Attention. Have you or a loved one diagnosed with shrimpithelioma? You may be entitled to a better discount. Shrimpothelioma is a rare disease linked to shrimp envy. Exposure to shrimp envy in pet stores, big box chain stores, social media, or your mom's house may have left you at great risk. Please don't wait. Go to Joe Shrimp shack.com for 15% off everything in the store using promo code. Aquarium Guys at checkout stripothelioma patients order now. All right, guys. And don't forget about Ohio Fish Rescue. They need your love and support. Go to Ohio Fish Rescue on YouTube, like, and subscribe their channel. They do a fantastic content. You can donate to the Ohio Fish Rescue right in the show notes. Certainly give them some love. And just to let you guys know that a couple of episodes from now, you guys will be hearing a hopefully cross your fingers an episode with Scott feldman from the podcast called the tint. I recommend you listen to it. You can find it on most platforms. He owns a business called Ten and aquatics, and he wants to give you listeners a gift. So go on the bottom of our website, aquarium guy's podcast.com, and sign up for a free giveaway from tanna aquatics. They are giving away a Tannon explorer pack. The tannin Explorer pack is a $60 value, and what they do is they curate based upon your tanks needs and send you a package filled with ingredients to add tannins to your waters, leave seeds, bark, whatever you may need for your aquarium. So certainly sign up. It's a fantastic offer, Tannoquatics.com. Let's kick that episode. Welcome to the Aquarium, guys. Podcast with your hosts, Jim colby and Rob dolphin. Hey, guys, welcome to the podcast. So this week we have a new theme. We had Taylor from Simply Beta on, and it was a fantastic time. Jimmy had fun picking on her. She had a lot of great information. I learned that betas were transgender, had no clue, had no clue at all. Any time that we have conversations with betas, and this goes for any content creator, because I got a lot of content creator friends that have reached out since we've done this podcast. And nobody wants to talk about betas specifically, or at least not a section of people do, because anytime they mention them, people's buttholes clench whenever you mention what container they should be put in, parameters, anything else? Because the beta community knows what the beta has been put through. The betas are very hardy fish. They can live in a puddle. They've been abused for years. Even like the most common that we see around now, they still have people that believe that they'll put them in last year with a potted plant and think they'll eat the plant roots. And it's supposed to be some hydroponic or aquaponic feeding system. Not fun. So everything from even shipping betas on wet paper towels, they've been very protective and think that betas are misrepresented and should be given the best environment possible. So anytime that we talk about betas, we knew we were going to get some feedback and we did get some. I got private messages, public messages and so on. And it's just to be expected. But that really inspired me. If that is what some people want to get upset about, I think we should do an entire episode to get people upset. What do you think, Jimmy?

I think we should let's talk about puppy meals.

Let's talk about everything.

Oh, let's start with that. Yes, please.

Let's talk about everything that they may not know. Let's talk about the stuff that no one else will talk about because either they're sponsored or they're on YouTube and they're not allowed to. This is a podcast. We can say really, whatever shit we want. Let's take that.

Are we going over to the dark side?

Let's see what happens. Let's set ourselves on fire and let's do the scandalous podcast. And I'm your host, rob's.

I'm Jim colby and I'm going to be avoiding all this all night long.

Sure.

And I'm out of on the side.

Along for the ride? Along for the ride. Yeah, pretty much.

Watch Rob drive this one right into the ditch.

Right into the dirt.

Right into the dirt.

So what we're going to do is we have a list here of some stuff that we've been thinking about for a little while. And this is not everything. There's a lot to talk about with the entire hobby. So we're going to pick some of our hand picked favorites. To start this off like any podcast, we have to do some updates. We've had a question message into us and again, you can go to the aquariumgyspodcast.com on the bottom of our website. We have email, phone, you can text us. We have discords, so you can message us live chat and someone messaged us. What is the timeline that angel fish should grow in? So from egg x weeks, they should be a quarter X weeks, they should be a 50 cent piece. And since you are an angel fish expert, what do you see your angel fish growing?

If you want to start from the eggs on up, after angel fish lay eggs, they usually hatch within 48 hours, usually absorb their yolksack at about the age of five, six, seven days, depending on your water temperature. From there, when you start feeding them live brine shrimp, it all depends on, again, of water quality, amount of time you feed them, like three, four or five times a day, and also the amount of space you give them. So I normally like to have fish at twelve weeks for sale, and I normally would get those between a dime and a nickel size body. I'm not talking about fins or whatnot medium size, usually about three and a half to four months. And at six months your fish should be large enough to start pecking at each other and started to, like, call pre breeders at that point.

Now, this all varies because temperature is another big one.

Absolutely.

Like you said, water quality, which the most important thing, is calcium.

Absolutely.

And no calcium, no growth. And that feeding. I cannot stress that enough. And this goes for a lot of different fish. Most fish, all these things factor into it. If you can, even with cold water, fish feed a ton or have live food available for them all the time. That's how outdoor coral farmers do, is with daphne.

Right. It's all about the food and about the water quality. The one gentleman that I used to buy fish from when I couldn't produce enough, he had the thickest bodied fish you've ever seen, and he raised him in 300 gallon water troughs, and he had a continual stream of water going in there. So the water change was getting I think he was getting 100% water change about every day and a half out of 300 gallons. And he had tremendous amount of growth compared to what I had. But then again, he had five or six automatic timers I'm sorry, automatic feeders on top of the water. And then, of course, every time he walked through the building, he'd throw more food. So just like anything else, the more you eat, the faster you grow, so you can really raise some fish. And that's what a lot of these people that get all fired up about different things is about raising fish quickly. I mean, raising chickens to adulthood in, what, six weeks? When I was a kid, it was 1214 weeks. And it's all about the food and how these things have been bred to grow. And so that leads us into a whole other pile of a stinky mess.

I feel like you should do a presentation for one of these aquarium societies. Like, how can you expedite your growth?

Right? There's a million ways to do it. And some people think it's ethical, some people think it's not ethical.

So let's get into that non ethical stuff that no one wants to talk about. han jimmy?

Yeah. I thought I would just throw you a bone there and let you get going.

Definitely. All right, let's dive head first. This podcast is not attended for all listeners. We love all feedback, negative or not, so we are not complaining about those that are messages about the Beta podcast. Give us your opinions. It starts discussions. And the only thing that can happen from those healthy discussions is people learning. We are not shaming those who have messaged us. We encourage them. And thank you for those posts, but we really just felt like if that's what gets under your skin, we need to go clickbait. We need to get under your skin with some real stuff.

So you want to throw some salt on a wound?

I do. I want to start a fire. So let's go to that garbage fire list here and start with one of my favorite topics juicing.

Juicing.

So this is not your normal hormone, arnold schwarzenegger and a gym thing. This is juicing for the intention of growth and color in your fish exclusively. When I first started getting into some of the wholesaling aspects with you, Jimmy, I immediately saw quality differences from a bunch of different people. And that's normal. Like different breeders have different stock and have for different purposes. Sometimes it's price, sometimes it's ease of ordering. Sometimes it's color. And when you're doing orders for bulk stores or you're trying to find that one individualized fish, you have to try and buy to see exactly where you want to get your stock from. And what I learned is I got some of these great fish from some of these international places, but after six weeks, almost like you turned off the color on your television, they just went muted gray, barely any color left, and they morphed in six weeks time. And this was consistent when I purchased from these people. What on earth could they possibly be doing? And that's when I began to learn and study into the details of juicing. This happens a lot in other countries now. There are vitamin supplements you can give your fish. There is special food you can order your fish, and that will enhance the color and supposedly longevity, thin, health, growth. And those are really supplements. Those aren't really the juicing we're speaking of. The juicing we're speaking of is hormone induced or steroids that they're actually pumping into the fish to maintain color. So they can ship here and not care what happens with the fish.

And how do they do that, Rob? Do they put it in the water, they put it in the food? Or are they taking them out and shooting them up with syringes?

Most of the time it's done with syringes. They're literally injecting the fish at a young age, trying to get them to grow for the fastest possible fish. Now, a lot of these places, especially with the parrot cichlids, the peacock cichlid craze, if you're a cichlid lover, peacock cichlids are a staple for a variety of color. The males are exclusively the colored one. And to get a good color, it equals you got a good breeder. So that is by far the most common thing we see that we can't hardly order those types of cigarettes from any vendor because almost all of them come juiced.

Yeah, I don't think there's a single one that I've ever seen not juiced.

I got to get them from private breeders. There's no way I can get them not juice at other places. If, you know, some hold those sources tightly, but they do do in the food as well. But it is very common for them to inject.

Yeah, the bigger the fish, then they'll start injecting and stuff, and that's where they get. The more bang for their buck, the larger the fish, the more money they get, of course. And I've gotten in so many fish, been so happy with them. And then, like Rob said, after four or five weeks, you kind of go, man, there's a noticeable difference. I wonder if the bulbs going out in my lamp or something. And then all of a sudden, in six weeks, they don't have any color. And then I call my wholesaler and say, what should I be doing? I said, well, if you feed some stuff with baby carotene, maybe some of the color will come back. And I go, Are they juicing over there? And they said, what do you think?

They won't even answer. Like, they won't argue with it most of the time. No, everybody does. But if you do your homework, find out where they come from, they're juicing overseas. The usda tries to keep ethics even we dare use the word PETA does their best on trying to make sure that one they're trying to eliminate the fish hobby.

I had a conversation with Dr. pablo teapot, who I like him. He is a wonderful guy. I met him down in Miami, and he was talking about all his he has a big cichlid farm down there. I don't know if he still does, but at the time, he had a big cichlid farm. And his thing was, he goes, These colors are all Florida colors. And I go, what do you mean by that? And he goes, there are Florida colors. He said, These are natural colors. He said, they're not made up colors. Is that the way he put it to me? Which to me was him saying they're not juiced up. These are the natural colors if you feed them and give them the room and all that. So I did buy from him. Unfortunately, I had to buy $800 at a crack. And we bought in one shipment from him, which was about six boxes. And we sold them all. They all live. They all did great. But it took us a long time to recoup our money. And if he still has the farm down there, I'm not real sure. But if you want to see some fantastic cyclid books oh, yeah, dr. pablo teapot. I've got several that are autographed. And what I like about his books real quick is that he tells it like it is. If something's really tough to keep alive, in his little note, it says doomed. That's how he doomed. Easy, hard, doomed. And that's how he talks.

There is no sugar coating.

Right? That's what I really like about him. And so he's been around for years. I don't know if he's still alive, to be honest. But it's probably been 1015 years since I spoke with him at the Miami show.

So the most common like I said before, the most common are cigarettes. Cigarettes are the easiest to juice. Because even if you get a fish from a bad breeder, you juice them, they will pop. They have the genes to do it. They're going to react to hormones. And they're hardy cichlids. Are notoriously hardy, they can handle a lot of PH and they're known to handle juicing better than other fish fish like discus generally are not injected because they're a delicate fish they're different parameters, they're not injected but they can still be fed the hormones and other supplements and these are not normal vitamin supplements to juice them as well So we see discus have it not as common as cyclists and even into some of these oddball angel fish you'll see come across what you'll see with angel fish. You'll see these people that have blue. Well, blue is just like a small, blushing blue hue. There's no such thing as like a bright neon blue angel fish. That you really see out there commonly. So when you see all these pictures overseas of what they're doing, those are juiced as well. Most of them don't come over here, so it's again more uncommon. But almost all of the peacock cichlids that we get from wholesalers and again we'll leave names out. We'll at least do that for people is completely juiced across the board. Find yourself a reputable breeder and pay a little bit more money to make sure that they're not juiced and if.

You want to take ten minutes you can go on YouTube. I'm looking right now. And they have several different articles about juicing and peacocks at Globe because they've been Juiced is one of the titles that I'm looking at right now.

And there's a line between juicing and permanently damaging a fish, such as the dyed fish or the injected fish with glass. Fish are common that are injected for colors or even glow fish, which are completely done in a laboratory. This is just using. They're taking a fish that was muted, brightening it up with hormones and steroids, much like someone in the gym.

It brings out all their natural colors. I mean, they're natural colors, it brings out their natural colors. But their natural colors like that are only during the breeding season. So by introducing the hormones, it's like breeding season all day long for them.

Imagine that you're a rainbow fish. goer. Rainbow fish are notorious for changing color during water change breeding, that those colors stay turned on all the time because of it. So if you want instead to promote healthy colors, do it the right way. Do it with good food, with good vitamin supplements that you can use. There's great supplements that you can drip onto your food before you feed your fish. Juicing just isn't done in a normal hobby setting. It's only done before they sell it to you. And that's why your fish have muted over time. Next thing on the list, this is going to be a bigger one, mass producing. So, Jimmy, you have some background in seeing some of the stuff they've done in Florida. We both have a lot of knowledge of how they do things overseas. But let's pick on betas first. So betas overseas are by far probably the second most farmed fish besides guppies.

I would say so. I mean, they're in the top five for sure. When you go overseas and you watch, they're fish farmers. If you want to go online and just see something, I don't know if you call it disturbing or fascinating, depending on how you look at it. And you'll see these greenhouses that have glass jars, the entire length of it, a piece of plywood on it, another glass jar. And they'll have the glass jars 1718 High. And they're in this greenhouse walking bent over on top of this stuff because they have so many jars in there. But they keep them in the greenhouses to keep the water warm, of course. And there's one fish in each jar.

And these jars are not the gallon size pickle jars that you're speaking of that you use to do eggs in for angels. These are small mason jars or less, right? These are pint containers.

They're anything that can hold water, actually, because you see a lot of plastic containers, a lot of cottage cheese containers. They'll use whatever they can get their hands on because these are poor, poor countries.

Now, this is the better breeders that you see in international sites. These breeders use glass objects, they use boards to prop them up. These small mom and pop shops that are still award winning, mind you, in international countries use one liter plastic bottles, like aquafina bottles. Those bigger one liter ones, they cut them in half. And that's literally what they use for the containers.

And they're well taken care of, don't get me wrong.

They're doing water changes twice a day. They're generally doing live food all the time. They can't afford dry food and they grow their own food. They do a lot of maintenance and care. But the environment that they're in is a pint of water or less. And breeding these things. They don't care about putting them in a big jar. They put them in something nice and shallow so the male doesn't have to work back and forth picking up the eggs and putting them back into the bubble nest. They're putting these things in dishes just long enough for the female to be in there. And it has maybe double the amount of water it normally would just to have eggs.

Yeah, because these people are working out of huts. They're working out of maybe a plastic greenhouse that they made themselves. So they're doing it absolutely as cheap as they can. And you have to realize that they're probably only getting for premium bedas. They're probably getting a dime to $0.20 tops.

And that's for the absolute best quality ones. Best quality ones. The rest, it's down from there.

And so these people are living in Hudson, are trying to feed their family and a lot of people get disturbed saying they're not treating the better correctly. But you know what? They're probably being taken care of better than their children, which is sad.

They work 16, 17 hours a day doing bayda water changes, all day feeding all day long. They're handling real fish. They have their own stores they bring to the market to try to wholesale because a lot of these people can't ship themselves or they're now just trying to connect to the internet and making these online stores. That's why these are finally just appearing to a lot of people on YouTube and it's a sad deal. Betas can survive in a puddle of water. That does not mean it should survive in a puddle of water. We got to be very clear about that. When we talked with Taylor on the episode for the beta talk, we talked to her and got her opinion on a gallon. She said, absolutely, a gallon of water can be now what we want to paint out is that for long term, one beta to live in a gallon of water, not a one gallon aquarium. I try to recommend, like I always use this as an example. The fluval 2.6 gallon spec tank is technically after you fill it with all of your gravel, your plants, your decorations, your filter, your heater, everything else is about a little more than a gallon. That's what I recommend, a gallon of living space, not a gallon tank where you have to fill with all this other stuff. They deserve a nice, healthy place to live. And us suggesting that they're farm like this is not how we condone fish living long term. This is how they farm from a very young age to get out into the market to live their full and extended life. And it's sad how they do it, but this is the facts and we're not going to hold back with information just because you don't feel like it's a good thing to share.

Yeah, like I said, it's sad to weigh, but it's fascinating to see how efficient they are. They don't use regular nets. They use either a wooden ladle or their own hand. So these fish are gingerly taken care of. And like I said, it's like people that raise hogs and have a faroing operation, I grew up on a farrowing operation. What that is, is just a hog farm that has sows, that has little baby pigs. And they put the sow while she has the baby pigs in a very small, very small cage. And people go, oh, that is so inhumane. Well, what they're doing is they're trying to get this 275 pound hog from rolling over on its babies and killing the babies. And it's only like that for maybe ten days and then they release them and they're just fine. Everything is not forever is what I'm getting at. If you have your dog in a kennel with a big kennel with puppies for a week because that's where she's most comfortable, and then you move her to a bigger I mean, nothing is forever. And that's what we're getting at, is you just need to continually give these things the best possible home you can. But in reality these things are raised in small, small containers and there's a.

Bunch of short changing as well for betas that do live there. They're the breeding working betas. If a beta breeds it's going to stay in that cup for the rest of its life and breed through they're going to work that beta through its entire breeding cycle and when it no longer breeds it gets sold for a reduced rate in their local market or frankly gets cold. That's the humane thing is that if they have no place for it in their mind, their humane thing, if they have no place for it they simply try to get rid of it humanely.

And it sometimes becomes feeds for their larger fish if they're raising stuff.

It's really sad. If Jimmy and I breed fish, you have an angel fish essentially a little farm in your basement for a while and if you had one that was you had an area bigger tanks for these fish to go out to pasture. This is not the way for international or even Florida fish farming. So what are some other fish with some background details? Jimmy in say like a Florida area which is supposed to be 100 times better than anything international.

Well, I know that earlier on we were talking before we went on the air that people were talking about neons and how fired up some people get about neons and how they're so genetically in bread. What do you got to see about that?

Adam, mind your goddamn business. From what I've understood with neons they took what bread and they put them in little tiny ketchup containers. They took a pear and they put them in little tiny ketchup containers or a little glass jar. If that's what bread, that's what bread. That's what they started with in the when they started breeding these. So then obviously they're going to take the ones that will breed in that little stuff and they'll keep breeding them. So they might be inbred but they work. You guys want your fish, you guys complain about wild caught, you complain about the way that they're being bred. Make up your minds.

So we've learned from the people at Project Hayiba that a lot of these small Amazon forests, rainforest fish number one die anyway because of how the floods.

Work the cardinals so they should be.

Taken out of the wild. But these actually are listed by wholesalers as quote unquote, the Florida neon. It's almost like they're treating them like a different species. The Florida neon versus wild neons that you would get from Project paiba would be significantly different than each other. They would not look, as far as color goes, different, but the Florida neon is significantly bigger and frankly, is more adapted to how they're farmed. And some of the aquarium environments that we have, they did not do that on purpose.

But they can take the water too.

They can take our water parameters here in the Us.

Like you said, they're quote unquote inbred from the stocks that they've had in the. They've just continued on doing so because.

During that project, PA, he explained to us how many weeks or maybe almost months that it takes to get the cardinals from the rainforest to different water. So they live over here and once they do that, which takes quite a while, they're sturdy stock, but up until that point they're pretty shaky. And so that's why you have people either love or hate wildcat.

And it's not because their jeans are any worse. They're from a PH of four going to a PH of seven in Florida. So it's just a change and no one tries to adjust for that or has four PH water to accommodate. So it's a slower process. Trying to get I bought wild, I've bought captive bread and I've raised both, but they just have different needs. When you're doing these neons, when you're doing barbs, when you're doing all of these bread and butter fish, the ways that they breed them is outdoor ponds. They do mud ponds, they are completely open to the wild, they are very small and there's hundreds of thousands of these fish in these ponds packed. They throw loose food like it would be duck feed to these things and they are on their own. Whatever comes out of the pond comes out of the pond. In Florida, there's species that need a little bit more tlc. But if you think for a minute that these things, oh, they don't have enough space, or this, they are packed in, what would you say, x feet by X feet square ponds where it's just solid, nothing but fish and no swimming space. Right?

And in these ponds that they have, they always have to worry about snakes going in there, they have to worry about blue herons going in, cocoons otters, right? And so these in Florida, just name.

The species and it's in there, right?

I went down there, I was on a farm that exclusively bred tiger barbs, what to me I thought was absolutely fascinating and how easy, simple and like clockwork, low tech. Absolutely. So I'll tell you real quick how they breed them in Florida. This particular farm had the old stainless steel five gallon tanks from back in the asked him, so why do you use them? Because they hold water. Any other questions? dumbass. So what they do is they have all their males in one tank, all the females in another tank. They put several males with female so they can. Get them fertilized.

How big are these tanks?

Five gallons, you said, or five gallons. And they'll throw three to five fish in per tank. And they actually have a stove cleaning brush in there, so the eggs have something to adhere to. On Monday, they set the tanks up. And how they do it is they go down to the local creek, which has a lower PH. They pump a bunch of water into a 300 gallon tank. Then they come and fill all these five gallon tanks with the crick water. The water they're being held in is at a higher PH and a lower temperature. So when they drop them in on Monday, by Wednesday they've dropped their eggs. They pull the fish out Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, the eggs start to develop. Then they take them out and throw them in a 300 gallon fat. Once they hatch, they start feeding baby brine. Once they've got ten to 25,000, then they'll throw them in a pond and they live there and they get about 80% rate that place. So if they throw in 10,000, they're getting 8000 fish out because you lose some, of course, and the whole thing is repeated week after week after week after week. And some people see that as inhumane. But what they're doing is they're just supply and demand people.

And that's, again, you're talking five, six fish in a five gallon tank, trying to induce breeding in small circumstances in old equipment with metal brushes that they're going to lay eggs on. It's extremely low tech, it's efficient, because, again, this is a farm. They're not there for your end game aquarium to keep there for the whole lives. They only keep the breeding stock there for their whole lives. And they grow the mountain grow ponds.

They had an airstone in there, not a spongebob, but had airstone because the water is only going to stay in there for five days and there's only five fish. And I don't even think that, if I remember right, I think during that breeding process, those three days, they don't even feed the fish because they don't want the food in there that would make sense to crap out the eggs. So once they've bred, they get out and they get fed and they're put into, I think it was a three or four week cycle, these fish will all be put up to breed again in four weeks. So they had four sets of breeding tanks full of males, females. So this is week one, this is week two, this is week three, week four. It would just repeat, rinse and continue making a living.

Then the next process, after they pull them from the pond, which whatever you said, 85% live from all the creatures and packing in the ponds and who knows what's going on in the ponds. So after that's pulled out, they go through their culling process and it's a fast culling process. They essentially take whatever hundreds or thousands are in the pond and they have a separator sitting there throwing fish into different baskets. The baskets that get approved or not approved is literally what you see for the bread and butter fish like Barbs, if they have good healthy stripes, approved if they are missing colors or something's wrong with it. To the cull box, bent fins, anything, bent fins, anything. All they're looking for is deformities. They're not looking for anything else because essentially Barbs breed true.

And even though these fish are all from the same week, there are different sizes and so at that time they're also sizing over the years. There's a difference between a small tiger barb to a medium tiger to a large tiger barb. There's probably a 28 cent difference in price from a small to a large. So anything that's large bonus time. You have the same amount of time, food, money spent on these fish. But now these fish are going to get a bigger premium and in today's economy that's what these farmers are looking for.

So what would you say is the cull rate out of that batch that they just pull out of the dirt pond?

I'd say 10% or 15%. I sat and watched it happen and no real numbers and stuff and I asked them what they did with them and stuff and they said they offer these fish to other farmers who are raising bigger fish for food. They're not wasted, they're made into food which baked people probably sick to their stomach. That's a tiger barb with a bent back or bad stripes or one eye because stuff happens in the pond. You got that many fish, somebody loses an eye and you can't sell that on the local market. Well now all of a sudden it becomes maybe Oscar food. I don't know.

Yeah, I love how you're just like yeah, it seems humane where other people are going, oh my God, they're killing thousands of them.

What do you think? The fish eating the wild dummies?

Adam'S on his band box, isn't he?

I love it. That's what I asked for.

And he everybody's fired up to him.

He came to bat. He came to bat for this podcast.

Are we doing a wild cot thing? Because I got a lot to say about that.

Give it time, give it time. Okay, we'll all have our soapboxes. All right, that's Barbs barbs is a 15% call rate because they breed true, they're going to have stripes. Now take other premium fish such as, I don't know what's something that has color. Discus have a massive call rate, discus 50% call rate or better.

And the thing with discus angel fish, I've talked to a number of breeders and stuff and they would rather sell you one premium fish for a high price and sell you ten normal looking.

And there have been private breeders because private breeders call way more than these farmers. Farmers are looking to fill the pet cows of the world, the pet smarts. They're looking for numbers in certain sizes. They're not looking necessarily for what is deemed award winning or quality by any measure for past the bread and butter stock. When you're talking about these fish, you've had people confirm that have just what we like to call mom and pop breed shops, where they're looking for the award winning, absolute three digit fish that they will call $1,000 to one.

Yeah. And they'll take those fish that are looking fantastic, and they'll put a lot more time and money and space into them and sell you a pair of angel fish or an individual angel fish for $5,000. $300 for a pair.

$500 a pair.

Yeah. There again, it's the economy. It's the market. Because if you're raising 10,000 fish, you need a lot more tanks than you if you're raising 1000. And so you're looking at it that way, people see that as inhumane.

You could sell fish for $0.25 or a pair for $500.

Right.

Some people are choosing $500 and they're culling the rest.

And that's what all these horse breeders are doing, too. It looks something like William shatner, who just got divorced. I don't know if you saw the headlines, but him and his wife were fighting over, get this, horse semen, because they have some award winning stallions and they milk the stallions, they get the sperm out of the stallions, and they sell the straws of frozen semen for tens of thousands of dollars. And they were sitting on all this horse semen worth millions of dollars.

Is that why that blonde was outside of your house? So she's looking for your stuff?

No. Okay. No, that was somebody else just making sure. No, but I mean, they had millions of dollars in semen, and that was what made the headlines. Not that they were fighting over their six properties that they owned, but they're fighting over horse semen because that makes great entertainment for everybody. But there again, somebody spends all this time on an award winning stallion horse. Could be a bull. They'd rather have one bull rather than having 10,000 head just to make pork chops or steaks.

So let's call the act of culling. In a normal home breeder, like if you're just doing the breeding for fun, maybe you have fish to share with your friend. You do maybe one or two batches of fish a year, right? Because most of maybe the eggs get eaten. You're not intending to breed. What they recommend, and this is in we're talking aquarium books, is that you either humanely cut them with a knife what? Or you use clove oil. Clove oil is by far is the most humane way, in my opinion. It works as an anesthesia for the fish. And that's actually how you do operations on things like koi or bigger fish. You dunk them in clove oil, knock them out, you proceed with your operation, fixing a fin, fixing a gill, removing scales, whatever you have to do. Trimming puffer teeth, trimming puffer teeth, removing an organ if there's a tumor in a fish, and then put them back in the water, and they slowly revive. Now, you keep them in cold oil long enough, and they're just out forever.

Yeah, I know people who will throw them in a bag and throw in a freezer, and I go, Why do you do that? They said, well, someday my Oscar might be hungry and I have food for him. And I'm thinking, that's strange, but there's a lot of weird people. I grew up in a farming community, so I'm used to calling, you have the cow that has a bad hoof, a bad leg. The horse broke its leg, right. And that animal is put down because you're going to put $1,000 into a $300 horse. Probably not, because of the economics. I mean, I feel really bad for people who have pets. And I know two people in my personal life here in the last year, and now we're talking about your pets that you live with every day and your dog breaks his leg. Happened to one of my co workers. He's put $6,000 into his $500 dog, and of course he did, because this dog is his his family. His family. At what point, depending on your economic situation, I mean, what if you can't afford to put that kind of money into your dog? And that's where those hard decisions have to be made.

And this is the big topic that no one will talk about, YouTube or otherwise. No one wants to talk about this. It's not a family fun, freely conversation. This is not something trending on YouTube, is something to click bait on. This is a real conversation, needs to be talked about, is how to and these farms, they can use clove oil. Clove oil is expensive. You talk about freezing. I talked about cutting there's flushing down the toilet there's, feeding it to other fish for food. There's a lot of conversation that you need to know what you're okay with. I 100% recommend clove oil. It's not a big expense. We know it knocks them out. I think freezing is inhumane, but I.

Would go with freezing inhumane personally.

You got to talk about the hard topics no one wants to talk about because there's purposes behind it. Calling is important. You're going to have a fish die. You're going to have a fish that's suffering. You, as an aquarius, are controlling of their environment, and you need to know what to do in case you have to make decisions or even, like we said, with clove oil, know how to.

Fix a fish right, depending on what you're comfortable with, what Rob said. And so if you're going to be everybody's ideas, I'm going to be a fish for millions of dollars, you're going to have some hard decisions to make. And they won't be popular. And I don't care who you are. I just read an article today about how mean Ellen degeneres is. I mean, you can't make everybody what.

Does Ellen degeneres do now?

What does she do now?

Well, she dances too vigorously for those mormons.

Yeah, there was a lot of talk about Ellen degeneres not being very nice to her staff and there was about 200 staff members that came forward and talked about it. But that's not what we're here for. But you're never going to make everybody happy. That's what we're getting at. But to open up the conversation, I think is important. We're doing this tonight and everybody's veins are sticking out on their forehead and I think it's hilarious.

So the next thing for heavy breathing is hormone breeding hormone. So this gets talked about a little bit more than I would originally assume. Fish that are hard to breed or don't breed in captivity a lot of times either get the water added with hormones so it induces the fish into breeding. This happens a lot with angel fish. If one starts breeding and their shared water, the rest start breeding. The hormones are in the water. So they literally take a tube of hormones, dump in the water and hope for the best for some of these fish to breathe.

They also put it on food here's.

The good and the bad. Fish that can breed in captivity, if at all possible, should not be hormone induced. There are a lot of different fish, a lot of kerosenes that are induced on purpose when they don't have to be just because they're not taking the extra steps or because, frankly, time is money and these things are trying to go for numbers to fill petco. Now, there's other fish like the siamese algae eater, which I have a lot of, that really don't breed in captivity. There's very few cases and it's very few and far between to get these things to breed. So the only way that we can do it for an area that we're unsure yet if wild can sustain them even though with Project paula we found ways to breed these is by taking the fish and injecting them directly with hormones to induce breeding. It's a very inhumane process. But how can we keep the species in the aquarium hobby without affecting the wild species? If we could do this with some other fish such as the zebra placo there'd be a hell of a lot more of them.

Right. It would drive the price down, but there's a million. And ifs or buts about all of this stuff about the breeding look at the ethics.

Get traded for economics.

Exactly. That is really fantastic the way you put that. I mean, look how people either love zoos, hate zoos, take it or leave it. Right? Now, like in our local zoo, the River Valley Zoo, they're breeding the red pandas and having more success rate than anybody else in the nation because of our climate and stuff. Look at it this way, boy, that's inhumane to keep them in that small 5000 square foot place they have them, but yet we're getting babies out of them that we can release out into the wild.

Some of these are endangered species that that benefits for. And there's been in cases like the endler's library is extinct in the wild. There's many fish species that are clouds wild that we exclusively keep in the aquarium. Hobby that there's projects, reintroducing them or it's the last thing that we have of the genus. Imagine if somebody took a tasmanian tiger.

Google this.

If you haven't looked up that breed before and had them in a couple of zeus before it went extinct, we would have tasmanian tigers still, and it would not have had to go extinct. And we could reintroduce them because there's.

Videotape of tasmanian tigers from what year?

It was 1936, I think it was right around when we could actually just film.

Yeah.

So they have like two films of a tasmanian tiger in captivity. I think the last one. But this whole Netflix documentary, that's number one now in the world. This is the number one show in the United States is the Tiger King. We have Joe Exotic, which is an absolute nutcase of a person you have to watch.

Hilarious.

It's a six part series. This guy is real, which blows my mind. And these guys are keeping over 200 tigers at a facility. And people say that these are massive animals. There's 400 square acres that they make as their territory. How dare you put them in a cage. As much as it is inhumane to keep those in a cage where fish we know can be kept healthy and happy in an environment, because we're emulating their entire environment for a fish in a better environment, a lot of times in the wild can offer look at betas. betas are in puddles dry up in the in certain rainy, less rainy seasons. We're keeping them in, you know, 30 gallon aquariums. We're doing a better job there. There's not a lot of ways we can emulate better captive bread and raise tigers. So people are up in arms. But they said right on that documentary we have was it over twice the amount of tigers captive in the world than there are in the wild.

No kidding.

Yeah.

What are we going to do when that disappears? I'm not saying it's ethical to keep a tiger. I'm just saying that where's the trade between ethics and keeping of the species?

Yeah. At what point do you have to make that decision? And for most of us, it's really uncomfortable.

So that siamese algae eater. I have purchased a dozen myself in my own little collection here, but I had quite a few over the years. And I just want to update on this, that this is the one that's always, every single time hormonally bred, they grab a fish, they inject it with a needle to induce breeding. Because these are a very unusual behaved fish. They have different social structures. They attach themselves to leaves. Their mowing behaviors and social behaviors are very unique. No one's been able to really consistently make them breed. And breeding in captivity at all is very difficult. I in my 125 gallon, have a bunch of leaf clutter. I've done different water changes. I've added some vitamins to the waters, and I've had them breed twice. It's very weird. They hide in the back, one gets plump. And just because they're plump does not necessarily mean they'll breed. But this is a species that is so difficult to breed that if they decide they're just not going to breed, they'll slim down again. And they won't release their eggs. They'll just dissolve their own eggs. So it's extremely difficult. They have not found a way to consistently breed them. I sure as hell have. It mine's. All biden by mistake. That's happened twice. There's no way I can replicate it. And I'm not some, like, fancy breeder. It just happened.

Have you ever had any babies club?

I have. I've had two. Wasn't able to catch them, and I haven't seen them since.

Yeah, like zebra plecos, where they're only having seven, eight, nine fish breed enough zebra placoes to put them back in the river system. And right now, the river system isn't safe enough for them to go back.

Into to be that's because they're throwing damage everywhere.

Right. It's a tool that can be used for fish that can't be bred, and we're trying to save the species, but it also is abused and used for bread and butter fish that don't need to be hormonally induced at all. And it's cruel to the fish. All right, what's next in the list? Should we pick something different? How about jimmy's favorite? This blew my mind. sterilization and lack of females.

Sterilization. I'm going to back up about a year ago when black mascot guppies it's been longer than a year, but they've.

Been around for a while, but they finally hit wholesale market, right?

I mean, you see them a lot in the private sector and stuff, but to try to get black Moscow females that actually have the black tail like they're supposed to, those are getting very hard to try to get through a wholesaler. Because people are holding back all the females that they say so they can breed more, but they don't want any competition. They don't want anybody breeding something that they can get a premium price for. And so it's a lot like hoarding toilet paper, don't you think? I mean, I get it. I get that they're trying to get a premium price for that. But as the moscow guppies came out with the different colors and stuff, it's very hard to find females. But you can go online and get them from somebody like an aqua bid for like $45 a trio or more. But it's very hard just to find some for the average hobbyist who wants to try to breed them. Another thing that drives me crazy is I get a lot of guppies from Sri Lanka. And what I like about the ones.

From Sri Lanka sri Lanka is well known for this, by the way.

Yeah, I used to bring in Sri Lanka males and I can get them really cheap. And they are gorgeous and they're pretty hardy for the most part.

And the reason you do mails is because a lot of the stores, they don't have a lot of staffing to answer questions. So the stores that you're supplying just have maybe some guy that's paying minimum wage that just has to get called over to the fish sector. And you don't want them to deal with buying eight males to one female and have them killed a female. So you're trying to do the ethic thing by just males for these particular stores that don't have the staffing, so they don't have the issue of female guppy abuse.

Right. And here's me being a business person. I get more money for males. Oh, yeah, I'm sorry, Adam. retailed for years, I get more money for males. They're more colorful, they're more beautiful. Unfortunately, in the animal world, a lot of times the females are kind of the more drab. So I bring in males and offer males, and every once in a while I have people ask for females. I would bring in the Sri Lanka guppies and when I have to order them, I get 250 to a bag. And you want to talk about humane, a bag is about a gallon of water with 250 guppies in it.

There's another topic of shipping, right?

And so they come to my place. I usually can split a bag probably to four or five tanks. Part of the reason is they need more room. Second reason is you never know what type of problems you're going to have with these fish. So you're always hedging your bed. You might have one tank crash on you and you might lose them because of tail rod or fungus or something like that. But I was buying a lot of females and I thought, you know what, I'm just going to start breeding my own because I do have people asking for stuff and maybe I can make a couple of bucks. I brought in I want to say it was 1200 females I think I brought in. And after about four months, I had about 1215 babies from 1200 fish. I had 7300 gallon vats. And these fish, I found out were sterile. And I never quite heard how they make them sterile, but I heard radiation.

So we began to do some homework. And it's quite common, especially for Sri Lanka. They have radiation systems. They literally radiate their fish like it would for some sort of cancer patient. They give them lower levels of gamma radiation. And they have tested this inhumanely to the point where they know exactly how much radiation to give the fish to sterilize it, but not kill it. So they're just giving it enough where of course, long term they're going to morph, they're going to have tumors, they're going to shorten their lifespan, but they don't care because their secret bread and butter product that gets their premium price stays in the market and no one else takes their secret and breeds it on their own.

Right. And again, they're getting a higher price for the males than the females. So when you ask for females, they're quite a bit cheaper, don't have a lot of color. But there again, I'm sure they're probably juicing over there too.

Now in the 70s they had chemical castration. Didn't really work because anytime you chemically not morph chemically inject a fish, there's going to be other damage. You're going to hit their slime coat, have them so they don't feed. There's going to be injuries to the fish which change the color, behavior, radiation, no harm, no foul. In their minds, they literally radiate fish and send them to you. It's the most inhuman thing. And that's where, again, things that people don't see.

So you know that story I was telling you, Jim? Sorry to interrupt, robs.

No, you're good.

You tell me a lot of stories. Which one?

Well, okay, the one about you remember those Indian barbs when we got them and we could never get any females?

Yes.

So there was one guy in the whole state of Florida that bred him. And I found this out through another wholesaler that wasn't Jim. And the guy would breed them and then he'd hormone dose him to get to see which ones males and females were right away. And then he'd take all of the females and step on them. He would just kill them so that nobody could get them. All you would get was males so nobody else could breed him because he was the only one that figured it out. And then they started coming from Asia because they got him over there. But literally some of the top notch breeders, when they're the first ones to get the fish, they won't let a single female out. They'll kill them. They'll do anything in their power to not let a female out.

Yeah, they're just trying to protect their market is what. Yeah, and we see the government doing stuff like that. There's all kinds of stuff happening in the human race all the time that we just turn a blind eye to.

Well, there's a list of people that should be sterile in humans, but let's not go there.

That's a whole nother podcast.

Again, anytime that you're looking for the mark is ethics gets sacrificed for economic gain. That's what you're going to look for. Any system, any business, anything that's what you need to be concerned about. And it's no different with the fish hobby. It's just that this is again, our passion. There have been big strides and changes from things that have happened in the past, such as chemical castration, that we've been able to identify, call out and really control to make sure it doesn't happen to fish. But these things like gamma radiation on fish, the things like trying to call out the females, it still happens because it's really hard to identify. So be knowledgeable, be aware. If someone's not allowing you to get females, they're doing that because they're trying to keep their trade secrets in house. And it's sad. This is a community we want to share with. But it is the sad fact of it all that it happens all too often.

Yeah, it's not all roses, people.

Again, some of the products out there is the same thing, heaters. They fail for everybody. It's not because there's necessarily perfect heater, but again, heaters are made cheaply. And if you buy heater, you're going to buy another. And we have buckets of heaters because we've been through them all. We get them to try to get them low cost ourselves because we know we're going to go through them. There are stories, we just talked with Big Rich and Josh about titanium heaters continually to fail. And we have to use grounding units just because we know they're going to short out. And you had a story about pumps.

We had our friend ty on the podcast a while back. He is the one that set up the big 22 foot tank, or was.

It 2000 gallon reef tank?

2000 gallon reef tank. So they hired a guy from Canada who makes his own pumps. He shopped around to every major Us. Pump manufacturer and they all told him the same thing. His pumps were lasting on average of 14 years. And they all looked at him and said, we're not going to produce these because we can't make any money because they're not going to fail. This guy is putting his pumps in when he came over here to Minnesota to help. I believe he'd come from Israel or overseas. And he'd been over there putting in a big aquarium for the state or the country. He came over here and they've been using his pumps and talking about how they're having any failure with these guys whatsoever. Everybody can make a better product, but nobody wants to sell the better product because it's all about selling you the same product over and over again. Like refrigerators, cars, cars, deep freeze. I mean, the stuff has been all meant to be thrown away. There's a place in Boston somewhere at a firehouse that has the same light bulb for over 100 years. Now it's like 100 and 102 years. And the light bulbs back then remain with a huge, huge filament. And if you know, like a regular incandescent light. Bulb. You know, if you bump them too hard, they they go out and they're done.

And a fun story about that light bulb, it was actually made in my hometown. Was it really? Of shelby, Ohio? yep.

Really?

And how old is this light bulb? I swear it's over 100 years old. It is.

It's it's well over 100 years old.

I think it was a San Francisco fire department, and it's left on 24/7. They don't shut off. They just leave it running all the time. Like, literally 24/7.

Yeah. And so they're, again, just incredible, where you can make something that lasts forever, but nobody wants it to sell it because they don't can't make any money at it if they're only going to sell you. Some of the new cars that are coming out have the 100,000 miles powertrain, and they're having all kinds of people stand in line for that sort of thing. But the new Tesla electric cars, which everybody's baking at, they're talking about a million mile powertrain warranty. Now, wouldn't that be great if they stood behind something for a million miles?

Okay, will they even be a company to last the car a million miles? Or is that another thing?

That's a whole other thing. That's a whole other podcast.

It says here that light bulb in the article I just found is about 113 years old. Holy crap.

Even older than I thought. Yeah. I just recently hit the news again for some reason. I don't know what it was about.

But so wait, is that thing that thing's older than betty White?

Wow. betty it's pretty young, but nobody burns.

Brighter than betty White.

You're damn right.

I don't know if you guys saw that meme of me and betty White on the discord, did you?

Well, people need to go to our discord. A crameguyspodcast.com. Bottom of the page, you'll see discord Link. It's an online chat using your phone. Join the fun. And one of our listeners, tell them.

Tell them what it was.

Tell them they photoshopped.

No, it happened.

It happened. It's with you in bed with micro and betty White.

It happened was hot. It was a dirty job. Somebody had to do it.

I bet you did. All right, back on track. Next thing on the list is food.

I like food.

So we talked about how there's additives in food again, like certain vitamins to try to enhance color. But this is not that we're talking about. Again. This is the Negative nelly podcast. And I hope this doesn't bring you down. If this is your first podcast, stop.

Yeah, don't watch it. Go watch some Coronavirus.

Go watch CNN news and feel happier than this podcast right now. But again, if this is the first, go to the beginning. Listen up. But this with food. Just like dog food, right? Dog food has been filled with filler for years. canines are a protein diet. You do not feed cat a salad that is just inhumane. They're not getting their nutrients. They are a different animal. They have acid in their stomachs that can dissolve bone. They are built for meat. So when we're giving dog food and the first ingredient is corn, you're not doing it right. And we've known that for years. You were given an example, Jimmy, of old Roy dog food. Let's shit on them for a minute. Yeah.

Who else can we make mad tonight?

It's only Walmart. I mean, come on now.

I wasn't going to say Walmart. Now nobody knows where old Royal Roy Dog Food number one selling dog food in America. Nothing close to it, people.

It's one of the worst dog foods ever.

There you go. So, number one dog food, why is it number one, Adam?

Because it's cheap.

There you go.

And because it's at Walmart.

Right. And it's readily available.

I mean, old Roy is actually Sam walton's dog. That's what he named the company off of.

And it probably killed his dog, too.

You never know.

So old roy dog food.

Dog probably got good dog food.

Yeah, he can afford it.

Maybe they changed the recipe.

Exactly. So Adam and I used to get do you remember pet Product news, Adam?

Oh, yeah, that was a good magazine.

It was a magazine called Pet Product News. And one time I opened up my Pet Product News when I was sitting in my office, which is the bathroom, and I'm reading about it, and it says, Old Roy Dog Food was compared to and it wasn't even anything really fancy, but it was like a high end dog food, but it wasn't like the top stuff.

It wasn't like science diet or something like that. And so they did probably pedigree they.

Took the same dog. This is the same dog. And they fed this dog, over the course of a couple of months, £50 of Old Rory Dog Food, and they took out £37.5 of waste. 50 pound bag of dog food.

I want to be that guy that's weight tells the intern, like, please, can you weigh and scoop this crap out of the yard?

Right? And then keep it for two months. And the next dog food they fed, which was a higher protein dog food, like I said, it still wasn't like a blue buffalo or anything real top of the line. But it was a good dog food you'd recognize. And I think they took out something like twelve and a half pounds of waste out of the yard. So you produce what you eat. You eat what you produce, and out the poop it comes. So, I mean, there again, you're just eating crap.

I'm just trying to imagine you on the crapper reading an article about weighed crap. I'm like, Are you? Like, I wonder how much that weighed.

And that's when we just hit the tree as we went through the ditch and rob's car. I know.

So just like that the fillers, the corn, all the stuff that's been dog food is really now hitting the food pellets, all the goodies. Now there has to be a higher protein rate on some of these. Otherwise, frankly, we're just not going to buy them. There needs to be this slow market trend, and the first thing that they've done is krill. krill is really no longer added to almost all foods in the United States if you're a food manufacturer. Besides, I think one or two places Chris biggs was telling us about this, there is not krill in your food. There are different replacements, but krill is no longer in there yet. They'll still have krill on the label. Because really, there's not FDA, usda, or there's not some yeah, there's no requirement.

Saying that you have to put it on there.

Right. So we don't have the backing to go on it, but that's how it starts. And some of these foods do have filler. I've always had a belief, not scientifically proven, that wardly has been a big culprit because it puts a lot extra waste. It dissolves the fish, don't hit it like they do other flakes. And I've always tetra.

Tetrafin is one of those ones, too.

And people believe that Tetrafin don't. Some people have tested it. But do your homework. Instead of buying from a box store, find food from a reputable source. Talk to your breeders. See what they're feeding.

Absolutely.

I guarantee that most of these things are not feeding flake unless it's on their off season. And they're not breeding their fish. They're feeding bloodworms. They're feeding a mixed diet. They're feeding live food. Do your homework. Find out what your fish needs. And if you do want to go with essentially a multi use flake, go from a really reputable source that you know is backed by someone. I'm going to go to Xbox store and pick up whatever's there, whatever is cheap.

And of course, that's what people are after, whatever is cheap. The one thing where I really noticed recently, going back to the tetras and the wardlies and stuff, there's certain different colored flakes that the fish won't even eat. It's like this is like styrofoam or something. I noticed that all the red flakes in one particular brand was all in the bottom of the tank, and they wouldn't even touch it, but they'd go after the green flakes. Of course, it was algae.

The algae is probably more garlic mixed in.

One of the best things you can do is feeding any of your fish algae. They love it. But when was the last time you saw your fish out eating alfalfa? There are actually a lot of foods out there now that have alfalfa in there.

And unless it's shrimp, probably not an alfalfa eater, right.

So what I really found now is ash content, which is interesting because I feed a lot of pleco wafers, I feed a lot of shrimp different foods and there's different things you'll throw in there and there's so much waste when the shrimp are done eating, it's just filler and ash and stuff they won't consume. And so ash content has been a big thing that I've been paying attention to.

It's really common in cats. Cats are really susceptible to ash content, really in food. And my cats alone, and I've had now my mom's cats, I had cats when I grew up. I have cats now in my house. And all of those cats are susceptible to the same stuff because we go to the local box store, buy whatever the crap is the cheapest, and if they eat it, oh, guess what? They like it. Well, it has a ton of ash content. And cats are susceptible because they get bladder infections. And if you get a cat with a bladder infection, they're pissing everywhere. You bring them to the vet. The vet immediately says, here's an antibiotic to fix this, but to stop this from happening, it'll continue happening after you've had one bladder infection. It will continue happening unless you remove ash content. You have to do to a different food. So we actually have to special order food with almost no ash content in it just to stop our cats from getting bladder infections.

And can I ask you a personal question? I mean, not being a dumbass, but does your cat litter box smell better than it used to? It's certainly not as full and it's not as nasty.

My wife would have to clean them out. And we have two cat litter boxes. We have two cats because we like to have extra cat litter boxes just to encourage good behavior from a young age. We just left them there and she has to do it three times a week to once a week. That was the change.

Premium food.

Yeah. Before I forget, did you also add running water? Because I heard that that also helps them when they start having a lot of bladder infections. They make some water fountains, just that or water bowls for cats that constantly move the water.

Well, a lot of issues is they'll drink it filtered, so they say that bladder infections get caused by what they drink. They're not drinking enough, number one, or there's something in the water causing the bladder infection because you don't have clean water. Well, we always have clean water. We're changing it three times in a day because we have roommates and we didn't have to do any of that. We actually had our water bowl tested and all kinds of goodies, we were good to go. We didn't have to change anything but the food. But that was recommended as these new fountain bowls with filters built in.

Yeah, my ex wife bought two of them and they both failed within 30 days, two different brands because her vet told her that moving water will encourage him to drink more. But anyway, she says, I paid $30 for this one. It crapped out after 30 days, sent it back and they went, well, here, try our premium one at no extra charge, which is a $50.01. Lasted about 45 days and crapped out there again. Nothing made to last.

Do a smaller bowl. That's what we did. We do a nice small I think it's like a ten ounce bowl, and we have to continually top it off all day, and that ensures they're getting fresh water instead of getting a fancy toilet.

Lid up, dude.

Oh, no, it's got to be running.

Bladder infection city. Toilet seats down.

No, that's just my kids are fine and that's where they drink.

You know what I've seen people do is I've also seen people leave the tap running just a trickle, and the cats will learn to drink from that, too.

Yeah, the first thing I want is my cats on the counter.

My cats love that. Every morning when we get up and go to the bathroom, that's what they want. They cry at it. They'll even pause the thing until my wife turns it on.

Really? Okay.

Yeah, the faucet every morning. The false. It works. Well, we have two more on our list here, so let's crank these out quickly. So, number one, let's talk about the coronavirus, because let's bring everybody down. We're not YouTube. We can say the word COVID-19 without being demonetized.

Where is it from?

China.

Adam. You and Trump know, Adam?

How dare you? China.

China.

So I'm going to butcher the name Chloroquine, which apparently Trump came out with a bunch of government officials and said that we're going to be using this as a treatment for COVID-19. For those that don't know, chloroquine is a drug that's used to treat malaria, commonly used to treat parasites in aquariums for many, many years. If you see an antibiotic if you see an antiparasite medication, it is used somewhere in the Pet world, or at least has before they've removed it from the market. You were mentioning before, Adam, that once upon a time we used to have everything that humans essentially do pretty much unrestricted for Pet use. And it was in form. They had Pet dosing and different instructions, and one dose could whack some stuff out that no longer can, or we don't have access to it because of limiting drug restrictions, because everyone is using it for meth or something.

No, it wasn't meth. They were literally using it. So what I was told is that.

They'Re not using this for meth. And I'm saying that other drugs that are now restricted because they're using it for those drug uses, we have everything now. We're very reduced by what a veterinarian can even access.

Yeah, it just sucks.

So this Chloroquine, again, is used for parasite removal, for fish as well. Now, before we say anything, we are not doctors. We are fish hobbyists. Do not use any recommendation. Pass your doctor and the CDC for anything related to the COVID-19 infection. Educate yourself. Go to the cdc's website. They have plenty of information, including the President's statement on using this drug. We are not making any recommendations to you. None whatsoever, other than do not use stuff in fish medicine. Fish what they do is this chloroquine, it's not pure chloroquine. It's a mix. It's a blend of anything they're trying to do to treat the paratroasites in the water. And trust me, it's not good stuff. So this gentleman that just passed away by using a fish medication had a batch of stuff that can only be assumed as a mix. I have yet to see chloroquine sold pure for fish purposes. It is almost exclusively in a mix. If there's any time to use medication, it's not fish medication.

And he was not he was not even sick. That's what the crazy part. He was doing this to try to avoid getting sick.

And didn't his wife, isn't she in, like, intensive care because of this, too?

One dead, one in the hospital. I don't know if he's passed or not.

He died.

We're not a source for this, trust me.

Right.

But again, don't use anything labeled for pets. Now, I grew up dirt poor. Jimmy made a fun of me for a couple of times for some of my sad, sad stories.

No, I make fun of you all the time for your sad, sad story.

Right?

We need sad music right here.

No sad music. But rob's did take when he was younger, his mother gave him antibiotics for different sinus infections and stuff when we didn't have insurance and we grew up dirt poor. Food stamps, the works. I'm young. I didn't know any better. Now, the stuff that I know, those antibiotics are not pure. Those are not made in safe, clean environments in a lot of times. So it's playing Russian roulette. When you buy any type of fish medication and use it for human purposes, they're not made for that. It may be on the bottle, the same antibiotics, but maybe it's a blend. Maybe there's some bacteria in it because they're not held in sterile situations. Never, ever, ever use pet medications for human consumption, even though it has a similar trait. Never do it.

Yeah, I'll back up real quick. I'll tell you what. I bought one time because I was told to by a pet professional. I bought four gallons of formaldehyde because that was told that that would cure any gram positive or gram bacteria, gram negative or gram positive bacteria infections in fish. And you have only put in, like, one drop per ten gallons. It's so nasty.

Did you even legally buy formaldehyde?

Not anymore. When I bought it, I had to fill out forms. I still have four full gallons. I don't know what to do with it. I don't want to pour it down the drain. I should take it over and give it to somebody. poison control. But anyway, for meldehyde when I was a kid and you're dissecting frogs, that's what they're soaked in.

Yeah, you put them in a jar and they keep forever, so to speak.

And that crap is so highly carcinogenic, causes cancer like you wouldn't believe. And you've got people using this on fish farms and you're kind of like roundup. Buy a little squirt bottle roundup to kill the weeds around your house. Get cancer and get cancer. So please, people, be careful. Don't listen to the Internet because they don't know what they're doing. Follow all the rules, go to your doctor and don't do any of this stupid crap.

And this is soap boxy. I mean, the reason we're doing this is because drug prices are so high in the United States, you can go over Mexico, get the same drug for a fourth to 10th the less of the cost. And people are, frankly, poor trying to do this. Like, I was I was dirt poor. Lights got shut off continually. And I have to take antibiotics that are fish because my mom gave them to me. Don't do it. There are places to help you. Don't let that be a victim because there's ramification.

Economically, it is just terrible that people have to make those decisions. When we were just in Mexico in February, not exaggerating, we were on the boardwalk walking, where they tell us from the ship to stay on, don't go off into beyond that fence. They have an eight by ten sheet that has been handwritten with a magic marker selling viagra. And next to the sign, it says, viagra four pills for $10. Next to that with another sign saying no pictures of the sign. And people are standing there taking pictures of the sign, just laughing their head off. But how many people get off a cruise ship? Go and go, I'll try some viagra from Mexico. Probably not a good idea. That didn't work great, let me tell you.

All right, last thing on our list, and can I say that this podcast sucks shit right now.

Sucks at.

Oh, my God. So we'll get this out of our system, never have to do this again. But yeah, there's a reason why people don't talk about this. And we're not going to hold back because you need to know.

What do you got? What's your last thing?

Hybrids.

Oh, Jesus.

You don't even get me started on hybrids.

Wow. They're in a duck and a half. Duck and a half.

So, Jimmy, what are some of the crazy hybrids now? We've heard, like, handler guppies. Heard about platties and sword tails. That's like age old stuff. That doesn't matter. What is some of the real crazy docker jekyll Mr. hyde stuff you're seeing coming in still?

One of my favorites is the angel ram.

Whoa. Angel ram.

Angel ram. It looks like a balloon molly with an angel fish body. Have you never seen these still one of my favorites. I love them. People love them or hate them, but there are so many hybrids out there and people lose their flip in mind. Either they love them or they hate them. You got goldfish, arandas. Our hybrid bubble eyes are a hybrid, but they've been around for so long, we just accept them as normal. And that's what drives me insane. You know, they take a fish like a serpent tetra, they keep selecting it to get long fins and that sort of thing to beautify and bring something new and exciting to the market.

But they're not using common sense, these types of petras Finnip, and now they're giving them fins to nip, right?

So you start crossing different cichlids. You start crossing cichlids with this or that, pretty soon you got a horse mating with a freaking guppy, and you got horse guppies and you don't know what's going to happen next.

Hey, is that sea horses?

Hey, Adam. Got one.

Jokes.

Love it.

The setup, it's like a dad joke.

Flower horns.

Some of the stuff that we're seeing is flower horns are already a species that came out of a lot of weird breeding. But we're seeing parrot cichlids crossed with flower horns. Parrot horns. We're seeing balloon pearl gourmet. Essentially, they're different types of grammys stunting that they're trying to breed together. All different types of crazy fish.

And a lot of this stuff is done on the petri dish.

Honestly, they're sitting there, they're taking eggs.

A lot of these are sterile.

They quickly bat away the male so they don't get bred with. They're taking the others and trying to cross. And if it works, great. If it makes some sort of mutation that dies immediately and they're inhumane about, so be it. It's random science. This is how the world works for crossing it. And that's why we have stuff like the glow fish that are made in a petri dish. But I think some of the stuff that are finally coming to head, that are by far the worst, is the new two headed varieties of fish. What you're hearing wait, what? What they are doing, and this is common now with Arijuanas, when I say why that? They've had a two headed marijuana and they decided, hey, that's a freaking nature, let's procreate that and see if we can capture that. And now they're selling a strain of two headed arijuana.

I'm flabbergasted. I've never heard of that. Holy crap. ola.

Of course they have to be artificially reared, but it's still a thing that if you really, really want to dig deep, you can probably find them.

Man, I think that is totally wrong. I mean, don't get me wrong. I like to go to the weird fairs and see all these weird animals.

Bubble eye, goldfish, all kinds of crazy genetics.

I'm talking about when you went to the fair and you saw the six legged calf that was stuffed and all.

Those crazy one happened in 1965, and Billy Bob stuffed it and they brought it to the fair for the last three generations for everyone to see, held.

Together by bailing wire and duct tape.

Now, imagine Billy Bob had the hankering that I bet I could make money if I made six headed calves and artificially reared them.

Yeah, totally, totally wrong. And can you imagine a two headed animal that's trying to feed itself and trying to defend itself? Just completely inhumane and wrong. But yet there's a demand out there. It's like every other weird, crazy thing. And people will sell it, and they'll make a buck, and they will just turn stomachs and turn heads at the same time.

Mutations. I mean, there's lines. Even the bubblehead goldfish, which I still think is a cruel thing to do, at least that can feed, have somewhat of a full life. You can't tell me in this right mind that a two headed marijuana is going to live long at all.

Look how many freaks are out there in the world who have money and buy this stuff and create a demand. But now there's people out there who are big collectors of these mass murderers merchandise. People like Charlie manson.

It's not necessarily because they're condoning the activities of these crazy people, but it's because that oddities sell. And that's what the real economic backing on these fish are for. If they they feel that, wow, that's cool. Well, guess what? It's 59 99 on sale this week. Suddenly, the ethics overcome the economics.

The weirdest thing I've ever held in my hands, I was in Dallas, Texas, at a place called autographs. autographs. autographs. Ask the guy because I collect autographs. I've got gilligan's Islands autographs. I've got I dream of genie. I've got, like, a lot of the 60s stuff.

You can have my autograph.

No, I don't watch your autograph. So I asked the guy at that thing. He had a John lennon signed guitar. He had a Jimmy hendrick signed guitar case. He had all kinds of cool stuff, stuff from $50 up to $20,000. I said, what's the crazy thing you've ever sold or that you've got? And he goes, if you want to wait here just a minute, he said, I'll go get it for you, to show it to you. And he comes with this big plastic envelope, ziploc, opens it up, hands me a pair of white gloves. Dead serious. Hands me pair of white gloves. You need to put these on to handle this. And he pulls out this thing, and it looked to me like kind of a weird looking price tag with some string on it type. And I'm like, what the hell is this? He goes, that's Lee Harvey oswald's tote tag the man that assassinated jfk. They had his toe tag that they bought at an auction somewhere, and his dad had bought it for his retirement because it was going to be worth so much money. I said, how much is this thing worth? And he goes, Tens of thousands. And that's all he said. And I know it was sold not that long ago. I actually know it was up for bid. I don't know if it's sold or not, but there's all kinds of people that collect crazy stuff. So I totally get where somebody comes up with a two headed Iowana thinking that there's some freak that's going to buy one just to try to impress his friends. And it's really sad.

So the moral of the story is on all of this, we're not just trying to get under your skin and talk about the things that make you uncomfortable or give us some bad fan.

Mail, well, you pissed me off.

Really? I always piss you off. It's the things that people don't because they need to be talked about. All of these things, as horrible as they are, are parts of our hobby. And if they're not talked about, they're not addressed. There's no change, there's no research to make things better. And again, it always comes to ethics over economics. So anytime that you have an element, you need to ask yourself, is this ethical? You need to ask that on every element of your fish. You're responsible for the environment, their livelihood, and recreating a life for your loved pet, as anyone should. So take these bits of information and go forward to your hobby. Be aware of them and try to make your own decisions as far as what you're willing to condone, what you're going to do in your own hobby, and how you're going to spread the information to others to help change the hobby. Again, we didn't talk a lot about what happened in the past and how it's got to here, but to give you this small example, we talked about betas. betas used to be shipped on wet paper towels. No water, just a moist paper towel, because guess what? The beta can actually breathe oxygen. And that's how they're shipped overseas for a couple of days. And that was kabash. Because ethics, we could not stand that in our fish hobby. And we did something about it to change it, to make our hobby better. And that's what we can do.

We haven't talked about the bat raise.

Yeah, we haven't talked about bat rays. We've talked about modifying, actually. So I think that was brought up once before.

Modifications.

Yeah, but again, talking about these with your friends, having real heart to heart conversations, making this known is important and the responsibility of those that are broadcasting fish tubers alike. Even though YouTube may monetize your video, it has to be shared somehow or it'll never change. So share the information, take heed, and number one, put your fish's ethics beyond economics.

Well said.

I'm going to get off my soapbox because this episode sucks.

Sucks.

All right, on that note, we're going to kick the. Podcast and I swear the next one will be better. Podcast out.

Thanks guys for listening to this podcast. Please visit us@aquariumguyspodcast.com and listen to us on spotify, iHeartRadio itunes and anywhere you can listen to podcasts.

We're practically everywhere. We're on Google. I mean, just go to your favorite place, Pocket casts subscribe, to make sure it gets push notifications directly to your phone. Otherwise Jim will be crying into sleep.

Can I listen to it in my tree house?

In your tree house, in your fish room. Even alone at work.

What about my man cave?

Especially your man cave. Yeah, only if adam's there no with feeder guppies.

No, they're analyz you imagine loving, fax sucking mother fat.

Well, I guess we'll see you next time. Later. bye.