You know, I'm just sitting down at my desk reading fan mail and I've gotten a few messages from some of my fans and if some of my friends and family about our podcast and they said that they love the advertisements at the beginning but don't know what Joe Shrimp Shack is. So for those that don't know what Joe Shrimpshack is, number one, go to Joe Shrimpshack.com. Find yourself an amazing store filled with luxuries in the aquarium hobby. And the best of all shrimp hobby, I think it really goes to what are shrimp and why are they so delicious? Well, they're not food. These are ornamental shrimp that you keep in your aquarium. They look like jewels. It is a wonderful hobby. If you've never kept shrimp, certainly go to Joe Shrimp shack's YouTube page and look at some of his creations that he's done and get inspired. And again, if you are going to get into shrimp hobby, listen to our episodes. We have a lot of great information and use promo code Aquarium Guide to check out for 15 whole percent off your entire order. We'll get back to the funny ads another week, but this week we got to give some information. And thank you to Joe Shrimp Shack for sponsoring the show. Also, guys, today we are releasing this podcast 925, and come this Saturday is the fargo Exotic Pet Expo. Please check out the information. They're going to be holding it. It's going to be in limited capacity, but I'm going to be there. If you guys want to meet the host of this podcast, certainly hit me up. Maybe I can even drag Jimmy along. We don't know. But I will certainly be there to say hello with plenty of hand sanitizer and mask. So hope to see you there. One last thing, I just want to take a minute. We are interviewing George Farmer this week. So take a minute on your favorite podcast platform, whether it be itunes, spotify, stitcher, Google podcasts, and look up the George Farmer podcast. We're also going to have a link in the show notes. Be sure to subscribe to that. It's fantastic content. He's recently kicked this off. Get this guy rolling. His podcast is wonderful, just like all of his other content. Definitely worth the follow. Now let's kick that podcast. Welcome to the Aquarium Guys podcast with your host, Jim colby and Rob dolsen. Jimmy, it isn't a mustard stain, alright? That's just fresh food. Your in shirt. Oh, hi everybody. This is the aquarium. Guys, podcast. I'm Rob Zulson.

I'm Jim colby, about ready to commit murder.

I've been listening to this podcast called Two Bears, One Cave and Tom segura has inspired me to make fun of you preemptively every show.

That's good. I'm glad you can get out of bed in the morning and have a reason to go on with your day. Just start right up.

Yeah. Making fun of you. Well, I was going to do like the whole thing. Like, he was just a bit where he pretends that bert is racist. No, that's not what you tell Jews. And then he just moves on like, oh, welcome to the podcast. I love you, Jimmy. That's the point of this.

Yeah, thanks a lot, rob's.

But what's new this week?

What do you got going on?

Well, Adam is not with us.

Adam is not with us. Adam has got a real job.

This is another Friday podcast and the.

Reason we're doing it on Friday is because we've got a wonderful guest today.

So anytime that we try to do scheduling with people, we're blessed to have people overseas join us. We had just had Josh Picadon recently and that was another Friday podcast. So to try to accommodate time zones, we did this one at 03:00 p.m., but normally again, 07:00 p.m. Monday. You can join us on the discord, go to Quarrygyspodcast.com and you can watch it live. It's the only way you can watch it live because we only publish the audio because YouTube sucks. Don't tell anybody.

Wow.

Don't tell anybody.

Making people mad already.

Right? But our special guest, we are so excited to have the famous George Farmer on the podcast. You can find his content@georgefarmerstudios.com. He is a famous aquascaper. And again, you're on YouTube, you do a lot of collaborations with people. You have a new podcast, the George former podcast, and there's even a book coming right around the corner. George, welcome, buddy. Thank you so much.

Thanks for having me, guys. Really appreciate it. And I think famous is a bit too nice. I think infamous may be a bit more accurate.

No, you're infamous when you talk about dolphin memes on a podcast. You're famous and you make beautiful creations.

That's how this works and write books and know what you're talking about.

Right?

Where are you joining us from? You're over in the UK?

I'm in England. They're Cambridge. So you may have heard of Cambridge. It's about an hour north of London.

Well, again, thanks so much. It's about 03:00 our time. I'm assuming that's 09:00 p.m. Your time.

Yeah, coming up to that. Yeah.

Thanks again for joining us. But before we get too far, we have George on. So of course this podcast is going to be at least getting our toes wet into Aquascaping and some of the inside secrets from George. But before we do, we always got user questions and of course, how jimmy's week has been.

My week has been wonderful. I was on vacation a couple of weeks ago and now I'm trying to get back into the real world.

And now you've cleaned from the hangover.

I did a little drinking on my vacation. I did some day drinking, which led into some afternoon drinking.

I just blame the dolphin comments from the prior podcast that encouraged the drinking.

That's why I drink it's just to forget about that podcast. That was a horrible, horrible podcast that you brought up and nobody wants to hear about that damn dolphin anymore.

So any news this week?

I got nothing for you.

Your pond froze over. We got our first frost, got our.

First frost and Cold Front came through. And as you know, I'd like to name the cold fronts that come through after my ex wife. So that was cold front, cold front gale that came through and froze my pond.

It was a frozen gale.

But you know what? My fish are happy. They still popped up and ate the other day. So they're still out there swimming around. And we probably got about another six weeks until we got to get them inside. And I've actually been thinking about maybe leaving the fish outdoors for a while and and trying some of the the.

Well, all you have is goldfish out there. Correct. Maybe some baby koi.

Yeah, I got I got some eight inch koi and butterfly coy out there and so I'm just going to see what their tolerance is for cold.

I mean, the thing is, what two and a half, 3ft deep?

I redid it and I got it down to about 24 inches now. And I possibly could leave it if I put a heater out there and kept some variation and stuff. But I don't know if I'm going to do that yet this year or not.

That's what they say. Yeah. ah. You know, we had pond experts on here and they they were stating they were stating 2ft is all you really need.

I know. But, you know, I still can't believe when it gets down to 30 below that that's not going to be frozen.

But just keep it bubbling.

Keep it bubbling.

Keep it bubbling. Well, my week, I have really kicked off my shrimp rack. So before we built it, and it's kind of been sitting empty waiting for me to have a paycheck. Well, of course I never had the paycheck come, so I put on the credit card but went down, saw Joe, got some nice shrimp in Joe shrimp shack down Minneapolis. Yeah, we went down there, picked on him, left another present in his aquarium. He didn't see it yet. And I got a bunch of different neocardenias. So I got blue, yellow, orange, red snowball, black snowball. So that's all starting up and going really well. Not a complaint. Planting it out and going ham. So hopefully that inspires people. Get your shrimp rack going. tis the season, winter starting. First question. I'm from bed, from England. This is Henry, by the way. And I've had some hydras show up in my tanks. They shouldn't cause much trouble with what fish I have, but couldn't find anything online how to get rid of them without using dog dewormer or completely bleaching the tank. Thanks to the podcast manbij listening recently, and there hasn't been an episode I haven't enjoyed. Many thanks, Henry.

Was that to us or somebody else?

That was to us.

That was us.

Okay, right.

So somebody enjoyed our podcast.

Contrary to popular belief. Now I've only had like one interaction with Hydra and it wasn't even my take. It was a friend of mine. I made a light recommendation and I can't remember what it was. I think it was just some sort of pest control medication because I've never dealt with it.

I've never had to deal with it either.

It's, in my experience, rather rare to get hydra in a tank, but I think we're going to save this one for the next Dr. Fish episode.

Oh, we'll throw that at him and see if it sticks.

Unless George, do you have any recommendations on hydra or hurt anybody with it with issues?

No, I've never actually dealt with it before. All I know is apparently a symptom of an undermaintained tank.

Well, I would assume that any of those pests that appears a little extra food, little extra detritus, but I'd assume Fish would eat it.

Like you said, I've never dealt with it. So we'll have to save that one for Dr. Fish.

Well, Henry, that is the definition of a great question. If you stumped us or we haven't dealt with it, we're going to get the expert for you. So tune in for a future Dr. Fish episode will be probably episode volume three. We'll get that in there. Next one. We just got a viewer that said my guppies had babies and he'd sent pictures and I don't want to just ignore this. This is the highlight of a tank, is when they're spunning guppies for some aquarius think that they're going to spun anyway, but that's an accomplishment. Celebrate your accomplishments. No matter how big or small, having guppies is still some of the funnest things I've ever had in a tank. My wife, that's her favorite number one thing, is in my nine to ten gallon tank restrictive living system is her scooping the sump every day for baby guppies. So enjoy the process, sir. Congratulations on your breeding and rearing. Next one is from Cole. Just started listening to the podcast, got in the hobby past January. My son is along for the writer, which is awesome. We have great luck with the hobby so far, as well as some mistakes and lessons learned. The Bashir Deep dive could not have come at a better time. We are debating on a pair of smaller species of bashir to attempt breeding. Could you possibly share the differences between Canada, us in the hobby prices and species, etc. Also, when breeding, say, epistagama, how often should one introduce a new male or female to freshen up genes? This part boggles my mind, but we have a I'm going to have you read that, Jimmy? It's that word.

Cockatoidis.

Cockatoides.

Cockatoides is a pistachama.

There we go. I'm not on a pistol.

Manipurs.

Yeah, it's probably one of the most.

Common, so we've had our cockatoids bond. Daniel spawn and Nanakara anomalies anomalies. I'm going to have you read it from now on. Would be nice to get a good idea of limits. I know of the possible defect, except how many generations there are were stumped. So just to answer the questions here in a row, could we share the differences between Canada and us in the hobby as far as price and species list? So as far as before COVID we could have given you some sort of an estimate. In our experience, we have some friends over the Canadian border. It's very much based upon what's legal and what's not. For instance, in America, you can't even get a Asian marijuana. Canada, you can. So if it's legal in both countries, it completely depends on your area, if there's breeders and wholesalers. But I see a 5% to 10% increase on a lot of things up north, mainly due to cold shipping.

Cold shipping, packing. And they can only ship into there right now with Ups. And so the farther you are from your wholesaler, which normally is from in our area, of course, Florida, in the Us. I am the farther most north zip code that they have for us. But when you go up to Canada, 200 miles farther north, that's, you know, even farther. Right now I'm paying $80 to $100 per box for shipping from cigarettes farms just to get them up here into northern Minnesota. I'm assuming if you would do that up into Canada, you're probably looking at one and a quarter to 150 per box.

So, I mean, you're, you're asking us to compare Canada U. S. When we're, we're basically on the Canadian border ourselves.

Yeah, we're 200 miles south of the Canadian border.

It's not a huge difference now since COVID borders are locked. No clue.

And I've talked to juliet at length. Julia is my salesperson at segregation farms. There is so much more paperwork to get him into Canada. There are certain things when you order from cigarettes farms, they can tell me what is legal or not legal just in our state of Minnesota. Take for instance, I can't even order in blue crayfish into Minnesota because for some reason they're considered illegal in Minnesota.

And it's not that Minnesota bans them. It's illegal to transport cross state lines or some legality like that. So there's many different technicalities. But as far as prices between us and Canada, couldn't help you there right now.

Yeah, I think what you're going to find out is that you're probably going to be more expensive just for the fact of shipping and paperwork and stuff. But right now I can buy some small bickers for probably about 30 years, whatever. I pick them up for 13, $15 a piece wholesale, and I see them retailing for about $30. So I'm guessing you're probably going to be in that $50 range and that's.

Base price, they go up from there. So fifty dollars to one hundred dollars depending on the species, is what we see.

Yeah.

So the next question is when breeding, say, epistegama, how often should we introduce new specimens to freshen up the genes? There's a lot of discussion on that and I think it's real species to species. I know guppy strains have been going for years and they're certainly in bred guppies. There's a lot of health issues from that. I like to do it whenever I possibly can, so every four generations is a good mark that I casually use for most species I don't know when I'm out and about every six months, grab a new one from a new store, ask them where they get their content from oh, somewhere different. Good. I'll buy it just because I know it's a different strain.

Yes, and the thing is, is you can pick up new stuff at different pet stores. They may be supplied by the same supplier, but chances are that they are not. There's quite a few suppliers out here in the Us still but another great thing you do is swapping with your buddies. I've got a friend that raises a lot of pistagamas and I know that he takes and does some trading with different people just for that very purpose to make sure they got new genes.

There's always a debate between purity of species and when are we inbreeding? Of course you're in breeding right away, but like for instance, endlers, right? I have those endlers from Adam that we make fun of on the podcast, calling them feeder guppies. They're very beautiful, very brilliant, but I'm very nervous introducing new species to them because they're essentially nk grade endlers and they're extremely rare. Trying to find one that matches without ruining that gene pool is going to be quite difficult. So what are your pros and cons.

Then?

The next question in this list would be would be nice to have a good idea of limits to no possible defects or when generations are stumped in your spawns, if you're seeing over 30% defect on anything, I mean, there's a massive warning you've you've gone too far. If you're seeing that when you do a spawn and it isn't something that's elbow I know that already has difficulty out the front gate and you're seeing bent backs, missing fins, any type of mutations or stillborns you might have yourself a red flag.

The other thing, too. People love to, when they're breeding, say, angel fish, and they do the veil angel fish, which are long fin angel fish. All the people we've ever talked to say when you're breeding long fin angel fish, it's always good to breed them to a short tailed version to make it a stronger fish and you'll get part veil and part standard and stuff. And the more we've done this podcast, we've had more people tell said that if you're breeding, let's say, like albino plecos, Bristol nose placoes, you should do an Albino bristol's pleco with a normal briston OS placo to keep the genetics up.

And that one's difficult because you're not going to get because I do that right now. For the bruno's plecos, you're not going to get a full on albino by crossing a normal net. You'll get a mixed color. So you have to know your species like it works with angels. bristle knows it's nice to do to keep a hearty line, but you're going to lose color. I mean, know your pros and cons.

There you go.

Talk to someone who's done it. Honestly. If you have a species that you want to breed, the best place to start is find your local fish group. Go online on Facebook pages and talk to these expert groups. Like, we had Josh pickett, the bashir expert. He has, like, two Facebook three Facebook groups he added me to that are just bashir lovers and keepers, and they know these inside secrets and can help you along the way before you make those mistakes. Yeah.

The more information you can gather, the better off you're going to be. It's better to learn from other people's mistakes than to make that mistake yourself.

So on the end of this email, I didn't finish it. It says, I've learned a ton from the podcast. It's hilarious and very informative. Keeping on ps. Don't worry, my son does not listen to this podcast. Thank you, mom. Thank you.

Wow. We've been banned in his bedroom.

We've been banned. That's okay, mom. listens to us. Information is going to trickle down, so mission accomplished.

All right?

One more email and then we'll get going here. I swear. We're not going to keep you any further, George. I promise.

All right.

All right, Peter. Messaged me. I used trumpet snails in my garden and had excellent growth on my spuds this year.

What the hell does that even mean?

Remember we got that guy that messaged us in on the podcast telling us that his was it pest spikes because he's a pest control officer, actually kills trumpet snails? And you said you read between the lines, and now trumpet snails are an invading garden.

Now I get it.

There you go. Peter is just there to confirm that. Yes, they're in his garden as well.

Yeah, trumpet snails are a son of a gun.

Well, before we get into the podcast, George, what's your experience with trumpet snails as an aquascaper?

I've had them once. I actually deliberately got some of a friend. I heard that they aided the substrate and helped to keep it fresh. And they weren't they weren't ever really a problem. They just really note I just really noticed them at night, and they came up on the glass, which was really annoying. And so I only kept them for a couple of years, probably until I stripped that tank completely down and started afresh. And I've never kept them since. But they were never really an issue one way or the other. Didn't affect plant growth, didn't affect anything as far as I could see. Not no strong opinion on them, really.

We always make fun of them on the podcast. We have so many people with nightmare stories, because if you're new to an aquarium and you overfeed, the population explodes. Like there's no forgiveness. If you have trumpet snails, you have to know exactly what you're feeding, otherwise you're going to have 1000 of them, and you probably already do. If you have one trumpet snail, if.

You see ten, you've got 100.

Yeah, that's fair point.

I never even thought about this. For Georgia himself. When you're trying to take photos of your beautiful landscape to aquariums and you've got 50 trumpet snails hanging off the glass, that really doesn't work well for you, does it?

No, not at all. But like I said, they only seem to appear at night. I only ever saw them at night, so they're never an issue for me.

Lucky man.

I had 125 gallon tank full of trumpet snails, and when I would turn on the light, it was like it was raining trumpet snails, because they would just let go of the glass and fall down to the bottom. It was just a horrible, horrible nightmare. I hate trumpet snails.

That's what you shake, shake to at night. Just like, no trumpet snails. anyways, let's start with the podcast topic again. We're going to dive into Aquascaping, which I I'm not even a novice, I'm not going to lie. I just do things that I find interesting or I feel that other people haven't done. I'm a person that wears shades during the day. I wear flamboyant clothing. I have idiot cars because I want to make a statement. And my tank needs to make a statement as well. So if I look into it and I don't see penis fish, it's a sad day for me. So I need to escape my tank to have fun. But the masterpieces that people are capable of, such as yourself, George breathtaking. So we can't wait to dive in, but before we do, we start with the easy questions we ask every person, interview style, on the podcast. What got you into the hobby, George?

Yeah, it's a good one. I first saw a tropical aquarium, tropical freshwater aquarium in my school, my primary school. I think I was four or five years old, and I was completely transfixed. And I remember just staring at for ages as a really young boy, and then fast forward a few years and my uncle kept an aquarium. And again, I was like, super transfixed. It wasn't until early marriage years in my mid twenty s, and my ex wife said to me, then, no, we should keep an aquarium. I said, absolutely. Something I've always wanted to do. So I got one. And I thought, I fancy a planted tank because I'm quite into nature and being like landscapes and stuff like that. So I thought it would be nice to have a natural looking aquarium. So I went to the store and I bought 1015 pots of what I thought were really good aquarium plants and tried my hand at it, and they all died, and they got covered in algae. And I was really pissed off because I spent a lot of money on these plants. I did some research. I discovered, like, the internet forums, and I quickly discovered that pretty much all of the plants I bought were non aquatic. They were like, at best semi aquatic, and at worst house plants.

I just had to stop you there. What species that were not necessarily aquatic did you have any access with just by experimenting?

Yeah, well, the first ones are non aquatics, were like theonia, which you can get in, like, terrariums and stuff. It's a really popular sort of house plant. And then Josenia as well, which is the piece lily and all these non aquatic plants. And then just doing the research, I realized there are actually loads of decent, easy to grow aquarium plants, and sort of had a chat with my other aquarium store, which kept the real stuff, and then read my first sort of book on the topic, which was denile guide, keeping a plant a tank. I don't know if you heard of denial. It's a really well known german brand.

We certainly have. We love their shrimp food.

Yeah. And they were like one of their sort of planted tank pioneers back in the they came up with this sort of system to keep a successful tank, a planted tank, and I realized that you need a decent lighting, co2 substrate, fertilizers, all the good stuff. So I did some, bought everything I needed, bought some decent plants so I could grow the plants, and I was pretty good at it. And then one christmas, I got a present from my stepdaughter, and it was the nature aquarium world book one by takashi amano. So I opened this book, and honestly, it was like an epiphany. I saw these nature aquariums, these beautiful aquascapes, and I just thought, that's exactly what I want to do with my aquarium. And so I just relentlessly pursued that. I became obsessive. So I'm quite obvious personality type. If I get into anything, if I'm even slightly interested in it, then I'll just dive super deep into it. And that's what I did with this nature aquarium thing. And yeah, I just got completely obsessed with aquascaping. Yeah. And that was the beginning. That was back in 2004, 2005.

I'm going off with some questions. We've also had messaging in from some fans. We we did leaked some of our fans that you were coming on the podcast. So one of them they were asking is, what is your one of your first biotypes of an aquarium that you're trying to go for in one of your first favorite aquascapes well, I did.

You mean like my first biotype? Yes. Is that what you're saying?

What were you trying to go for one of your first?

Well, I was kind of commissioned by Practical fishkeeping magazine, so I started writing for those guys. They're just regular tank articles and stuff. And they said, right, we want you to try and aquascape different biotopes. Let's do a biotap series. So my first actual biotap was a blackwater tank for harlequin was Borrowers. So it was like a Southeast Asian I think it's cambodia. Just loads of leaf litter, different types of woods. I just went for the tea stained water with the harlequins that just looks super natural. And then, yeah, that was my first sort of real well known biotope. I guess I've done like weird, weird stuff. I've done like planted marine tanks as well. So I've done like a bangai cardinal fish biotope with sea grasses and stuff like that. It's like a planted marine tank. And then I did probably one of the most proud biotopes was when I went I actually went physically diving myself into a local reservoir. Saw some stickleback fish, some lodeer, some la cars. I collected a load of the wood and some stones that were just lying in this reservoir, collected some sticklebacks from a local garden center. I didn't wildly collect them. And then created this UK English English biotope and then entered that into a contest and one night first prize with this thing that I actually saw for real and recreated in an aquarium. That was a really cool experience. I think that was 2008 or so. Big fan of biotopes and combining this natural, trying to combine the beautiful aesthetics of the aquascaping kind of concepts, combining that with something that you'd actually physically see and you'll recreate and there's habitsat. Combining that visual element with a natural element, I think that's really where you can take fishkeeper into a different level.

So how often do you go spelunking in local rivers, streams or wherever you go and harvest plants or specimens for some of your.

I'd love to do it more often, but I don't get much opportunity, unfortunately. One of the coolest things I did was going exploring with Chris Lee calf, the shrimp guy. I don't know if you guys have heard of him.

We certainly went to Rainbow.

Yeah, we went to Rainbow Springs in Florida and we went sort of diving in the local rivers down there. And the thing with aquariums is just help to connect you with nature. That's where I get my kind of thrill from them. But when you actually go to that natural habitat of where those fish live, that's when you truly can connect. And that's where I get my biggest drills. But I can't do that as much as I'd like to. So I try to recreate that as best I can in my own kind of living space.

Again, you started in the early. Two thousand s, and you started writing for it, essentially, that's when you got into it real big. When did you go to, say, like, a first aquascaping competition? Or when did these start coming up? Because I know aquascaping as a competitive atmosphere is relatively new in the hobby.

Yeah, it really started online, and it still is predominantly online. So you've got the biggest contest is the international aquatic plant layout contest, which is hosted by aqua designer mane, the kind of high end luxury Japanese brand founded by takashi amano. And I think that contest started in I think it started as early as 2000, so that's like 20 years. But that's grown from back then to where it is now. That's grown massively. And there's lots of other online competitions now, and they've started doing live contests. That's more recent. The live stuff in the last ten years or so. Yeah, I entered my first contest online. That was back when I first started the hobby. Really? 2005. 2006. Yeah. But contests are an interesting one. They're an interesting part of the hobby. It's a different motivation when you're creating an aquarium for a contest. It's very different. Maybe what most people want to do with aquariums is keeping them as something to enjoy on a day to day basis. When you're focusing your aquarium on a contest, it's so kind of time scale specific, and a lot of energy is going into that aquarium in a short amount of time. Whereas with regular fishkeeping, it's like it's just a bit more kind of chill than not so focused. I'm really rambling some nights. I'm really tired. I do apologize.

No worries. It's night time. You crack your favorite beverage. We have a lot of fun on these podcasts, so don't worry about that.

I've had a few beers as well.

Wonderful.

Maybe I'm a bit more fluid.

It's good to be hydrated.

Hydrated? Absolutely.

Okay. Well oiled.

I have seen some of these pictures in these contests. How long do they get? Do they give you to get ready for this? I mean, is this something that you could be working on for a year?

Most serious escapers that are doing it for this contest, they're probably spending six plus months on it. Probably not nowhere near more than six months. Six months to twelve months, maximum. Some people as little as three or four months, depending on the style. A lot of the styles these days, a lot of the high end stuff is very, very hardscape dominated. And that's like 90% of the work really goes into the hardscape, and then the 10% is into the planting and then let that grow in. And depending on that balance of the plants and the hardscape, obviously it depends on how much time they need to spend growing it in.

I've seen some of these people online that go to shows, and it's amazing because you think when you do the aquascape process, first, like you said 90% foundation, 10% plants. We always assume it's a bit different. They spend so much time on the foundation to cover up some of the gaps that plants leave behind because you only have so many plants and then you expect the plants to grow out to become and fill in all those gaps to become beautiful. But seeing these on YouTube where people set up aquascapes on point, I think is absolutely breathtaking because they get by with bringing tubs of plants in, doing an aquascape on site and still making it look beautiful even though it was built yesterday, that's such an art. I have no idea how that does. But is there competition still that do that in person? I know the COVID ruined everything before.

COVID Yeah, they had the Aquatic Experience in New Jersey, they do a live aquascaping contest and it's interesting because the more kind of experienced competitors may have stuff ready grown in. So they have pieces of hardscape, pieces of wood or rocks with the plants ready attached that have been grown in for weeks or months in a previous layout, and then they'll bring them ready attached to the hardscape, put it in, and then that looks super mature and grown in already. And then at the other side, you've got people that will need to use brand new plants fresh out of their pot. And that's the real challenge, is making them look more grown in. But yeah, it's an interesting thing. The live aquascaping contest. For me, it's more about these live aquascaping contests. For me, it's more about actually engaging with the audience because you're hopefully getting a lot of people attending that event that are new hobbyists or they've never really experienced aquascaping. They get to see these guys working live and get really inspired. That's the cool thing with these contests.

I think so I know when you're doing these contests, it costs a tremendous amount of money to travel there. It costs a lot of money to bring in and ship in all your goods. Is there any large type of rewards? I mean, do they give you any prizes or is it just all bragging rights?

I think in the contest I just mentioned in New Jersey, the Aquatic Experience, I think you pay to enter and then I think you can get to take away the tank as well for like a really good deal. And then I think there was cash prizes for the first maybe three, top three, but I don't think it's something you then go for a financial kind of profit. It's more just to have fun. It's not a cheap hobby, to be.

Honest, unfortunately, just sometimes just to get your costs covered for these things. I mean, airplane tickets and hotel rooms and peak packs, you could easily have $2,000, depending on where you're traveling from, tied up in this before you even step footed in the arena to conquer and make your tank so beautiful. So at the end of these contests, did you say that they auction these tanks off or do they sell them?

I think if you're a competitor, you have the option to buy it at a really good price. And then I guess if you don't want to do that, then they'll wrap them off. But I think the tanks themselves and a lot of the equipment I know the plants and the soil, the hardscape is all usually provided free of charge from the sponsors. So you'll have sponsors for the aquarium, sponsors for the plants, and this is all provided free of charge. So they can get the folks that want to buy that whole system, they're going to get a super good deal. That kind of side of things, price wise is covered, and all you have.

To do is get it home to your house, which sounds like a lot of work.

Yeah, that's the challenge.

So before we get into too deep, we cover beginner aquarists, we cover advanced aquarists. And I wanted to dabble in both areas. So there's in my mind a handful of aquarium styles, and I'll just list some here. There's the traditional Dutch nature aquarium. Igwami jungle. There's mixed bio. I'm definitely butchering the names. Mixed biotypes that we talked about initially. taiwanese walstad, and then, of course, saltwater aquariums. Is there anything that I'm missing in that list? Something new that we all don't know about?

You've got kind of Diorama style is very provenance at the moment. Yeah, diorama. So that's the style of copying landscape and kind of shrinking it down, miniaturizing a landscape fully rather than it being like an underwater looking environment, you're deliberately copying like a terrestrial environment, like a mountainscape or a forest with like minimanti trees or something like that. That's a real popular style. Now the diorama style.

Yeah, I've seen some beautiful mountainscape looking and actually looks like they have a freshwater river running through it.

It's literally trying to recreate just from my understanding here. Trying to recreate like a Bob Ross painting.

Yes.

There you go.

Yeah, exactly.

Happy code, happy aquarium.

I'm more of a traditionalist, I guess, when it comes to aquascaping. I'm a big fan of seeing this landscape stuff underwater. It looks a bit weird.

I just feel like you're a sneeze away from making a Christmas village tank. You know what I mean? Those Christmas villages that your grandma does, she collects those figurines. There's a train, maybe an ice skating rink. I just feel like that's about to happen in the aquarium.

Kind of a normal Norman rockwell painting type of tank.

Right. And then somehow there's fish floating by.

Yeah, that's weird, isn't it? Especially like insects or something. Or birds.

Well, just for the listeners, what I like to do is I'd like to shout out some of the ones that we listed. So we just listed that one and go down the others just so they have a highlight of what each one is. So explain to us Dutch.

Dutch is very formal kind of groups of plants, normally stand plants. It's like a very rigid formal structure of how they're placed in the aquascape. It's like formal gardening flower beds. And you're using the textures and the colors in very distinct groups to kind of create almost like a patchwork kind of effect that just like you decided.

To make a vegetable garden in your backyard and you have a little bit of pepper over here. Corn is in the back to make the height, and it's all little patches.

Of it's very formalized and strict. It's not my favorite, but when you see a really good one done for real, it does look stunning. But it is just very high impact and doesn't really invoke this sense of nature because it's so formal and rigid in its style.

So next one would be the nature aquarium, and you think that that would be self explained and people confuse it with selecting some sort of, like, biotype. But what is the nature?

Yeah, this is my favorite. So this is what really got me so passionate about aquascaping. It's the transparency of an essence of nature from outside and putting that into the aquarium. So you're not directly copying or transposing, you're just using an essence of nature. So you'll just use a combination of natural wood and rocks and plants in a way, just to give the sense of nature. But you're not deliberately under copying anything in particular.

It's not a specific biotype. Instead, it's freeforming, what you think your possible nature cube could be.

Exactly. You can mix up plants from Asia, South America, Africa. You're not creating a specific habitat, you're just creating visually something that gives you an essence of habitat. It's really cool. I love it.

Now, the next one I'm going to butcher again, I always put Iguami.

What is the actual iwaguami It's nature aquarium. It's almost like a subsection of nature aquarium, but you're limited just to using rocks. So that's what Iwgami is. It's basically rock gardening and you normally just use the one type of rock and you create a layout just using rocks. Simple as that.

Now, I've seen some of these because I know a little bit more about this, but I never get anything correct. So this is where they really popularize using what they call like dragonstone and trying to make it look like it's some sort of cliffs with patches of low hanging grass type plants. And what I've seen most recently, it's probably fading out of popularity now, but they have like, floating rocks to make it look like it's some sort of like pandora off of the avatar movie.

Yeah, the avatar. That's the thing. It doesn't have to be if you're using rocks in any way, it's Iwagoomi. But the classics creates something that looks natural. So you normally start off with one very dominant stone and then you have smaller stones kind of leaning into it and it just creates this kind of not mountain, but just something that looks really natural. The floating rocks thing is just a bit gimmicky and trying to even though.

The gimmicky and silly. How would one do that? I'm assuming what they do is they crack the rocks in half. You put a piece of foam on the inside and then you glue it so it's completely hidden. And then what? Do you use fishing line to make it float?

Yeah, well, actually they're just using I think it's just expanded polystyrene and they actually have fishing line attached to the bottom of the polystyrene and it floats. And you fix the bottom of the fishing line to the base of the aquarium with a suction pad or something. So you have these floating rocks.

I mean, some of them you see don't even look like there is fishing line. Do they use something thinner so it's harder to see?

Yeah, unless it's in video. Maybe they're just photoshop.

Maybe just get it in broll. Just cheat. So the next one is jungle aquarium.

That's just completely free form, chaotic. Just do what you want to do. Plant it really heavily, have lots of plants scattered everywhere. No real kind of structure for the layout. Yeah, that's basically just a bit of a chaos for healthy plants.

You said chaos. So, for instance, you want thick and dense, maybe a mangrove esque feel? Or is it just where it's completely overgrown on purpose with a tasteful feel? I really have never understood it's.

Whatever you want, really. I mean, jungle is just a very loose term to describe something a bit chaotic and not conforming to the other style. So not irogamy, not nature aquarium, not Dutch, just an overgrown mess.

Next time Jimmy makes fun of mine, I'm calling it Jungle. Right.

Well, I'm just I'm looking at that and I'm going, you know, if that was my jungle tank, I'd put in elephant nose and lionfish, but that's me.

Just recreate a movie.

Tarzan swinging through the trees.

All right, so taiwanese is up next. It's supposed to be some sort of combination between a nature dust style with a zen garden feel. Don't know. I've heard the term used a couple of times. I didn't think it was that particularly popular.

No. I don't know why it's got its own kind of grouping. I don't know why it's definitely not narrowing. It as big as nature aquarium or Dutch. I don't think. hiu knees.

Maybe it's just some way that someone was trying to describe like you hear people that are into music and they just come up with a certain genre to try to identify and make themselves unique when it's not actually a genre.

Hair metal.

Yeah.

Like hair metal. Yeah, that was definitely just metal. But they decided to wear costumes.

All right. And wolstead Wolfstead is the actual kind of methodology of keeping the tank rather than aquascaping style. So walstad is low tech, non co2 injected, but the biggest thing is the soil substrate. So they normally have a base layer of, like, an organic soil substrate, and then they top that off with a sand or gravel. So it's more to do with that actual methodology of keeping an aquarium water than any aquascaping style.

So is that where the cap comes? Because you look through a lot of these beginner, not aquascapes, but even planted tank guides, and they always start with, do the substrate below put a cap on top? Is that style really created because the Wallstead was it Diana walstead is the one that really started this whole movement? Is that where that came from?

Yeah, that's exactly right. I read the book. The ecology of the plants and aquarium or the ecology of the freshwater plant aquarium? And, yeah, she kind of did some studies and stuff, and there's a few different opinions about that book online. But, yeah, that's where that method comes from, the garden soil method with very few water changes in other october what.

Substrates do you use that differ from this?

We tend to use, like, a soil substrate, but it's a commercially prepared product. So a lot of the times it's volcanic ash that's been kind of pelletized into small kind of balls, and that's a lot of the manufacturers that's what.

They use got you we use in the shrimp hobby that exact volcanic gas. I use it for neo cardina. You don't have to you really have to use them for cardenias. Those are the absolutely way more delicate. They need the lowering of the PH. You're going to have to use RL water that you're going to have to add your own minerals to make sure they're much more finicky. But I definitely love that substrate a lot, but keeping it natural, that has the cap for sure. And if you don't use that cap and you want to use soil, you're not going to have a great tank. Trust me. Those aren't going to be tannins in the water. It's just going to look like toilet stew. Besides salt water, what are the most common biotypes that you see around?

Now, south American is always very popular, like the blackwater South American, like cardinal, tetras, angel fish, discus, that sort of tannin, like leaf litter, big pieces of wood, that kind of thing.

And for those beginners who are listening, the biotype or meaning is essentially trying to represent or portray a specific location or habitat. So you could have a South American biotype where you're trying to only have South American species, plants, and styles that would replicate something in a river or body of water in that country. Or you can have something specific for a habitat, for instance. That's why we always make the joke in the podcast of making a Minnesota lake biotype, where you have a large mouth bass, some sunfish and then a beer can in it just for the joke or aesthetics, just to make it feel like it's real.

Yeah. We have a similar thing in the UK would be a shopping trolley. In the grocery store. You have your trolley and yeah, those are like, often kept in local rivers and stuff.

Well, I think I'm familiar with this term. We call it grocery cart.

There you go. There you go.

Shopping trolley.

I like shopping trolley a lot better.

I do, too. My favorite trolley is on Mr.

Didn't you say sidewalk? And we say path.

Exactly. Or boot and trunk.

We say boots. You say trunk. Isn't it trash can? We say bin.

Do you guys still call we call soda pop.

Pop. Oh, no. That's controversial. Jimmy. See, we have soda pop and coke. It is like three demographics in the.

United I forgot about because down south they'll say, do you want a coke? Which just means do you want and.

They'Re like, what kind of coke?

I don't know.

The the classic?

Yeah.

Oh, I thought you're meaning the orange. And it was sent down on a fantasy next to you. I'm like, this is weird. They don't know English. Now they're just going to do carbonated beverage in the UK because they just say pop. Wonderful.

Just like Minnesota.

Just like Minnesota. So what collaborations are you working on right now? I know that on your Facebook page, you continually post a bunch of different information and you do put out YouTube videos consistently. But what is the secret project you're working on right now?

There's no real secret. Oh, I do have I do have a bit of an exclusive, actually.

Ooh. That's what we're talking about.

I'm starting plumbing a second book already, even though my first one hasn't been published yet.

Well, you have to I mean, there has to be the George Farmer Library.

Yeah. So I can't tell you the title, but basically it involves me going around the whole world when this lockdown finishes and taking photos of the best aquarium photos in the world, basically. Of the best aquariums in the world. Best aquascapes in the whole world.

It's literally aquascaping porn. That's what's going to happen.

Just focusing on aquascaping at the highest level all around the world.

So when you put your book together, is this a combination of your tanks and other people's tanks, or just specifically are they all your tanks?

Almost all my tanks, yeah. But I've done a lot of tanks and a lot of different kind of styles. It covers a lot of topics and a lot of different levels, but there's a few different other people's tanks and there's some huge tanks in there, as well as the joint nature aquarium in lisbon. And then I did a huge one in hamburg. hamburg? Yeah. So mostly mine.

There were these large aquariums and hire you to come in and do a scraping for them?

No, one of them did this was in a public zoo in Germany. It was a seven and a half thousand gallon biotope southeast Asian, which fully planted. But there's a team of four of us, and we did it over like a three day period. But the biggest one was actually I didn't set it up, I filmed it. It's the 160ft long nature aquarium in lisbon flores dasa Mercedes, which was led by Takashi marne just about a year before he died. It was like his last thing his last big project they ever worked on was the world's largest nature aquarium. So that was the yes. That's the best thing I've ever that actually moved me to tears. When I walked in to see that exhibit, it was just me and my wife, and we walked in because that was the guy that kind of started the journey for me. He invented this nature aquarium aquascaping thing that got me so inspired.

Is that the picture on your website?

Yeah, that's me standing in front of that time.

That is breathtaking. It's like going to a city saltwater aquarium where you're imagining that you're going to have, like, penguins splashing through, but instead you're seeing a wall of breathtaking green and even red.

Yeah, it is mind blowing.

Is that aquarium still going?

Yeah, it is. It was originally going to be set up for 18 months, and then it was so popular that they said, I would do it for three years. And then and that's been running for five, five and a half years, and I think they're going to keep it going indefinitely. But they've got the the really cool thing is at any one time, they've got two full time Japanese guys maintaining it. So when the exhibit is close to the public, these two Japanese guys, they actually spend all night maintaining it, every night as a three month rotor. So the Japanese guys will be away from their home for three months, work on this aquarium for three months solid, then go back home, and then another two go guys come over and they swap over. And that's been happening for the last five years. This tank is just getting maintained like 100% all the time.

That is incredible that people spend that much time, effort, money, and travel time just to take care of one tank.

Clearly, it seems like your favorite style is the nature aquarium by far correct?

Yeah.

So trying to guide someone through just general aquascaping for their home aquarium, nothing special. Just trying to get through some of the the best practices do's or don't. So from a non aquascapist perspective, just to go through the normal setup, you first rinse all of your objects. If you're having sand or gravel, rinse it. If you're having other substrate, like the volcanic ash, you don't want to rinse that. But again, you're not purposely kicking it up either. So lay your substrate slow, fill, place your decor get your cycle running. That's step one. So I'm assuming that right there leaves you as a blank canvas. But as far as the substrate, we're always taught, at least for beginner, aquascaping, not even aquascaping, just as a presentation, is push like a 45 degree angle, put your substrate to the back and push to the front, because that always encourages the fish to move forward where it's the lowest. And it also makes for a better set up that you have even the same height plants at least show up in the back, almost like a stairwell. Go from there. How would you begin to set up your aquascape? How do you prep plants? How do you begin to make a selection?

Yeah, I think you started off really well there with the basic set up. So you substitute your hardscape, which is the decor, and then your plants. I normally like to split the aquascape into kind of five main parts. So foreground. So actually foreground plants, your mid ground, so that's the mid ground plants that go between the foreground and the background, and then your background plants. So you've got three different stages of planting. Then you've got your hard skate, which is normally around the mid ground. So you've got your wood and your rocks, potentially. And then what I like to do is after the foreground, mid ground and background planting, I attach the epiphyte plants. So these are plants that attach to the wooden rocks, and that gives the aquascape a lot more kind of focus. So when you've got this, hopefully quite a high impact hard skate. So you've got this beautiful wooden rocks in the tank. When you start attaching the plants to that, it really brings it to life. So you've got your foreground planting, you've got your mid ground planting, you've got your background planting, got your hardscape, and then you've got your plants on the hardscape. You've got a really beautiful, heavily planted tank right from the start.

And now this is nearly the point where the fans want to know your favorite, but specifically beyond that, I want to know your favorite for beginners. So if someone's going to try out their first guide through, maybe they're trying to go on one of your videos and try to match some of your designs to the best of their abilities. Because again, you only design with what you have. What's some of your favorite drift wood to choose for a beginner and plants?

I don't know if you guys can get hold of it over there, but I like to use manzanita wood. That's a really good one. You guys heard of that?

I think I've seen some. It all depends on the pet store. Maybe they can even order it.

Any kind of generic bogwood. But you're looking for the most sort of interesting pieces. You don't just want like a relatively round lump. You want something a bit more branchy. So you're aiming for a piece of hardscape, but whether it's the wood or the rock, it needs to kind of fill a good amount of the aquarium. So you want to be the highest piece of your hardscape should be around two thirds of the height of the tank. So if you have an 18 inch aquarium tall, the top piece of the hardscape should be hitting twelve inches or so. So you're getting plenty of height in there. And what pieces you choose to do that is up to you. It's what you can find, but try to get some really nice pieces, big pieces of height in the aquarium on.

The megs anita wood. I'm assuming you pick that when I've used it in the past, because I have had some pieces, it's been very hard. Wood, meaning when it's soaked with water, it doesn't fall apart, it doesn't rot. After a while, it stays, it's maintained shape. Is that part of the choice behind it?

Yeah, it's a good word. I mean, some words obviously softer than others, but manzanita is a good word, to be honest with you. After a couple of years, it does kind of get quite soft, and you can kind of scrape it back with your fingernail if it gets covered in. Sometimes you get a little bit of algae and you just kind of scrape it off with your fingernail if you guys do that, but you can just feel it coming away a little bit. So it does get a little bit soft after a while.

I mean, that's all.

Yeah, I think yeah, of course. Mandatory is nice. I like manzini just because it's kind of twisty and there's a lot more kind of character to it and a lot more types of wood when you're.

Trying to get something to grow on that. What is the best way what's the easiest way to get plants to grow on the wood and the rocks?

Yeah, I've heard a lot of different methods, like people using wire, people using string, people using some bonding glue. What do you use?

I use glue normally, but my favorite technique is to just literally wedge it in between a gap. So a lot of the times when I aquascape, I have a lot of different pieces of wood and rocks, and there's a lot of interconnections. There's a lot of crossovers. There's a lot of natural gaps in between that wood or the rock. And I literally just wedge the plants in, and then over the coming weeks, the plant sends out its roots, and, you know, rhizome grows, and it self attaches really securely. So a lot yeah, a lot of probably 90% of the time my plants are just literally wedged into gaps.

And so you're saying in two to three weeks, that plant will actually just hold onto it and you don't have to worry about it floating off. That's incredible.

Yeah. If you've got good growing conditions, so you've got good CA, two. Good liquid fertilizers, good lighting, that plant will start getting on really well.

So what are your favorite plants to encourage beginners to use?

I really like an ubs. It's a really nice, easy one, especially if you don't have strong lighting. java fern is quite easy. It's not as easy as some people make out. To get a java Fern to look really good, you need to look after it quite well. Cryptocurring. crypts are really easy. They tolerate low lighting, don't need co2 injection background plants, they got really easy stone plants like balls. You guys must have heard of Alice over there. Jungle valve.

Oh yeah.

If you've got a big tank or just a valleys nearest wireless for kind of medium dwarf safe, yeah, you got sagittaria as well. That's nice and easy. Fast growing for foreground. If you want a easy carpeting species, then you could go for lindy ops Braziliansis. Quite easy. It's nice and slow as well.

What's one of the carpeting species that you'd recommend without co2? Because in my experience and the stuff that I've tried, I can get mixed success with carpeting species, but most of them really don't grow without a co2 tank and I do. Most of mine low tech.

You could try Cryptocurrency parva, but it's so slow. You're looking at a couple of years, really about cet Liliox's. Brazilian is again quite slow, but very tolerant of low lighting. And cat. Do you guys have Leocards pavila? Not dwarf hair, grass. That can do okay as well sometimes for that cat.

We do. I'm very mixing that as well. I have to blast it with lights and then I still get mixed results.

What about astroturf?

Astroturf?

Astroturf.

Just put some astroturf in there, call it good.

There you go. And a gulf maintenance.

So what are the most common mistakes that you see aquascapers do?

I think one of my biggest problems when I started was trying to hit like a specific nutrient level or just really getting obsessed with testing my water and trying to hit the perfect kind of parameters. And I realized actually it's just more important to focus on the basics, just ignore the numbers, just look at the plants and try to grow them as best you can. And then once I started doing that and I didn't worry about testing and just focused on good plant growth and everything else was relatively easy, my fish were healthier, the whole aquarium system was healthier. I wasn't stressed about testing the water, so my method was like just feeding the plants every day with a decent quality liquid fertilizer and feeding quite a lot, and then doing that every day, but then changing a lot of the water every week to reset everything and then just repeating that. So I never needed to test the water, but I knew the plants were getting plenty of food and I could just see in the plant health and the fish health that everything's fine.

What are some others like, as far as, like, design elements or something, that they could prevent it if they did it correct at the beginning?

A lot of beginners will really worry about spending any decent money on hardscape, so they'll just buy small pieces or only a few pieces, even if they have a relatively large aquarium, put this hardscape in, and it won't have any real impact, and it won't give them a strong design. And then they need to rely on the plants to fill up the aquarium. And then normally when you buy a plant, it's not very big. It will take them a long time to really get that nice visual impact that you can get from an aquascape. So my advice would be for beginners to invest in a really good quality and good size and amount of decent hardscape materials.

Yeah, my wife and I do a lot of gardening and stuff, and we just recently were on vacation, and we came across a place that had a rock quarry, but they sold all types of rock from all over the world, and we sat there and deliberated for an hour. If we were going to buy this one green rock, that was probably if you took a huge beach ball and cut it in half, it was about that size, and it was $200 for this one rock. And if we could have lifted it up and got it in the back of our SUV, we would have taken it home. But it was so large and so heavy, they needed a forklift. But she says, I want one centerpiece item in my garden, which is next to our pond. And so to get that one centerpiece item, you might have to spend some money, but it's something that you'll have forever, and you can redo it. And I think it just adds to the beauty of the entire operation of the garden, of the aquarium, of your backyard, or whatever you're doing.

Absolutely. You've raised a really good point. Now, it's timeless. When you buy a piece of rock, or even most wood, will last years and years. Just keep it forever and just keep investing in the best pieces you can, and hopefully you've got somewhere where you can store them. I'm very fortunate to have a big garden. I can just hide them down the side. But, yeah, every time I go into a new store, I'll always seek out the best hardscape, and I normally buy at least one piece wherever I go. So I'm constantly building my hardscape collection because it's the initial part of the aquascape and it's the most arguably, the most important part. It's the framework where your aquascape comes from. Is building that hardscape to start with?

Now, you said you blame your stepdaughter for giving you that book and getting you started in this hobby. Is anybody else in your family interested in doing any of this, or they think you're nuts.

No one's actually interested from a hobby perspective, but I think they all appreciate that. I love what I do and I'm in a fortunate position to be able to support my family from an income perspective doing it. So I'm sure they're grateful for that. I think they really do genuinely appreciate having beautiful aquariums in the home as well. My stepson, my oldest stepson now, I pay him to maintain them as well. So I don't even have to do any water changes anymore. So that's awesome.

Even better.

Everyone benefits from it. I think they get a little bit frustrated sometimes when I've got hoses everywhere doing like, water changes and camera equipment filming and telling everyone to shut up or turn their internet off while I'm streaming something. But yeah, I think on the whole, I think they will appreciate it, but they never sit down like I do and just sit there and look at the aquarium and enjoying it. They never consume it like I do from a hobbyist perspective. I think they just see it as part of my work, which is interesting.

Well, I still got to give a shout out to your wife. You guys started this podcast adventure not so long back. I mean, it looks like, what, beginning of August?

Yeah, it was eight weeks or so. Yeah.

If you guys haven't listened to it, I suggest certainly going. You can go on any platform just like us, spotify itunes and find the George Farmer podcast. You guys look to be up to episode eight again after the aquarium.

Guys.

We do once a week. It looks like you guys are keeping to a tight schedule as well, but you guys seeming to start out with the idea of seasons and I love this. So what you said is I was listening to some of these podcasts. Episode one is getting the foundations of how to maintain your planted aquarium. And you guys do everything from talking about how to do co2 injection, the lighting, low tech versus high tech. I'm just reading some titles here and it's been quite a good journey, especially for people that are beginners to certainly jump on board while you're putting up this first season, but you actually co host with your lovely wife, Emma. And I got to say, I'm definitely a fan.

Oh, thanks. Yeah. For people to learn something, it's good to make it come across in like a bit of a story and a bit of a Q and A. So rather than me just transmitting the knowledge, it's good to bounce off, especially someone like emma's. She's a beginner point where she obviously learns some stuff by osmosis because I make her watch my videos. Heck yeah.

It's nice to have a partner that at least helps you.

I think she just does it out of just because she wants to support me. I don't think she's generally interested in the content. It's good fun and the biggest thing for me is that she wants to support me. And I have to confess, before we do the podcast, I have to go into a deep dive for an hour about the topic before we do it. So it gives her some kind of background and then we build the question in to tell the narrative they want to do. But it works really well. And we have a really actually, we have a really good laugh. But if you saw our setup, I mean, I'm looking at your studio now and it is like if you saw how we record our podcast, this is an exclusive. We're both lying on our bed.

Hey, that's where the magic happens, you.

Know what I mean? We have an iphone and a lav mic. And we attach the lav mic. We're in a load of cushions and stuff because I know this is going to be better for the audio. And we just have the lav mic kind of in between us and we're just sort of twelve inches apart, like just lying there and amongst the load of cushions. And that's how we record our podcast.

I don't want to ruin your guys'time in bed because that seems decent, but in light of that, we're more than happy of helping you out, getting you set up with your own studio and helping out with whatever you need. Man. We're in. Jimmy called studio. Be this in my basement. We got a green screen behind us. People are watching us on discord. If you want to be a part of watching us live, just a reminder, go to Quarryguyspodcast.com Bottom, the website. You can join the debauchery. And yeah, it's a board for those who are listening. We'll give a little background to us as well. Since you so talked about your bedroom podcasts, we made this wonderful I have a friend of mine that made this wonderful island. So I have all these four boom mics stuck to this piece of wood. And on the wood I have the audio board so we can unplug this. I can put it in the car and drive wherever I need to and do a podcast in person. So we have up to two guests. I can add more if I really needed to, but it's a nice clean solution to make a professional easily mobile. And it's quite the fun. We're getting ready to do videos when Spotify opens videos up because you're brave enough to do YouTube. But if we say the wrong dolphin joke, we'll get banned from YouTube.

So that would be one more place that we're probably being banned. I'm just really happy that Robbie didn't say that we're going to start doing the podcast in his bedroom.

Oh, we're going to do one now.

No, we're not.

We'll get the pillows out.

Yeah.

Those aren't pillows.

Quit playing with my hair, Jimmy. It's weird.

Yeah, no, that's not going to happen. It's amazing you talk about how your wife supports you, even though she probably doesn't think it's the greatest thing in the world. My wife also supports everything that I do and you don't even make money.

Doing yours really right.

And it's just refreshing to have somebody who like this afternoon and I said, I'm going to go over and shoot a podcast with Robbie. And she goes, okay, she'll let me know if you need anything. And she'll run food over to us or run beer over to me if I'm running out of beer or something, but that'd be my whole thing. If it takes an hour to get your wife in the mood to do the podcast, maybe get her liquored up, buy her a couple of drinks before you start the podcast.

Keep the podcast up, we certainly appreciate it. Again, we can only go through introductory on highlights of Aquascaping. If you want to learn more about Aquascaping from the best, certainly the George Farmer podcast, fantastic resource, George Farmer on YouTube, there's plenty of different video libraries of product spotlights, tank setups, live sessions on how he aquascapes, and again, the book that's coming out from Georgefarmerstudios.com go there. The book is preorder available on Amazon. It's aquascaping. A step by step guide to planting styling and maintaining beautiful aquariums. Written by George Farmer. So certainly get that pre order up and don't be afraid, make mistakes, try to get some aquariums out there. And if you got questions, email us, email george. His contact info is on the website. Trust me, he's a real gentleman here to help you and inspire you to make something beautiful.

How many tanks do you have in your home, George, that you maintain right now?

I have four right now. Yeah, sorry, not too many. I have a 50 gallon malawi cichlid tank.

He said gallon for us, by the way.

I appreciate that.

Yeah, and I have a 30 gallon high tech planted tank, and then I have a 20 gallon kind of medium tech planted tank, and then I have a very small two gallon. It's like a no filter desktop tank just with plants and shrimp in there.

I'm sorry, is there any type of fish that you would suggest not keeping in an aquascape tank? I mean, fish that will literally tear this place up?

Yeah, there's a few candidates of purely sort of fish. So silver dollars, a lot of kind of cichlids and tear up plants. I tend to stick with small shoaling species like tetras and reservoirs. daniels, maybe. I tend to find bigger shoals of small fish of the same species, look really natural in plotted tanks. So I tend to avoid big boisterous fish. Although I am keeping, I'm planning my next tank, which is a discus, 100 gallon discus aquascape. So I'm excited about that one.

Are you going to start out with small discus or are you going to do the big ones?

Big ones. 14 CM. So what's that five five and a half inches. That's?

That's a hefty boy.

Well, that'd be fantastic.

Yeah.

Well, George, we gotta go through some questions from the audience before we let you go. Okay, so one of the questions that we have here is what is the rarest plant species that you successfully kept?

That's a really good question. I don't really keep I'm not a massive, like, plant geek in terms of trying to keep rare stuff. I just use them as a canvas. It's a paint for the canvas. Sorry. I tell you what, I have some anubious mini coin at the moment, which is quite rare. So it's like anubious regular anubias, but each leaf is about it's less than a quarter of an inch, fully mature in size. Wow. Yeah. Really small. So look at your little fingernail. And it's about half the size of that.

That would be adorable if that's the full growth of it, for sure.

But it's so slow growing. I have a portion about the size of a quarter. I'm really into my American culture, aren't I? A quarter size in the coin.

We appreciate all of it. I know you did some effort and homework for us.

Yeah. Don't use celsius because that really throws us to you.

Don't worry, I have the conversion chart. We have a UK guest.

It's really funny because over the years, honestly, I speak two languages in terms of metric and imperial, because I just deal with it all the time. It's really funny. I could say if you throw any gallons at me, I'll tell you the liters straight away, just instantly. It's like another language.

That's a wonderful skill as an aquascapist.

That would be good on jeopardy.

Anubis mini coin is a rare one that I've kept really nicely. Yeah.

Next question would be, have you done any nontypical biotypes? Such as I think they're referring to comedic biotypes, like we mentioned, like doing the bottom of the lake with a beer can. What is the nontraditional biotops you've attempted? People are making fun of me. biotopes.

Yeah. The word is biotype, but I don't want to correct you. Good embarrassment.

No, please lay the smackdown.

I did not the weirdest, but the most it sounds really cheesy, but it was a goldfish tank with plastic plants. But I did it so it looked really natural, like a really nice aquascape. So loads of boulders, a load of spiky plastic plants. And they look really nice, actually. Yeah. So that's probably the most interesting nontraditional aquascape I've done.

We got to get pictures. Where can we find pictures of that, buddy?

Yeah, you can find it. I think if you probably just Google George Farmer goldfish aquascape, probably find that.

So, next question is, have you done any of these New Age river style tanks? So I think what they mean by this is we're seeing a trend in the hobby of more and more people making these long gated tanks with absolutely extreme amount of water flow. So they're trying to mirror a flowing river where it actually pumps that much water through the tank.

I've filmed these before. I've never actually sat on it myself, but there's a drop in journey called pantaria, and one of the parts of their business is making these very high flow pumps. And, yeah, they have these specific biotope setups with stupidly high flow rates, but they mimic the amount of flow rates these fish are experiencing in nature. So, yeah, it's really cool.

You said you haven't done anything with these. You're just filming them.

No, yeah, I finally just witnessed them.

So do you see that as a future trend for the most extremist hobby? Because you got to expect these particular type of tanks cost an absurd amount of money, not only just for the hardware, but the electricity they use.

Yeah, exactly. But if people want to take their hobby to that next level, then, yeah, you can go in any direction, can't you? Big flow is one direction, I guess.

And I guess there's one more bonus question. What is the next trend that you're most excited for?

I really enjoy seeing the more out of water stuff that's going on. So a lot of the pallidarium style, so the bottom part of the aquarium is submerged, and then you have three quarters. The rest of it is growing out with natural planting and just this above and below water thing that's going on. I think this could be a big part, a big thing to look out for in the future. And it's something that excites me. I think it looks more naturally. It kind of invokes this closer connection with nature. When you see the out of water stuff going on with the underwater, that crossing over thing, I think there's something special about that.

We just recently were on vacation, and we saw something like that, a very large tank, and it was kind of like the river system, like rob was talking about, where you can see the natural river fishes and stuff, but it was more of an exotic fish. And then above there, the plants were out of the water. They had poison dart frogs. They had small chameleons, some of nols and stuff. And then on top of that, they actually had a few small birds. But it was all one big tank. It was all enclosed together, and I sat there for for 20 minutes, and just every time you look, you see something else moving that you you didn't. I mean, they even had some some ribbon snakes in there, which were incredibly beautiful. brake ribbon snakes. So there's so many cool things out there that people just keep coming up with, and it just enjoys the heck out of it.

When I see that it's anything that connects people's nature, I think, is a good thing. Aquariums are a huge part of that. But the more I kind of get into aquariums, the more I realize aquariums are just kind of a byproduct of my own personal kind of passion to do with connecting people with nature. Anything that can achieve that, whether it's breeding fish or shrimp or growing plants, or making a burnt with aquascaping or keeping goldfish, whatever genre, whatever specific niche of the hobby that you're into, it's all about a slightly closer connection with nature. I think that's really important.

Absolutely.

Well, George, is there anything that you feel we missed in this topic? Again, we're only highlighting stuff. Aquascaping is a very deep and dense subject, and I feel that we really cater to beginners on this mainly due to request. There's so many people that we see just getting into it or feel that aquascaping is one of the most intimidating parts of the hobby. We feel that aquascaping doesn't have to be perfect. As long as you have a vision, strive for that. But anything we're missing, I just want.

People to give aquarium plants a real go. Almost put aquascaping to one side, just purely from a fish keeping point of view. If you can learn to grow aquarium plants, those aquarium plants have so many benefits for the aquarium system. So they produce oxygen, they remove harmful nutrients from the water, like nitrogen compounds, they help to reduce algae. They create a secure and safe and beautiful environment for the fish, and they're almost secondary so that they look beautiful to you as well. So if you can just consider putting some effort and time into growing a good amount of aquarium plants, then if you could do that, and then the next thing might be aquascaping. So get the plants looking good and healthy so it keeps the aquarium healthy for the fish. And then you enjoy keeping these plants and then think about making them look beautiful. Put the emphasis on the actual system in terms of making it healthy by the use of aquarium plants, and then there's a byproduct of that. Think about making the aquarium look beautiful for you. I don't know if that makes sense to you guys.

It totally makes sense to me. I mean, it is an ongoing project. You can continue to do something week in, week out. You do a little tweaking, you can add stuff, you can take away stuff, you see a new idea somewhere, and you can run with it. It is a fantastic hobby. It's a very beautiful site, like you said in the aquarium. And just to have your friends and neighbors come over and see that and just go, that is incredible. That is just a wonderful feeling for oneself.

And a lot of people that get started, they get hung up on, what should I choose? Start somewhere if you're really looking for a place and you don't want to do homework. And the aquatic names of plants are very intimidating because most of them don't have common names. We even did an advertisement for Joe Shrimpshack in one of our earlier episodes where he couldn't pronounce a single plant name on purpose. Well, find a friend. Go to your Facebook groups, go to your local aquarium clubs and ask, hey, is there a plant guy here? And take him out to lunch and say, I'll give you $50 for a bucket of trimmings. I guarantee that guy will fill a five gallon bucket top to bottom with everything and anything. You don't need to know the names. You can learn as you go plant and just try it. You won't get hurt. Start somewhere.

Yeah, it's the best way to learn. Just dive in and make mistakes and learn from them. And just be prepared to put a bit of effort in.

And the best part is those species that you got from the friend, if you have any questions, he's there for you. Oh, it's this purplish looking one. Well, that one tiger lotus. Just do that with it. Make sure he has a lot of sun. He'll guide you through. He wants you to succeed as well. But, George, thanks so much again for coming on the podcast, buddy.

You're welcome. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Well, again, those who don't forget Georgefarmerstudios.com books coming out, check out his podcast and YouTube channel. Jimmy, got anything for us?

Nothing, man. I've just been inspired. I want to go home and start planning more plants and stuff. I've never had any luck with plants. Robbie does plants pretty well, and I would just like to go do a nice job and tell Robbie to suck it later on.

It's your birthday next week.

It's my birthday next week?

Your birthday next week. You got volcanic ash soil for me for your birthday present? You want to go get on it?

Yeah.

Robbie and I are kind of weird. For his birthday, I bought him a 50 pound cement goldfish that he absolutely loves, and it's not in front of his house. And I had one, and I purchased I did not want him to steal it because he threatened me many times that he was going to steal it.

You damn right.

And so we went and found another one, and so, yeah, we're kind of weird. We buy each other aquarium gifts, but I guess we're the aquarium guys.

There you go.

For those that are listening to the podcast, if you want to support the podcast, go to aquariumgistpodcast.com by the website. You can share the content or donate a little money to help us keep the lights on. But for those that are listening, I want to thank you. It is now September 11. Wait, I just realized it's September 11. The September 8 is when we started the podcast a year ago, so we have now surpassed a year. It has been an honor and pleasure talking with you all every week and can't wait to do it more.

All right. Looking forward to it. And like like Rob said, it's it's September 11. Today we're doing this podcast, and it's year 2020. What could go wrong?

What could go wrong?

Exactly.

Well, thanks again, everybody. We'll catch you next week. 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.

I never knew that a Minnesota accent.

Be so sexy until I heard adam's voice.

Go frank yourself.

Don't you know that's my boy? Don't you know?