Foreign.

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Welcome to the aquarium guys podcast.

Jimmy.

Yes.

Finally someone's here to validate the green water living in my tanks.

So you what?

That's it? Yes. Just. He ain't gonna judge me for my green water.

I'm judging him right now for judging your green water.

Well, before we start judging, judge, I'm your host, Rob Zolson.

Hey, I'm Jim Colby.

And I'm Adam Ilnashar.

Today we are graced with the person that isn't judging me for my green water. I'm pulling up his business card here because this. Your business cards fly like this is. I got this. How many years ago was this? I got this from you. It's a couple years ago.

It's about two that I've been.

Two. Yeah.

Trying to get this thing off the ground.

Love this, by the way. Nice to meet you, Josh Oswald, otherwise known as Reefer Oz. So if we call you Reefer, it's not because you have one lit, although you're welcome to it if you need to.

Oh, wow.

You just. You just let me know if I.

Knew it was going to be like that in Studio B.

Absolutely.

This is like the Snoop Dogg show. You ever seen Snoop Dogg when he had Fluffy on?

No.

And anyway, Fluffy, Gabriel, gracias. Got interviewed by Snoop Dogg in the studios, which is way out in this kind of out in the woods type of place. And he gets there and Snoop Dogg isn't there. And he finally walks in and stuff. He rolls a blunt about the size of his arm, he said. And then he. And so he had his son Frankie along, too. And he goes, dad, can I hit it? He goes, no. And then he nods his head yes. When else you ever get a chance to smoke with Snoop Dogg?

I wouldn't pass it up.

Awesome.

Any news before smoke you into a stupor.

Oh, wasn't Snoop Dogg supposed to be giving up cannabis?

Oh, that was. No, that was some sort of advertising program.

Oh, that was like A media stunt.

Yeah.

All right, good for him. It got me. Then I was in.

My friend Wayne just bought some Snoop Dogg shoes and he goes, what do you think of these? I look at them. It's. It's kind of like they're. It's white shoes, but it's kind of blurry. And finally we realized it was smoke on the. On the shoes, I mean. So it's pretty cool once you figure it out. But anyway, yeah, he bought a pair of Snoop Dogg shoes somewhere when he was working out of town, so. Real cool.

Nice.

Hey, you know, maybe Snoop Dogg would sponsor us.

I'd be. I'd be in. I think Dwayne the Rock Johnson would be the. The closer one because he's actually into fish. Pretty hardcore.

Is he really?

He is. He's actually a secret tilapia farmer.

I just heard some tilapia news today. Not to do with anything, but I was talking to somebody that we're gonna have on the podcast here very shortly. You've talked to him? I've talked to him. And Anyway. Any spoilers, Mr. Consolidated Fish.

Oh, goody.

Dan Connor. I talked to him for quite a while today and anyway, he was telling me that. That they just did some test on some.

I'm glad you got him on the podcast for me.

Yeah.

High five. Up high.

Any. Anyway, he said he talked to you once and. And he said, yeah, it doesn't take much convincing. I said, well, I said, we don't pay. He goes, I'll take that.

Excellent.

He goes, I'll add it to your next bill.

Perfect. So.

But anyway, he was telling me that the. Because he's got some really nice show guppies, which we'll talk about on the. On the. The next show with him.

Sure.

But anyway, the new Siri, or the Sri Lanka guppies are being imported in the United States, have a tilapia herpes in their intestines, and that's why they're not living. They just got tested positive for that in Florida.

Delightful.

Some sort of tilapia herpes. So if you're out there dating tilapia, be careful, people. I don't want anybody to come up with this.

Dr.

Fish has to test for tilapia herpes.

Yeah. I'm assuming he was probably part of the process because he's in that group of people.

Well, I think that's enough to get him back on the show. We've had many episodes with Dr. Fish. You probably seen those episodes. We have, what, seven of them now? And honestly, we just stopped Having them because we stopped having questions. We have basic questions that he's answered before. There's only so many times that we're going to ask him to add salt to a tank because we see. Ick. You know, this guy's a professional that does this for a living and we're going to ask him the weird shit.

Yeah.

So if you got questions, bring them to our discord, send them out to our email. Markham, Dr. Fish, if you want. We do compile them and if we get enough, we'll bring Dr. Fish back on for Nate episode. So this is definitely a reason that I'd love to get him on the podcast just to talk about tilapia herpes.

Tilapia herpes. That's what I heard this afternoon.

That can finally get that shit looked on your lip, Jimmy.

That's. I think I'm just gonna put a like a little lip ring over that blister. Over the blister.

Excellent. Yeah, good choice. That way I can ooze onto it.

I thought so.

Delightful. Adam, you got any. Any news? I heard about this basement stuff before. We're rewarding warm up.

No, no, nothing yet.

Nothing in your basement.

I'll let you know.

Put the lotion on its skin.

I'm working on some plans and then I've got. I'm going to design. I'm designing garage to like a 14 by 20 foot garage.

So Adam is in the process of designing his fish room because as life happens, him, his wife bought a house, they had one child, they had a second child, they had a third child, they had a fourth child. And finally now Adam's going to have some time on his hands where he can play, I guess in the fish room.

Have a fish room for once, right? I'm excited for you, buddy. Dalton, we got you back in the podcast. I'm so excited to see that you have color in your face and can walk again.

It's good to be back.

For those that don't know, this podcast is being recorded on July 9th. Just to let you know how far back this is. And we still haven't released the Pygmy Sunfish podcast. He's editing it tonight because he's finally back in health. So you can all get off my tits. For those who are listening live to this, that say, where are you guys at? Well, guess what? Our editor was about dead.

Yeah.

So, so glad to have you back, buddy.

So was it. Is it true, Dalton? Did you have the tilapia herpes or why were you out for so long?

He Is in Florida.

Yeah. If we could go one episode without, you know, talking about Florida or never an attention to us down here, that'd be great.

Never.

It was, you know, it was a whole. It was a whole conglomeration of, you know, multiple STDs, and, you know, it's a whole thing. But I'm back now.

Well, you are the hanging penis of the planet, so down there in Florida. We appreciate you, though. Yeah, I said hanging. I didn't send standing.

Isn't it still the hanging chad of the. Is that old enough joke now?

Hanging chad. Was that from the.

I don't know, something about it.

Hanging chad?

That the bush Gore?

That's right.

Before we begin, we're going to go to a full interview. I want to know more about Josh to do and more about our topic of the evening, microorganisms and saltwater tanks and more importantly, plankton.

You got some plankton?

But I got a question for you before we begin. So when you got here, because you drove from Duluth all the way to this area, so that was about what, three and a half hours? Three hours.

Like it's more like four with the construction right now.

But construction is bad, so God bless you. Right. We'll at least validate your parking.

Okay. Appreciate it.

For sure. When you went upstairs, you were nice enough to, you know, use my bathroom, of course. And inside you probably saw the one gallon Thunderdome.

Yeah.

In there. So I have a question. I was sitting there one evening and there's a trail of something that crawled out of this tank. Now, for those who are listening, we talked about it before on the episode where we talked about bathroom, fish room. I have one tank in my bathroom and it is a 1 gallon saltwater tank where it's just nothing but, you know, little starfish, little hermit crabs, little worms, you know, random stuff, nothing that we put in there. Just all hitchhikers from plants and whatnot. And we don't feed it, we don't do anything to it. We just leave a light on and whatever grows, grows. Whatever survives, doesn't survive, don't care. And it's just kind of fun watching a couple crabs wrestle or starfish on there and just. It's a great ambiance when you're taking a shit. That's.

That's where I've been peeing for the last year, by the way.

Yeah. Can you help me?

I just go in there and take a leak. I thought it was just like a pee jar.

That explains the smell.

Well, that explains starfish on the end of my week.

I was going to say that. And the burst of life. All of a sudd. Whoo. Are you predictive?

You got to top it off somehow.

Yeah.

Rob's the one that pees in jars now. He's the one that puts air stones up his butthole.

Hey, all right. This is. This is not about this. So aquarium. So I'm sitting there and I see a trail of something that crawled out of the tank. So I'm actually concerned of what possibly could have crawled out of there because we haven't added anything ourself. It's just whatever hitchhikers are there. So is there anything that I need to be concerned about in a random saltwater? Because you're a saltwater expert, so I got to. I got to pick your brain while you're here.

I wouldn't go so far as to call me an ex.

You are. You can be humble, but help me out. What. What on God's name? Crawl out of my one gallon tank upstairs that I need to be concerned about because I know some of that stuff can bite.

I'd say likely. There's nothing that you need to be concerned about.

Okay.

And then also, how do you know it wasn't something that crawled in?

That's exactly the wet trail. Because the wet trail.

Well, what if it was something that crawled out of your shitter and it was like. Yeah, because it wasn't an aquarium.

Maybe it was that tapeworm that you've.

Always been talking about because it wasn't brown.

No. So there are all kinds of, like, intertidal snails. Prob would be like, one of the bigger culprits that could possibly leave.

It was a very thin trail, like, you know, like, barely.

Like a snail trail.

Yeah, like a thin snail trail.

Yeah.

All right. I get you. Maybe I see what's good.

Or I like.

Was it in your underwear?

Bristle worms maybe could work their way out if they were.

Oh, God, please.

That would be cool. If there's a bristle, There's a lot of.

I saw a few in there. Yeah, I was taking a piss. Yeah, no, there's a bunch. Sweet little tank. I love that.

You might want to keep the lid on, because if that bristle. I've seen some little ones that come out and they're this big and they grab hold of you, pull your ass back in there and eat.

Have you ever had such an entertaining shit in the last, you know, 90 days? Admit it.

I actually. I didn't get a chance to take a shit yet, but I am excited for my morning poo.

Excellent. Because you are staying overnight.

I am, yes, yes, yes. Rob's is such a gracious. Not only podcast host, but a gracious host in his home as well. I got to spend some good time with his wife and his daughter just before the show and meet his parents. You know, he's a real family man.

And then we get to go out for drinks after this.

Cool.

Are you ready?

Drinks?

Yeah.

We don't even have to go out.

We got to pop the tequila bottle.

Jimmy, I think I got one of those.

All right, all right, all right. So let's get down to the topic. Adam, do you have anything to add before we begin the interview here?

No, I'm waiting to listen.

All right, let's.

Let's roll. First of all, what got you in the aquarium? Hobby, sir.

I guess it would have to be when I was a youngling and my folks had one of them big old coffee table Jacques Cousteau books. You know, just all these seascapes and all the shit he was doing. No one got me the books.

I only had the videos.

Oh, no. This was, like, big, full Glock. I mean, as good a resolution as they could print in, you know, the 80s or whatever.

I want some of those.

Super, super rad. And I just. I, like. I wore out the binding on that book. Like, I grew up in Minnesota. We're 2,000 miles from the ocean, you know, so this is the kind of I never got to see. We'd catch carp out of the lake and crayfish out of the, you know, cricks and the rivers and shit, but, like, nothing like you would see in these books. And so I was always just super fascinated. We'd go to the zoo, and I'd, like, always be into the aquatic stuff, but I grew up with cats and dogs, never had any fish, but it was always something I was really intrigued by. I'd go on vacation, and I'd always try and see, like, oh, what zoo has an aquarium? Let's go there for the day. Or, where's the big national aquarium here? You know, So I check out all the national aquariums, and it was always something kind of really intriguing for me. Never even got into freshwater fish keeping. And then I had some friends up in Duluth that had a saltwater aquarium, and I saw, like, how easy it could be. You know, you always hear, ah, salt water so hard. It's so expensive. And, man, they just, like, hardly did anything. And. And it was just like, a super, like, thriving little environment that did its own thing. Much like the one gallon up there in the shitter, where if you find the right balance of critters that fit your maintenance schedule, it can be super easy. So I was tank sitting for these guys for a little while and I realized how easy it was. Then not too long after that, somebody gave me a few free 75 gallon aquarium, you know, like a free tank. You're like, oh yeah, great, I'm halfway there. Well, and then you realize everything else that you need. So I started accumulating equipment.

And this was as an adult?

Yeah, this was, this was as an adult.

Excellent.

And so I spent a couple of years getting gear together and I actually, I set up my first saltwater aquarium about four, almost five years ago now. So I'm relatively new in the craft myself, but I've gained an extreme wealth of knowledge in my pursuit in really trying to figure out what makes these systems be able to operate on, you know, like a very base level.

Sure.

You know. And so that's where I discovered the benefits of marine plankton on so many aspects of these marine systems that we keep. And I started growing my own, you know, if you will. And soon everybody's like, hey, you got a little extra? And I'm like, oh sure, yeah, yeah. And then it's like, well, maybe there's a business here. So I'm trying to get a little, little business built out of it. But I still just, I love being able to contribute to the reef keeping community in the greater Minnesota and Midwest region. And so coming here and being able to share a little bit of knowledge, if I can, is going to be a good thing, I think.

So that's what you call this business, the reef Lab, and titled yourself as a plankton farmer. So I'm extremely interested. I tried to do some saltwater stuff as of recently for a project and got into doing some of the phytoplankton myself for farming. And I think I did it every wrong way possible. So first of all, go through for listeners that are mainly freshwater. Of course, a lot of our listeners describe what phytoplankton is part and how it is part of the cycle and then how we can cultivate it and.

Why do you need it?

Yeah, yeah, we can, we can talk about all kinds of cool stuff around phytoplankton and zooplankton and all the things that really build up a food web in our aquarium. And I think that that's one of the biggest components that maybe like differentiate some of the saltwater systems from freshwater. I Don't have a whole lot of freshwater knowledge. So I don't know really. Like, I know that there's green water that can be cultivated for use in freshwater systems, but I think goes a little deeper than even that in the marine systems where the phytoplankton is the base of the marine food web. These are autotrophic microorganisms that are turning elements and sunlight into all the stuff of life. Carbohydrates and lipids and all the amino acids that build up the proteins and everything. This is like the base of the food chain in the marine ecosystem.

So in the freshwater hobby, we immediately see green water and be like, oh, where'd I fuck up? Why is it so important in salt water?

So the, the biggest.

I mean, that's. Jimmy's laughing, but that's exactly how we treat it. Like, oh, shit.

Well, no, so correct me if I'm wrong. Don't people like purposely culture green water to feed, you know, like Daphne or something like some.

For the most part, that's, that's a rather niche thing for us. Advanced Aquarius. For most part, if you get green water, it's because they put, you know, two goldfish in a 20 gallon with no filtration and left in the sun. You know that type of.

Leave light on for 24 hours.

Exactly.

That's what I do.

You leave the light on for all week long. You know, see what, let's see what happens.

Put it on a time timer.

Come on, let's roll the dice.

We've come too far to leave lights on.

Yeah.

23 hours on, one hour off.

That's how it goes, baby.

That explains why all my fish look like they're kind of stoners.

No, so. So the main purpose of using phytoplankton in saltwater aquariums is to help promote a diverse diet for all of the different suspension and filter feeders in there, as well as the other like secondary producers that eat the phytoplankton that end up becoming food for higher levels of organisms within the captive system. Now there's no such thing as a self sustaining saltwater aquarium in, on a high level, sure, you can set something up that's pretty low fi, but it's going to have to have some level of maintenance somewhere.

Well, even my little tank in the shitter room there, I still got to top off water. I still got to clean out the cartridge. Yeah, that's literally the only two things I do.

I've been topping it off for the last year. I don't understand why you have to see that's yellow.

That's my maintenance.

That's my photoplankton going in.

What it's doing is feeding the rest of the biodiversity within that marine environment. And we've come to learn in the very short time that people have been keeping these captive marine systems that one of the biggest components of success is having a high level of biodiversity. And if you think about the ocean, they're. There's just life in every millimeter or milliliter of fluid, every cubic centimeter of substrate rock. Everything is just crawling with bacteria and microbes of some sort. And those secondary level of microbes are feeding on this phytoplankton. Using it in your marine systems gives a good food source for a lot of different organisms that are in the system.

So this podcast caters to advanced aquarists and beginners. So for those that don't know and are listening online, they're thinking of trying to salt water for the first time. And they're trying to think themselves from a freshwater perspective. They are used to having some plants, and then you're used having tanks with no plants and just fish. Salt water gives the extra layers of the different macroalgae, the different corals, the different creatures that they just do not have in fresh water. So when we think of food, what are these things feeding? What are you directly feeding by dosing something like a plankton into your aquarium? So starting at or making sure that there's plankton there to begin with.

Yeah. So at the base level, you're looking at some of the interstitial, like meal fauna that's in there. These are all the little critters that live in the sand on the glass. And we're talking like copepods and isopods and amphipods and some of these micro crustaceans, those are going to be some of the smallest things that are going to be consuming this. You might have some different protists and ciliates and other type of microorganisms that are secondary producers essentially within the system that are going to predate on the phytoplankton as well. But really, the main benefit comes to these micro crustaceans, which are then food sources for coral, for fish. They're part of the microbial cleanup crew.

So when you say micro crustaceans, is there something specific?

Yeah, copepods, isopods, amphipods, and these are.

All different triple pods.

These are all different orders of crustaceans. So they all serve kind of a different level of that microbial Biome that's in the substrate and on the glass and in the water column. You know, some of these are. Once they hatch, they're just in the water column and they're fish food or coral food.

So this is something that you'd get with live rock. So if you had just like a bear tank, not that it happens often, I mean, come on, what type of tanks do you see with people saltwater with their bear tank. But let's say for the conversation's sake that you had a bear tank with clownfish in it with essentially no live rock, just plain decorations. This wouldn't necessarily be something for that because you don't have a ton of those micro crustrations introduced and you don't really have a ton of that cycle. So you wouldn't be wanting to introduce salt waters, green water, the phytoplankton into the system like that. You do that for a living system where you have the live rock that brings that whole bio culture to the tank.

Well, I mean, and I guess I don't know like what the fresh water crossover is. In just about every system I can think of, you need some level of biological filtration that's going to have to have surface area of some sort to develop. So in a marine system, the only time that you're not going to have something, whether it's even just a synthetic bio media, like ceramic rings, bio balls, bio blocks, that kind of stuff is used in marine systems also. But any of that is ultimately going to be become a breeding ground for these micro crustaceans. You cannot avoid getting them in your system. So there. When you add a fish, there's a very likely chance that even the water that's in its slime coat on in its gut, it could have eaten one that's passed through its gut system.

Could it get it from the salt itself?

Not from like the salt mix, but like if there was even just a little bit of the shipping water or anything.

Sure.

Or from another tank. Oh, absolutely, absolutely. Like I've never seen a marine system that does not have visible copepods. If you look hard enough in the right spots at the right time, you'll see them. It's impossible. They're like. It feels like they're in the air. They just appear. Like everybody I know that started a tank with bacteria in a bottle, totally clean substrate, dry rock, ends up with copepods after they add their first life form, whether it's a snail, a fish, a chunk of coral, they're just in it. They are there. Yeah. You're not going to be able to, to avoid it.

Yeah. In, in this freshwater habitat like you do the flowerhorn and flowerhorns, you, for the most part you can have them in a planted tank, but the rule of thumb is you keep them with nothing completely. Glass tank, no, nothing in the bottom, no substrate, nothing. All you have is the media in your filter to hold the cycle. It's just nitrifying bacteria. There's literally nothing in the tank. So there is cases in fresh water where there's, there's no life cycle. No, there's no natural system. And we just have to make sure that our nitrification cycle, our bacteria in our filter is going to hold that salt water. You're saying that they're even wanted to imitate that. Good luck. There's not even gonna, there's always gonna be a case where you're gonna want at least some version of a plankton to benefit those micro crustrations. Because we're gonna get questions on this. That's why 100.

I mean, could, could, could you get some of this stuff from, let's say you put in frozen brine shrimp to feed your animals. Could the frozen brine shrimp have something in their gut?

Likely not. I, I mean, I feel like the freezing process would kill it, kill any eggs or there wouldn't be any like live.

But on the fish, on the snails, once you add stuff again, yet to see it. And I gotta say I've yet to see it as well, honestly.

So if you have, you know, a very new system, if you are running a quarantine tank that just has PVC structure in it because you're medicating or what have you, there's definitely instances where you're not going to see a ton of the benefit of adding the plankton as a food source. Now, one of the other benefits of phytoplankton addition, if you use it when it's live, is it will actually help with nutrient uptake and sequestration. And then your skimmer is going to take some of it out. Your mechanical filtration will take some of that out. If you use it in a live state, it helps with some nutrient balancing within the systems as well. So with proper dosing, even a relatively new system, a bare bottom system, a system that doesn't have a ton of different microbial life that's going to be feeding on it, or even some of the other higher life forms that would feed on phytoplankton, you're going to dose very sparingly.

Sure.

But eventually you're going to have a pretty good population of these copepods and all of these other microbes. Like it's life finds a way in these marine systems. It's ridiculous.

So this is the base food to start your full on cycle of life in your saltwater tank. Tank. Now, when we want to do, we brought up Daphne and green water. There's gonna be a lot of comparisons for this freshwater people. Because the whole goal of this is I'm trying to get this basic concept for a saltwater person to a freshwater listener right now to try this for the first time. That's my goal. If you're listening to this, you haven't tried salt. You're scared of it seems intimidating. All the saltwater people are intimidating. That's the first thing you mentioned that it was even intimidating for you when you started. Let's not make this so intimidating. So when you take this base concept of bringing the plankton in, I'm going to compare it to the Daphnia subject in green water. If Jimmy and I, we want to do a Daphnia culture, we literally tell people, get a tank ready with green water. Okay, how do I do that? Simple. Grab some food or a nasty dead fish. Grab a vessel of water, maybe in a Rubbermaid tote or a tank, and then light the bitch up with, with a light. You know, if you can get a fluorescent light, a shop light, and leave that on for a few days, you're gonna have delicious soup. And once you get that nice, near thick green water, then we'll give you Daphnia culture and put it in there with a bubbler and suddenly you'll have thick Daphnia that you can scoop out with a net and feed your fish. It's that simple. So is there a process like this that you can do with plankton? Is there a way that you can create it? Or do you have to have a small sample starter of it to get it growing? Let's start there.

Yes, you hit it with the ladder there. Unlike freshwater microalgae, I mean, there's aerosols of that in the water vapor.

I'm breathing it right now.

Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely. If you leave Jimmy's laughing, you leave a bucket out on your deck. Like happens every year around our garden. You know, like we have the watering can just sits there for two weeks and all of a sudden you got green water in the watering can.

And lots of mosquitoes.

Oh, yeah, yeah. The dragonflies love them, though. There's not that type of equivalent in marine Phytoplankton because there's just not that bioavailability in the air. The critters that might land in the pond and then land in your water bucket.

You know, I can't take reverse osmosis water I bought from the grocery. Stor it under a light and make something happen.

I can't turn water into wine, not in a marine. That'd be cool. As you mentioned, you have to start with an inoculant of some sort, a starter culture. And you can get them all over the place online. You can get them from me, you can get them, you can go to.

The reef lab.net and get them right directly from you.

Oh, if only I don't have E Commerce set up. No, I'm slow rolling.

Excuse me, Excuse me. You have an email on the website and your telephone number, so that's good enough.

Oh yeah, absolutely. Oh yeah, you can get a hold of me. Hit me up. I'll get you set up. But yeah, you need an inoculant. You need to get this culture started with something. But once you have some and you get the system down and you get it bubbling like it's a self replicating, self sustaining. It is. I mean it take, it takes obviously some of you got to feed it something. It needs light there, there are some, you know, resource costs to it. But the cost benefit if it's something that you really want to use in your system and, and I'll admit it's not for everybody system, there's definitely some that benefit from it much more than others and some that definitely need it. Like there are some marine organisms that without regular frequent phytoplankton additions, they're just not going to live.

There's a couple different ways that at least two ways that I know of getting the stuff, I can go to my local pet store, go to you someone that sells it, right. I can get a container of it and that would be the stuff that I can dose in small amounts. And there's generally some sort of measuring guide that either you told me or on the package that says that at least some vague instructions on dosing it. But I want to make more. So I can either continually buy that from the source that I got it from, which it could be affordable. It could be something that I could get to in my area. I'm lucky enough I'm 20 minutes from a fish store or I can have someone ship it in. But maybe I don't have that convenience and I want to grow it. You said I need light and I need food. Explain. Light I think is pretty self explanatory. There's nothing special I have to have for like a spectrum, is there?

Not necessarily. Necessarily. Look, these are some of the most ancient and base organisms on the planet. Like we wouldn't even have oxygen. I mean, I guess cyanobacteria is as.

Long as not UV light, we're pretty kosher, right?

Yep, yep. So they'll grow under anything like most photosynthetic organisms. Depending upon the pigments in them they will prefer a different spectrum. But if you just get a 5 to 10k chemical Kelvin light of any sort, it will grow. Yeah.

And then what food would one feed these things?

There really hasn't been a whole lot of advancements in the algal fertilizer that's out there. So in the 1960s somewhere I think this guy produced this formulation working for food fish aquaculture. So that's where all of this came from. Food fish aquaculture. Once they started cracking the code on oh we need these different sized organisms to feed these larval fish and then, well then that's how we can farm fish. So all of this research came from food fish aquaculture. And these botanists discovered a formulation of all the right minerals and things that the phytoplankton needs and they produced that as an F2 formulation. You can find recipes, but I don't know if some of the constituents are tough to get if you don't have access to lab grade materials.

Sure.

But there's.

I probably know a guy.

You know, it sounds like Adam knows a guy for just about anything.

That's what makes.

But no, there's again, there's a lot of people that produce and sell F2 fertilizers. I get a two part product from Pentair that works great for my purposes. Fritz Aquatics does one. Just about anybody out there that that's dealing with marine phytoplankton sells an F2 fertilizer. I get a lot of base stock and fertilizer from Algal Research Supply. Florida Aqua Culture Research is also another place it's readily available online. And then every product slightly different. They all base their self based off of this F2 formulation but they might have slightly different, different dosages. So look at the product you're using just about any kind of product, but it's a liquid fertilizer that you end up dosing by the volume of water that you're adding to the culture that.

You'Re just a generic liquid fertilizer.

I'm I'm just happy that, that this didn't go, you know, like where he's out in the woods with fertilizer, making bombs type of thing. That's what I kind of expected where it was going.

Now when I heard this and had talked about to some of the people that just got into salt, they're like, oh, I just used some Miracle grow in there. He literally just grabbed Liquid Miracle grow, put it in and sure enough it popped and made more phytoplankton. Now I'm not exactly a proponent of that because I don't know what the hell else is in there. Still, it worked. But there, is there any particular brand or over the counter product that you would recommend that can work for someone that's listening that doesn't have access to something complex?

I guess I don't know of anything that I would would recommend. Granted, you could, yeah, I mean you could grow it with just about anything. I mean, I think if you could come up with some type of fertilizer tea, you know, that would be suitable for almost any plant. Sure, give it a go. But if someone were, why try and reinvent the wheel? I mean someone figured out the right recipe. It's hella cheap too. Like it's not, it's not. Yeah, order it online. It's. It, yeah, it's, it's insanely cheap as far as like the consumable. And you use such a small amount of it, like it lasts forever. Like if you're just doing this on a small scale, like, like they sell the stuff in like 8 ounce bottles because you don't go through it, you know, so you don't need, if you're doing this on a small scale, don't get a 32 ounce bottle of F2 fertilizer.

And one more time for the spelling of the name so I can put it in the chat live to our Discord audience.

It's Gillard's F2 fertilizer. So G U, I L L A r d f slash 2 is going to be how you're going to find it. So ton of people produce this formulation and again like you can find the recipe for it and if you've got access to the components, go ahead and make it or give it a shot.

Just to give you guys an idea for listening audience, because I did pull it up, I did add the link as well into Discord. If you guys want to listen to these podcasts live, we do have it in Discord. The link is in the description, but the Amazon listing for this particular Gillard's F2 formula for the 8 ounce. Excuse me, 16 ounce bottle is 25 bucks. And that'll last literally forever, a lifetime maybe. They have an 8 ounce for 16.95. So half of that. $2 an ounce. Ish.

Yeah, it's. It's definitely relatively affordable. And for the product I use, it's a dosage of 0.15 milliliters per liter. So it's like next to nothing.

So you're literally putting a drop in whatever container you're using.

Oh, yeah.

Is this thing used for anything else other than that? I mean, is this being used for, like, regular plants?

Well, this is the new Viagra, Jimmy.

I'm asking for myself, Robbie. No, no, no. I'm asking for a friend.

Asking for a friend for a friend.

But I mean, is that use. Is that used for anything else that used for growing corals or any. I mean, what is it used. I mean, what are they selling it for? Just sounds like you guys are. Sounds like you guys are blowing up.

Literally. It's listing on. On Amazon not to cut you off. It's literally for a phytoplankton culture. Algae, aqua algae cultures. Powerful solution. It's literally made just for this.

Yeah, yeah, it's. It's a very specific formulation. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. I have. I haven't found any recipe for anything, and I also haven't really dug a whole lot to see if there's another option or. That's a good question, Jim. Is this used for something else other than aquatic marine plankton? You know, I really don't know.

I hate the fact that every time that we bring up a medication on this podcast, somebody has to go. It's like, well, I could use that as shampoo.

No, that will cure covet.

I'm pretty sure Dan still uses Mellow Fix in his goddamn hair.

It might even cure, you know, that tilapia herpes thing, right, that Dalton had ordering. Now, poor Dalton killed all this out.

All right, so we have light, we have water. Just put it in a container and watch it go green. And then just what, Keep adding water and just dip into it as I need?

Well, it is a marine organism, not just water like you need salt water. And clearly, more specifically, I'm assuming the.

Same saltwater mixes in your aquarium because that's where you're going to be adding it.

Well, that's. That, that, that works to a point, but you're going to get your best production out of just about Any of these phytoplankton. And then if we start talking about the zooplankton, too, at a reduced salinity, because they do a lot of their cyclical blooming in the ocean when there's a big spring runoff somewhere.

Oh, almost brackish.

Yes.

All right.

Yes. So that's where you get plankton blooms in the ocean. And then that's when the copepods come out for a fest. You know, like, they're like, all right, we're going to go. We're going up to the beach to get it on, you know, so Jimmy's thoroughly entertained.

I'm just thinking of this big orgy.

I'm just, oh, it's just gross. Copepods laying out, getting it rubbing on each other. Oh, it's worse than that dolphin audio clip I heard earlier.

All right, so a little less. A little less salt than normal, for sure.

Yep, yep. So you're looking at 1.02 to specific gravity.

Sure.

You know, somewhere in there is going to be prime for any of these. You get your salt water mixed up and you get it in a container with some aeration. That's really all that you need. You don't need any heat for the most part. These. These will survive and breed and thrive and produce in between 60 and 80 degrees. You get over 80 degrees and you're going to start seeing diminishing returns in their production. Everything. You get a little colder and they're going to be kind of a little more sluggish and not really producing quite as much. So usually your lights and the aeration from the bubbler keep it right in that 70 degree sweet spot just about anywhere.

You're at kind of room temperature. Yeah.

Yep, yep. So you don't need to worry about heat. And then.

Now do I need to aerate this?

Yes, yes. There definitely needs to be vigorous circulation. And air seems to work the best. It's just so low fi.

Now, do I just keep, like a nice steady stream or do I want to froth this like a beer?

You want to push it as hard as you can before it's like foaming at the top. You don't want to be making a skimmer in your container, so no skimming.

But.

But you want it.

I want to turn that bench as much as up to that point.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Like crank it as much as you can. And a circular container is going to work best to help keep any of that.

So the whole idea to keep it moving.

Oh, yeah. Yep. Okay.

It's not necessarily the Oxygenate, that's just a second byproduct. It's to make sure that this is churning.

Yeah. Okay, well, you still, you still definitely need the benefit of the gas exchange because sure, you have to do these in, but I don't need relative environments. Right, yeah, yeah, correct, correct. I should have brought it in. I have a couple of lo fi containers that I use that would maybe help as visual. Visual aids.

Well, what containers would you recommend?

Someone put this in my ex wife's drink.

There you go. No, don't drink it too cold.

Now, Ice Queen, when I did this, because again, I, I had a saltwater tank set up and I'll. We'll talk about the podcast another time. But I set up a tank for over a year that was super low maintenance. And again I wanted to have that ecosystem. So I got the phytoplankton culture. I decided I wanted to get a vessel and I saw somehow other people were doing it and they were doing it with like, like weird plastic pictures. They had some weird Rubbermaid totes. Everybody had some sort of weird different method of doing it. So I got creative and I went to my wife and said, hey, can we have like an old school lemonade container? And she had like this, you know, couple gallon lemonade container with a spout where you actually have like a little tea spout at the end that you'd bring to like an old time country lemonade picnic.

One of my parties.

Yeah, one of your parties where you assume there's booze in it. Okay, yeah, absolutely. You don't have to have to assume there's absolutely boostness. So I got one of those glass containers and it had a metal lid, right, Like a mason jar lid for a two gallon container. I put the stuff in there and then I drilled a hole for the airline, churned it up, and then I wrapped it in LED lights and made a smoothie. I made a smoothie, put my little bit of fertilizer in it. Well, I put my, you know, phytoplankton, fill it up with salt water in there and then just let it churn. And sure enough, it got real green dark. And then I just used the same spigot in the bottom to put it, the dosing, whatever I wanted to, in a little cup, pour it in the tank. And then whatever I took in my idea because again, I did with no help, no, no research like you doing this. And I just scooped water from the tank, like, okay, I dosed that much. I'm just gonna put water from the Tank back in the jar and keep replacing it. And I got growth. I don't know what good growth was like, but it was enough where I could deal with the. I needed to do so. And I probably had cobalt in my.

There you go.

I was gonna say, yeah, soapods in my growth.

That's what happens then is then you. If you use the tank water, you're adding the shit that's going to be eating it right in there. You might even be adding other things that would be competing for the fertilizer solution.

Well, it makes sense because after a year of doing this, the jar stunk so bad.

Was it still semi green, though?

Oh, 100% green.

Okay, so it was still working.

But it was definitely. You could definitely.

Things going on.

I could definitely tell that I probably should have cleaned the jar out in.

A year's time or not peed in it.

Yeah. In fact, Jimmy, move that curtain. It might be sitting right there. I don't know if I threw that jar away. Just move that curtain right there. Let's see.

Ignore the man behind the curtain.

No, the jar's gone. But it was right there in the corner. I had the jar sitting right there as a spigot, and I would just, you know, feed right off that darn jar.

I came over.

That's perfect.

I thought. Rob finally turned cool and bought himself a lava lamp, but did not buy a lava lamp. He's made his own green one over here. Stunk like ass. What's that smell? It's alfalfa coming out of a horse's butt.

It was. It was fine until the end. The end got stunk. It was literally. Sounds like my first marriage, like, nine months. It was great.

Well, there. There are some phytoplankton and microalgae that just stanks when it's culturing, too. Like, just smells like a back bay on a hot day, you know, like. But that's just the aroma from.

Sure.

The. The. The trauma thing itself.

The aroma from the trauma.

I don't know. I feel like people should dump those out and reculture after. After a year. But that is doing it. My method, for sure.

Yeah. And that's. That's one thing. If you're really looking to try and gain some success, there has to be some level of sanitization at some point.

Start over points.

Yeah, you just. You want to clean your container because you're gonna get. No matter what, you're gonna be getting some type of biofilm growing in there as well. That's going to be Competing and. Or actually contaminating the culture and causing the phytoplankton to die. So come to think, periodic sanitation that you're going to want to do.

Come to think of it, I took my original salt water was out of the aquarium. I didn't make fresh salt water. That's where I started with the. Whatever that was.

Cheap ass. It's funny that you said about you kind of got to reboot basically. So watching aquarium co op when they went and visited that guy in Israel, breeding all the guppies, I think it was Israel, they were raising like a million guppies a month or something like that. It was just astronomical amount. And they're only at about. I think if I remember they're like at 2/3 capacity. I mean they could go farther when they were showing all their filters and different things and stuff. He says, I can't tell you why, he said, but every 18 months we gotta stop, scrub everything down, start fresh. He goes, or else our whole production starts dropping after about 18 months. He says. We've got these three systems and we have to move everything.

And this is for all his live food.

Just to explain here again, he's saying something that. You can't keep something going indefinitely. You got to stop and clean and go. That kind of fits.

Yeah, you gotta wipe your ass every now and again. Jimmy.

I use the Charmin. That stuff that they use, you know, they show.

Why are you wiping your arm?

That's the new Charmin thing. They take some blue paste they put on the arm. They take the cheap toilet paper and just.

That's it.

That kind of smear it. And then they take a Charming and it cleans right up.

That's a tampon commercial, Jimmy. No, getting that confused. Listen, that's where they use the blue color.

No, don't. We're not talking about tampons today. We're not talking about glass dildos today. Stay on task.

Okay.

I was gonna bring a dildo. Todd. I'm kind of just dropping the tank.

Kind of disappointed you didn't forgot. It's an aquarium dildo. It's an aquarium.

Just do what I do. I just take a dump in it when I leave.

Don't worry.

I can do that.

Don't worry. I can't wait to go to your house.

I know. I. We can't wait for the seven.

Still hasn't recovered from that.

Well, recover from what? What?

Adam, when we put the plant in every single one of your tanks, that little tiny piece.

Okay.

You were so.

All right. Little, little tangent. Tangent.

All right.

I, I just went and did a little cleanup of my, my, my 10, 10 gallon rack. And on the top left highest tank I have the plant that is so thick in that tank, it literally choked out a fish. I don't know if the fish got stuck or the fish died. Something else before just had happen to land in the plant, but the plant is so thick and matten through the tank. It also made a layer on top of the tank because there was about, oh, an inch of duckweed thick of duckweed.

I saw the last time.

And the plant wanted more of the duckweed's light. So the plant out competed the duckweed for its own space and made a mat, a thick like 2 inch mat on, thick on top, over top of the duckweed. So it out competed duckweed. And then it, it grew out of the water onto the fish tank edge. And I have this hang on the back side tank where you put like a beta in or whatever. And it crawled onto the hang on the backside tank working its way down and now it made a terrestrial mat and it has these little like fern fronds that come out of it.

We're hoping that's all and all kinds.

Of that it's sporing out of now.

Could be little, little arms.

You're welcome.

Thank you for the plant from hell. That weeping moss that you have is some, some horses, but everybody comes over, they're like, oh, that is so cool. I lifted up the mat that's terrestrial and underneath the plant died to make its own dirt to fertilize itself to be terrestrial. I can't even explain this. I should take pictures of this shit. It's. It's incredible what it did in my tank.

You're welcome.

So there, there's your little tangent for the podcast episode.

You're welcome, Robby.

I gave a chunk of it to another buddy just as a. To be a dick.

You know what?

I wonder if it would grow in salt water. I bet it would.

I'll try it. I'll give. I'll give some nas. Well, have some fun. You have some. You know what the plant is. You've listened to enough episodes.

If it kills, I don't know if I know what it.

I don't even walk back there because it kind of reaches out for you. Kind of like Scooby Doo where this like reaches out and tries to grab you. I was like, I'm not going back.

Okay. I figured by episode 70 you heard it because that's where you said you were At. By the time you came to the podcast, the plant is a plant that Adam got a while ago, and he's convinced it's super invasive. He freezes it, he dries it out for a year, rehydrates. It still grows. It's insane. Like, he'll give like a little. Little, like, flake of it, and it'll overtake an entire tank.

It lived on my. I have a counter where I bag all my fish. And anyway, Adam gave me the piece that was about inch long and in a Ziploc bag. A year later, I find that it fallen behind, still green, and on top of it, the Ziploc bag hadn't even leaked. I was so impressed. And I ended up taking that back to Adam and gave it back to him and never opened.

I put it in a tank and it just started growing. I literally put in a five gallon and it just started.

Yeah. So it lived in a plastic bag for a year and a half behind my bagging station.

I've had it fall out, fall out of the tank, dry out, and just sit on the. On the floor for maybe a month and I'll rehydrate it and just find that doesn't matter. So we looked it up at some sort of weeping moss. It's some sort of weird hybrid weeping moss. It's not invade. Not illegal. But yeah, it's. But it's known as the plant of the podcast. So I'll send you home.

See, the whole reason why I got that was because I was told it was illegal and nobody should have it.

I mean, that's had to take it.

You kind of feel like it is.

Don't send me home with some illegal plant.

Oh, no, we checked it out.

It's fine.

It's DNR approved.

I can't.

Did you actually show it to the dnr?

Yes, I did. In fact, the DNR listened to the podcast and they wanted a piece of.

It, and so it's funny.

Hi, Mandy.

When Robbie gave him the piece, it also had your phone number, address, last night of your Social Security.

They're like, we need to know what this is. No, though they did it personally. They didn't do it on an official capacity. They just. They just Aquarius themselves. So it's cool.

Anyway, how did we get on the tank bombing tangent?

And that's how it is. That's how this happens. Goes.

Okay.

You just feel the rhythm.

Everybody goes, you know, you go off the rails. We're never really, really ever on the rails.

Back to the container question. So that my Method of container, jar. Just what I came up with. But what do you recommend for a jar or a container? A vessel.

That's brilliant, dude. Like your intuition was sound, was it? Oh, yeah, yeah. Solid. You want a round container, like using a 10 gallon tank or a 5 gallon, you know, square vessel.

Sure.

You're just not gonna get that really vigorous circulation that you need in the corner. So you're gonna get, you're gonna get stuff settling in, out.

I do have a question. This. Are you familiar with this type of glass, sir? Yeah. You are, I guess.

Not the type of glass.

Okay, so this is made. This is uranium glass.

Okay.

This was made before World War II and actually has real uranium in it. It's radioactive.

That glows in the black light.

Where is my black light?

Get your UV light on there, Jimmy.

Did I leave it at the hotel? Just make sure there was no stains.

So Robbie showed me this. And anyway, about the same time he has about getting a vasectomy, I said, just rub that on it.

Yeah, that thing.

Every night I put my nuts in an hour a night, just.

There you go.

Make sure they try to go sterile.

It'll work.

And then at Christmas time, he makes a candy dish out of it. And you don't want to use that.

So still doesn't sterilize the candy bar using that.

I don't know. I don't know what the reason I.

Had to make the joke, but any, any rounded vessel, gallon, pickle jar work?

Absolutely. Yep.

I'm going to tell you a quick secret for people looking. I. I hatch all my brine shrimp in gallon pickle jars. I hatch angelfish eggs, rams eggs in those jars. And I'm here to tell you, if you go looking to buy a glass 1 gallon jar right now, if you can find them online, it's like $40 for a case of four. But then everybody says, well, just go buy a jar of pickles at Walmart for six bucks. Throw the pickles away. Better yet, go to your local recycling place. And I told those guys, I said, can you save me any of these pickle jars that come in for recycling those gallons? They said, sure. They called me up two weeks later, they had 70. Right. And I've never had to buy one since. And so if you can. And all I did for those guys that saved all those pickle jars for me, I said, what do you guys want for lunch? I'll bring over a couple pizzas or something. They said, great. And so a couple pizzas go a long ways.

Absolutely.

So pickle Jars work great.

Talk to restaurants. And if you don't have access to a recycling center, if you got a local restaurant or somebody that goes through them jars, yeah, absolutely. And then you can ditch the lid if that's all rusty or stained or whatever. And just a lot of people put like cellophane over the top of it to put the airline through that. And then you have a covered container, because you want the container to be covered, but you have to be able to diffuse the air from the line that's going in there. So something covered but not super tight or you have like some type of valve in there.

What I used to do when I was, when I was hatching brine shrimp, when I first started hatching brine shrimp, I took one of those stems that were in an underground gravel filter. You know, the stem in the middle, the hard little 1/4 inch. And I would just take, put a foot long stem in there and I drill one hole for the air to come out. And I tell you, even with that little hole, which was probably an 8th inch enough for this to go through, it was like a little geyser and it would just shoot out brine shrimp. It just didn't work for crap. And so anyway, I finally just started lowering my water level a little bit and just leaving the lid off. But a lot of these restaurants now are going to plastic containers. But you could probably get a plastic, plastic container, one gallon lid to fit on your one gallon jar and at least it wouldn't rust, especially with the salt water.

Then you could drill it definitely.

So you mentioned before, before we get into the questions of different types of plankton, you mentioned before of dosing. And I know that this is going to be hard because if you think about dosing for medication, you think about strength and then you think about the amount, right? Like milligrams. So with this we have no idea what the strength is. We just look at it and goes, yep, that looks green. Is it dark green? Is it light green? Did Jimmy urinate in it green? We don't really know. Besides that, can you look at a tank and go, how much life needs to feed off of this? But we still have to ask you, how do we dose, man? What do you recommend? Help us.

So to your first point, about the concentration of it, if you will, or the strength, as you said, it's wild west out there. It's not a regulated product really. No one has to tell you what's in it, what concentration, how much is in it. Everybody kind of has their own standard Dosage depending upon where you're getting the product from.

To read the label is what you're saying. If you're going to buy from someone, read the label.

Definitely read the label.

And, and then pay attention when you buy it. Take a picture of it to see the color of it, to see how dark it compares. If you're going to grow it later.

That is really keen advice there.

All right.

Yep, yep. There, there are ways that you can test like the essential, actually the concentration, density of it as you're growing it.

Can you take like a TDS meter and go, holy, that's nasty?

Well, you wouldn't. You wouldn't get a blow it up. Good indication of the density of the culture. Your TDS meter is going to read the same when you first start it as when you have a relatively dense culture. Honestly, it's. I don't think a TDS meter is actually going to pick up much on that.

Guy can dream is.

Is thickness and color. Thickness.

Do you taste it? Can you take a swig and be like, that's ripe.

You can, but you're gonna have a salty surprise that you won't like, will you?

Your pants.

If you drink enough of it, you might.

The neighbor's fence, too.

Don't drink this, guys.

No. Yeah, not for human consumption.

Not for human consumption.

It works great as a suppository.

Yes. Yeah, I guess. Could an enema maybe. Don't.

Don't.

Vital plank. Latent enema.

Sure.

You just freeze a small bullet. Just freeze it, you know, and then you can insert the bullet, clean you right out.

Holy. Dalton's not approving any of this right now.

I'm not a doctor, but I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express.

Not a, not a recommended procedure. I mean, I heard of coffee enemas and beer enemas and this is where Dalton goes.

I'm skipping this. Ten minutes right there.

Always check, check the, the dosing that you.

So I can give you kind of a baseline there.

Yeah, please.

Just about everybody, myself included, is going to tell you to start with a dose of 1 milliliter of phytoplankton per gallon in your total system. You know, so if you got 100 gallon system, start with 100 milliliters.

All right, so that's where we start.

So follow the recipe.

So.

Or for every 10 gallons. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I was like. Well, that seems like too much. So it's for every. Every 10 gallons.

So just re. Clarify.

Yeah. 1.

1 milliliter of the phytoplankton juice for every 10 gallons of water. Cuz I was about to rail your ass. I'm not even going to lie.

If you guys want to be left alone, I could go upstairs.

No, no, no.

So when you 100 gallon tank, you'll want 10 milliliters.

Good. So when you dose this in, in the tank, how do you know that you've overdone it and how do you know you've underdone it?

Cuz you're all sweaty. Yeah.

Oh yeah. You know you've overdone it when you start sweating.

Yeah, yeah.

I'll be honest, it's really difficult to overdo it. You'll get some green tinge to your water, but you're not going to see too many negative effects from a high dosage of phytoplankton in any system. Now if you do that consistently then you'll start getting a buildup of some organics, you'll start seeing some nutrient increases and then you'll be feeding hair, algae or some, some type of nuisance. You know, underdoing it. Like if, if you're really trying to keep a robust population of copepods in there. I mean you, you can visually see whether you're having a pretty good level of those in there. So if you're seeing so many factors.

If you're not seeing enough increase or concerned about a decrease of your microorganisms, if you're not seeing those small creatures gain off of any of this, then you know to maybe add just a slight bit more. But be careful because then you want an explosion and you don't to want, want green water.

Well, so I, I have a system that I do 10x that, that dosage. So I have a hundred gallon system that I do dose a liter every two days.

Sure.

So, but that has a ton of clams, has a ton of gonians, feather duster, worms, all kinds of other macro life forms that are also feeding off.

Of and the clams alone. Like if people don't understand like I, I do a lot of freshwater clams. Clams are a natural filter. That is probably the one thing in that whole tank that you could have painted out as the biggest food factor of just sucking it down.

Yeah, yeah. So like you said there, it's same within the marine system. Clams are filter feeders and they will just filter, you know, a hundred times their vascular capacity a day. It's just, it's insane. The amount of water and then the amount of bio organisms that they pull out of there. It's just crazy. Crazy.

I'm.

Now I'm gonna ask a beginner's question. Please do I need to turn off the filtration when I put in after I dose?

There's a couple of different schools of thought on that. It depends on what type of filtration you're running. If you're running a skimmer, as a lot of marine systems do, that will pull phytoplankton out. Absolutely. So there's good recommendations too.

What about UV filtration?

UV filtration will absolutely kill it. It's a good idea to shut down your UV UV filtration for a short time after dosing it. Now me personally, I don't shut off when I feed because I'll forget to turn it on.

You know, that's the problem.

Right, Exactly. So that's why you're.

That's why you're pouring out a 40 of malt liquor for your homies. That's why you're overdosing. You're just like. It's like just pouring out for my boys.

No.

So half of this is going on the UV sterilizer.

I know, but I also, I don't run mechanical filtration in any of my systems. I don't run uv. So I. I'm literally just.

What do you run?

I just run a skimmer. I just run a protein skimmer. That's the only filtration that I run.

Skimmer it.

Yeah, that's it.

You're my hero.

I'll run some activated carbon now and again.

You must have a lot of macro algae.

All of my systems have a ton of macros.

You're. You're my hero.

Yeah, I love the green stuff.

Back to the beginner thing, Jimmy. When I did, I did my tank. You know, let's go with a little detail. I was going to. I'm going to do another.

Are we going to talk about you again?

Again? Me again. I got a 60 gallon tall. I want to do this whole thing low tech and I'm impatient. I'm trying to get in this thing for doing it with no heat. Trying to do it with no mechanical filtration, just on air. And everybody's calling me crazy. But I really want to get that biological cycle rolling. So I actually introduce on purpose pieces. Live rock. I know there's a ton of copepods. I go to my friends to get pieces on purpose that I know are just loaded with in sumps. I put it in there and I know that they need to feed. I do that bad Idea, right? You. You say, you know milliliter per 10 gallons. No, I'm pouring the full 40 for my homies out in the thing. And I'm doing this every day until I see any type of results of explosions because I'm trying to get this thing pumping. So I finally get it going and then I cut it off and I'm like, okay, now I know I got an explosion starting to happen. I'm not going to feed them for a few weeks. I'll just see where this rounds off to. And I got lucky. It exploded. My water didn't go green and I just let it sit. Now I'm sitting there like, well, what am I supposed do to. To dose? So I just took a red solo cup and I went to red solo cup every day. And apparently that was too much. So a red solo cup was not the measurement that you needed because immediately.

The 16 ounces red solo, well, you know, 20 ounces.

I had this lovely country time lemonade container full of phytoplankton and then suddenly my aquarium matched its color.

So, you know, Toby Keith would be so proud of you right now if he was alive.

But to reward myself with the abounding life in the tank, after I got the UV filter temporarily put in there to sterilize it out, I got myself a. Was it pink dragon goby Mandarin something Goby.

You're looking at us like trying to remember what the.

He's looking at us like, we know mad.

Your dragonet, it was pink, it was bright, it was cooler than. And it just mowed down pods like a. Like a lawnmower.

It was probably.

That's what they eat.

It was great.

That's right.

At least he didn't say coolie loach. Adam. So.

Well, I mean, that's not a beginner fish for saltwater people. Like if that is not an ocellaris.

Now that it doesn't have any more copepods.

No, it did well.

Did you give it to somebody else?

No, it did well. And then when I got rid of the tank, it went away. When the tank went away. But it lived a full long life in that year's time.

I'm sure. I'm sure it was scarfing on all though.

Well, there was two. Two types of fish in the tank that was just obese. It was that dragonet, that pinky guy and. Yeah, and a lawnmower blenny that I swear to God looked like Jimmy's swollen up. Like it was just rounder than it looked like a bouncy Ball. It was literally just a circular ball.

Big, big ball.

No, it was just a little tiny chode that was just round and couldn't swim.

Pigs, they. They'll just eat everything.

You must have caught me on a cold day. I don't know what you're talking about. Slinky push you down the steps and watch you just go backwards.

Also, that dragonet was not cheap, by the way.

Marine fish, they're not.

No.

I'm amazed that it actually lived because even if you get them and they will eat copepods, a lot of times they hit them with cyanide and. And they poison them. So, yeah, they'll be alive and they'll eat, but they just wither away and starve to death. I'm actually a little impressed that you've got it to live for more than in a month or two.

Yeah. I got this from a particular wholesaler in Minnesota. It was there for a bit because no one wanted to buy them.

Because it's too much money.

No, because nobody carries a ton of copepods in that. That amount. And that's a very big tank for that because, I mean, I had 60 gallons of pure. The wall was crawling copepods and that thing mowed it down. Oh, yeah, yeah.

You don't need.

You can get them on frozen, but.

Say, oh, I was only told that you had to have them live. See, again, I'm not a salt guy. This was me getting into it. So I was told you could only have them live.

They're difficult to condition. But you can condition a lot of dragonets onto frozen food. Especially now, to Adam's point, they are captive bread in large quantities. All your green blue, your ruby red dragonets, your psychedelic dragonets, they're all captive bred now. So you, you've reduced that risk of, of cyanide exposure. And they're capturing. And then in a lot of the breeding facilities, they're like immediately weaned on to nano pellets and other processed foods. And then they really can get conditioned onto frozen food.

Sure.

Or even pellets these days.

I was gonna say Bones just put in the chat that since I've seen him take pellets and I'm like, there was no feeding that fish because I had so many copepods.

So I didn't know you had fish in that tank until one day it was solid green at the end on all three sides. And then one of the lawnmower blendies just kind of made a small little quarter size hole. And you kind of look in there with your eye and see them in there and you're like, hey, it was.

Just this giant round ball giving you the middle fin. Yeah, the middle fin. The middle fin giving you the middle fin. I think we got at least an idea how you can get started on dosing your tank with some phytoplankton. Now, you talked about other plankton, so can I go to the store? And you talk about zooplankton? What are the planktons? Do we need to concerned about other different colors? Do I have to match them? Something like a, you know, Captain Planet ring.

Like granimals, you know. Do you remember granimals, people?

Hold on. We went an hour and 10 minutes so far just learning about phytoplankton. Now you're gonna tell me there's other planet I gotta learn about. Damn, I'm exhausted.

So what? Granimals are for you.

Granimals.

Young punks listening.

You feel like you got grandchildren?

No. I do. So, granimals. When I was growing up in the 80s. 1980s, not 18.

Oh, this is your children. Got it.

No, me, you, you, you. That's for everybody, right?

The middle fin. Right there.

That, that was, that was it.

That's the middle fin.

What were we talking about now? Oh, granimals. So it just took all the gets. So you'd buy a pair of pants and it would have like a lion on it on the back pocket. And then your shirt had a lion on the tag and so you smashed up the two tags and you knew you matched. What? Granimals?

I thought granimals was a food.

No, Granimals was a clothing line. God fucking. Keep up, would you?

Hold on then. What the. What the shit is the yogurt my kid eats?

What?

Animals.

Animals. Granimals.

This is.

Wow. I swear to God, I haven't had any weed. All right.

Anyway, it made it much easier for dressing yourself if you're stoned.

I did.

When you're 8 years old, you know.

Oh my God, you're all messed up. Oz is just about to lay an egg. You gotta. Does this match?

No. You've got your lion on with your leopard, dumbass.

That's how you learn to match your clothes.

Granimals. You two.

You know what? It's.

I'm gonna leave tonight and you two are about 2 o' clock in the morning going, we gotta look up. Grandma's gonna think he's full of.

I, I remember this. I grew up in the 80s. See, I mean, I, I might not look it, but I'm 43.

The type of stuff that we're into is like Teddy Fresh.

Teddy Fresh, Yeah.

Right here. Check this out. Like, you know it's the same thing that they stole. It's Teddy Fresh animals. No, look up your animals, you're saying?

Yes. So there are all kinds of different plankton.

Oh, yeah. Back to that.

Yeah. Holy.

Dalton's gonna kill us.

Even as far as like phytoplankton's concerned, there's a bunch of different varieties out there. So if you go and you get one of the blends that's out there and you start trying to culture that.

Is it hybrid?

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Is it all relatively same instructions?

Yes.

Yeah.

Okay. Thank God.

Follow the damn instructions, Robbie.

Thank God. So you okay. Still fertilizer, still like, still aeration, still circular container?

Yep, yep.

Okay.

Basically.

And it's just different ganja.

It's just exactly. You get different strains and they're gonna have a different high, if you will.

So if I go to a salt store, like a saltwater local fish store, I can go in there and be like, they'll have eight flavors of plankton's.

I know.

Likely not. So what, what a lot of producers, myself included, do is sell a blended product.

It's just your recipe, you know what I'm saying?

My special sauce.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Oh, we're supposed to. Oh, yeah.

I'm so glad this is on camera. Anyways. To keep your special sauce.

Yeah. So.

So what's in your sauce? Or do you want to.

That's a secret.

That's a secret policy.

Why do you both have your hands in your pockets when you're talking about your secrets?

Hand check.

All right, crepes.

I'm going to look this way, you look that way. Now we can do this podcast. You two want to be left alone.

No, there'll be time for that. I'm.

So anyways, I'm going to get plankton from a store and it's going to be a blend.

Yep. Like it's almost.

So they'll say it's phytoplankton, but it might have zooplankton. A plankton?

No, no, it'll be. It'll be a blend of phytoplankton. It'll be a bottle of green water, but it's gonna maybe have two to five to six different types of phytoplankton in there. And they're all gonna have different nutritional profiles.

Sure.

They will out compete each other in enclosed culture. So if you want a variety of four different types, you have to have different cultures for all four of those types. If you just buy that jug of six different types. So my jug put it into a jar.

That's what happened. My jug lost the war after a year sitting in the jar, and I only have one type left.

You got it.

Ah, that's why I had to change out the jimmy.

Yeah. So they'll out compete for the nutrients, because some of them can swim a little bit better. Some of them can absorb things.

Some of them are stronger swimmers. Robbie.

Yeah, Tell me. I know we can't get to your secret sauce, but how many different cultures of planktons do you have on your farm?

I. I produce three different varieties right now. Well, okay, so that's a lie I had to shut.

I like how he calls himself out right away.

I shut the lab down for a hot minute as I'm doing a little bit of an expansion, adding some updated equipment, and, hey, cleaning up some of the.

When do I get to come over?

Sanitizing protocols. Whenever, anytime. You're in Duluth, man.

I'll make the trip.

Come on.

You came. You came down here.

Yeah. Oh, dude. Yeah, you owe me a visit. But no, we're gonna get that cranking back up again. I'm hoping to be producing six different varieties within the next year consistently, because you have different. Different profiles of pigments that are in them, different profiles of your fatty acids, different profiles of your lipids and cholesterols that are in them. And having a variety is the spice of life for just about everybody.

So basically, what you want to do is if you see your buddy at a fish swamp or fish club or you're hanging out with your buddy, and he's got a culture, you got a culture. You should, you know, swap a little bit, you know, swap spit, maybe.

I mean, if you're culturing different stuff. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. And so having a variety of phytoplankton is good for your aquarium. It's good for. If you're culturing copepods as well, you know, which is, to be honest, like, that's the reason a lot of people want to culture phytoplankton is to also culture copepods.

That's. That's the next episode. Yeah, right there.

Zooplankton.

Copepods.

Yeah. Yeah, no, that. That. That. That's a. That's a whole episode in itself there, for sure. But, yeah, the phytoplankton, there's a lot of different varieties out there, and myself and other people will sell monocultures where it's just the One single strain.

How do you test that? You got to put in the microscope and then just see who is the Spartan winning colony.

Yeah, you should. You should be like, if you have a scope and you're getting a new inoculant or a new batch in from somewhere, throw it under there, take a look. You should be able to see there's different slides that you can get that you can use to count the cell density in a given sample as well. So if you're really looking to see, like, oh, what is the culture density here? You can do it with a microscope and a particular slide. And then there's also Secchi sticks or Secchi devices that allow you just through turbidity, to kind of gauge how thick the culture is. And that'll give you a relative culture density of whether you're. You got more or less than you did last time you checked. It doesn't tell you the exact cell count or anything, but it gives you a good visual representation.

Question here from the audience. You did say that when you have different types of plankton, generally one will win. Generally speaking, are there types of planktons that can coexist in that jar long term?

I don't know of any, no.

So no matter what you're going to find out, you're basically putting them into the bathroom. Battle zone.

Yeah.

And someone will reign supreme.

Thunderdome.

Yeah.

You are thunderdoming your planktons.

All right.

It's highly unlikely. I mean, I, I shouldn't say no.

But it's none that, you know, none.

That I know of. And from what I know, it seems highly unlikely, but that, I mean, maybe that's the code to crack, because there's literally hundreds of different species of phytoplankton.

Yeah. And maybe some undiscovered stuff we don't know about. Well, now there's not a lot of guy in petri dishes trying to. To, you know, crack the code on different planktons.

I saw Men in Black.

Unless it's. I was about to use that joke or spongebob squarepants.

Yep. Saw Men in Black. Happens.

Oh, there's a way. I, I do believe it. But, no, there's. There's such a variety of phytoplankton that I, I find it hard to believe that there wouldn't be. Maybe that's the challenge is to find that, you know, a lot of the. A lot of what we call phytoplankton is they're diatoms, they're dinoflagellates, they're different types of organisms. They're not even technically algae or plants most of the time. So we're.

Rotifers fit in the. Am I pronouncing that correctly? Rotifers.

Rotifers, Rotifers, rotifers.

Where does that fit in the. In the cycle of life?

So rotifers are going to be one of those primary consumers, the first organisms that eat the phytoplankton. So then they are going to bioaccumulate all of the good in the phyto. So and so they're going to be the. That first food that a lot of larval fish are going to eat. A lot of different coral with really small polyps and things.

So we have the base of phytoplankton. Well, we have the rotifers, which is the first. First bites. Then we have the micro crustrations and, and copepods. And then we go into a gamut of things, everything all the way up to our fish. Yeah, all right.

Yeah, it's a, it's a food web, man. Well, it's amazing.

I. We need to have podcast number two on copepods because I have many questions. We get emailed in about copep pods being like the most difficult thing for even experienced reefers in the tank and love to get into that at another time.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. There's. There's all kinds of cool ways to get really vibrant coke pod cultures, but it's all same with like the phytoplankton. It takes a certain level of regimented consistency and sterilization protocols and things like that. And that's where most people end up failing, is just biosecurity. You'll get contamination between different samples. Like, if you're growing rotifers, you better keep those 15ft away from any of your plankton cultures and you better use 100 different tools and equipment for those two systems or you're going to wipe out your plankton, your phytoplankton.

But you'll have a lot of rotifers, right?

Yeah.

Suddenly you'll have a lot.

I learned that one the hard way. But thankfully at that time, there were people that were like, starting to breed a lot of clownfish.

It just worked.

Cardinal fish and they were looking for rotifers. Like, okay, yeah, I got you for the next two months. Let's do it.

I'm your guy. Belly up.

Belly up to the bar.

Adam, you've been particularly quiet. You got, you got any details for us?

No, I'm just listening and taking notes.

He's fact checking all this shit.

He is right now.

Yeah, he's fact checking all of my bs.

He's just going bullshit, bullshit.

Nah. Right now he's trying to figure out how big of a vat he can make of this green, nasty water basement.

Well, I already got that figured out.

Ta da.

The only thing I wondering. So for saltwater people, what is the. That breed captive saltwater fish, what is the main culture they use or is that kind of every. There's like two or three main hatcheries. There's one in Hawaii, there's one in Tennessee. What is the main greenwater culture they use or do they both use the same one or you don't know.

A lot of those are, are the primary first food of most marine larval fish is going to be like a microorganism and not phytoplankton. So what they're feeding is a lot of times is rotifers is going to be that first or honestly brine shrimp, naupli, like the juvenile brine shrimp, are still used in a lot of marine ornamental fish aquaculture, but rotifers are going to be one of the primary first foods for a lot of marine marine larval fish. These farms are either producing rotifers and phytoplankton in house typically. So they're producing a lot of it themselves. They probably have a couple, three, four cultures and are producing the phytoplankton and then they've got some cultures of the rotifers as well. And maybe they're doing some brine shrimp to get them going and then some various levels of copepods mixed in there. Yeah, I thought there was one other.

Because I was, I, I thought with them breeding tangs, they had to start doing some of the tangs on the phytoplankton level.

At the phytoplankton level, perhaps maybe some of the more herbivorous fish and maybe there are particularly larger sized phytoplankton that are more of a ideal diet for some of the larval marine fish. I guess I don't have a good answer for that one.

Now. How often do you, you need to.

Be an expert in the fish more than you would the phytoplankton?

I feel like, yeah, probably.

How, how often are you dosing? What would the average person be dosing? How often would they be feeding?

I go every other day. A lot of people will suggest every day, but I go every other day. It kind of started out as laziness or it was hard. I just felt like an Ass for not doing it every day, because I was supposed to do it every day. So I was like, oh, do it every other day.

Day.

And sometimes maybe it's every third day.

You know, don't you worry about getting too many, like phosphates and other things affecting the tank? Like it's just going to spike and you gotta balance it out, you know, give them a. Not starvation period, but a time where they're not.

They're having to forage in the tank. You're saying? Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Because fresh water, I don't tell any human. For an adult fish to ever feed anything past every other day. If you're growing on fish, I get it, you're gonna feed sometimes six times a day. But an adult fish, you're trying to. To keep, you know, going. That isn't breeding every other day. Is the stable for fresh.

The thing with phytoplankton, the recommended way to dose it is in some live state. Ideally, it's not a direct source of organic material in and of itself. The second you add it to the water, unlike a lot of other food, whether it's frozen or processed, it's going to have some type of. Some level of metabolic activity.

It's a delayed reaction. You're feeding the food.

Right. The theory is that by the time. Because your tank is not ideal breeding conditions for this phytoplankton, but it will live for a long enough time before it gets either filtered out by your filtration or consumed by suspension or filter feeders.

Right.

If you happen to have a batch of phytoplankton that's gone bad and you end up dosing that to your aquarium, you could very, very well be adding direct ammonia sources. It could be.

Oh, so how do you know if it's bad? Does it still look green or is it going to go brown in the container?

A bit of both. It's going to lose its color and you're gonna get.

Also, Jimmy's freaking out. There's a spider behind your head and he's losing.

How big is it? Oh, that's a good one.

Oh, nice smack. Continue.

Not into spiders, huh?

Not at all.

Yeah. Anyways, how do you. A purpose.

How. How do you define dead algae or. Excuse me, phytoplankton coloration is going to.

Be your first clue. Not all phytoplankton is green. You know, some of it is inherently kind of brown to red to yellow to green. So you have a spectrum of colors depending upon the variety and what pigmentation they're Supposed to have.

Sure.

So as long as you know what it's supposed to look like then.

But I mean, I don't. What if it gets real dark and I just like, man, that's really concentrated.

Well, really dark and concentrated is a good thing, like you want.

If I get that dark and concentrated, what will it turn? If it's dark and concentrated and that dies, it will go light colored all of a sudden.

Yep. Depending upon why it's dying and how fast it's dying. If it's dying because of lack of environmental conditions, whether it's flow. Jimmy peed in it, or light or your friends peed in it or something.

I'm gonna do it.

A lot of times you will see just a. A decrease in the color because it's either falling out of suspension or it's not producing or something like that. Now if you just see like a decrease in color, it's not necessarily dead. You can maybe make some corrections there, increase the flow. Maybe it needs some more nutrients. Maybe the light isn't intense enough. But if it starts changing color, then you know that you have actually some die off and not a lack of productivity.

But the point is, is, is it won't go from light to dark. It'll go dark to light most of the time in. If it dies, right?

Yeah. Yeah. It's not gonna. Yeah, yeah.

So if I have a nice dark green, I got a nice backing that I got a good colony, and I can. I'm. I'm convinced that that's a good product I got going on. Smell it.

So it smells the other thing too, which is also a very subjective thing.

You know, I. Yeah, but you, you get the idea. If you're in there feeding that stuff every day, you're solo cupping like I was. You know what it smells like and then suddenly it smells like, ooh, ass. What the hell happened here? Yeah, Jimmy. Jesus.

So absolutely, it's pretty recognizable by smell. When a culture is turning or has turned, they all have a limiting factor in the culture. They're going to use up the nutrients that you provided for them. They're going to have a particular rate of reproduction. And so that's going to lag off as they use. Use up all the nutrients. So when you harvest a particular amount, if you want to use a continuous culture method, then you just replace that volume that you harvested and dilute that culture again with a new nutrient solution in your growth medium.

Sure.

So how many cultures do you keep going at one time? You have a backup culture for me?

Oh, yeah. Redundancy is huge. Redundancy is huge. I try and keep three cultures of every variety that I want to produce going at any one time. And even though they're in the same space, I've had one right next to the other crash out for no real apparent reason.

I, I treat my live cultures for fresh and some of my fish the same, some of the same ways is I pawn them off to my homies. I was like, hey, you want some free live cultures? I was like, yeah, I do. That'd be great. Good. When mine die, I'm going to give you a call and then you're, you're going to shoot share. Oh, that, that's all I would need for some free. Free live cultures. Absolutely. Great. Let's get this rolling. And I have a couple backup plans with my homies. You know, I do that. Some of, some of my rare fish got some cichlids that I can't get back. Some limias, those are. I got some of those pawned out to my friends because I know that if I. My cultures take a crap, that's what happens. I got blue eyed, lemon bristlenose, long fin, plecos, and I got them from a buddy because he treated me like that. He farms them. He has all, all kinds of them. He has a terrible thing. Go through his fish room, lost all of them, came back. I gave him pairs.

Nice. So you had brood stock for.

I had brood stock for him.

That's awesome.

Yep.

Yeah. You never know if you're going to have a power outage.

Something's happening.

You know, in the marine aquarium craft, there's a whole sentiment of frag it forward with coral. We're just like that. You've got a prize coral specimen. As soon as it's big enough to bust a frag off, give it to your buddy with a good tank. And then when your tank's shits the bed, you can hopefully get that thing back.

Maybe that's what that guy said to me the other day, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't to do with salt water. I think it was because of my colored clothing.

Were you not wearing your granimals or what?

Yeah.

Oh, no, it wasn't frag, was it? Never mind. Different word. All right.

Wow.

I walked into that one. That hurt.

Frag. Coral frag.

Thank you. Thank you.

We have a question from the audience.

Let's read it here on topic. Let's find it back here.

It is on topic.

Does depleting and topping off the culture help grow it out at all.

Yeah, you. It has to get harvested at some point.

Like, do you like dump like it. Let's pretend it's my jar again. Let's just explain this a little clearer because I think I know where he's going with this. If I have a jar and I've been running it for nine months and it starts to funk out, do I drain that bitch down to like 5% and then fill it up all with just the fresh. Not fresh water, but new water water?

Yes.

And then that would suddenly reinvigorate the jar.

Now you're getting the culturing method.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yep. So yes, to the forest gump fish keeping there. That is. That is exactly what you need to be doing. Like what Rob's explained earlier. Like, if you just harvest them out and then you just put tank water in there, Were you adding fertilizer then to what you topped off?

I don't want to talk about it.

No. Okay. So. So that's the thing is you have to replenish the, the food source.

Okay.

With whatever.

Now we know in the circle of life, real story.

Yeah.

I would only add fertilizer anytime that the color wasn't strong enough. All right. I would literally like. I would treat it like Kool Aid because that's all I know. I don't know this. This was not something that someone taught me. It's all self learned. So I'd literally just see it. I see a jar in a Kool Aid container and I treat like Kool it that Kool Aid isn't strong enough. Let's add another packet. Yeah, let's add another 30 cent packet from the grocery store.

There you go. J. Jones.

For sure. Too soon.

Google that if you want to be depressed later.

Oh, geez.

Yeah. All right.

So yeah, you have to replace the, the culture media and then you'll go through a leg phase where you're not gonna see. You said leg, leg, leg.

Thank you.

We're gonna get so much information.

Me. Thank you. Yeah, we said the guest, he came.

In person for go through the lag phase where you won't see any kind of growth and it'll just barely be ticking and then it will.

All right, I did get a message. I did get a message on my phone that I've been ignoring.

Was it cease and assist or what?

No, this is a real message. If someone takes a dead fish, whether it's a small damsel fish or a little goldfish, and they blend it up in a blender and they put it it in that container. Will that be fertilizer enough for. For phytoplankton in a pinch.

What is this? The Basmatic.

I didn't want to ask it so.

I guess you know, I don't know.

I can. We could we do research and the next podcast you come on when you come up, we'll supply the dead fish. You're gonna. You're gonna try it?

Maybe I'll try and get a hold of some fish emulsions and make a tea and see if there are some other type of.

I would just google it myself.

He said. And then he added details of if you could. If you had to strain it or think outside the box here to try to get a pinch for fertilizer. When he can't. When he can't was waiting for shipping spends.

I have a. I have a feeling you'd get more decomposition than fertilization out of something like that. But.

But you haven't tried it.

I have not tried it. So I do not know.

How about we lab this out together?

I think we can.

I would just buy the 20 thing.

Should we get.

Use that.

Should we get a jar and try it out?

Same.

I bet you it smells really delicious. I bet it just smells awesome.

Some of that fish based fertilizer for plants. It's just disgusting smelling but it's good ass fertilizer. So if you made a tea. I don't know I mean put it.

In your garage if you want to.

Try this kids when it's 90 degrees. Yeah, we're not endorsing blending fish.

No, no dead fish. This is already dead.

Take the bats, the whole bat. We've talked about bleaching octopus. We've talked about in jars.

We've talked about.

Talked about all sorts of crazy.

We're not blending fish.

Okay.

This brought to you by the Basematic.

Hold on.

Remember the Bassmatic? Yeah, I do remember the basement Basematic.

So I forgot that now we have an emoji of Father Fish in our discord. Someone just posted a big fat emoji of Father Fish. So I don't know. Again, you're not part of the freshwater community. Father Fish is a famous YouTuber. God bless us all. This guy is a legend. He's for the advanced aquarium Freshwater aquarium hobby guy. He's the don't touch it, don't do water changes guy. And he believes that we should take the Indian Native American method of like taking a fish and planting it in our soil. A dead fish and then putting your corn kernel in there to grow our plants. But he thinks we should do this in our aquarium hobby. So of course that's what they posted as Father Fish when I said blend a fish and make it for fertilizer.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Well, I'll tell you what. In marine systems, when a fish dies, if it's a healthy tank, you don't even notice it.

That's the same with fresh. Yep, same with fresh.

Take some fava beans.

I. I love this guy, but this guy's. He's. He's a bit made fun of because he's not for beginner hobbyist. Cuz they take it the wrong way.

Who's that? The.

The father. So we'll see. Like beginner hobbyists. Take that clown puke gravel that you get from Walmart. You know, multicolored stuff. There's nothing beneficial in it. They don't have a single plant in the tank. And then they'll just take a dead fish gravel because they're not understanding his message. It's just. Nope, you're not getting it, guys. You're making stew is what you're doing. Oh my gosh, he's a treat. This is not making fun of Father Fish. I love him to death. I hope someday I get to talk to them on the podcast.

Have you.

Have you tried after our beta podcast.

Oh, he. He's willing. I've talked to his. His. Was it his daughters and he's willing to come on the podcast. But he's like. He wakes up at like, I don't know, 4am and then goes to bed at 2.

You know, just take a day off work.

If you can make that work. The knowledge that that old man will give us is ridiculous.

If you're pert near 90, trying to make time for someone is impossible.

Or if you care.

What'd you say down it?

Does he still have a store down in Venice, Florida?

I. I know he did.

I don't know.

A while. I might have to go down there. It's about an hour away.

Hey, I'm in. I'm a huge fan. Like, honestly, go tell him he can.

Be on the podcast for free.

I'm a huge fan. He's just not for beginner aquarists.

I want to look into Father Fish.

I'm dead serious. You're gonna find the coolest you've ever seen.

You should look into the Mathematic.

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

What was that? Was that a Chappelle show bit or.

No.

Saturday Night Live.

Saturday Night Live. Dan.

I remember. It's one of those things you take.

A fresh fish and put it in the blender and just go.

And it would just turn the bass. The entire bass. That's right.

The entire bass. That's the best thing ever.

And then.

And then he'd always pour it into a glass like he's gonna drink it, you know?

He did?

Yeah, I think he did. Oh.

All right.

Well, I think we've milked about enough out of this.

Unless.

Unless. Adam, you got any more questions?

No, I'm good.

Jimothy, I had something strange happen last night. I just wanted to share it with you because it's still kind of disturbing.

Hold that. Did we miss anything glaring on our topics this evening?

No, I. I mean, we kind of covered the bases. We kind of talked about the purpose of phytoplankton, kind of its position in the food web, some basics about the methodology and set up, the usage. Seems like we got through most of the basics.

Well, if you guys got questions, you could go on our discord. It's in the link. You can go to the reef lab dot net. There's contact information for Reefer Oz, right? On his website. He has email, and if you're daring enough, his telephone number directly on there because he's dumb. So call him, text him, Sexton. What do you need to do?

99 per question.

He does require full tank shots for answers, though.

Show me your tanks.

Show me your tanks.

Show me your tanks.

For sure. So certainly check it out. And please get him to send you some delicious plankton.

Yeah, hit me up.

Yeah. And don't. It was a joke, guys. Please don't eat, ingest, or insert any green liquid into your orifices unless you.

Want to be known as a pussy.

Now, Jimmy, you had one more note that you wanted to share with the podcast. I do, too, now that we're at the end, by the way.

So this happened to me the other night, and I just wanted to share it because it's just. Oddly, it's just odd. And I just. I just. So we went out the other night, and we. We had dinner and we had drinks, and my spouse had more drinks than I had. And so I drive home. She goes, I'm going to bed. I'm hammered. I said, okay. And anyway, she's laying there, you know, how you about ready to fall asleep and your wife will say something stupid to you? She goes, so anyway, I thought of her. I thought I heard her snoring, okay? And out of nowhere, she goes, hey. I go, what? You want to know how clams reproduce? I go, what? You want to Know what I learned today? I go, what? She goes, I learned how clams reproduce. I go, how do clams reproduce? She goes, broadcast, spawning, mic drop night. Like, what the hell is all this about? When I'm just falling asleep. Broadcast, spawning mic drop. Good night.

You know, wrong.

That's. There's a couple mic drops moments that we've had between each other. And I think that's a new one we got to make fun of Jen for. The one that you guys make fun of me for is. Spoiler alert. Mashed potatoes.

Oh, God. Robbie made me watch this God awful.

Dr. No, you wouldn't watch it. So we're still in my living room.

You tricked me into it, you dickhead.

Okay? You're sitting in my living room. Like, you got to see the show, Jimmy, if you've never seen it. Like, what do you mean, the show? She's a dermatologist and she helps these poor, poor people. He's like, what are the you talking about? I pulled up on the television and we're sitting there and this episode of Dr. Pimple Popper comes up. And this person that has the only describable as like a watermelon embedded into their neck and shoulder.

A boil. It's a giant softball.

It's the size of like a watermelon on their neck and shoulder. And I'm like, look at that thing, Jimmy. And he gets it. He immediately stands out. He's like, hell, no.

I'm about ready to go because she's.

Holding a scalpel ready to pop that bitch open, you know? And I'm like. I'm like, jimmy, you can't miss this. And he's just running for the door. And I'm like, jimmy, no. He's like, robbie, this is disgusting. I'm not gonna watch this. I'm like, spoiler. Spoiler alert. There's mashed potatoes in it. And at that moment, at that moment, she takes the scalpel and it sprays her.

Yeah.

What looks to be garlic. Mashed potatoes.

Potatoes.

Yep. And then he didn't come over for two weeks.

I'm doing that tonight to my wife when I'm sleeping, just before she falls asleep tonight, I'm just gonna go, hey, what? Spoiler alert. Mashed potatoes night. Mic drop.

Mic drop.

I got one more before we leave. So you listen to the dolphin episode, and I played you the Patreon content. If you guys haven't listened to it, you can subscribe on Discord for 2.99 or you can subscribe on Patreon to Thank you for five bucks a month.

I ain't paying.

Five bucks to Discord is much cheaper. And then you can get our exclusive content. We did a podcast talking about conspiracies. One episode, I think it was like episode 50 on our podcast. And dolphin jokes have been going around on the Discord for a long time. Since then, guys, it's been great.

My granddaughter called me the other day at two and a half years old. She goes, hey, it's Shark Week. I go. I go, yeah, Indy, I know it's Shark Week. And she goes, do you know how much it costs to swim with a shark? And I go, no. She goes, arm and a leg. There you go. That's pretty funny from a two and a half year old.

That's solid.

All right. On that note, the rest of this podcast will be for Patreon only, Discord supporters only. So thank you. And till the next episode, thanks guys, for listening to the podcast. Please go to your favorite place where podcasts are found, whether it be Spotify, itunes, Stitcher, wherever they can be found. Like subscribe. And make sure you get push notifications directly to your phone so you don't miss great content like this. And it's just kind of fun watching a couple crabs wrestle or starfish on there. Just. It's a great ambiance when you're taking.

A. I didn't get a chance to take a yet, but I am excited for my morning poo.

That nice, near thick, green water.

Everything is just crawling with bacteria and microbes of some sort.

Well, this is the new Viagra, Jimmy.

It might even cure, you know, that tilapia herpes thing? What's that smell?

Please don't eat, ingest, or insert any green liquid into your orifices.