that lilies consume a lot and filter a lot of water. So when you put it in, they will suck nutrients out of everything. So if you put them in a pot, it's amazing what they will just blow through for fertilizer. They will blow through their contents, and they will grow insanely, insanely fast, making their bulbs and buds below. And in doing that, they need a lot of fertilizer. So if you just put, you know, basic sand or gravel in there and your fish waste only go so far, they will burn through any the fertilizer that they need really quickly. So people, of course, want to put fertilizer tabs, just like you would do root tabs in your aquarium, Michael. So you put these pond root tabs in with your lily. But the problem is these root tabs, at best, they only last two weeks, and this is the same problem that I've had. So when you're in a pond, you don't want to go into it after you've put it in there, because, you know, ponds get shitty and scummy. So imagine that you have to go to the deepest part of your pond, grab this bucket with your lilies, disturb the lilies, maybe break a few off. And every two weeks, you got to put in nude fertilizer tabs or find a way to grab a steak like your grandma's. What is that? Little grabbing stick? And just shove them into the pot and hope you put them in the correct place.

Sounds like an absolute pain in the ass.

It is. It's pretty awful. So they decided to try to change the game. So they introduced a new type of fertilizer pod. These things look like massive shotgun shells. So instead of having a small, just normal, dissolvable tab, they change it into this clear shotgun shell that you would put in. And the idea is, when you plant your lily lily bulb into your pot, you first just put, of course, loose fertilizer. You sprinkle it in, maybe that only lasts two weeks. And then afterwards, you can shove this giant shotgun shell with a stick into your pot that would fit a lot better and not break apart the moment it hits the water and actually be in the correct shape to shove into the dirt pot underneath. And then that one lasts 180 days, which I don't know if you understand how it works up here in Minnesota. That's the whole season. So I have a fertilizer pond up, a pod that I can just shove into my pot, never have to fertilize it again, and I will have the best lilies in Minnesota is fantastic for me. Now, in other states, you know, they have summer for nine months of the year, and they'll have to do that, you know, more. But for me, all year long, I call that the biggest win of this, this whole list.

Absolute game changer. So is this. This shotgun shell, is it encased in anything, or is it just kind of like compressed nutrients, I guess, in, like, a solid thing that just slowly dissolves.

So they got two products. They just got the loose. It's like tiny little pellets. They look like, I don't know, airsoft BB's, and that's kind of. It's not necessarily uncommon to see Airsoft BB's as pond fertilizer. So those are already, like, little caplets, and those are tiny, about the size of an airsoft pellet, actually. And those that you could just mix loose with your potting soil when you pot them. But then those actual pods, those shotgun shells that I was talking about, those look exactly like your prescription tablet, you know, where you would have a casing over, over top, and then they have those same airsoft bbs on the inside. They've just measured the time release process and the amount that would do to last 180 days with different layers on the inside.

Yeah, that's a pretty, pretty big deal.

So then, of course, impedes a video as we're sitting there through this kickoff to this expo of gray woodsuck in a Wild west costume, you know, shooting lily pads with, you know, shotgun gun clips over his shoulders, filled with, of course, those pond fertilizers. So lots of fun.

Were these shotgun shells, these fertilizers? Is that something that Greg and his group developed themselves, or is that just a product that they happen to roll across that somebody else put together?

So all of these are products from Aquascape released by Aquascape. If they had third party people develop them, I highly doubt Aquascape has a pretty high team. And they had the product development team come up and they would talk about the back and forth that they would go through and their innovation. Maybe some of these, they would have an outside team develop, but I know nothing about that. I know that this fertilizer thing that they've been working on for quite a, quite a while because it's been a pain. And there is a. And I'd like to have them on the podcast, a lily association, world association, where they try to preserve different lily species that are either going extinct from the hobby or wild. I'm not really real sure about that one. I have a lot of questions. If we do an interview, but they do a symposium that actually travels each year. They do a different location. It's been housed at Aquascape before, I think last year was in the UK. And they had a lot of questions on how to make this easier for the general public and how to preserve species. So that comes from that side of research on how to do these hard, delicate, or some even winter hardy lilies better than others. So, yeah, that's the one I was most excited for.

Sounds like considering that that was their goal, that they probably hit that one out of the ballpark.

Can't wait to get my hands on it and give it an actual try to see if it lasts a whole Minnesota season. So they went being so large and.

Potentially lasting so long, so to speak. Giggety is, is there like a minimum size pond that you'd want to use? These ends, they didn't just leach like an excessive amount of nutrients into your, into your water.

They had. It was per plant. So if you're doing like a potted plant, they had, depending on, they had a guide that came with the product. So they didn't go into a ton of detail because they, again, they said on the guide, but they said if you know how much volume of dirt or how many plants you had, that was how many pods you put in. But essentially one big lily gets one big pod, is what essentially we saw on the screen. So definitely check the product announcements on that one. But that seems to be fairly clear on at least that. What are you supposed to do for other projects besides the pots, you know, I think there's going to be a bit of trial and error, and I don't think instructions are going to give it all the way. If you're going to have some sort of like natural pond that has a dirt bottom and you want to fertilize an array of things, you know, how many inches between are you going to want to put these pots? You know, that's something that might be on the product, might be trial and error.

Right now, I'll be honest, every time I hear you say these pods, I think of somebody standing there with a bucket of like, think tide pods, like the laundry pods, and they're just lobbing them into a pond like a hand grenade.

So while they were doing this thing, they were talking about like, oh, fertilizer pods. I'm like, and I lean over to Derek and I'm like, finally a pod that'll taste better than tide.

Exactly where I was going with it.

Yeah, we definitely had the same thought there. So of course they went on and they did different awards. They did the certified Aqua escape contractor of the year, decker's pond scapes. Congratulations to them. They had rookie of the year award to Zach's pond and property. Zachspawn service.com would be the listing out of that one. And they, of course, they showed some of the amazing work that they did. This guy is, I think year one of it. And he uses of course, aquascape training and certification for it and of course the product line and pretty, pretty impressive stuff he is located out of. I'm pulling up his website here.

So Greg and his team at Aquascape, they're such a big deal. They offer basically pond building lessons, from the sounds of it, yes.

So they have a course that if you're for your business, they call it. Let me see here, CAC training, certified Aquascape contractor that they would have training for your team, you and your team, to know exactly how to build water falls, do inclines, I mean, do everything from quoting to full installation, maintenance, all of it for your team members. And that's what they sent a lot of their team members for, was either refresher courses or to get introduced to it before training to go to pandemonium. There would be people with, you know, six or eight of their team members from one bigger pond organization there going to get training or get hands on. And the.

Zach, sounds like Pond Monum is a pretty big deal. Like you said, it runs several days. It's a lot of the, like the industry experts is this something that you have to run a similar business to be able to attend? Or is it open to public? Like, if I'm like, hey, I'm, I like ponds, I'm interested in starting my own business, but I'm not there yet. I want to go learn from these guys, or do I need like an actual established business in order to attend the event?

So according to the website, because again, I didn't ask. I was invited by Greg. He was nice enough to have me join along and Derek join along. And according to the website, it would be open to the public. But again, the intention is for people in the industry, if you're hungry for this, because I know you and I, doesn't matter if we're in the industry or nothing, would just fuel our passion, you definitely can sign up, pay admission, and, you know, begin to taste the aquascape lifestyle that they have there. They keep using that as the tagline. And it was, it was a lot of fun watching them really rep that as the brand name.

I mentioned to my wife this, well, this spring, before summer started, I'm like, hey, I think I want to build a pond in the backyard. And she knows probably about as well as you do that I don't really do anything halfway. If I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna jump all the way in. And she's like, are you sure you want another hobby? I was like, well, it's not another hobby. I said, they're fish. Like, I'm into the fish hobby. She's like, no, ponds are a whole new hobby for you. Like, it wouldn't just be like aquariums. Like it's, it's a completely different animal. And I would end up getting neck deep in that real fast.

Well, I can't, I can't say that it, it's not, not a different hobby because it really, you know, going into this, like fish or fish. Like, I love fish in aquarium. An aquarium. I like fish outside in the pond. But what they did, what they, they showed just at this and the passion they show for changing your environment. And I, what's the word? Changing your terrain of your, where you live to something completely different. Fish can be the focus, but generally the features, the environment, it's so much more than fish. Even just going in the aqua land, which I'll talk about here in just a minute, just paints a different picture. That, yes, it's a, it's like going from one. Like, yes, I like, I like watercolor painting. And now I'm suddenly in putting paintings in a museum it's just a whole nother gear in a different direction. But that. Zach's pond service is in Omaha, Nebraska, and he wanted to give up. Make sure to give a shout out for his fantastic work on that one. But again, go ahead, chance.

No, there used to be. It started as an aquarium store called rivers and reefs in Omaha. And I think now they mostly do ponds. Does that name ring a bell at all?

It does actually.

Yeah. I think it's rivers and reefs.

Rivers and reefs in Omaha, Nebraska. I have it pulled up.

There's that. That's a. There's still a fish store. There's a different shop down in Omaha that I'm thinking of. I'll see if I can find it. Rivers and reefs, I think, mostly does like aquarium type stuff anymore these days. But there's a. There's another one. I'll see if I can find it.

And there's definitely a couple people I interviewed that were there that, you know, one gentleman I was talking to, you know, had a aquarium shop for, I think 17 years and sold the aquarium shop because he just got so busy and big into the doing his pond business. And, you know, he's got a 13 people on his team for doing ponds. They do pond maintenance and they don't do landscape work. They only do water features. And it's almost exclusively with fish. And he's in the jersey area. It was just a really good to network with all the different people in the industry and see, you know, where stuff was at. And they have a geological map. This was people from around the world. They had people from Africa coming in. I think there was someone from Australia. It was. It was pretty, pretty aggressive how many people there were. And I was shocked by the people so far north. I figured the further north you were, less people would be interested in water features outdoors. But no, there was mass amounts of people in Canada. The tip point of Maine was a lot of people. Just more than I expected. I don't know actually what to expect, but it was a. It was a lot of fun, which is why I'm sharing an insider event that most people just want go to. Try to give you a little taste of the little bonus episode here.

Yeah, it's definitely impressive. I just happened to be looking around. Rough Waters was the name of the place I was thinking about. They used to be an aquarium store that did a couple ponds and now I think they entirely do ponds.

Nice shout out for them. Well, before you get into building your pond, finish the last part of the last day here. So after all of the award ceremonies, talking about new products, getting people hyped for the, for the next day, doing dinner, the keynote speaker. Because every conference, even if it's not something, I'm an IT guy, so if you. I go to an IT conference, they might have someone like one of the IT conferences. Years ago, I actually saw Barbara Cochran, the gal from Shark Tank. She was the keynote speaker at a IT conference. Barbara Cochran is not an IT expert, but she has a lot of different stories and she's very inspiring. And as far as a keynote speaker, to try to, you know, give you passion and drive and motivation, it's fantastic. And I think that's what, especially in a business person, for a keynote speaker needs to have. They need to be able to motivate, drive, even if it's not in something that they've done, that's in your expertise, but just walk away motivated to do what you do in the best way possible. And Forrest Galante, if you don't know who he is, give him a gook. This guy is crazy. I've been a fan of his for many, many years. He has rediscovered more officially extinct species than any other person. I think it's eight now total. He discovered a turtle from one of the Galapagos islands that was supposed to be extinct for 124 years. Found one alive, brought it back in for captivity. They're trying to find a mate for it still to revitalize the species. He found the Zanzibar leopard. It was supposed to be a miniature leopard that's been gone for a very long time. Rediscovered that. Rediscovered the pondicherry shark. Just a crazy individual that has dedicated his life for benefiting the natural world and conservation specifically. And keynote speaker asked a lot of fun questions, and he got to hang out with us the entire time at pondemonium, just as one of the guests. Extremely approachable. You wanted to go out and just walk up to him, shake his hand, say hello, tell him how much you like his work, you know, bullshit with him a bit. Great guy, great atmosphere, great, great presentation. And I, again, huge fanboy. So I'm all about trying to milk information about the hunt of the thylacine. That's the big one for me, Michael. Thylacine, the tasmanian tiger. I don't know if you're, you're a big guy outside of the fish world.

Yeah, yeah. So it's, it's funny, these events. A lot of the times, you know, they advertise, you know, so and so is given a talk on, on such and such topic, and those are great to go to. But I often find that if the event offers some sort of hospitality suite or if there's a social area after, you know, after hours, you can really pick the brains of some of those guys that have done so much and just know leaps and bounds more than I'll ever know for sure.

The networking was by far a gold mine of information of all different types of people with different perspectives. Even helped one guy there, they were having issues. You probably like this little side tangent there, Michael. One guy was sitting there, man, I installed this big pod. It's been running for a while, and I just can't get rid of the brown diatom algae. Like, what am I supposed to do? And we're just asking questions like, why are you doing this? Are you doing that? And it came down to he was using a pressure washer for your car or other things, maybe your sidewalk, you know, your house. And he was using a full power pressure washer and blasting sandstone to clean it off, feeding silica to the diatom algae.

I hope it was clean afterwards.

Apparently. Apparently enough to blast silica off of it. So once we told them, stop pressure washering your sandstone, and you should be fine after a while, it's just, you know, a lot of fun networking.

That'll do it. So if you did, hopefully you did some networking warrior out there, given the great opportunity, and hopefully you might have some of those folks on future episodes of the podcast.

Well, one of them, apparently, that I was talking with is dear friends of the CEO of Chemipeer. And I was texting him, and he might come on the podcast. He's gonna listen into a couple episodes and see if he wants to come on. So that makes me nervous.

So be very selective about which episodes you suggest. He listens to you for a tease of the podcast before you really.

I just sent him story time. I figured I wouldn't hide anything, just go right to the. Go right to the worst ones, you know?

So maybe if you're lucky, even though you were mean to him on the first episode, you could get Greg back and maybe you guys could do a, you know, a more in depth recap of pond imodium and. And a little bit deeper scene into some of the pond stuff that he gets into.

Oh, definitely keep in touch with Greg, and he'll always have something to. Something to clue me in on that's going out on, in the pond world for sure. Let's see here. So the next day, we get done with that evening, the keynote speech, and the next day, we get to the bus and go and travel to Aqualand. This is the headquarters of Aquascape, and this is a massive facility for the warehouse for all of their products that get shipped out. So this is a big, big building, and outside of it, they have a aquascaped pond wonderland. So they just literally drop you off and they just say, have fun. And they have, because every one of these events, they have a application where you can go on there. And they have, I think, near 13 hours of time where they have, you know, food, drink, places to sit, relax, but they just give you a lot of time to take it in, take pictures, wander around and absorb all of the stuff that they've done. And they built just immense ponds, water features, and it's just a great place of my candy land. It was a pure paradise. I got to go around, see all their water features, feed his coy, write down some of the ideas that I want to do for my pond. Because after going to this place and you don't want to build a pond, if you leave aqualand, you clearly are in the wrong hobby. This hobby is not for you. If you're not inspired by that place and if you want to see some of the pictures again, will be in discord. Otherwise, they are on my Facebook page. If you want to add me on Facebook, it's Rob Zolsen on Facebook. I don't think I've ever told people my Facebook social media page. But you know what? Find me. Follow me on Facebook of all places where the boomers are hangout, and you'll find videos and all kinds of goodies. But through the day, did breakout sessions. Got to see people build and do pond building competitions. And before some of the education breakout sessions, oh, questions, please tag me out for any of those pond building competitions. So in the back, when you arrive to Aqualand, they give you a t shirt when you sign up, and this t shirt gives you a color showing the territory that you're from. I'm from the Midwest, being in Minnesota, so of course I was in green. So they had people, green, red, yellow, blue, all different types of t shirts and ones for, you know, countries outside of the United States. And you show up and you do these aquascaping competitions to build ponds with other people from your territory. So you commingle with other people, you have all of the resources that Aquascape has at your fingertips, and you go in the back and you escape and build these massive water features with people right on site. So if you didn't, if you didn't know, how you got experts at your fingertips trying to compete against the other people.

So how large were the ponds that you guys were building? I mean, you only had a few days, right?

The day they had them done in hours, it was that impressive. They have. They have machinery to lift these massive, you know, sandstone or, you know, quartz or whatever slabs. They have all different types of digging tools for contract work. And they were not small. These were, you know, some of them 1520 foot plus in just some of the sections of the ponds. Of course, they have rivers and the whole thing and water features. They were not small. They were what you would consider for a big water feature, for a big business.

So, I mean, you can't really talk about those with the out showing us the end results of your attempt at your competition pond.

No, no, no. See, I did not participate because I'm fat, see, and I'm by no means an expert. So I let the experts participate while I'm, of course, taking pictures and absorbing it all in. I came with business attire and frankly, not the correct underpants. So I was not about to make a fool of myself in front of world class experts building a pond. Thank you very much.

So how are the. How are the end designs that they came up with after just a few hours of building a pond?

I don't know who won, but the end designs were actually finished, more or less, at least what I would consider finished. Now, did they have grass planted? No, but they did have the features ready for water and filling by the time I was done looking at at most of those in the competition area, and it was quite impressive. And literally seeing them from you get there and you start, it was just a few hours to have these things done. And, you know, they have a lot of people doing it. A lot of hands make light work, and a lot of equipment make light work, but that does not underline the fact that they got this done. Like, if I had the same amount of people just from regular Joe Schmo's, there's no way I could have gotten it done in x days. These people are clearly world class experts to get that done and get it done so well that they're competing against each other and then nickeling and diming each other's chosen rock placement and such. It was very impressive.

It definitely sounds like it'd be entertaining to watch. I'm personally, obviously, I can grow plants. I wouldn't consider myself an aquascaper by any means, but it'd be cool to see people that are good at their art put something so large and so impressive together so quickly.

For sure. During one of the. Before, we had breakout sessions, because we had breakout sessions to talk that they had a guy that was. They called the fish doctor. They had lily pad expert. They had other breakout sessions for marketing, you know, general sessions in the afternoon after you've taken in for most of the day what you wanted to take in from around the Aqualand area. And, of course, I was sitting, hanging out with Greg for a few moments, and as I'm waiting for Derek to come out of the bathroom, Greg runs across with a weight belt on. I'm like, what is going on? And this guy, I'm telling you, he moves. He's interacting with everybody he can. He knows he only has a few days, and he's talking with everybody, trying to make as many connections as possible. This dude is, I want to say drugs on the Persona. He's just has so much energy. I want a piece of it and passion for what he does. So he's walking across, he's like, hey, meet me out. Meet me outside for weightlifting. I'm like, weightlifting? Can I participate? He's like, yeah, let's do it. And he grabs a couple guys, and apparently they take this weightlifting set. They go out to one of the. It's a modern pond, but it's a. It's like a swimming pond. That's not. That's the only way describe it. It's got, like, a little place where you can set a chair into it and just have just your feet weight into it. And then the other part is where you can actually wade and swim into the. To the pond while having a viewing glass pane for everybody to see the koi. Well, he goes in there, and this is apparently how I found out that Greg is a world champion weightlifter, underwater weightlifter. So what I didn't know that this was like a. A thing outside of Minnesota. Apparently, you can take a dumbbell and, like a, like a. Just normal weightlifting bench and put it in water on, like, a pond or something and then do weightlifting reps with a certain class of weight, and you can hold your breath and you do how many reps you can before you have to come out of the water and take a breath? And I think, what was it? He said that the russian record was 67 or something, and Greg's record was, like 59 or 61. I can't really remember. It was something ridiculous. Of how many reps he could do, like, 105 or 115 pounds with this dumbbell, which is not a terrible amount of weight. But when you're underwater and you have to hold your breath, it's all about oxygen management. So here in Minnesota, when I was in high school, some of our friends would grab, you know, like, a weight set, bring it out to the lake, throw it in there, and we'd have some fun. But I didn't know that this was like a kind of semi professional thing that people did. And Greg, being a, you know, CEO of a pond company, he's been practicing for years doing this stuff, and used to hold the record.

And, I mean, he's no spring chicken either.

Oh, yeah. He's. He's not young, but that dude's very fit. He takes care of himself very well. Trust me. So he goes out there, and, of course, I'm in my normal attire with. There with the t shirt, and he takes ForeSt galante himself. They get a crowd going, and we're doing underwater weightlifting. The first rep, I think he gets, like, 56 or 54, just crushes it. Forrest gets, like, 31, and I hop in, and I think I get 15 or 16 reps in before I have to pop up. And then they're like, hey, anybody else want to. Want to join in? So they grab, you know, anybody else? And this gentleman comes up, and the only way I can describe him is the dude is absolutely professional weightlifter. Like, he's. Yes, he's a. Probably a expert in aquascape or upon contracting, but you could look at him, and without a doubt, he's a cousin to Brock Lesnar. The dudes built, right. Just full on thick. And he pops up. Yeah, I weightlift semi professionally. The whole thing. He comes down, pops in. Like, I, you know, I did this in high school. All that pops down, and he does, like, ten, nine reps before he has to pop up. And I'm like, oh, thank God I didn't lose.

But, yeah, I found that. I happen to be poking around, and I found a picture that Greg shared, and it sounds like there were 530 plus people at the event.

Yeah.

And I see a sea of people in various colors, and I believe I can pick you out of the picture pretty well.

Yeah, if you look at the fattest green t shirt, you'll see me, or at least the one with the. With the weird glasses on.

So usually not hard to find, for.

Sure, but it's really hard to express.

They had their events and whatnot. And you had your breakout sessions. Did I. Did they do anything to kind of wrap the event up a little bit.

Or had great breakout sessions? Learned a lot. Some of the particular ponds that I like to point out that I found unique is they had a garden trench. It was just a long, I'd say 40 foot trench that was probably four foot wide that they used for lily displays for rare lilies that they were growing out of. And immediately thats what spoke to me like, I dont, if youve been in the fish hobby for a long time, youve had a collection of fish, and you know that theres one fish that speaks for you because youve had it, youve tried it, and you just keep coming back to that fish and you dont know that until you try it. This is the moment where it hits me. Like, this is the pond for me. Like, yes, you can have natural edge ponds, cool rockways, but I want a river trough in the back of my yard so badly. There was massive jungle like lily pads like you see in cartoons. They had full on colored blooms out of these lilies. They had an array of other plants trapped in and just a full on growing ecosystem that flowed from one end to the other. It was just simple, elevated high. You could sit on it. It was just a fun, fun piece. I took a lot of pictures, took videos of it, and I think that's what I'm gonna be, be doing. That's my big, big takeaway from my personal self. But again, check out my Facebook page, check out aquascape, social media, and I guarantee you there's going to be some videos out there from a lot, a lot of these details that went on. I even think that was it. Bama bass. I think that's the guy's name on YouTube, or have you heard of him?

I have heard of him. I can't remember. I was listening to a stream the other day and somebody was talking about him.

He was there.

I'm not super familiar with him, but I definitely recognize the name.

Yeah, he was there. And I think he took videos of the weightlifting competition. So I don't know if that'll get posted, but, yeah, definitely check out the whoop. I loaded his page. Check out the videos on the Pond guys website, Greg Wittstock, the Pond guy, and you'll find a bunch of details from Aquascape. Unfortunately, the last day was not Aqualand. It was supposed to be further breakout sessions and more training, how to do pond maintenance. Other details. But my wife has been dealing with thyroid cancer for years, and before I left the aquascape, I didn't know if I was going to be able to go. She had to go under, undergo surgery, and they had to do corrective surgery for some of the damages from the cancer and different surgery treatments. And I had to come back because there were some complications that I had to do. So literally, I got back from that magical second day of Aquascape at the Aqualand at pondamonium. And I got to the hotel, got the news, jumped in the car, and drove nearly 12 hours through the night to get home to take care of the emergency situation. But Saturday, they had to miss out on the last day. But at least I got to be there on the crucial second day where I got to see such a magical facility. And inside the facility, you know, you get to see the warehouse, you get to see the offices, you get to see, you know, Greg's office where he's right, he's got a dock right there with a Koi next to him. But even inside, they have, you know, patio ponds all on display, showing you all the different details to do. But they have this amazing koi store, and it's a whole koi display area where you can walk up on top of the pond, you can see these massive koi. They have different imported japanese koi for all different price ranges. And you just got a lot, a lot of details to take back. Certainly, if you're in the St. Charles area, this Aqualand is a retail place where you can go buy plants, buy Aquascape accessories. I believe they have some to the public, and they do have a store there. So, yes, you may not have been able to stop and participate with pandemonium this year. Certainly, you know, call ahead, check in and check out the store if you want to purchase something. If you're in the Chicago area.

That'S awesome. And that, that's an event I've never heard of. I saw you post about it on Facebook the other day, and I was like, huh, never heard of it. But it sounds like this was the 25th year that they did it. Is that accurate?

Yeah, 25 years of doing this. And it's just originally, I think it started off, and I think it still is. That's the whole heart of this is a show to really inspire people that are a part of the Aquascape network that utilize his training tools and products to really educate and make these artists. I'm not going to call them scapers, artists, better at their craft and give them the tools. And I know I learned a lot, and I only build a handful of ponds in my life, and I don't do this professionally. I can only imagine what people are gleaning off of each other. If you did this professionally and really what you could take back and, you know, bundle up and change the way that you make a revenue off of this. So if you are a local fish store wanting to get into pond maintenance, if you're a landscaper wanting to do water features, certainly contact Aquascape and consider their certification courses a very, very valuable asset to have in your back pocket.

That is awesome. And I did, I didn't already have multiple hobbies and a full time job that kept me away from home all the time. I think I could probably manage building ponds and doing the maintenance because they really are just something different to bring like, an entire piece of nature onto your property. And, you know, without obviously, like I said, I didn't know about this event at all. But I wonder, you know, where ponds would be if it wasn't for, you know, Greg and Aquascape putting this show on to kind of release and showcase new products and techniques and some of the skill set that they've developed over the years and teach that and share that with other people in the industry.

Right. I know the big one that like Derek, again, since he's starting to get into pond maintenance and clearly getting people asking for pond help, he's taking that stuff away. But he's also taking patio ponds away because they were making, if they want to do patio ponds, they would have to build a lot of the stuff they needed for patio ponds. In the local fish store that they have at these fish company, they would take and build those pieces, and they are not cheap to make. And they just have a, I don't want to use like, pre done product, but they have the pieces there that are built better than we can build for a better price. And that he's, that's a big takeaway for him. So he's gonna be onboarding a lot of those pieces to build some of the patio ponds because patio ponds are huge in Minnesota, especially our neck of the woods. Everybody wants a rice fish pond because they can have that out for a full hearty season into fall without having to worry about it and breed them out nice. So that's exciting. But again, you, I highly encourage checking out the YouTube channel. If, again, you're interested in this, you can contact them at 866-877-6637 find them on aquascape.com. links are in the description and of course, like and subscribe on YouTube. But Michael, before we leave, there's a bit of a debate, and I want to get to a whole podcast on it that you and I need to talk about fertilizers.

I'd be more than willing to do so. And we could definitely get right down into the nitty gritty and the details and the science of it. And it'd be a pleasure to sit and talk one evening. And whether it's a difference of opinion or share stories or go back and forth, however we may, it'd be a good time. And I definitely think it'd be beneficial not only for, for us. It's always, it's always good to, to discuss opinions and techniques with like minded people and, you know, a lot of other people. You know, the podcast would make a great stage for others to not only listen in, but if they can catch it live, they'd, they'd be able to ask those questions and we'd be able to answer them on the podcast.

Well, before we go too, leave this mini podcast, do you have anything that's going on or any live streams coming up that you want to tell the people about?

You know, just because of, you know, work and the summer, my family and I are usually pretty busy, so it's, it's difficult for me to stick to regularly scheduled things. But if you subscribe to my channel on YouTube at all things fish, and if you hit that notification, Bella, you will get notifications whenever I go live. Lately it's been randomly later in the evenings, usually during the week. I know people are busy on the weekends and I'm personally usually preoccupied on the weekends. But once every couple weeks, I'll stream at night and we'll talk about all kinds of largely planted stuff, planted aquarium type topics or fish breeding. And once things settle down with work a little bit, I get back home. Definitely like to have you on the podcast, if you'd be so kind, or on the stream. And let's see what we can put together and let's get some good discussions going.

Oh, I'm in. Last time I saw you on, I harassed the hell out of you. So even if I'm not, I'm going to be the guy. Super chatting and being a dick in the background.

I wouldn't have it any other way.

Rob's now last thing because I was reading notes as I'm going through this, because I took a lot of notes. I don't want to miss important details going through this because I have ADHD and I'm going to forget things. But we have questions along the way or comments. Omi Beta says that cloth pots have been around for a while. You break them upon break the cloth pots upon planting to wake the roots when you move. And yes, I've seen those as well. The difference with these are, I can't explain this. The cloth pots that you had fell apart after, like, years use this was, imagine, like a really heavy, heavy, heavy tote bag with this fibrous canvas material, like this stuff I don't see falling apart for a few years. This was meant to carry hundreds of pounds in these big, big satchels. They were very aggressive, and you'll have to check them on the aquascape website. Looking at them on the pictures versus having them in your hand. The light bulb goes off. The. Yeah, the fabric is, I'd say, closer to a half inch thick, even. It feels like. I mean, I might be a bit exaggerating because, again, I'm terrible with measurements, but thicker than the stuff I've seen before. I would have a lot more confidence in these than any of the, you know, crappy, dissolvable pots as I would put in the use in the past.

Yeah. There was actually a discussion just the other day on discord, and they were talking about some people were setting up, you know, whether it's a patio, pond, whatever. And they were. They were looking for options to plant their plants, whether it's a lily or whatever, anything with wet feet. And I wish I would have known about this, this option that they're producing, because it seems like a very viable solution that would make life super, super easy instead of some of the other, you know, DIY or honestly homemade but retrofit type things where you just find something that kind of sort of works. But this, this specific product sounds like it's the bees knees to make your life easy.

Yeah, definitely seemed like it. And it wasn't just like, here's a product, try it. They had, of course, their own massive ponds where they've been sitting out for an entire year. And they have full lilies and full bloom in this with full rooting in the pot. So it wasn't. And you were allowed to go down and reach down, pick them up, test them if you really wanted to. They had full people to help you out and. And really get your hands literally wet. Like, I was in ponds while I was there, and I came fully dressed for business conference and I was soaked half the day. Not just from weightlifting either, so it was a lot of fun. Another comment, when you get frogs is the ultimate sign that your water for your pond is right. I think this is commented during the beginning when I was talking about the person's pond using chemical treatments and whatnot. And absolutely, if you don't see frogs, I would take that as a sign, especially in the middle of the year when you hear it around you, but you don't see it in your pond. Your pond should be a magnet for that. It's like, hmm, maybe the rotting stake I left outside isn't attracting flies, is a problem like that. Should have been attracting flies the whole time. You know, it's a natural attractant for the organism. So if you have a beautiful, fresh, clean, chemical free pond, amphibians that are really susceptible to the chemicals in being in the pond is the perfect sign that you don't have a chemical issue.

So speaking of lilies. So you mentioned Zach's ponds and Omaha. So I happen to look them up on Facebook and this picture caught my eye, obviously, because those, the lilies that are planted, I don't know if you're following along on discord during the live production of the podcast, you can follow along in the Discord live chat. So I shared a picture of this long kind of trough like pond and has these giant lilies. And the lilies that are in there, I don't know the specific name, but they get to five, 6ft across. So I thought, well, that's pretty cool. This is an awesome pond. Like something that's a little bit different. And then I looked further towards the back of the image, Rob, so you watch. Are you looking at the image that I posted in the chat?

I am. I got it open right now.

Okay. Look in the very back part of that image and tell me that is not a guy sitting down in, in that pond.

Yes, again, that is the same trough I was talking about that, that I'm so inspired by. That is a very same trough. And in the back there is a guy in showing how deep that section is. There's a guy probably just about 6ft and he's fully submerged in it. And when he got in there, he was actually checking some of the pots out, looking underneath to try to see how they, they built it. They did not care. Like, I'm seeing staffers around us. They didn't make a comment about, get out of the pond, please. Why are you doing this? You know, they're, some of these lilies that he's sitting by are rare hybrids bred species that are just introduced to the hobby and are worth a couple thousand dollars apiece. And they're just letting not a stranger, but just one of the guests jump in with it and just kind of roam around in the pond. I. I don't know if that's intended. I don't know if that breaks the rules. I don't know if they're just being nice to the guy. But, yeah, it wasn't off the, it wasn't off the table because I think they know that. This is a conference of people that are experts in this. You know, you didn't just bring Joe schmo off the street. These people maintain, build, and take care of these. So if you're brave enough to get in there with them, fair to say, you probably know a few a thing or two about it.

Well, how else do you think that they properly fertilize their ponds without getting a fine for public indecency?

Yeah. Yeah. You got a piss in the pool somehow. You know, I'm saying?

So I'm surprised they didn't just have a sign that said, please come jump in the pool and take a piss. Our water lilies will love you.

There was a, there was a someone's little kid because again, the families became like their wife and kids were welcome as well. So they. Some people brought their kids, and, you know, one of the kids is just roaming around. She's probably just maybe slightly above toddler age, maybe just toddler. And he goes and runs and he takes a pee right in the pool. Just whips her on out there and just lets her fly. And, of course, mom Washington super embarrassed and. And the whole thing. And, you know, no one. No one even made a scene comment or anything. I think a couple of us just giggled and all we did. But, yeah, it happens. You know, nature happens. And these are natural puns.

Just. Just let it go. Let it do its thing, man.

Faux show. But, Michael, I appreciate you coming on. You're literally just hanging out with me. I did this impromptu, didn't even schedule it, and you just hop, popped in like, hey, would you like to help me with this? And you were very willing, so appreciate you. We'll get you back on, and I'll join your stream. But again, notice the description. Find me on Facebook. Rob Zolsen, rlbbz is the name. And find Greg Wittstock, the pond guy on YouTube. Bye, friends.