Hey, just a quick announcement. Minnesota co op get together, sponsored by Joe Shrimpshack, put together by Joe Shrimpshack, is going to happening this weekend, June 3. Come and see us. All of the aquarium guys are going to actually be there in person. Adam, Jimmy and me. And we'll have our pens to sign. Butts, I mean your fish accessories. Jimmy will be having a large vendor table. But come check the place out. Not just for us. I want you to see this place right now. There's over 53 vendors of house plants, freshwater, saltwater, artists, small businesses, food trucks, aquascaping. It's for kids and adults. There's going to be raffles. It's going to be straight up fun for the first time ever doing this. So if this turns out we're going to get more of these, please show up. It will be 142362 3rd Avenue, North Plymouth, Minnesota 55447. You can also find us on MnCo op.com. There'll be kids drawing contests, kids aquascaping. Be there or be square. We also have a sponsored ad from Deesfishco.

Hi.

This is Derek with Deesfishco in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota.

We are celebrating our one year anniversary this Saturday and Sunday, June 3 and fourth. And as a thank you to everyone.

We are doing 25% off everything in the store. That includes tanks, live goods such as fish, plants, medication, any treatments, foods, everything. So stop on in third and fourth. And remember, you don't want those fish. You want these fish. Let's kick that podcast. Thank God. Welcome to the aquarium, guys. Podcast. Jimmy, you look tired.

I am tired. Yes. It's been a long week.

Has it?

Yes. I was on vacation last week, and now this week, we've had some poopoos at our house. Yeah, I just hadn't been much sleep.

Poopoos.

We've had a lot of poopoos. My wife fell yesterday.

Lots of poopoos.

Well, let me tell you about the first poopoo.

I'm in first poopoo.

So I was on vacation last week, and my wife and I, we live up in northern Minnesota, a couple of blocks from Robbie. And we originally had taken the week off so we could go down to the Minnesota Aquarium Society Show. And that got canceled, so we had all kinds of time to free up. And so we bought a bunch of concert tickets. And so we went oh, God. So we went down to Minneapolis and saw a couple of shows on Saturday. Sunday. We came home Monday. While we were gone, my dogs were mad because we left. And my son, who's in his 30s, takes care of our dogs. And so the dog crapped on the floor every day for him.

I'd like to also point out, when you were gone, the dogs crapped on the floor. And I didn't once prank you.

No.

In fact, I left chocolate banana bread in your fridge.

I know.

Just for the record, I ate most of that.

So that was Saturday. Sunday, we're down to minneapolis tuesday, we go down up to bemidge during that snowstorm, saw Reo Speed Wagon concert. Came home, dogs crapped on the floor. And then on Friday morning, we went off to Sioux Fall, South Dakota and saw Journey in Toto. Had a great time. And then we jealous. And then we got a distress call from my son, and he crapped on the floor again. Crapped on the floor again. And we said, you know what? He's a musician. He had a gig to play. He said, I don't have time to clean it up. I'll come back and clean it up. And we said, don't worry about it.

They tracked it all across the house.

Not the dogs. No.

Oh, not the dog.

No.

You.

No, not me. Not me.

Okay.

It was our little automatic robot robot vacuum cleaner.

You had the Irobot Mirror 3000 all.

Over 100% of our carpet. And the thing went pushing these turds until the thing got so clogged up, it just stalled.

That stalled fantastic.

And it only was like 40 carpet. That it only and then, of course, then it kind of threw it up on the couch. And then my son comes back, and now there is a thin film of doggy doodoo all over the linoleum.

Also, I can smell this comes in.

Thinks the dog has eaten the turd that he left oh, no. And starts looking for it. So he in the dark, walks through this with his shoes. Not only is it in the living room, it's in the dining room.

I'm so glad I didn't prank you this week.

Yeah, that was the first week. And then yesterday, my wife hit the ice, and she's now on crutches and boot. And now she's now the reason I was late tonight is because I was doing laundry, because she can't go up and down the stairs.

Well, you're a gentleman and a scholar.

I just did my laundry. I didn't do hers.

Well, before we go into many more stories, I'm your host, Rob Zolson.

I'm Jim Colby.

And I'm Adam El Nashar.

And we have on with us today. Privileged to have on with us today. How do I put this? I've never seen someone not be technically famous, but yet everybody in the aquarium hobby knows him, knows this guy, and just has everything good to say about him. Larry Shankel, it's so good to have you on the podcast.

Thank you. Pleasure to be here.

I don't know how to put this. You may not be, like, listed famous, but you are infamous. There is not anybody. People are asking what's coming on the podcast next. I'm like, well, we're having Larry Shanklin. I don't know if you ever heard of him. Oh, my God. He's the best. I didn't have anybody that didn't just blow up your skirt.

I heard that from several people also.

Yeah.

And stuff. It's been a long time coming that we get somebody on here who knows something about rainbow fish, so we're pretty excited.

Well, Larry, before you begin, I see here that you're on Webcam with us on Discord Live. And after the podcast, I think you said you're going to even going to do us a fish room tour for the people that are live. Is that correct?

Yeah, I can run it through the fish room.

I'm pretty excited.

So where are you located, Larry? What state are you in? The kitchen right in the kitchen, right.

Near the corner here in Stockton, California.

Okay. So the weather is nice there.

Yeah. Rainy.

Yeah. We hate you.

What happened to the drought that was supposed to be happening everywhere?

It was 21 below here last night.

Yeah, I'm glad we're not like that. We're supposed to hit the 70s in about a week.

Oh, God bless.

Yeah. I hope you're okay. Let us know.

Yeah, I hope you're okay. You're so mean.

Some rads are going to find their little butts out in the outside to do a little bit of spawning this summer.

I do a lot of spawning this summer, too.

That's how you get it done. Well, before we begin, you had a story there, Jimmy. I also have a couple updates. So one, we've had a bunch of people up our dairy air trying to get us to have a PO. Box so they can ship us random bits of garbage.

I do not accept bombs in the mail.

No bombs?

No bombs.

No, but I've seriously, I've had a lot of fans trying to send us stuff and they've whined and beg.

Robbie.

That's called PO. Box.

Robbie, that's called a cease and assist is what it is. People just want you to shut up.

Is that what it is?

That's exactly what it is.

They want to be able to send us those letters.

I mean, I know your fan club disbanded after your one friend died.

Oh, boy. So we don't have a PO. Box, but we do have an agreement with Dees FishCo that they are going to be our PO. Box. So if you want to send the aquarium guys some sort of package in the mail. I actually had a gentleman ship me vinegar eels. I thought that I had to order them yet and they just show up. He's like, oh, I get a call from Derek at the fish store. Hey, you got a package of piss here that showed up. It says the aquarium guys on it. I'm like, look closer. They're vinegar eels. I'm pretty sure they're piss, but that's okay.

We don't want that.

So the address is two two three Front Street, West Detroit Lakes, Minnesota 56501. Please send all your didgeridos, all of your bags of vinegar, piss, whatever you'd like and we'll read it on the open it up on the podcast. There you go.

Yeah, that'll be fun. When it blows up, it's going to be great.

Yeah, that's why we do these live.

What's that, Adam?

I don't have to worry about that?

No, you're far enough away. If you'll see the mushroom cloud, it's right.

If you want Adam's address put on blast, just join our patreon. All right, so that's one update. And the other one is I am starting a project that we're going to be doing, hopefully doing a podcast on in the future. I've had a lot of fans ask about trying to get into the salt water for the first time, and they have two common issues that they complain about to us, trying to come up with better solutions. We're traditionally freshwater brackish people. At best. We're really not salt people. I've done maybe three salt tanks ever. We've had salt water. Adam's probably our in house salt expert. Out of the three of us, jimmy and I really haven't touched it that terribly much. No. So I decided from their complaints that one, their complaints are if they say that the hobby is too intimidating, the people have to be nitpicky experts. And above all else, it's extremely expensive. If you don't have $8,000 and every bit of technology in these high tech tanks, you're just doomed to fail or shouldn't do it. I want to take that head on. I have a 60 gallon tank, 60 gallon high, and I have set it up salt water. But I have mission. I'm going to do it with no motors. I'm going to do it with no heat. I have set this aquarium up to only work on air powered devices, air driven devices. So I have a Jimmy car seat sponge filter. I have two moving bed media reactors. You can get those off of Alibaba. They have them on Amazon. It's just a moving bed. It's like a little air driven sponge filters. And I have even an air driven skimmer, because in saltwater, you're going to have to deal with suck the skimmer. You have to have a skimmer. There's really no way around it. So I want to do this. I've been doing a lot of research on different species to give a try, and I'm finding out that nothing in the hobbies really documented well. If you want to look up a certain coral, they're not telling you the temperature range, because they're just assuming that you're going to treat it like a traditional reef tank, that you're always going to be this 78, 80 degrees no matter what. So they don't list fish species, they don't list coral species. They don't have a lot of temperature temperate information. So I have to do a ton of research. And I have myrtlewood that's now living here in Minnesota and been helping me with this whole project. And it's been quite fun. We've got a bunch of different corals. We got some sponge. We got even some clownfish that are not supposed to be able to handle that cold of water. So my basement is somewhere around 70, 71 degrees, which puts my aquariums anywhere between 67 and 68 degrees at all times, just being room temperature. And of course, I have posted on a bunch of saltwater threads and forums and that I am now public enemy number one in the saltwater community. People are losing their gut minds. They're telling me how I'm killing animals and killing coral, because, again, coral is not a plant, it's technically an animal, and that I'm risking this. So I just like to put out there that bite me each and every one of you. And it's working. We've set this up. I have a control tank and I have this tank, and we've yet to lose a coral. It's been working well. We've put what was the type of clown, sergeant Oscellaris clowns I was going to look up. Name is again, I've had zero sleep in the last 30 hours, so forgive me. But again, I was going to try to get a different type of clown that's more suitable for cold water, but it's way expensive and out of a beginner's price range, so I'm trying $600. Yeah, they're expensive for sure. So we're just trying aquarium or saltwater staples, and it's been working very well. The only modification that we're having to make is using a traditional freshwater light, doesn't have enough par penetration in the tank, and that's what the corals feed off of. So I'm having to do supplemental lights until my new reef light comes in. I have a Kessel green tuna, which was intended for freshwater, that I'm spot hitting the coral to make sure that they're getting the adequate light until my new light comes in. So this is working well. And if it continues to work well, I'd like to write a guide to make it less intimidating for people on how to start and get their toes wet in saltwater. Because if I'm wrong, I wasted some money and I killed some coral. If I'm right, I probably have hundreds of you listeners that is willing to give saltwater a try because it's more cost effective and feasible. So that's going to be exciting. Cool.

And next week, we'll see Robbie's fish tank on our aquariums on the reddit board.

100%. I can't wait 100%. But it has been working well, so we'll see. Adam, you got any news?

Oh, I found out that corridor are venomous.

Some are, yeah.

And now I'm really excited because that's one more venomous thing that I can get that technically isn't dangerous.

Adam is always trying to find a way to get rid of his wife, Larry.

Larry is laughing his off right now. He's really trying to keep it together over there.

Oh, yeah.

Adam was not on our Internet stories episode. And on there, Adam, we had a guy that swallowed a corridora drunk at a party and the spines got stuck in his throat and the event him injected, so they had to rush him to emergency surgery. And they still have it in some public museum, the actual Albino corridora.

How drunk are you to swallow a corridor?

I've been that drunk.

So I get corridor in there and not the guy.

Yeah, I mean, the thing is, it took him a while to get to the emergency room because they kept just, here, drink more and get it out of your throat. So they kept throwing more booze down in his throat, trying to like, yeah, that'll free it up.

You should kill it with some some tequila, right? Larry? Larry's laughing his head up.

Larry's just larry's just trying to keep it together.

All right. Yeah.

Last update from that episode as well. We talked about the frog army. Remember that, Jimmy?

Yes.

That was disgusting.

As Brant.

That was disgusting. As Brant. Apparently he's back at it.

Reminded people, if they haven't heard that, what happened?

Just briefly, we had an episode again on Internet stories, and one of the creepy stories that we talked about was this gentleman on TikTok called Frog Army. We're pretty sure that he's either mentally handicapped or a child. We're not real sure which. Delusional something.

Some people are both.

He decided to go out to his local swamps, which were drying up, by the way, and he wanted to, quote, unquote, save the frog eggs. Well, the frog eggs he did counts on the batches of frog eggs. And he's like, I wonder if I could collect as much as I can all summer long and see if I can create my own frog army.

He filled how many children?

It was like, low estimates of, like, 1.6 million frogs. And he put them all in pools in his backyard. He hatched them all. He was giving them mass amounts of food. He hatched them all. And they took over his entire suburban neighborhood. So much so that some people moved out of their homes because they had a fear of frogs. They were getting in between cracks of their house and getting into buildings. Like, the entire neighborhood was blanketed in.

A carpet of baby frogs and greasing up the streets.

Yeah, you'd take a step and just everywhere was smashed. So this gentleman, which I'm assuming he had, like, let's pretend it was an HOA, they would have hung him. I'm assuming they tried to go after him from some sort of lawsuit and probably couldn't. But after he did this, his whole feed just stopped. Clearly you're like, okay, they got this guy. He's not going to do it again. No. Now he's back at it. Well, good news.

More to talk about later.

We will have to update that as well. Any other stories, Jimmy?

That's all I got. We should go in with Larry here.

Larry.

He falls asleep.

Larry, forgive us. Let's start with more about you, Larry. Tell us more about yourself. How did you get into this wonderful hobby?

It's actually my parents fault.

That's how it started.

1969, I had my first fish tank. I still remember that bolting, I think.

You are not that old.

Yeah, I'm up there and just hit 60 from there I'd gotten out of it, then ended up getting back in and started doing some breeding and started working with a couple of stores. And then next thing I knew I was working for that store. And then from there I decided I was going to open my own store. So then back in the opened up a store called Something Fishy in Davis, California, then opened a second store up in Citrus Heights and made it there for a while. That was in the bad times of everything was starting to go down. Stores are having troubles. We had troubles. So we ended up closing down. Took all the tanks home. I was up at 150 tanks in one of the stores.

Wow.

So I started breeding, started breeding again. So in the was breeding and had a bunch of rainbows going and a bunch of Danios and Corey's and whatnot. Then got back out a little bit and then got married to my wife and told her, yeah, we're going to end up having some wet pets here. Hope you're okay with that. Yeah, no problems. Of course I had to get one tank and knowing where I was headed. And now I'm back up to 100 tanks again here in the house.

Wow.

It is always best to ask for forgiveness than for permission.

I've got a big dog house.

What's that?

Yeah, I've got a big dog house. I live in quite a bit.

Excellent. So Larry, I've talked to you, I've been friends with you for a few years now and just lightly a couple of times a year chitchat back and forth on Facebook. I've been meaning to get you on the podcast. I'm glad we finally did, but what got you into Rainbow Fish specifically, considering that's what we're having you on the podcast for?

It actually was started back when I had my store. I sold a couple of rainbows and of course back then there's not very many out there. And of course I'm like, well, where are they at? So they kept coming in slowly through the years. You've got a lot of the people going out and catching them and finding them. Gary Lang, he's very well known for it. Even has one named after him now, the Gary Lang eye. After a little bit here, I said it's just got to get back into the rainbows. Well, then I ended up getting onto the Rainbow Fish Live forum on Facebook and I'm one of the admins on there now and it just got me buried harder and harder and harder. At one point I had 24 different species, anything from extinct to rare to the most common and just love them to death. I think they have one of the best colors out there. When you look at the varieties of how many are out there. There's tons of different colors. They're not easy to get. You don't find them in the stores, not that easily. Not the ones that are more difficult. Excuse my puppy here.

Hot puppy.

It's Holly. She's still a baby. She loves the bite. But yeah, they're getting more and more common. I'm sure there's still going to be more out there to be found in the wild and brought in. They seem to find them every couple of years. A new one, the Cali Tawa was one of the latest ones. It was a few years ago, gary Lang had brought that one in. Very beautiful fish.

So what species do you have currently?

Oh shoot.

Now I got you on a pop quiz.

Yeah, I've got anything from MRI to I've got your common lacustrus and bosmanae. And bomani now being on the spot, of course, I can't even think of the names there's. Probably right now I'm probably up at about maybe eleven to twelve different species, the Ornatus. And then I've got a couple that are from Blue Hole and several other ones probably need to take a walk to try to remember.

Oh, no worries.

So what is your favorite one? What is the one that you keep going back to that you get rid of and then you go get them again?

Oh, it's the Blaire, that one. And the MRI I keep tossing up between those two, I really do. They're both just gorgeous. MRI is extinct. Wish it wasn't down on numbers, so I don't have actually any fry on them. And the Blair, I had lost my last one on that one. Last year was a little bit tough for us for medical stuff, so we lost a lot of fish, a lot of different species. That was tough.

What happened that you'd lost them?

I ended up with cancer and I also had blown a bicep in my right arm.

I am so sorry, Larry. That's a rough deal.

Yeah, it's been a road. Cancer free at the moment, so everything's good.

Congratulations.

Back up and going.

That's fantastic. I mean, here is somebody who's resilient who I mean this all happened to us where we've had to kind of get out of it because life hits you spouse, brother, sister, parents, and then you get right back into it and it probably helps save your sanity and keep your mind off the problems, I'm guessing.

Oh yeah, absolutely. And on my toes. Yeah.

And on your toes. On your feet. Honestly Larry, I could tell you I'm 58 years old and I've had several friends that have retired and I've lost six friends in four years who were absolutely healthy, who retired and went home and sat on the couch and watched Jeopardy and died in six months. And I think if you're not active, if you don't have a reason to get up in the morning, that people kind of just give up. And when I'm having a bad day and stuff. If I go down to my fish room and spend a couple of hours down there, I come back a different person.

Absolutely.

Mainly because that's where he keeps his drugs and tequila.

And tequila, yeah.

Well, Larry, I think there's a fair moment we can take in the podcast since we have so many listeners. If there's a species you're looking for, this is your time. Tell the audience they will help. We have a very generous community that will find your species for you.

Yeah, I actually have, I guess you could say, one of the best finding of, I guess, anybody in the world right now. I'm working on kali tawa. I've got a buddy that's already got them. Now the cat's got to join in. So I had fry, and then we had one of the big major storms, and power went out, and all the fry, I lost all the cali tawa babies. Speaking of babies, you're being spoiled.

That is a gorgeous fish. It's spelled K-A-L-I-T-A-W-A. It's pretty darn breathtaking. I've seen them only once before. They have white top and upper fins, and I believe their back fin. I'm looking at a picture here is orange. I saw it where it was more red, but again, I probably got it on water change day.

Yeah, usually they're a little bit more red. The buddy of mine see if I can get my cat out of the way. He's being persistent. The dog got a bone. Cat won't go for that.

You're just the popular guy this evening.

Larry's got the animals crawling all over. For those of you who are listening rather than watching and stuff, larry is sitting at home in his comfy chair, and his pets are just all over him.

I'm just waiting for, like, a Chichilla to jump on.

I'm waiting for an ostrich to walk by or something. Cool.

Got the shrimp right next to me. They should be crawling in my lap here pretty soon.

There you go.

Funny.

Well, let's go over some of the basics for rainbow fish, because we're trying to adapt to both beginners and advanced aquarists. So when you're trying to do these, I call large and nano rainbow fish. You just spoke about the Kelly tawa. That's what I would consider the large body style. And then we have the blue eyes nanotype of rainbow fish. Let's talk about the large style. What are some of the requirements that you would have to maintain them?

Heat.

What would you recommend for food, et cetera?

The nice thing about rainbows is they're very forgiving. So, yes, there's a wide range of foods. There's a wide range of PH, temperature, et cetera, et cetera. They're very forgiving. So a good one to start. In my book, my water is pretty hard, and they spawn for me regular. My poor cat just will not leave me alone.

We can hear the motor microphone.

Yeah, bet your common ones that you can get in the stores are really good. They are very tolerant. You do need to do water changes, normal as normal. They aren't going to be too finicky as far as your PH temperatures, even the ornatus. Now he's pushing the button. So my seat is moving. I'm going to be keeping some of them out in the summer, but there are some people, if the weather is not too freezing cold, they'll keep them out all year round. I don't know if I'd really recommend that much, but people are doing it. We hit freezing maybe three or four times a year and yeah, I think that's just too cold. But they tend to do pretty good. So they're good species to work with. Your larger ones you're going to find in stores of Bose Monais. Your lacustra is also known as your turquoise. Those are your larger ones. As a matter of fact, I've got one that's roughly six inches long. He's about maybe six years old, seven years old now, very large. But of course he gets fed a lot of frozen brine and bloodworms and inflakes when they hatch. They're actually one of the smallest fry, very small. So if foods for that green water is great, you can do the golden Pearls 550. That's one of my favorites that I use. Greenwater is great.

You said golden pearl. I'm going to stop you there and ask some questions.

Powder food is golden pearls.

Yeah, it's a real super fine powder. It's 550, meaning five micron to 50 micron. It's perfect for feeding them. You just sprinkle it across the top. Rainbows feed at the top. For the most part they will go down, but they mainly feed at the top. I've got some fry, you wouldn't even be able to see them on the camera, they're so small. But the golden pearls from there, in a couple of weeks, maybe three weeks, if they're fed maybe three times a day, four times preferable, get them into the live baby brine shrimp, that's great for the nutritions. And of course, as fresh hatch as possible, they'll grow fast. Water changes always helps. From there you can get into bug bites. They're wonderful. In the wild, there's going to be nothing but bugs that are getting into the water and that's one of their favorite foods. They'll eat just about anything. They're not too finicky, they're just a good round fish. Which makes you wonder, well, why aren't they more common in their trade? The biggest reason I feel is they're such slow growers and it takes forever. So, yeah, they need more money to sell them, of course, because it takes so much longer to raise. And bosman eyes are one of the longest ones to grow, so they take forever. Preycocks are not so bad and they're your mid sized ones, getting them into spawning mode. A good food is your blood, worms, tube effects, which. Is what used to be. Now it's blackworm. So blackworms are great. Good water changes, maybe 20% daily for about three days. They're ready to spawn anytime, but that really gets them going good. You get a lot better eggs and better quality eggs and less fungusing, more fry. If you want to fill a tank up with some babies, that's a good way to do it.

So in the breeding realm, what do you use to breed with? I've used breeding mops. Is there a special type that you use or do you use something else in the tank?

If you've got a lot of planted tank and you're going to want to breed a specific species, so you put that species into the tank, let them just play around. If there's plants, then good. Maybe seven days, pull the parents out, put them in another tank where they've laid eggs on the plants. They just start hatching all over the place. Or using mops, everybody's favorite is to take the acrylic yarn, wrap it around a book about 100 times, snip the one in and put the styrofoam so it'll hang off of the top. It looks like a regular house mop. And you can hang that, let it float around in the tank. And they'll just get in there and it's just a show. The forehead, the stripe. There's a stripe that comes down their forehead depending on which one it could be from powder blue to yellow and gold and all sorts of different colors. When they're in that spawning mode, it's just gorgeous to watch.

So is it just spawning that controls.

The colors down the forehead? Yes, that's when they light it up. They will light up.

Seems when I have rainbow fish, in the past, I have done water changes, and immediately as I do a water change, they just brighten up. Is that because they're already getting into spawning mode due to my water change?

Or is it just because the rock is so handsome?

They love water changes. They get excited and they'll start sparring and challenging and race car driving themselves around the tank. And then of course, they run into something and get their lip going and it's like, yeah, speed limit science would be good in a tank. Of course we can't do that. But the water changes get them excited, very excited. They'll come up and a lot of times just do a dance for you, especially when they're hungry.

So a lot of people ask us when we're talking about breeding, a lot of people are always in their mind, are thinking about how can I do this? How can I make a little bit of money doing it? How many on average do they have and how often do they spawn?

They will spawn daily.

Why?

You've got good water quality and you're feeding them good quality food. And a lot of times I see them spawning most of the day. If you get into the parva, they're going to be colored up and really going at it mainly in the mornings. And if you want to see a show and it's like, okay, I've gotten home from work, but I want to see it. Turn the light off, give them about an hour, turn that light back on and they'll color right back up just like it's morning. They'll spawn and give you a beautiful show. Then after a little bit, they'll calm back down again. They're morning fish.

That's what we call tricks of the trade right there, Jimmy.

Yeah, that's what we're always looking for is a little bit I mean, spawning and stuff when I was down in Florida and stuff, and they're talking about how they're breeding guramis and stuff. And as soon as it starts getting daylight in the greenhouses and stuff, and that's when they all get busy and stuff. After a good night's sleep, everybody's feeling a little frisky.

Yeah.

So how many babies will they or how many eggs will they lay per day? Are they like chickens or what?

Yeah, I usually have maybe two or three pair going at a time, and I can get in excess of 100. It just depends on how many I have. I'm going to guesstimate I'm going to end up being wrong on that. Probably shouldn't say, but it's going to be quite a few.

It all depends on how many pairs you have in.

Yeah, I don't think he's counting if they're happening every day, it's like, oh, there's another batch. Not counting that. Just put it I can throw a.

Mop in in a couple of days, pull the mop, and I can count probably 150 eggs.

So do you pull the mops in and put them in a different tank and let them hatch out there?

Yeah, that's the way I do it. I do pull the mops, just dump.

It into another how many spawns will you put in there? I mean, like, let's say you've got a 20 gallon long or something or wherever you're putting them. I don't know. But are you putting in like Monday through Friday? Are you putting that whole week's worth in one tank for that particular species?

Yeah, I use a ten gallon sometimes. I'll do a five gallon if there's not many eggs on the mop. So I'll pull the mop out, ring it out. Eggs are pretty hard, so they're really easy to see under a good light. And you can actually feel them between your fingers. You don't have to worry so much about just popping them. Of course, you don't want to pinch too hard, but you can ring the mop out above the water, grab the mop, bring it over to a light and start thumbing through it, and you can see the eggs. And if you've got a good batch going, yeah, I'll throw them in a ten gallon, let them start hatching out up there on my top row. If there's not so many. Then I'll put them down in a five and a half gallon. Then I also have a rack, roughly 35 little tubs, about a half gallon tubs. I've got them all on system. I can just pick the eggs off and drop them into those tubs and let them hatch in there. Just depending on how many I do that a lot with the quarries.

How many fish do you keep together? Do you just do by the pair and leave the pair alone? Or do you keep, I don't know, a gaggle of rainbow fish together to breed?

Yeah, it'll depend. There's times I'll have maybe a couple of females to a male, and then there's other times that like my rads, I've got shoot, there's probably 20 in there. I just let them have at it and then I just pull the mop. Mop is on the bottom right now, so I need to get it hanging again.

So what is the magic temperature you're keeping everybody at?

Oh, these guys love it. About 78, 80. And now what I do with mine in the house, I rely a lot on the house heater. We keep the house fairly warm, but in the fish room, I actually have a dehumidifier. That dehumidifier keeps the temperature usually reads 78 to 80 in the air. So I'm 74, maybe 76, 78. But figure I'm going to say average 76, 78 throughout the year.

So you're not using any heaters in the tanks per se. You're using a dehumidifier to keep the room nice and warm.

Correct.

Dehumidifiers are not cheap to run, but they're still cheaper to run than 60 heaters any day of the week.

Oh, absolutely. And to heat the room is great. The other nice thing about that, too, is with a dehumidifier, you don't have to worry about the mold on the walls. I keep my humidity down. It's sitting about 50, 55. So it's really good.

Yeah, we have humidity here in Minnesota two days a week. A year?

No, in the summer. In the summer it's like was it 95, 98% humidity? You might as well swim across the parking lot when you have 18,000 lakes, when they're all fresh, they're just going to evaporate in your face. Go to Arizona if you want that dry heat.

Yeah, I lived in Minnesota for three years. Their bird, state bird is the mosquito.

That's right. Can you say UFTA for us? Because I know you probably say UFTA a lot. Yeah, there you go.

It's your kink.

Yeah. There.

You.

It's Minnesota.

Just ask Jimmy to say sorry.

That's a good hot dish. That's a good hot dish.

Oh, boy.

Yeah, it's hard getting used to want a pop instead of a soda.

Yeah. You know what, when I was down in Florida and I asked him where the pop was, and they looked at me and go, are you talking about soda? I go, yes. And what's funny is that up here in Minnesota. Mountain Dew is a huge probably one of the biggest sellers up here. And when I got down to Florida last time stuff and I asked for Mountain Dew and I finally found it on the bottom shelf next to Tab. And this is not a big thing down there as is Tab.

Now, a couple of the harder questions for you, larry, are you ready?

Sure.

So a lot of the debates you find online with rainbow fish are people want to keep them in high tannins. Some people want everything crystal clear and not want anything. What do you recommend in a tank? Do you want a lot of those botanicals in there?

I don't do them. I'll have my logs and whatnot in other tanks with other fish. They're good to have. Yes, because they do help keep fungus off of the eggs. They're great for that when breeding is so much different than keeping them in a home aquaria. So, yeah, tendons in a home aquaria is probably pretty good idea for keeping a lot of your funguses down if you're going to do any kind of breeding at home. But being a breeder, I'm not so worried about the tannins coming from all the logs. I'll use methylene blue and of course I use that in a light form. I won't use it heavy, but I'll use it light. I also do hydrogen peroxide to help work with the eggs. I also used age water. I'll age it overnight. I got 120 gallon tank that I use for water changes for the sensitive. So I'm not pulling it from the tap, but I've got a four foot charcoal filter for coming into the house and it treats the whole house. So I use that to keep the 120 filled and then I pull that water for eggs and fry and whatnot and I don't have to worry about because I've got chloromines coming in. And of course the charcoal filter will take care of the chlorine but not the ammonia. And of course I can go into some of the other specialized charcoals for that, but the cost on it for me would be outrageous with the amount of water I change, they just don't last that long. So it's better to use 120 gallon with a couple of filters and the next day nothing's ready to do. Water changes for the fish.

Are rainbow fish particularly jumpy? Do we need to worry about lids?

I kind of light up on that one. Yes, absolutely. You should always have lids on. Yeah, I'm bad about not having lids on. A lot of mine and yeah, I get chewed out and told about it all the time. And sometimes I will pick up a crispy critter off the floor. They are jumpers. Yes. They're going to be like killyfish. They're going to jump. So, yeah, keep the water a little bit lower. I keep my waters low in most all my tanks. Not real low, just a little bit low. It helps keep it from happening. And then I'm always checking on them anyway, too. And you can't catch every single one. But I'm going to say, on my average, I'll get a jumper once every three or four months. For me, it's not that bad. But I'm not keeping all the tanks up to the top either. So I also work on not startling them. Then your biggest time startling is stomping through a house and coming up on them too fast. So I'm always keeping that down to a very minimum. Also, for like, nighttime, when the lights first kick on, they're going to get startled or shutting off, even. So, I've got a nightlight the main light in the center stays on. Twenty four seven. And that way when I shut the other lights off, those stay on. And I noticed that I hardly ever would get a jumper. It's usually the fry. The adults are usually kind of like, okay, dad, I know what you're doing. Yeah. But, yes, you should have lids on them. Absolutely.

What we've been doing at the fish store is Derek and Dan have been saving all of the crispy critters that hit the floor, if they ever do, in a collection in the back of the store for us. And we're going to ship out was it you said, in resin or something, Dan?

Try and preserve some of them.

Try and preserve some of them and then ship them out as patreon gifts. Have some fun.

Back a long time ago when you're able to larry, you'll remember this? You guys remember larry, you remember when you could go in the back of magazines and buy seahorses from Coral Gables, Florida? Do you remember that?

Sea Monkeys.

No, I'm talking seahorses, miniature dwarf seahorses. Do you remember those?

Yeah. Yes. Absolutely. Yeah.

Because the Sea monkeys were basically they give you some brine shrimp and tell you to entertain yourself, basically. But when a seahorse would die, I would take those and just lay them out and get them positioned like a seahorse would look and just let them dry out. And my mom would take clear nail polish and she would make the coolest shadow boxes. It was a beautiful shadow box with three or four seahorses in there and stuff. Because we had a lot of seahorse. We had probably had 40 or 50, but you'd lose one here and there. And she makes these beautiful shadow boxes, and she'd put in some fake plants and stuff in there, and she would just hang them on the wall.

Wow.

There's a lot of way to create something beautiful out of something dead. Right?

I'm for it.

Yeah. We had a wholesaler down in San Mateo back when I had my store, and they would get in some of the craziest seahorses. Half the time they're popping babies out left and right. And of course, they would hold on to them and try to raise them. But back then the saltwater wasn't as good as it is today. But they would get some crazy looking seahorses. You'd look at them and go, that can't be. And then they'd start to move and man, it just looks like a plant. So they had every kind of seahorse. It was a huge saltwater wholesaler. He probably had maybe 200, 250 of the 150 gallon tanks on the side, plexiglass just open at the top. And he allowed us just to go in and literally grab the anemones and net out whatever we wanted all on our own and just bring the buckets up and pay for it and go, that was something else. But, oh, yeah, those seahorses then were great. But yeah, I remember that back in the day. And being able to get those little seahorses, some reason I never could keep them alive. They would always die out of me. So, yeah, I curl that tail. I remember that. That was great.

Well, back to the rainbow topic. Now, do you want more open space so they can swim and do their thing, or do you want to add hiding spots? How would you scape it correctly for rainbow fish?

One thing about rainbow is they like to spar and they do need space. Really recommended is a good four foot tank, at least four foot long or wide. And of course the more surface area on them is going to be better. They are swimmers, they like to just swim, the tighter they get. And yeah, they run into things and you'll notice their mouths will get messed up and whatnot hiding places? If your rainbows are happy and healthy, they're not going to be hiding, they'll be out. If you get a lot of sparring going on, if you get an aggressive one, then, yeah, hiding places, like putting a you disrupt their point of view site so one can actually run behind something, like you would do with some of the other Cichlids. Give them a place to run and hide, hang out for a little bit.

So how is aggression in the tank? I've always had these as extremely peaceful fish. I haven't had too much of a problem except they seem to just interact with each other. What seems to be aggressive in my tanks, in my experience, is just them not really committing to it. They'll flare, they'll chase, but I've never seen nip fins with each other. What's your experience?

It's absolutely the same thing. They like to spar. It's almost kind of like, yeah, I want to show off my muscles. Oh, yeah, I'll show my back and forth. And they like to spar. One wants to say they're the big boy of the tank, but yet, no, they generally don't hurt each other. It is pretty uncommon for them to hurt each other doing that. They have so much energy, they've got to release it somehow. And I think that's how a lot of their sparring is going and looking for the girl hiding over in the corner going, okay. And of course, get them into a mop and it's just a wonder to watch. And even then, there's not much aggression. It's all, everybody join in and have fun.

Now. Quick question, Larry. Adam has always had this story about raising cichlids with a powerhead because it's like a treadmill. Have you ever used powerhead with rainbows to give them a little current to fight against?

No, I don't. Some people will. I don't. And usually they're not in fast running streams, not always. So there's going to be a couple of variety that are generally they're more slower moving bubbles. aeriation is great. If you do have the higher flow with, say, a canister filter, it's great to have the holes going across and equal it out and keep the water moving. Of course, you don't want any stagnant areas, but they're not really so much into the high current. There are people that I know of in our group that definitely do keep them in the higher current, and they seem to be fine, but where they come from, in a while, generally they're not so much in higher flow.

Adam, what was the thought process on that for your cichlids?

So the thought process is that, and this is what I was told by an old time breeder, he said that African cichlids are lake cichlids. So because they're a lake cichlid, the water changes don't really matter, but the power heads do. And they grew faster. So I had always thrown a bigger pump. I put in a 20 gallon long. Whenever I get little cichlids, I would throw in a you remember the Marineland 280s?

Yeah.

They'd get knocked around and they'd find a corner for like a day or so. But they did grow faster than the other fit than they would if you kept them in the 20 gallon with just air on them. They were one of the few tanks that I always had a back filter on just simply because of the current. And that's the only fish that it seems to really work with is African lake cichlids. Everything else that I've seen, it's water changes. So I don't know if there's been a study on that, but I can.

Give you my thoughts on it realistically. Yeah. Being in a lake, of course your water does turn over, but there's not a big flow. I would assume your fish are getting larger because they're getting exercise all the time. I mean, go to the gym all day long and you're going to build up muscle. So, yeah, you can end up growing with that. Not doing water changes, not being as important to me is really more of a scary thought than anything. They're going to be urinating, which becomes acidic. You've got ammonia, your nitrates. Of course, if you have plants, it'll help with the nitrates and ammonia. But then you use Ro water and try to top it off to keep your chemicals. Right now you're chasing PH to bring it up, keep it from dumping on you. And of course your Lake Tang and Yika and Malawi and Victoria are not going to be acidic waters, so you're going to be chasing that PH to get it right. Yeah, sure, they can still be happy looking and whatnot, but think about every time you do Ro. To top it off, there's another guy, San Francisco area, I believe it is, that has a store that he says, oh, I haven't done water changes in 25 years, I only top off. But yet he's always got new fish going in and he's got to do something in there. Any chemical that's going past the Ro and the canister filter or charcoal filter and getting into the tank is going to slowly build up. Sooner or later it's going to be toxic. I mean, anything that's good for you can all of a sudden become bad in excess. So to get away with trying to do no water changes, what is in your water from the water supply company that gets past your Ro? I mean, there's not much of course, but there is going to be a little bit getting past and then what comes in from the air? Dust particles. I mean, we live near farmlands, so there's dust always in the house that gets into the tank. And if I only top it off, sooner or later there's a big layer of whatever was in the air. If the wife uses hairspray or something like that, that's in the air. It gets into the tank, it builds up, it gets into their bones.

See, this is all you can tell. Larry is a diehard rainbow guy because he hates cichlids. Because he hates cichlids. One, two he's so adamant about water changes because no fish other than the rainbow fish is better for water changes because you get that instant gratification of them immediately coloring up, playing and thanking you that you don't get in any other species. So I've yet to see a true rainbow guy being like, yeah, I'm the low maintenance plant, no water change guy. That'll never happen with a rainbow guy.

No. So it's my turn to tell you a story. The wife wants to say something.

Come on in, let's get the story in Mrs. Shankel.

Get her close to the microphone.

And so in his fish tank, he had all sicklets and I would go to the fish store with him and every time I would point at the angels and the rainbow, at mostly the angels, and I says, can this go with our fish? No, they'll eat them. So two weeks later, same question over and over again. So after he finally decided to give me my own tank, he got me some angel fish. And then he says, you see that fish? And I said, yeah, it's still ugly. Right. You take home and it'll turn blue. And that's how we got started with the rainbows. We took that thing home and it turned blue. Wow. I got you.

That's the secret right there.

Yeah. That's so funny. Well, I don't think I would ever want to not do water changes. You've got build up that it's going to be hard, especially if you're feeding them up heavy and wanting to breed older age water. With build up of nitrates, it's going to be hard to get enough plants to get rid of that much nitrates.

Now, Larry, when you're doing your water changes, you've got number of tanks. How much did you say you had? Over 100.

I got 100 running. Yeah.

Now, are you just running around with a hose like every other fool, or have you gone ahead and plumbed everything now so you can do changes?

I guess I had to say yes to both because it's both. I have a few of them on automatic water change and then a few others. Yeah, I'm dragging most of them. I'm dragging the hose out.

What do you prefer?

I like doing the hose only because I use the pythons, I can get the gravel vacuum going better, where the automatic water changes, I can't. And the amount of food I put in, I need to be able to gravel back a lot, and I can never keep up on it. So I'm always trying to gravel back, let the tank fill up on its own, or just go ahead and fill it back up myself. And I can keep an eye on it that way, too. Sometimes when I'm doing the automatic, depending on if we're getting rain, they throw more chemicals in. And I've got a few tanks that just right out of the blue. After doing a water change, all of a sudden it turns purple. I'm thinking, oh, potassium permanganate. Maybe it's some other iron type bacterial, whatever that's turning it purple. I think there's one out there for that. I heard from one of our other admins on the Rainbow group, so it's kind of weird. They just throw in chemicals from time to time and where does it come from? So I want to be able to watch what's happening. It's just easier.

So by having that large 125 gallon tank for your water changes, you know exactly what you're putting in your tanks?

Yeah, absolutely.

When I had my warehouse and stuff, I had a 300 gallon VAT, and I put mine as high as I could in the ceiling. I built about a six foot little water tower, I called it, and I was able just to go ahead and fill that darn thing. And it being next to the ceiling was self heating, basically, because, of course, always warm up on top, and then it acts as a water tower. You don't really have to have any water pressure, so you don't have to have it hooked up all that sophisticated. Now, is that what you do? Do you just have a hose that comes out of your 125, or are you using a python or what are you doing?

I'm actually running a power head.

Okay.

So I got the hose hooked onto that.

Yeah.

My tank is actually down lower.

Okay.

And I also have Stixy snails in there that I keep and breed.

What kind of snail?

Stixy snails. S-P-I-X-I They're actually one of the members of the mystery snail.

Okay.

Apple snail. Yeah.

They're not Malaysian trumpet snails.

Yeah. There you go.

No, I don't like snail asians. I've got tanks of them. Yeah.

The spixie snail is commonly known as the zebra apple snail. That's what we know them as. Jimmy okay.

So you call them back there. Okay.

Yeah. They're either a cream color or yellow.

Mine are actually covered in algae, but, yeah, there's about 400 in there.

And what do you keep those for? Do you keep them because you love them? You keep them because they help with the water.

I'm also in a couple of Quarry M clubs, so I take them for auctions and stuff, and then other people come by, and they like to go through the fish room, and they'll pick up some so they're just neat to keep and sell off. And if I get too many of them, then the next trip to the wholesaler, I'll bag up about 100 of them and take them in.

Robbie, Adam and I have a what do you call that? We share stories and stuff, and now we're seeing, like, the applesnails are up in the Wisconsin yeah. In the waterways and stuff. Somebody shared that the other day.

It's not this variety apples snail, but yes, it's the traditional, delicious apple snails.

Yes.

And they're actually in the state of Wisconsin. They're paying people to go out and find the snail eggs and destroy.

That was Arizona.

That was in Wisconsin, too, if you read the whole article.

Knock off the eggs into the water and let them die.

Yeah, because they just drowned. Because most mystery snails and applesails lay right above the waterline.

Have to breathe.

Yeah. They'll take over. They're bad pest, but you don't want to touch them with your hands because they're toxic.

The pixies or the apples?

The eggs. The apples are in their intestines, so they are edible, but you'd have to clean the intestines out, the whole tract. You got to be sure. Disgusting. Yeah. That's a big dinner.

Right.

But yeah. The eggs have a toxin on them, a light toxin, from what I've read or heard. So, yeah, you don't want to actually touch the eggs, knock them off and let them go into the water.

Well, that explains a couple of things that I've done wrong in the past.

Yeah. Because Robbie usually licks them for a while.

Yeah.

I mean, don't you, robbie.

Also runs the microwave with the door open a lot.

Snail eggs and toads. Those are the two things you lick.

I wouldn't let him lick them.

Well, back to the rainbow subject. What do you recommend for tank mates and what shouldn't you not have for tank mates?

Well, your aggressive cichlids are of course a big no no. A lot of people have issues with them, with angels, we've got them in with angels, no problems. Some people will use them as a dither fish and then of course, other people say, well, you need a dither for the rainbows. I've yet to see that. They come out and they just beg. So, yeah, tank mates, they're fast. It's almost like having Indy 500 in a tank. They're just constantly running. So barbs, of course, you can get some of the barbs that are going to be sneaking up on them. But generally rainbows are always moving around and they generally stay away. You're always going to find the angels that they want to pair up. They're going to get really nasty, they're going to fight everything. Same thing with all of your other cichlids and even some of your other barbs, but neon or Tetras, anything that can fit in their mouth will end up going in there. The big problem with rainbows is they have a small throat. It's smaller than their mouth. So if they do eat something, pellets are a big one, it can get stuck. And it happens a lot of times. It's almost like, okay, what do you do? It's not like you can pick them up, squeeze them and hope that it pops out. But I'm sure it's happened. Some people have even gone as far as Tweezers to try to get the pellet out. Hopefully in time it'll go down. I've had a couple of them, it take a couple of three days and their mouth are just swollen. It's because there's a pellet stuck in there and it should have gotten soft by then. But after about two or three days and finally I either got it down or spit it out.

Yeah, jimmy's rule, if it lasts longer than 4 hours, that's his thing. Yeah, it's got to get soft in 4 hours.

If it's not soft in 4 hours, then I call the doctor and check that out. Earlier you said, Larry, about bug bites, and I was turned on to bug bites a while back, a couple of years ago. And what I find is that I was at a store out in North Dakota and they had all kinds of bug bites and she goes, they don't sell for crap. And I looked at them and all the bug bites she had were just absolutely huge. And I said, I'll take them. I said, you shoot me a price. And she goes, I'll give it to you for my cost, just to get them off there. Because she goes, they don't sell. And anyway, I bought them. And I was talking to Robbie, and Robbie said, you don't need to do is just get yourself a pepper grinder. And so we got a pepper grinder and just ground them up a little bit finer and stuff. And they're a great food.

Pepper grinder is probably the most abused thing in my fish hobby.

Absolutely.

Well, you know, last year I got teased really bad last year because we have a swimming pool, and all of a sudden the mosquitoes came in, and the wife's like, come on, I need to get the pool ready. And I'm like, wait, I got some natural food here. Of course, at the club, I had to net out a gajillion mosquitoes and sell them off at the auction. I couldn't believe how well they went. A couple of people are like, you're just breeding those things for the neighborhood. The only thing I could say was, they're breeding in the pole, and I'm netting them out. I'm keeping them out of the neighborhood. At least I'm getting the mosquitoes that would have bit you over here. And then they go into the fish's mouth. It was kind of funny, but, yeah, some people kind of got upset about it. Other people are like, I need more. Let me know when you've got them.

Yeah. In the summer around here, we've got every little pool has got mosquito larvae and stuff. And if you can find a good pool that's been away from an agricultural area and, you know, it's clear of sprays and whatnot and stuff, a lot of people go out and collect that stuff. But the last time I did that, I put them in a plastic bucket and kind of forgot about them.

Then you're sitting here swatting.

Yeah.

They start hatching at night.

My wife goes, what, all the mosquitoes?

Yeah, I'd run around the pool with a net, and I'd put them in a bag and ziplock it, put it up in the freezer, and I had bags in the freezer. It was great. It's getting ready to go again this year.

Good deal.

So can I share a story with you, Larry?

Sure.

Years back, I got really big into rainbow fish. I tried to do got to catch them all mentality because I found out that there really isn't many rainbow fish or any that I found that can't go with each other. So I set up a big 75 gallon aquarium, and I just have just the rainbow tank. In fact, I still have the old sign. You could probably see it. I'll hold it up here. It says Rainbow Road. These old fashioned painted signs. I had this one specially made. It was absolutely one of my favorite tanks I've ever done. I got Kamaka rainbows, dwarf neon rainbows, bosmani, millennium rainbows, which I thought were fake. For the longest time, I thought they were like a modified fish. Didn't know that that was actually a real color.

Yes. Yellow too.

I had every variety I could possibly get. And I wanted so badly to get one of these new species that Gary Lang brought back in. At the time, it was the whoppoga rainbow, not the red laser. It was just the traditional whoppoga. And I wanted it more than life itself. So I scoured the internet, because again, they were brand new. And from my understanding, and you can correct me on this, gary Lang, when he has a new species, he doesn't just proliferate and spread across farmers in Florida. He instead goes to people like yourself and says, hey, I have these cool species, I'm going to give you some. Can you help move this through aquarium clubs in the trade? So for me, not being an area where there's aquarium clubs or anything, it was much more inclusive and painful to get a hold of some of these species. So I ended up driving 6 hours one way, paying a guy hundreds of dollars for four WAPOGA rainbows. And that was where the passion really kicked off. Absolutely. To this day, still one of my favorite fish, they went from one color to a completely separate. It was like Bob Ross just spilled paint across them every time I changed the water. And forevermore it was just locked down. And that was the coolest rainbow ever. Jimmy taught me at that time that I shouldn't be naming my fish because that will be the one that dies. Yeah, I had that tank for a while and it was wonderful. Now, is there any species that you've come across that you mentioned before, new to the hobby? What's your experiences with those?

I get some rainbows from time to time from either Gary Lang or I'll get them as eggs. When he comes up to the club, he'll auction them off. Another good place is to find the on Aqua bid, find out the sellers. Which ones are, it's hard to determine, but there's good sellers and then there's some that could be bad. Of course, I can't just say, but there are known good sellers on there and you'll find some of those rare ones and the ones you're looking for, you could end up paying a good premium for them. But the way that I'm assuming, the way Gary I put it that way, that Gary works and I understand and get it, he has an umbrella of people that he will get eggs to and fish. And then, like you were saying, works with those people and they get the fish up and work with the rest of the people. Gary's busy. Everybody's bugging him all the time and of course he just doesn't have time for everyone. So I think it's good what he does with trying to get specific people. Basically I call it an umbrella and work with them the most. Get the eggs out or the fish out to them, let them work with the bigger crowd.

So what species have you had that you've received from either Gary Lang or someone else that's quote unquote, new or rare to the hobby?

The best one that I had gotten was the melanotania Gary Lang eye, the one named after him, but I've gotten many species from him taken out of.

The book of Axel Rod eye.

Yeah, I got Herbert Axel Rod eyes out here. The stores call them yellow. It's kind of like no, they're Herbert. I mean, if you want to call them herby, that'd be even better than saying yellow. Herbert axel rod eye. Jerry Allen strain is the one that I've got through gary I've gotten quite a few eggs from Gary and then others as fish. But shoot, yeah, that's one of the best ways to do it. And, yeah, the Gary Lang, the one I was really pushing him to get, and he's like, I think I got some. And he sent them to me. I was like, yes.

Awesome. Well, we have some other questions that have been mentioned. For instance, crossing species. Will some of these larger rainbow fish species actually hybridize with each other?

Absolutely. And you'll find them in the trade more often than not. You don't really want to put a finger on it, but farming fish, a lot of times that's really where they're coming from. A fish jumps out, they find it on the floor. It's like, oh, I don't know what tank it came out of and throw it back in. And then they breed, and now you got cross. Other accidents can happen. The biggest thing when that happens, for the breeder to man up to it and just, hey, I think I had a cross. I'm giving these away or putting them down. I can't just let them out. I don't believe in that part. So they need to be kept separate so that doesn't happen. It can happen so frequent, and it does, and it makes it really tough. A lot of times in our forum, there's somebody, hey, can somebody help me identify this fish? You see that more than anything. It's kind of like yeah, it's a hybrid. And no, we're not saying hybrid between electric and gas, this is two different rainbows coming together.

I suddenly want to see a millennium rainbow cross with something else, just to see what goofy albino strain you're going to get.

It's got to happen in the wild, right? If you're a fish and and you your fish, really think about it. Your fish, you don't own a mirror. You don't know what you look like. You just know it looks hot. And so you're just chasing the other rainbow fish, and you have no idea if you're a yellow rainfish.

I mean, take Jimmy. He's a white boy that just loves some senoritas. You know what I'm saying?

What?

No.

Well, yeah.

Kind of a quick story. Then there's in the Running River, there was one of the rainbows that was in there and they were doing just great. They've gone for the DNA, they know what they're supposed to be. Next thing you know that there were other rainbows that somehow got in there. So they started pulling rainbows and then checking the DNA. Once they found some that were pure, then they got them out to breeders and got the breeders to breed them. And these people worked their tails off on very little money. And yet they managed to get people to get these done along with them and re them back in into the wild, I think if I remember correctly, about a mile away into another river where they didn't know where there would be possibly other rainbows. And they thrived. They did really good. They went back the next year. It was getting better then I don't remember how many years from the initial. All of a sudden they found some other rainbows that had come downstream and got mixed in. So if you can get the running river, I'd gotten a mop of them. They were cooked. I managed to get one that hatched they got overheated in the mail. That was sad. So I ended up with one male at him for a while. But yeah, they're going to be extinct in the wild before you know it.

Well, there's a question actually. You've mentioned you received a mop. You got eggs in the mail. This is so foreign to me. Unless you're doing killy fish like you dry them out, you can keep them in a baggie for X amount of time. What in the world are you doing with rainbow fish eggs that you can ship them and how do you ship them? Yeah, tell us more about this whole process. This is completely foreign to me.

The best way, easiest way is you pull your mop, you look for the eggs and oh yeah, I got a bunch of eggs. You can snip the strands off or just ship the whole mop. And basically you want to put just enough moisture in there. The mop is wet. You don't really want the bag filled with water and just bag it up like you would make it moist. Yeah, you could rinse them off first in some good tap water and not worry about the chlorine and ammonia. I mean I would worry about the ammonia but the chlorine because that'll help keep the fungus off as they're being shipped and ship away. You don't want them to get under maybe 60, 65 degrees. 65 is when it starts getting bad.

They're that hearty that you just throw them in a Ziploc baggie, make sure they're moist and ship away. How long do they last?

How long does it take for them to hatch?

Usually seven to 14 days is what it takes.

That's a long time. Honestly.

Yeah. I had a ball this one time. I felt so silly. I went up to be a speaker up in Oregon and I brought up just bags. The wife went up there with me to help me out and bags of eggs to auction off. And it was like the day before the auction, I'm looking in the bags, and there's just enough water in there. Next thing I know, I see these things swimming around, and I'm like, oh, my God.

Luckily, where I was at, suddenly there's a flash sale.

Yeah, there's another breeder. So I was dumping out live babies into different tanks and labeling tanks real quick. I still had plenty of them that shoot, there must have been maybe up to 100 fry or eggs per bag. So there was plenty of eggs. But I felt so funny. It was like, yeah, I don't think I'll do that again. I got to make sure when I put those mops in, it's only, like, two or three days before leaving.

That's what you get. You played Barry White in your fish room way too early.

All right.

You got to do that the day before the show.

That's the problem. You play Barry White for this group, and all the other groups hear it.

Yeah.

Well, Larry, I have a couple of things more to add here. One of the fans in discord wants to know your involvement in the 1987 video game Leisure Suit Larry.

I what was it? I was in the third generation of it.

Oh, good.

Really? You're not just BSN.

What was the third generation here? That was an 89. I have it pulled up. Leisure Suit Larry three passionate patty in the pursuit of pulsing pictorials. Yeah, there you go.

I never actually played the game, but I saw it everywhere.

Jimmy is very confused.

So you did porn back in the 80s? No. That is exciting. Back talk about that.

So 87, Leisure Suit Larry came out and came up for computer, and then they actually brought it to the Atari. It was quite the kickoff. It was the first naughty game, really published globally.

So was Larry part of that?

That's what I'm saying. I'm pretty sure that Larry in the game is named Larry Shankel. Yeah. He can't talk about it because he's still getting royalties.

Yeah, exactly.

Wife doesn't know that. You're not supposed to say.

Yeah, we won't talk about royalties for me.

Yeah.

There you go.

Mama needs a new dress.

Mama needs a new one.

Yeah.

The other questions are some of the nanospecies. So the blue eyes, like, for instance, fricata rainbows, are not really a true rainbow. But do you do any work with the nano species at all?

Yeah, and legitly, actually, they are a rainbow. Their genetics suck. That taxonomy.

I mean, they're not true rainbow in the sense of the larger species, in my opinion.

But your opinion sucks.

I think my opinion is shared by others.

I can see where yeah. Because they're more of the nano, for sure, but they are actually a true rainbow. The celebies is actually a little bit farther from genetically than the pseudomogles, but they're awesome to breed. Also, they breed some good sized eggs compared to the other larger ones, and you got to watch them a little bit more. They seem to have a time frame where it's like, yeah, look, honey, it's 12:00. Yeah. Isn't it about that time? Whatever time they want to choose during the day. So you've always got to check that mop, find out when they're breeding.

Hey, Larry, how do you check the mop? Do you take a flashlight to it, or do you have great eyesight? Because, I mean, my eyesight is not getting any better the older I get.

Oh, no. Pull the mop. Ring it out, and whoa, whoa.

Ring it out.

Ring it out.

What about the eggs?

The eggs are tough enough that you can ring them out.

Wow.

Yeah. So, wait, I have to ask this. Adams well, no, this is important.

It is.

So most eggs are very delicate, fragile. So much as touch them, the abrasions from your skin your skin can mess them up.

Can confirm you're saying that you can.

Literally pick these things up, swirl them around, and then they do not care. They don't get damaged, and they will hatch into perfectly viable babies.

Absolutely. I literally take them up right out of the water. And it's not a tight, tight ring, but, yes, I ring out the water. When you ring the water out, you can see the eggs a lot better. And, yes, you can literally pick them up with your fingers and roll them around a little bit and feel how stiff the shells are.

Like a booger?

No, it's more dang.

Like a big booger.

Yeah. I would say they're a little bit hardier than Corey eggs, but very similar. I mean, you can get Corey's well, no, they are hardier than quarries because you can smash them pretty easy. I'd say they're a little bit stronger.

So do you take the time to take the eggs out of the mop, or you just dump them up and throw in a fresh mop?

It depends on my mood. If I'm wanting to go into the little tubs and I'll pick them off the mop and stare at them for a while until I'm getting ready to fall over, or if there's a lot of eggs, it's like, okay, that whole mop just goes into a ten gallon.

How do you pick them off?

Literally, with fingers.

Really?

You are breaking all the rules of other fish keeping. If I have pleco eggs, I have to use objects to touch them. If I touch them, it's over.

Robbie has to use objects to touch his wife.

I do. Wait, what?

Never mind. We'll talk about this later.

Yeah, they're hearty. I'm surprised with you. You've kept rainbows in the past, so you haven't experienced that.

I've had eggs, but I've never touched them. I treat them like all the other eggs like, ignores them. I have to scoop them with water so they never get dry. I have to put them in a pickle jar like Jimmy does his angel fish. I got a bubble out of them. I got to put a little methyl in blue. No, I haven't done any of this, so I clearly have been doing it wrong. All I got to do is flick, pick, and roll like you're on fire.

Click, flick and roll. So can you take the mop and put it in, like, a quart of water and just kind of wiggle the mop? Shake the mop. Will it fall out of there or not? Are they a little bit.

Sticky? Okay, they're a little sticky. They'll stay in the mop. You do have to pick them out of the mop. It's not hard. And I'm sure if you gave them a good enough shake yeah. They're going to be coming out.

Well, we know not to shake babies well.

Okay. All right, Larry, I'm calling you out here. First you say you can ring them out. Then you say, go ahead and just shake it. They'll fall out. I am super nervous on all of these instructions.

Don't shake babies. Robbie, you've got one of your own now. Don't shake the babies.

I'm saying if you shake it hard enough yeah, I'm sure you can get a few. Fall out.

Now, are you two talking about eggs or what are you talking about? You shake it hard enough, shake it.

Twice more than that. You're playing with it.

That's right.

Yeah.

All right. Larry went off the freaking rail.

Quick, quick tangent. Quick tangent. I had my first child. She's now 18 months old, right? But in the living room, it was a clown fiesta, right?

What?

I get there, I'm eating pizza while she's emotional. It was a complete rank. Okay, so delivered the baby, magical moment, whatever else. And then after we're getting settled down, after delivery, and Mommy's holding baby, and the doctor comes back in, it's like, you know, there's no book written for parents, but if you got questions, I'm here to answer anything you got. Do you have anything that you have to want to ask right now? And I'm like, I just raised my hand. She's like, yes. How can I help? What questions do you have? And I'm like, well, how often and to what degree do I shake the baby? Is it more of a vigorous thing? And of course, people in the room with us are laughing. The doctor very much is not laughing to the point that she punished me by forcing me, like, I was not able to take my baby home until I do a two hour CDL. Why we don't shake babies.

That's funny. The question should have been, you deserve it.

I apparently deserved it.

The question should have been, is my baby's cute? Do you think I'm the father? That's what it should have been, right? It looks more like Jim. That's exactly right. Think about it. So, speaking about babies, here's an expert on the app, mr. Four Score.

From my first one to my fourth one, there was a huge difference in the stuff that they did at the doctor. From my first one, they were like, oh, here you go, take them home. Do you have any questions? DA DA DA DA. The fourth one, I had to watch a 1 hour video on postpartum depression and all the symptoms of it, and it was in multiple languages to make sure that before they would let me.

Go home, they threatened to do that, but they gave me the Shake Baby one. They threatened to do that one on me, but they gave me the Shake Baby one instead. They thought that was more important.

That is probably more important for you. But yeah, I was really impressed. But I was like, this is our fourth one. I'm pretty sure I know what things look like. And they go, oh, yeah, you're fine, but you legally have to watch the video.

I'm like, oh, okay, great. So Larry should start a little yeah, CBL. He should do a video out there and how to shake your eggs.

How to shake your eggs.

Yes. Or hear me out, Larry. Right. Hear me out. We should do a first annual mop throwing competition and just take moist mops and then try to stick them on a target.

No, let's not do this.

We'll toss different species back and forth. Then we'll get to hybrids.

It's basically like a dog show. You first have your individual species, and then it's just whatever came down the road, and then it's best across hey.

Larry, you're talking about your fish group. And we're up here in no man's land, and we're trying to start one up here, but anyway, do you guys ever do, like it's just rainbow eggs. What kind? It's just mystery. Do you guys just do, like, mystery bags of fish? Because I've done that with people.

You're such.

We haven't done that. And I like that idea. As a matter of fact, we have a mega auction this weekend. Maybe we should do that.

That would be great if you had some that people could buy the species or for a discounted rate, they have a random chance of getting whatever, and you send them with a paper. It says one of these twelve species. Exactly. If you get this species, you know, you won the scratch off ticket.

That's right. If it's a zebra pleco, you won you're right.

That'd be great.

I'd be in I buy, like, five mops worth.

Yeah. I have a friend that is in one of these societies and stuff, and they do bring in, like, baby fish, and it's just a mystery. Mystery baby fish. You don't know what it is. Or they'll bring in mystery eggs. Like the killy fish people.

Yeah, but that's like a sump, Molly. You know what I'm saying? Yeah.

Robbie has created the sump. Molly.

I didn't create them, Jimmy. They've been here all along. Anybody that has a sump and live bearers, they have sump x, sump guppies, sump mollies, sump sword tails you find.

Them in the sumis.

Yeah, see, you find them in the Sump.

That's right.

Gary says, oh, I think they're in the sump. I'll check. And sure enough, he had plenty down there. Look.

See, he's slinging Sump rainbow, sump rainbow.

And, you know, they're good swimmers because they didn't go through the Sump clearly. So they're good strong ones anyway. They're not the dumb ones that go through the shredder.

Well, Larry, you got any special tips and tricks? Like, for instance, we've had some people on here that have really given us trade secrets. We're not telling you to tell us your copywritten processes here, but there are some bits and details of knowledge that only people like you have. We're trying to milk those out. I think one of the most recent was we had what was it? Epistogramma guy that told us that we have to keep night lights on otherwise they'll eat their babies.

And we had Jim Pleco King who talked about the right correct caves that need to be able to breathe.

Had to have a certain type of clay to get these special species to breed in captivity at all.

Or do you just want to give us your first nine numbers of your Social Security number?

That could work.

Yeah, let's see just the first nine.

For the people that really want to get a bunch of them going, the best way to do it is do that 20% water change at least minimum four days in a row. And while you're doing it, eat high protein. Whether it's bloodworms, the blackworms bloodworms, they're just a midge fly blackworms, anything high protein, stay away from the pellets. That could be an issue. But high protein food. And you can get a mop loaded, I mean, literally loaded with eggs. Hundreds. I've got a couple of tanks I did that with, and it's like, okay, I don't need that many fish. 55 gallon is not meant to hold 300 rainbows. So, yeah, that would be about the best secret. Good quality foods, pull the color out, look for the rainbows. You're not going to find them in your LFS that often because you don't know where their supply is. Get them from known quality people up of Aqua Bid, you will have pure stuff that will just bore you be amazed.

Now, I just want to you had you said something that brought up another question to me, larry, you said about the high quality food and live Blackworms. We can't find a live Blackworm to save our soul. You're out in California where the live Blackworms are produced. Can you give us any insight to what's happening? Because I have a lot of people asking about.

That that's been going on now for a couple of years. When the drought was happening down in Fresno is the big main place where they're being done. It's only like not even an hour from me. They were getting too much drought, too much heat and they couldn't keep up with supply and demand. I was going from getting three and four pounds a month down to one pound a month. Now I'd be lucky to get a pound every two or three months. Yeah. Probably just going to be a couple of ounces at a time like the last couple of times.

Can I ask what you're paying for that?

Meth prices.

Yeah. How high are the prices? Like for a pound? I buy wholesale and it used to be it wasn't that long ago I was paying twelve, thirteen dollars a pound to have it shipped up to me.

Yeah. The wholesale here is sitting about 1750 right now.

Okay. Because I purchase my black room through Segres Farms and they're buying from that same guy and they're telling me the same thing that with the drought and then now the floods and stuff and they can't keep up production they put.

A hot pause on it for a couple of months I think.

Is there one or two farms there? I've been told two different things.

I've been only told one in Fresno. That's all I've been told california blackworm.

Okay. And so there's one guy producing blackworms for the entire nation?

To my knowledge. I'm going to say that I don't see how only one can have that much control. There's got to be more.

Well there's imports.

Yeah, well yeah, there's import but I only know the one in Fresno and I've always been told there's only the one. Okay. But I just don't see how we can only have one without also import.

Yeah. We've had this conversation amongst ourselves numerous times in the last few months and I called my supplier because it was always I could buy a quarter pound, half pound, three quarter pound pound and now they're saying if we can get a pound we got 25, 30 people waiting.

Pretty soon they're going to spread it out like a teen th at a time. Like the drugs.

Well I'm just wondering how do you produce Blackworth? Maybe we should start this in your basement Robbie.

I'm in.

I can tell you it's tough, but.

I can tell you yeah, let's hear it.

Basically just get yourself a tank with some coarse smaller I would do the smaller gravel, not fine, but the smaller gravel medium to small and the variation is good. But more water flow, fresh water. Now a lot of people I've got a couple of tanks that the worms just live in them. But you just grab a fork and break across the gravel. Break them up. So the old tube effects would lay eggs and they could break up blackworms. They reproduce by breaking up. So just scrape across, let the gravel break them up and just like earthworms, two pieces will become two. You break them and you get two worms. The more you often you do that, then as long as you don't kill them by overdoing. But you do it maybe a couple, three times a week, go through it and they'll double up feeding scrounges they're worms. A lot of people say, yeah, do paper and the brown paper. I'm not too fond of the brown paper. I don't see much they would get out of that. They definitely love pellets and regular fish food. And you don't need the water up high. Low is good because they actually can drown. Not really that often, but yeah, they can. They like to have be able to reach up when they're reaching up out of the gravel, they're breathing that way so they can breathe under the water like that. And they do the water down low, but they want to be able to get out of the water so they can breathe better. Water flow is best with water changes, really. And keep them cool, keep them around the 60, 65 degree, 70 deg. If the water is too warm, you end up getting a lot of other issues going. They want it cool. That's going to be about your best and good clean water. You don't want to run water over it. That's got a lot of ammonia or really any ammonia. Well, they're dirty like goldfish. Put up a lot of waste.

So one quick question. Is there an easy way to harvest them rather than digging through the gravel with the tweezers and pulling them out? Do they stick to the side of the glass? Do you start playing some berry weight or something? They come up going, hey, what's going on?

Some people have used a battery with wires and they'll stick a net in there and scoop up and then they stick a battery with wires and electricity makes them jump up and then you can scoop them. I never tried that, never seen it happen. I've just heard about it actually. I saw it on YouTube, I think it was. Then other guys, they'll sift through with their hands and get them to come up into the water column and then scoop it with a net. If you use a net and scoop up the gravel with them in it, you can have it over a cup. Before too long, they'll wiggle through the net and then fall into the bottom of the cup where your gravel will stay in there. Okay, that's another good way of doing it, but it takes a little while to do.

Up here in the northland. We're in the land of 10,000 lakes here in Minnesota. And a lot of the guys go out and clicked. Night crawlers have the probes they put in the ground and the night crawlers come right to the top of the grass. And start crawling around and they grab them by fingers. So I could see that working. If you long as you have the right sort of voltage, I don't know what it would be.

As we're wrapping this up, I also want to make sure that we're getting all the questions answered. We have one of the listeners that asked about the hump on old rainbow fish. Do they have to be concerned about that getting too big? Is that something to be proud of, like a cock and a flower horn?

I kind of look at it as a proudness thing. But then it's natural for them to get that hump as they get older. It's very common. It's almost like they have a small beak and then this big humongous body that builds up over them in time. It's like this one big turquoise I have. Man, he's beautiful, but he's got the big old humps.

My grandmother had the same thing. It was osteoporosis.

My humps, my lovely lady lumps.

No, we're not singing that song. Rob.

Speaking of which, how is Josh them all doing?

I have not seen Josh now for about a month.

Have you?

Okay.

He's probably shooting another film.

Yeah.

As we're wrapping up, you mentioned about extinct or rare species. People that are listening that suddenly are mesmerized and want to get into rainbow fish or have been in the rainbow Fish. How would you recommend that they can support and help these particular in need species?

The best thing you can do is one, it's kind of hard to do, but go on to Aquabid. I know I've said it a few times. Look for the pure species. Make sure you've got it. If somebody can tell you a location, generally a collection site, you're going to be a little bit more trustworthy. As, okay, maybe they do have pure. Ask more questions. Then you can go to cares.org. Caresforfish.org. They're based, I believe, out of Australia. And you can look up all of the extinct ones, anything that's endangered and how endangered they are. And then once you know you have quality pure, then you can list on there that you have it how would you put it, an organization that wants to know what is out there in the world. And if it's extinct in the wild and you happen to have it, let's say that they want to do a study or something on that species. Then you could be called I'm sure somebody else is going to be ahead of you, but they're just kind of wanting to know what is out there, who has what.

Caretakers?

Yes.

So what are some species? Maybe a couple of species that you'd recommend that are, in your opinion and most in need.

One of the ones it's one of my favorite, too, is look for the MRI. You're going to pay the price for it. You could end up paying $100 a fish because they are extinct. Blaire believe it or not, the Bosemane. But Bosmanae is getting ready to go extinct in the wild. But yet you find them in the aquarium trade. But you've been in bread a ton. Unless somebody has like Gary will work with and Lori from Rainbowfish Live has worked with a bunch of Segregus farms and many different farms where they will bring them quality pure strains and get them back on track of having good pure quality stuff that they get back to the stores. How long does it last? Who knows? They're inbred and cross bred before you know it and you start losing the quality. You find a lot of bent spines that way. So definitely support your local store. If you breed, get a hold of caresportfish.org and let them know what you have. And usually that's done through your club, which you were talking about starting a club too. Yes, get involved with cares for fish. They are a little difficult to get all the paperwork filled out and get it going, but once you do it's kind of like it's something to be proud of. That's one of the best things to do for the Rainbow community. Search out your clubs, find out what they have, and if you find that you've got people that are interested in it, read a few for them, auction them off, support them. There's hundreds of species of Rainbows and people don't have a clue what's out there. And yet some of these have so much color, it's kind of like, wow, you got to look them up. I don't know why they just haven't, other than they take too long to grow up and grow out. And who wants to spend a ton of money in food to feed them up for months and months to grow out. But if you can be a supporter and get around going, that'd be awesome.

You mentioned Aquabid several, several times. And I've bought quite a bit of stuff on Aquabid and I'd like to stay. When you're looking at Aquabid, they have the reviews just like they do on Amazon and stuff. Go through that. Try to stay with the people who are from the United States because what happens right now I'm doing some high end guppies and I'm finding that there's some really cool stuff from overseas in Thailand. But you have to use trans shippers and your $40 pairs of fish end up to be about $100 by the time you get them here. And then if you read the fine print from these breeders in Thailand and stuff that are sending stuff, they'll say, if you give me a bad review, you can never buy from us again. And then we're going to it's just a long list of things they're going to do to you. That's no way to do business. So if you can support and a little communication, finding out from other people who they like to use and stuff, you go on there. And they do have a really good review policy on Aqua bid and stuff. And that's what I always look for before I even start talking to people.

Absolutely. Any seller that has any kind of stipulation like that, walk away from basically saying, I got bad stuff, and if you're going to give me a bad review on my bad stuff, then this is what we're going to do to you. Not worth it.

And so you'll see the American flag in a lot of those, and that's telling you. And if you click on information about the seller, it'll tell you they're in Michigan or they're in Tennessee and stuff. And it just makes you feel a little bit better about things when, you know, dealing with somebody that you could drive over to their house and beat the crap out of them. If they give you some bad stuff.

Or spray it on their lawn, that's.

Exactly what I'm going to do.

And then have their roomba suck it.

Up and spread it cross the lawn outside. I'm bringing my roomba if this happens to anybody. Where your roomba? My wife's really good at cleaning out roombas of dog crap. It took her two and a half hours, so I'm sure she would gladly do it for $300.

Well, Larry, you got any other notes or something you want to shout out for your local community?

Shoot. Anybody in the California area that would like to join a good club. I got many groups that I work with. I even have one from my local area or needs any mentoring or looking for. Yeah. Feel free to reach out. Yeah, I do. Shipping. Just remember, post office has a lot of issues with shipping. You don't know if they're going to be on time or not. I'll take pictures. I have oxygen. Not meaning to be here to try to sell.

Sell when you can. Listen up. If you guys want some rainbow fish, hit up Larry Shankel on Facebook. If you can't find them, go to my name and then you'll find them as my friend.

Thank you.

You got to hoard yourself out every now and again.

Absolutely.

You get no bread.

Yeah.

And so if you guys want a mystery bag mystery bag from Larry, you know what?

That's what we should do. We should listen our podcast, mystery Rainbow.

Eggs from Larry, and you'll get what you get. I think you should do that.

I'd be more than happy. I'd be really willing to do something like that, a mystery bag. And they wouldn't be unhappy. They'd be happy. But it would be a mystery back. Yeah, that would be funny.

Here's the deal. You give it to them. You give them six months to grow them up and keep us a little ledger of what you sent them and stuff. And when they call and tell you, say, you know what, if you give me more money, I'll tell you what, they are.

I think that the only charge, the only thing that could make it better is if you give them a list of what it could possibly be like. Here's, like, a list of twelve or 15 species. Guess which one you got? And make one of them, like, super.

Expensive so they think they might have gotten that's.

Right.

Right. Give them, like, three rare hits, and then the rest are like, commons.

That's funny. Oh, man. It could be anything. Like Picta. It could be a Gary Langai. It could be yeah.

There you go.

Love it. Yeah.

Well, Larry, thank you for coming on. It really means a lot. I know that's been a long time in the making, but I'm very tickled to come on. And again, I can't underline enough how everybody I've ever mentioned your name to just has nothing but praise, and I can see why.

Oh, thank you. I really appreciated you asking me. I got to tell you, this is a blast. I love it.

Awesome. Well, Adam, you got any other comments?

No?

All right.

I'm good.

Thank you.

For those that are listening, if you like what you hear, number one, go visit Larry, get some mystery eggs. But you can also help support the podcast. We have a patreon. Go to our Patreon page. If you are a $15 a month subscriber and you want to support us that well, we will send you a car filter or excuse me, car sponge filter autographed by Jimmy himself.

Yeah, I made it out of a 1969 Ford Galaxy 500. I took the seat out, I cut it up. I made it a sponge filter for you. I signed it. And if you don't like it, it doesn't matter. I'm not taking it back.

All of them weren't from that particular one. You also did some newer eighty s and ninety S Cadillac.

Yeah. Anytime I see a wreck alongside the highway, try to stop and grab a car seat.

You cut out the front seats.

Exactly. Yeah.

Because the bat seats are gross. But, yeah, check it out. Go to our Patreon page. Certainly love your support. And then if you want to listen to these things live, right after this podcast, larry's going to do a fish room tour. So go to Quarrymeyspodcast.com bottom the website. You'll find discord link, join it. You'll get notifications when these go live. And, yeah, join the debauchery.

The other thing I want to say is, if you know somebody, if you've got a hook into a buddy who's an expert on anything fish related, give us the information. If they're interested in being on this podcast, because it's a lot of work. Robbie spends a lot of time hunting people down. I think he's got a couple of what it is.

Easily 95% of the effort of the podcast is arranging people the amount of people that I've reached out to and have wanted to come on the show. But can't because they don't have Internet or they don't have a piece of computer to actually run this on or some other limitation has been difficult. And then when we finally do get something happen, we'll try to schedule something, get it on the discord, and they'll cancel because of a life emergency. So, I mean, coordinating and finding people is very difficult. They have all different types of requests for different fish, different topics, and we could talk about it, but we're not the experts in a lot of those topics. No, if any of those topics, we.

Want to hear from somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody, and we can get them on this podcast we are.

Working on or like Larry, where everyone knows that's, right?

Yeah. But right now, we're working on a Pacific one on Axolotl, Axolotl, Axolotls. And we've been working on it for a couple of weeks, and we're hoping to have that for you soon. But it's a lot of darn work trying to find everybody to be on this podcast. Like I said, if you've got anybody or any suggestions other than to go to hell, you can let us know.

All right? Again, thank you, Larry, and we'll catch you on 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.