DIY beautiful outdoor Koi aquarium

My name's George and in this video we are going to be visiting some of the best backyard fish ponds. So we're going to be taking a look at some of the amazing ponds that Aquascape Inc. has created. We build what I would call like Ferrari type ponds, right? Like really, really nice ponds. And so if you have a really nice pond, you should put in a Ferrari type fish. I have been designing and building for 30 years now, thousands of ponds all over the world, creating water the way nature intended it. When I'm designing and building an ecosystem, it's an ecosystem for life. The fish are a part of it as well as a lot of other things. But I think it's hardwired inside of us to be near water. There's a sense of calm there. In today's world with our hectic lives, people are looking for that, just that little peace of mind. We're about to meet with Greg Whitstock, the pond guy. He's going to be telling us all about this amazing ecosystem pond. Hey, you're only 20 minutes late. Half an hour from your house. 30 minutes, he's only 20 minutes late. Isn't that crazy? I've been waiting to show your mom. We're pond hunting. Oh, the water is so clear. Not just that. Look at the whole design. It goes through the whole backyard. Oh my gosh. Wow. Oh my gosh. And look at those fish. How beautiful. Hi Scoobies. And then the coolest thing about this property is that right there, a swim up bar, a koi swim bar. So one side you could sit, have your drinks and you could feed the fish right from your swim up bar. They have a ton of koi. Hi babies. They're beautiful fish. Yeah. They got a good variety in here. Brian, have you met Carol? I have not, but I know this guy. This is the real boss. The real boss. But this is the designer of this project. First, Ron was an awesome customer. He said, Brian, you have free reign to do whatever you want to in this space. And I said, are you sure? He said, yeah, yeah. So I wanted to make it as interactive as possible. Also, my favorite features are the ones that create a little bit of mystery. So as you come around that corner, you're kind of focused just on this space, but then the bridges pull you further and further through. And not until you get to like where this big tree's at, do you realize there's like this whole sunken patio. That's what I noticed too. And the koi swim up bar. I always say there's something very psychological about a bridge. You put a bridge in on a pond, there's not a person in the world that can resist crossing it. Like they're pulled to it. And then you really start discovering the fish and the fish feeding rocks to sit on and dangle your feet in the water. Everybody walks up onto that rock and feeds the fish. Yeah. But I will say my favorite part is a hundred percent this space down in here. But you can sit here and feed the fish and they'll come right up to you. These guys are awesome. Ours are that way too, where the minute we come even close to them, they're coming and asking. Isn't that fun? Yeah. But I also like the perspective from down here. It's like such a different vantage point to look across the water. What do you think? I think this is like the nicest one I've ever seen. Oh wait, we're going to see some pretty nice projects today. We're pond hunting, mom. You can't just choose the first one you like. You gotta wait. I like that. We're going pond hunting today. Yeah. The water is crystal clear. It's spotless. The wetland filter is really the heart of the whole pond. Maybe more the kidney. The kidney. So the main filter of the pond is what just looks like an upper pool. Sitting up there. But that's a four foot deep hole full of rock and gravel. And water comes up through all this rock and gravel. All that beneficial bacteria that's growing in there. And then pours back down into the pond. You only clean that once a year. And everything we do is meant to work more with mother nature, not against mother nature. I mean I would like get in here sitting on the rock or standing there and having your drink. Look how big this waterfall is. Makes our waterfall look kind of small. Yeah. This is gorgeous. What an amazing design. All right, so we are now at our second location. The difference with this one is this is going to be what they call a recreational pond. So you can actually swim in it. You can do recreational activities. Okay. This is it. Yeah, this is it. Oh wow. Gosh, George. This is a big one. Yeah, this is huge. Oh, I love the float. Yeah, it's so clear. I mean I would just be walking up and down all day long. It's a swimming pool. Yeah. Imagine being a kid swimming in something like this versus a chlorinated swimming pool. Okay, so this is what you would consider a recreational pond. This is a recreational pond. That means what? Just that you can swim in it. You can jump in it. You can jump in it. That's set up as a jump rock. So right off of that, it goes straight down seven feet deep. Seven feet? Seven feet deep down in there. Doable with koi? Oh yeah. You got to remember, koi are carp, right? And carp live in some pretty horrific conditions. They're more of a river dwelling fish. This setup is perfect for them because not only do they have the depth, they also get this lazy river. We call it more of a deep stream, so the fish can actually swim all the way. In fact, here comes one of the koi. Yeah. Right? They love playing in the currents. Wow. Yeah, this is like the ultimate pond and ultimate pool all together. You can tell they use it quite a bit. I mean, they went out and bought their own little remote control pool floaty. They got a little joystick on the side there that they can move around. I kind of want one. My kids were supposed to come on this, and if I brought my kids here, we'd be ripping apart my pond because they would want this. Notice there's hardly anything on the surface of this. A swimming pool would have more stuff on the surface. All the windblown debris gets pushed by waterfalls, pushed by jets, pushed by that deep stream. Everything's slowly getting pulled this way. It goes into a 3,000 gallon rainwater harvesting system here. This is such a natural way to kind of filter the water out because it just looks as if it's like, you know, going back down a stream and out, you know? This is a fire pit area. So this is just like one of my favorite spots over here, the sunken patio. Awesome little fire pit. Feels like you're in nature. Right? We're camping right now. Oh, and look at the wildlife coming up the stream. I hear those are rare. Yeah, they're super rare. Brian, what does a pond like this cost? Most of the cost comes from labor. A pond like this is going to be probably at $250,000 to $300,000 to do something like this. This is a Ferrari in the backyard. People put Ferraris in their garages and drive them on a Sunday. This is enjoyable 365 days out of the year. It's a Ferrari pond. Better than a Ferrari. Better. Hi George. Hello. Welcome. You are the pond mom. I am. So we're here to see your pond. Yeah, come on in. Come on in. The big focal features are the windows and the view all around. That's beautiful. You guys reconstructed the house to have these windows so you could get the view. Yeah, it ended here. Come on over this way and I'll show you what I love is that this is a new bedroom and we now have our bedroom that's designed so we can listen to the water at night from the waterfalls. Wow, so cool. What's your favorite part about the pond? My favorite part of the water lilies and the fish. Yeah, and when we moved here it was just a flat backyard. Just a flat old-fashioned backyard. Do you see the orange one? The ginrin with the glitter on the back? Yep. I like that one and I like that one. The yellow. The yellow one. The yellow with white polka dot. Yes. That's a really special water lily over here. This one right here? Why? What makes it so special? It blooms above the water. It stays there all year. Yeah. So here's where we sit. This is like the most comfortable for coffee in the morning or for cocktails at night. You will find us here. Yeah. And that's our skimmer filter is under there. Oh in here. Yeah, you could lift it up. This is the skimmer. So this is actually where the water goes in to get pumped all the way to the waterfalls. I think this pond is as good as you can get with incorporating the landscaping and the hardscaping with the views from the inside of the house and the outside. And every year we add a little new decorative piece. You're such a well-trained spokesperson for aquascaping. Yeah, I love the company. I love my son and I love what he's done for everybody in the industry. Yeah, absolutely. I'm very proud of that. Now I gotta find a way to recreate this for my own mom. Fourth location. This is their fourth pond. Fourth location, fourth pond. They have a pond and a pool so they got, I guess, the best of both. Hi. Num num num num. Koi kisses. There's so many koi in here. Some really pretty ones. There's one, it's definitely a mutt of a koi, but this orange one with the red freckles is pretty unusual. Wow, such a good variety of colors. You got really like everything in here. Look at this platinum white one. This one I think is really cool, this red and white one here. It's kind of a strange pattern. Obviously the koi fish, but you see like dragonflies, you see like birds taking some baths in the in the water. Yeah, so much nature and wildlife darting around all over the place. And we're literally five minutes, look at the airplane go by. Yeah. Right, we're right next to O'Hare airport and you've got all this wildlife back here. So George, this is our fourth pond, right? If you had to vote, which is your top? So far, I actually like the collection of koi fish the most at this pond, but obviously I think the rec pond, the big one, the super deep recreational pond is still my favorite. What would you rather have? What would draw you outside? That backyard to sit in with those plastic chairs or this backyard living the aquascape lifestyle? I say no contest. So if you think of an in-ground swimming pool and above-ground swimming pool in the Midwest, how many days are you actually going to use it? You can't use it in March, you can't use it in April. So you have June, July, August and maybe a little bit of September. So four months. The rest of the year, what does that in-ground or above-ground swimming pool look like? It just has a cover over the top. A pond is for all seasons and it evolves over time. A swimming pool will never evolve. A pond will evolve as your fish get bigger, your plants get bigger, the landscape gets more mature and stuff around it. This is the oldest aquascape pond that you guys have had. This pond was built in 92. I started in 95. And you can only imagine what 30-year-old koi look like. Wow. Coming up. Look at the size of these guys. The other thing I love about this pond is it's so much the inspiration of so many of our designs. You're going to notice the mystery of it, how we see a little section and then it just disappears. And the lot size is only 50 feet wide. It's like 47 feet wide. So a lot can be done in a really tight space. Really tall bridge. Oh boy. One of the things I always say about a bridge is it's got to take you to a final destination. And when you come back here, look at their yard. And so then they've got this hidden little deck. Dude, look at the size of some of these. That is a massive fish. That's so cool. And it's a huge pond. I mean, it just goes all the way around. Really just kind of serpentines all the way around. What's the most expensive fish in here? What do you think these could be worth? This is Shui. I believe it was like around $10,000. They're not buying $10,000 fish. They'll buy $100 fish and hope they develop. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, these are totally more my style. Koi, they're just so defined. And so, what's the word? They're definitely choosing and buying fish based on specific breeds. I find the large koi in a pond, for some reason, they're more relaxing. When they're tiny little koi, they seem to be like darting around. It's almost like little children bouncing off the roof, like all over the place. You notice how much more active the pond is when they're small. These guys are like big submarines just kind of gently moving around. Oh yeah. That's a great way to describe it. Chilling. These are the wise boys. We're with owner Bill. How old is this pond? How long have you had it? It actually was built in November of 93. Can we believe that? Aquascape came in and built all the things in the back, revamped the waterfall and put the stream in. And over the years, as you know, things grow and things change and progresses as time goes along. What made you want a pond? I blame my brother. He's always had fish, tropical fish. We went on a pond tour. Greg and his dad were just starting up. I thought, wow, that's really neat. Because he had the waterfall and we didn't have any of that. Our pond was, my brother and I built a pond in here too, before that. It was goldfish pond. So that was always the goal? Oh sure, sure. Yeah. Then we started seeing koi and we thought, wow, that's the way to go. Yeah, definitely. Well, you have to watch these guys eat, because it's a pretty amazing sound and they're so tame. All right, let's do it. So this is where you feed the koi? Right. Oh, here they come. It's like they sensed it. Sonny, the big orange one. Sonny, we're going away. Get them back. Come on guys. That's how they know you're going to feed them. Nothing to be afraid of. Well, we just want to feed you guys. That's strange. But they're so smart that they can sense, like, something is different. Oh yeah, they know when it's not one of us. There we go. You know me. What's the oldest koi that you have? This one right here. The 29 years we've had her. 29 years? Yeah. So I'm guessing she's probably 30. That koi is older than me. Yeah. I just call it Chewy. Chewy. Actually, that one's Jewish. That one's Jewish? The yellow one down here. Israel apparently breeds koi too. Yep. You have some Japanese koi, you have some Jewish koi. It's like a multinational, very diverse group here. Oh yeah, there's another one. He's from Iowa. Koi kisses. What's the best part about owning a pond like this? No, I don't know. We enjoy just sitting back here. It's so quiet and peaceful. And as you can see, the yard is surrounded with shrubs and trees. It's just a little quiet place apart. The fish, you see them mingling or swimming around down here. It's very relaxing. All right, we're here. This is actually your house. This is my house. So I took my favorite things out of each one and said, let's see if I can't create like my own backyard oasis. Amazing. And so just like some of those other ones, my favorite part is the mystery element. So I really wanted like when you came around the corner to kind of come through this garden walk and then turn around the corner and be like, how does this even happen? Like, how do you get this back here? Right here, it looks like the water is disappearing into the ground. This is what you would consider a pondless waterfall. I have a pond that falls into a pondless situation. This is the end of the pond. End of it. So then it comes this way. Wow, that is so cool. It goes through the whole backyard. And look at all the fish over here. Hello, koi kisses. Oh, wow. You need to take me on a date first. Wow, this one is definitely my favorite. Yeah, I love this fish. He's so cool. Look at how interesting of a color this is. It's honestly, it's not even really brown. It looks more gold. Gold and blue, bluish gray. Oh my gosh, you are so aggressive. This guy right here is super aggressive. Oh my god. So we just did a pathway back here. See how I'm like training the trees to create this like a little arch. That is so cool. Pretty, huh? It's just the coolest thing ever. Look at that. Oh my gosh. It's okay. Big Scooby. I'm trying to have a zen moment here. This is the wetland filter. This is again the main filter for the pond. I haven't drained and cleaned my pond in 13 years. Why haven't you cleaned it in 13 years? Because I haven't needed to. With the wetland filter and that pre-filter, that 6,000 gallon rainwater harvesting system, it just stays clean. Tell me about the gnome. I don't know anything about the gnome. Beautiful fish. So most of these are starting to slowly transform just into Japanese koi. And I think as I start seeing more and more fish, you start realizing the difference in the beauty of some of the high-end Japanese koi versus some of the domestic koi. And then some of them just have sentimental value. One of the ugliest fish in here, the orange guy, was the very first fish put in here. So that fish has been in here 13 years. It kind of stays that size, but we'll never get rid of it because it was the first one. Make sure to subscribe to my channel for more videos of amazing ponds around the world. George out.