All you people who are afraid to try something new, let me tell a story.... (I'm keeping it short and sweet)
I once bought a house, and it came with a pool. A small in ground pool, about eighteen thousand gallons. All my friends thought it was nice. I told them I was going to turn it into a pond, they all laughed and said I was crazy. I told them to come over anytime and swim and enjoy it. No body ever did... Six months went by....
So I mentioned again, I going to turn it into a pond, “You're crazy,” is what I heard, “then we can't use it...” So nobody used it, another six months went by....
Well then came the big storm and blew thing all around, filling the pool with limbs and various debris. What a mess... The lights where out, the water was out for quite awhile.
In this big mess I saw opportunity to do what I had been longing to do.... I had kept an aquarium, a nice one, I new how it worked... I was filling the pool from a well, so treated city water wasn't going to be a problem, so I sat down and laid out a plan.
I just let it sit, so all the pool chlorine would dissipate. I went to work on the filter system, which didn't take much, mainly a good cleaning, with the introduction of some batting. After about two week of sitting, I filled it back up and started filtering, stirring it from time to time to get all the fine dirt out of it...
Then I introduced some lily pads and other plants to control the algae growth, and continued filtering for another two weeks.
Now I have a friend, who was coming over pretty regular for coffee telling me I was nuts, and all the things that were going to go wrong... I kept telling him, it's an eighteen thousand gallon aquarium, once it's set up, it pretty much maintains itself, just add to and filter the water.
So while I am arguing with my buddy on the state of my sanity, I get creative with some pcv pipe and make a fountain and a small water fall.
So.....after about a month of prepping, I put a couple of Wal-Mart goldfish in it. What do you know, they didn't die.. So after a couple more weeks I got some koi and through in there. They didn't die.
Then one morning, there are rings around the pool, back ones, all the way around the pool. Looking a little closer, it's eggs, thousands upon thousands of eggs. Fish eggs..? But they are not quite in the water, not quite.
Well this is a mess.... then I thought, leave it along, see what happens... After a couple of days, I had a pool full of tad-poles, it was amazing... The fish were eating tad-poles.... After a few more days there were tiny little frogs everywhere, hopping all over the place....Then after another couple of days, they all hopped away.
In the months that followed, I had friends, in their fifties, in their sixties, one fellow who was seventy-five on their bellies, petting the fish in the pond.... They were getting in the water and swimming with them, with tiny baby fish eating the dead skin off of them, telling me I was a genus.... After months of telling me I was crazy.
So..... If you have an idea.... and everybody thinks you're crazy... So what...
The fellows who were telling me I was crazy, were well educated, well rounded airline pilots.... But they didn't know squat about an aquarium, and only one of them had had a pool.
Build it, and they will come...
George Henry Nichols
April 9th 2025
