Welcome to the Aquarium, guys. Podcast with your hosts, Jim colby and Rob dolsen. Hello, listeners. Welcome to the podcast. We're going to dive in today. I have my co host, Jim colby.

Hey, Robbie, how are you doing today?

I am doing well. And again, I am your main host. The better host, Robbie olsen.

The much better looking host.

It's not on you. It's on me.

Are you going to give me the $5 you told me you'd give me for saying that?

That's from our future sponsor. Oh, okay. We got to get some of those.

I did not realize that.

Well, I appreciate you guys tuning in. We're trying a new format of a podcast. We want to make this podcast essentially evergreen, where it's not necessarily time stamped, where you can go back and listen to these podcasts to help you out in your aquarist hobby anytime that you want. I know that Jim and I are both enthusiasts of amazonius. Is that how you say? Amazonus magazine?

Amazonus magazine. Yeah.

So think of it as that content. This content will hopefully help all listeners no matter the time. So we're going to dive in, not each week. We're unsure in the schedule format. You'll be hearing from us soon, but every so often we want to sit down and do a deep dive. Jim is an expert in tropical fish, wholesaling breeding. Trust me, if it's out there, he's at least giving it a try. How long have you been in the industry, Jim?

Almost 30 years now.

That's really tailing on how old you are. You don't look that old.

I started when I was seven. Does that help?

Months. Seven months, yes, seven months. Seven months.

So I started in my early 20s, trying to make some money at it. I was a pure hobbyist up until my early twenty s, and I'm now in my later mid 50s here, let's put it that way.

So most kids in their 20s, they try to make money is what, start a band, sell drugs. You're like fish? Fish do it.

I wish I would have started the band, because girls love band.

Well, I believe that every aquarist out there, maybe their main hobby or second hobby could be fish. But I'm seeing that everybody that does it has a secondary hobby. Mine. I'm a nerd. I do computers, gaming, magic gathering. You are a rock fan? Through and through, Jim.

Yes. Love the rock music. We spend a lot of money, a lot of time following bands around the Us. We go to a lot of shows. We do Rock Cruise every year, and some people hunt and fish for fun. And that's what my wife and I enjoyed doing, is going to rock shows. We meet a lot of the 80s rock stars over the years and become friends with a few of them. And that's our love. But also the love is the aquariums.

Fantastic. So, again, 30 years and you started to see if you want to make money off of them, assuming what was the first thing you bred?

Well, you know, I was suckered into this whole business by a friend of mine. His name is Steve larson. And Steve shout out a shout out for Steve. Hey, how's it going? Hey.

How dare you?

Yes, Steve owned a local five and dime shop and they sold aquarium fish. And when I was younger, my mom and I had aquariums, and she had a love for it also, and we raised a lot of guppies. And so I was going into my local shop and talking to Steve, and I go, how come you don't have any guppies? And he goes, I can't get them, I can't get them, I can't get them to live. And I'm going, oh, I can raise your guppies. Wrong.

Wrong.

I lost my 1st $8,000. I lost $8,000 in guppies in one year. whoa, whoa, whoa.

So let's roll this back, let's say 30 years ago, right?

Yeah.

How in the hell would guppies cost that much money? How many guppies did you get 30 years ago for eight grand? I'm assuming equipment had to been involved.

Yeah, of course. But why would you just start with a few tanks when you could start with 50? And that was a good starting point in my mind. I'd start with 50 tanks. And then I ran up to a fish wholesaler and got guppies. And that was back when the disease first came through called a Singapore slu. And what it was, depending on who you talk to, gram negative or grampositive bacterial infection that guppies got. And people bring guppies in, and most of the guppies are raised in Sri Lanka, Hong Kong, Malaysia, places like that. And they're brought in, but they're getting these gram positive gram negative bacterial infections which looked like a saddle across the top of the fish, and it actually dissolved the bodies, the but I mean, it actually would, they would fall apart. And you'd have 100 guppies today, you'd have 75 tomorrow, you'd have three on Tuesday. I killed, didn't kill. I did not keep alive 500 guppies the first month. And that's how I went out and spent a bunch of money, got beautiful stock and brought them home. And that's the same thing that was being experienced by my local pet store that I was buying from. He would get them in from the suppliers. They'd last about three to five days once he got them, and then they would just dissolve and very, very hard to treat. Like I said, it was gram negative or gram positive bacterial infection that they would get, and they had to be treated. And by the time you treated them, you still have a 40 50% loss. And so after about a full year, I was $8,000 in the hole. And so that was the first thing I tried raising when I was raising them. In high school.

So let's stop. There $8,000 in the hole. There is this infection I heard of. And what was the name of the game?

Well, they they called it the Singapore slew.

So I've only heard this once before.

Okay.

And I have this extremely old book that my grandmother gave me because, again, our families are the ones that get us into the hobby most of the time. Maybe it's a friend, maybe you just thought it was cool at a pet store, but my grandmother was to blame. And this book, it's all in black and white. It was like one of the original fish manuals for tropical fish. I mean, it has instructions from, like, victorian era aquariums giving history back of how aquarium started and all kinds of shit.

Love that stuff.

And she had handwritten notes, and on the leaves with a few live bears, she had that bacteria written down. So that's all was was a note susceptible to this. And she wrote it down in the book. I never knew what it was.

Yeah, it was incredible. And it took basically years for it to get cleaned up overseas. And from what I understand, and I don't know if there's any truth of the matter, is that they were actually keeping formaldehyde, which is highly carcinogenic, in the water, to try to kill this bacteria that was killing the guppies. And once they got into fresh water and they went into their treated water, which they were trying to breed them in, that's when they would come over here, they're shipped over. It takes probably about three days to get them from, say, Sri Lanka. They'll fly them into lax airport in Los Angeles, then they'll move them into Minneapolis, minneapolis to our local airport here. And it's a lot of stress on a fish, and they break down real quick. And so what I thought was going to be a slam dunk was basically driving into the ditch. It was a terrible, terrible deal.

There was no Florida back then.

That's a part of it. Florida did not really do any of that because there are certain fish that can be that are so I guess the word I'm looking for is there's so much work for calling. Like when you go into looking at coy, I mean, we've talked about coy in the past and how to get 100 good coy. You might call through 2000. And that's the same thing in Florida. They were having the problems at that time with all the bent fins or the bent backs. I'm sorry. And that was the calcium deficiency that they weren't able to take care of. So once it hit the orient, then Florida stepped up and started to breed guppies, but not enough guppies to matter, to be honest. It was very hard to get them. And once you got them in and you were able to keep alive, you had to put them into you couldn't put them in tanks that these former guppies had been in without basically taking the tank down, drying it out and bleaching it, because the stuff that was killing these guppies would just live in the tank forever.

So for those that don't know Florida, especially if you're not in, like, the fish business, florida is the hot spot for farm raised fish. It's been the hot spot for many years, and it's really boomed out. What we say? What, in the 90s?

Yeah, I mean, they were doing it back in in the the early 50s, they started doing it, and you and I have been in Florida together. We've been to several of the farms and see how they do it down there. And it's very basic, it's very simple, and they don't throw a lot of money at the problem. And that's the one thing I learned after losing the eight grand the first year in guppies, I contacted another company where I was able to buy just normal fish, because now I want to sell just regular fish, say, betas and plateaus and swords, just to try to get my money back. That's where I was at that point going, I need to get my money back on this.

Interesting. Most of the people will be like, Eight grand? nah, I got burnt. I learned my lesson. I'm out. But that showed that it's a hobby above all else. And then money.

It's kind of like have you ever seen a bar fight where somebody gets to crud beat out of them and they're laying on the floor and they've totally been beaten up and they look up and go, is that all you got? That's kind of what I'm doing there.

So you're just making a point. I feel like mom had to be involved, like, Jimmy, why are you doing that? And you just had to prove it wrong. Like, I'm going to make money at this shit, mom.

Yeah, well, you're going, how can I not make any money at this? This should be simple. It's freaking guppies, for goodness sakes.

I mean, next to sea monkeys, I'm thinking that goldfish has got to be the most popular at least now.

Yes. Sea monkeys, when I was growing up, was on the back of every comic book. And basically you get a little bit of brine shrimp in a package. You put it in salt water and it hatches and you sit there with your mouth open going, isn't this cool? No.

Then they get a bacteria on their back and they dissolve that's guppies. That's what happens.

Exactly.

Well, that's fantastic. Now, my intro, again, is from my grandmother, and I just want to point out I am 29 years old, and when I started getting into fish, everybody, of course, had guppies, and they were very different in the 90s, they were different in the 2000s. They actually had color. Females had color, and they were much bigger. They have definitely been stunted down in the last 1520 years. I mean, we have pictures of these things, and it's just not at all what I'm used to. They used to if for anybody that wants to look this up, if they want to look up the size of a female mosquito fish, imagine that with color for a female guppy, just a big two full inches, just a big old fish.

Yeah, you used to be able to take a nickel and sometimes a quarter and laid on their tail. I mean, that's how big their tail was. Big, beautiful, bright colors. And basically after the Singapore slew, everybody kind of had to sit back, scratch their head, and start over. And when they finally found some wild caught guppies, they started over. And of course, in the wild caught guppies aren't as big, not as bright and beautiful. But now look at where we're at now. And you go on aqua bid in that tartar place, and you're seeing $7550 for a trio of guppies. Absolutely gorgeous. But man, somebody spent a lot of time, a lot of effort producing those guppies.

And just to dive in, I'm going to pause on a couple of different notes along the entire podcast. I just want this friendly for everybody, not just experts of the fish hobby. So aquabid is essentially the ebay of fish trading and selling. So if you want, as a private breeder, have your own select stock and you want to essentially sell your fish to good parties that have a nice middleman use, aqua bid, it protects you, the seller, it protects the buyer, and it does have extra costs and fees to it. But again, it's the safest way to buy small private bids online. There's, of course, industries, there's other stores you can buy from. But from private party, it's the ebay of fish selling.

Absolutely. It's fantastic for the hobbyists especially. Let's say you're a basement breeder of guppies and you're looking you're trying to.

Prove your mom wrong.

That's right. And you're going, I got eight gs to get rid of right now.

Oh, shit.

And why drive to the casino? I'm just going to sit here and throw it down the toilet.

Let's just get that done.

Let's get her done, dude.

Oh, man. So thanks for that deep dive, but my bio again, my grandmother got me into it. She had a 75 gallon above her fireplace, and my grandma was a bit nutty when it comes to fish breeding. She has notes all the way back from the 60s. She's done it most of her life, back when it wasn't cool. And she's got notes of all kinds of rare species, a couple of species that don't really exist in the hobby anymore. And I cherished these books she gave me, and I've just really kind of spun off of that. I've had a lot of different species, and I pride myself as an expert in freshwater fish specifically. I've definitely dabbled in salt. But I learned quickly that fish a hobby can be very expensive. And keeping it cheap may be an idea for business, but I also want to do it for growing up. I grew really poor, so if you had a tank that was broken, I would seal it up, anything I could do to get it working. So my grandmother gave me a lot of equipment. I got to see her breed betas in the she actually would breed them together and grow them up by the pair so she could sell two mills together before people would realize they'd rip each other apart. If they're bred together from a small size, you can keep them together. And it was just amazing what she could do, and I was just really inspired by that. So I dove in. Jimmy and I are friends, actually, because of the fish hobby. We saw each other in a local grocery store, and he saw me getting a bunch of RL water and thought I was nuts. What are you doing? Like, I'm filling a tank. And Jim and I have been friends ever since, and we've done business ventures together. We have both wholesale tropical fish and really want to use this podcast to share our expertise. And just to humble myself, I'm going to say my saddest moment is having, like, a freshwater black arrow. Not Asian. It's not illegal. It's a South American fish getting eaten by a high red tiger catfish.

That was the highlight of my day.

When that happened, I had pictures. The arijuana was twice the size of the damn catfish and ate the son.

Of a bitch hole, I think somebody said. I don't know if that's a good idea, Robbie. I don't know who that was, but.

No, it couldn't have been couldn't have been anyone because they they had they had measuring sticks.

Yes. Yeah, that was a sad, sad day when I had to give you a little crying tall there.

It was a very sad day. But no, we've all had a lot of experience, and we just want to go over these podcasts and do a species deep dive. And I'd say every hobbyist that's been as long as especially as long as Jimmy has, we have our favorites and our expertise, and I really want to dive into your expertise, Jimmy. You are the king of angel fish.

I'd like to think that, but I'm really not. There's so many people out there that do such a wonderful job, and I really love the angel fish. It's just been my favorite fish ever since day one. I've tried discus. I've got my butt handed to me on that on a couple of occasions right now. We've currently got discus. Again, doing well, listening to people. The best advice that anybody can give you, and I'll tell you this really quick. I was down in Florida after my $8,000 kick in the pants.

Hopefully mom paid for your ticket?

No, I charged it because what else? You got eight gs on the credit.

Card, which doubled down. You're in Vegas, baby.

Exactly. And so I went down there, and there's a gentleman down there that took me under his wing, and I love him to death. He's still alive, but he's an older gentleman, and his name is Paul norton, and it used to be norton Tampa Bay Fisheries. And his specialty was Tiger barbs. Cherry barbs. Garamis. And here when I first started, I put a lot of money into my fish room because everybody wants a beautiful fish room, and you want a light on every tank. You want every tank to look good, you know. And so I go down to down to Tampa and I get educated. And, you know, I tell my children, I've got I got two adult boys, and I give them this advice all the time that Paul norton gave me, and he says, the best advice I can give it to you is learn from other people's mistakes because it's a lot cheaper. And I went, wow, where were you a year ago? And he said, he said, Jim, you can keep a healthy fish healthy, but by God, it's hecking back to try to get a sick fish healthy. He said, So when you get them in, he said, you want to treat them like they're sick. You want to hit them with the antibiotics, you want to hit them with the medicine. Whatever you're treating with every fish course is different when you get to that later on. So, anyway, when I went down to Paul, he educated me. He showed me he was doing and it was so simple, Robbie, so simple, what he was doing.

Are you sure you don't want to save this for your book later that.

You'Re going to yeah, my book of how to lose $8,000 in a year without going to Vegas? No. You go into these greenhouses and they've got blocks, bricks. What do you call them? Cinder blocks.

I'd say cinder blocks.

They've got cinder blocks with wood across, with tanks sitting on top, and they've got the cheapest sponge filters you've ever seen. You wouldn't use them, you wouldn't pay $0.10 for them. They look terrible.

I swear to God. It looks like they cut them out of, like, chevy caprice's, like, cushion seat exactly.

That have been sat on for 30 years.

Oh, yeah, they're falling apart, half eaten. They're chunky. You definitely tell they're not manufactured. They're ripped apart.

Right. I mean, these guys have made these filters. And what was really interesting that he took me through the whole Tiger barb thing, which was interesting as heck. I'm not a fan of Tiger barbs, but watching him breed these things, they're breeding at that time, 12,000 a week out of a room, probably 20 by 30. And on the other end of the room, they were doing grammys. So basically half that space are doing 12,000 fish a week and you're going, cha ching, I can make back my money. Wrong.

Wrong. You took these ideas and how did you start with angels?

Well, one of my stores said, can you give me some angels? And I said, yeah, I can bring them in. And so at that time, I was starting to bring fish in from overseas. Overseas does an okay job with angel fish, but they come in thin, weak. You have to get the parasites out of them because most of them are in ponds and stuff. And so it quickly came to me that I wanted to breed my own and have a healthier fish. And so what I did is once again back to my local pet store. And everything you read on the Internet says, hey, you want to raise angel fish? Go out and buy a dozen, let them grow up. Have you ever seen those articles, Rob?

Oh, yeah.

And you don't have that kind of time. I mean, why would you go out and wait six months to start breeding fish when you can go out and buy adults from somebody else?

And I think that we shouldn't to take some time, go into a deep dive about how the hobbyists can actually make money and what is a better investment. But if you're going to make dollars growing a fish from small to big, that's where the money is lost. Essentially. You want them in a nice small size. They are easily shipped, and if you have issues with them, it's definitely going to be something long term. Maybe the power went out once, maybe there's a lot of variables. And as soon as you get them to size out, they go.

Right. There is no money in raising an angel fish to an adult size unless you're doing it for yourself because it's something you want genetically, basically, if you're doing it to make it.

Or if you had that mystical blue one that doesn't exist.

That's right. Or the glow in the dark ones, which they have overseas that you can see on the Internet. They're like the glow fish, but they're glow angels.

Well, we'll get to that soon. Back to your point.

I've been trying to get those for years. Nobody will give them to me.

I wonder why.

Because they're illegal in this country. But anyway, I went to one of my local Pit stores and they saw my first pair of pearl scale gold angel fish adults.

It was like you bought your first porn.

Meg yeah. Oh, man. I sat there and just drooled on the tank. And to me at the time, Michael Jackson was big. I'm not a Michael Jackson fan, but who is? But anyway, Michael, it looked like the sequence of his glove. I've never seen the pearl scale before at this point in my life.

And the pearl scale variation that carries out to other fish, just for the listeners that are in. It's literally segments that reflect in the size of either small circular or diamond shapes across the scales. And they're highly reflective. It literally looks like they're glistened across the fish. Some other mollies have carried around hybrids of pearl scale. It's not that they're crossed, it's just that's the style of the body of the fish.

A lot of goldfish, a lot of fancy goldfish coming in that are coming in pearl scale now. And not to the extent of, like, what you see on an angel fish, but that's what they're breeding for. They want a showy fish so they can get more money. And it's all about when these breeders overseas, it's all about if I can get a nickel more fish and I'm selling 10,000, that's a lot of money, especially from overseas.

Mommy, mommy, I want the shiny one.

Exactly. And so I bought my first pair of angel fish for $50. For the pair, it was a mated pair. They're laying eggs. These particular people had three pair, and I said, I'll take a pair for $50.

Never had an angel fish up to this point.

No. Other than maybe in the tank here and there.

I'm not going to start the small one. They're just going to go in for the big, expensive pair.

Yeah. And $50, then that was 30 years ago.

That's 30 years ago.

30 years ago, folks.

I mean, inflation is huge. That's probably ten grand.

It's like another $8,000 down the crapper. My lord. So anyway, what I did, I took them home, I listened for once, I listened to somebody else, and they told me what to do. And I had my first spawn in about ten days. And I sat there in the dark watching the angel fish spawn, and at that point, I was hooked.

You're in.

Absolutely. Sold.

So let's take that a moment and talk about how they spawn. So again, these are essentially an elongated fish from the cyclist family. They're semi aggressive. You can have them with other fish. But again, when they're paired, they easily fight for their territory. So start at the beginning. What was the information you were given? How do they breed?

Well, first I was told, don't put them in with anything else. Don't put them in with a plea or an algae. I've got a story about don't ever put algae to in with your angel fish. Once upon a time, when I had 30 pairs of angel fish, the tanks are getting kind of scummy looking. So on a friday night, as I'm leaving to go for the weekend, I threw two or three algae eaters at each tank. And left for the weekend and came back and found 18 out of my 30 pairs. At least one of them dead because the algae eaters love the body, slime off an angel fish. And so apparently that's more delicious than algae.

Well especially when they're breeding again they're pretty close to a discus and the discus are notorious for the only fish that really freshwater fish that nurse they actually feed the slime off their body when they're breeding to the little ones so they're very close to the family so when they're breeding like that they're.

Going to be tasty yeah exactly and so get your pear. You don't need a large tank. I've used a lot of tens. Most people want to use 20s, but it all depends on the size. I mean, I've had angel fish that have bread that are the size of a little bit bigger than a 50 cent piece, body wise. But most of them, you know, are about the size of the palm of your hand when they start breeding. They need to be about nine months of age when they start breeding. And they're very hard to determine the males from the females until they actually show their breeding tubes.

So the way that you taught me, because again, I got angels. I had a couple before, but I never bred them, never grew them up. I had someone that wanted them, they were wanting to get their own hobby, so I pond them off. But how I got deep into it and giving me breeding a try myself, you showed me that again, if I remember correctly, the males have a nice bump on their head. Jenny, generally speaking.

Generally speaking.

And the females, they definitely lack that and also can be just a hair smaller, but they're fatter. Generally speaking.

Yes, you'll see them, let's say you've got a dozen adult angel fish. If you take a dozen angel fish in a 55 gallon tank and you put in breeding slates, which is a slate probably two inches by twelve inches.

And when you say slate, it's actually, I've seen different objects. It's something that's textured. Normally they actually do use slate rock. If you can get that cut at a hardware store, that's what you see, especially in the international breeders. That's a cheap way of getting them bred. You don't have to find a log or some natural setting that you have to spend a ton of money for. They literally have just a slate rock cut in that shape.

Yeah, a lot of people sell them. A lot of people I know use kind of a plastic slate. I prefer, like you said, the real rock slate. And it's cheaper, it's much cheaper. And there's all kinds of people out there on the internet selling slates. But if you want to do it the cheap way I went to my local hardware store, big box store, and bought twelve inch tile slate. And I went home, I bought a close out on a diamond saw, which you can cut slate with because slate is very, very soft. And I went home and I made my own two by twelve. Two by twelve. Yeah I cut I cut six out of them out of each one for about $0.40. Apiece, I think, at the time.

And I've seen a lot of weird stuff. You go, especially aquabad, you'll have all these, you know, how do we say high class breeders telling you that?

Nope.

The only way to do it is doing like this. And I've seen crazy shit where they have a pvc pipe stuffed with almond leaves that's been literally sanded to have texture. No, just go get a tile, make it rock slate, make it cheap and make it dark.

Because here's what happens with pvc. And I've used pvc and I've had success with it. But when they lay the opaque eggs on the pvc pipe, you can't see it very well. And you'll have a pair that will be sneaky as snot. And they'll do it on the backside. And you won't notice because a pvc is being completely around. Whereas with the slate, if you take the slate and you lean it up against the glass and I usually do it on the end, then I've never had one go underneath and lay they've always laid it on the top. And what's nice about the slate is a piece of slate like that will easily fit in a one gallon jar. If you're going to artificially raise them, which I prefer doing, that is the best way.

So to not skip some steps. So we have the slate it's again, twelve by two. You set it up against the side of the glass arc. So it's not really a tent, but just leaning up against the glass of.

A 45 degree angle.

Yeah, right. So they come and they they breed on them. And again, the female lays, the male follows behind with the silt sperm. Come on, this is a fun episode. It's jizz.

It is.

They're going to jizz right off. Shit.

It's just a bad porn movie.

Just going to blow the load all over the thing. And now you said before dark slate so you can see the eggs. So I've had people like, well, who cares? You can use a flashlight, you'll find it on whatever device. But it comes to the fact when you pull these things out, like you're just about beginning to say, when you're monitoring the eggs, you'll see that they're opaque, they're almost see through. And when they go bad, they go bright white. That's correct. They die. And immediately you're going to have issues with egg fungus, which is very common for any fish. You have bread, right?

I've had some pairs, not many. And at one time I had over 100 pair at one time. And I had one pair that would always be about 100% and you wouldn't have to really worry about that. But most of them are probably about 70% that they get fertilized. And within jeepers, 1218 hours, I've seen them start turning white. And then if you leave the eggs in with appearance, a good pair will start eating the white eggs.

Yeah, I've seen them where they pair. I just thought it was like oh God they're eating your eggs and your pants.

I know you freak out.

No they more or less know what they're doing. There are such things as inexperienced pairs which is the first time they've bred and they do weird shit. Angel fish are one of the weird things that they'll have one female and three males. On a rare occasion they don't pair up correctly. They'll have you know one of the weird homosexual fish where they just have a slate and they'll both just melt on it with no eggs. But for the most part if you have a pair that has done it more than once if they're picking leave them alone.

Right? And I've had going back to the 55 and I was trying to pair off my own pairs at one time. At one time which I which I prefer to do. I had a several trios and you know those goddamn females would get in sync and both females would lay eggs at the same time and I'd have one male and go up behind and fertilize them. And so you'd get 1000 eggs on one slate.

And there is a study on this done by a bunch of different breeders that was publicized in a few different books. And this cycle again it's like a 14 day distribution period between breed cycles and one would start and again you have the hormones in the water everybody else would and you'll see a lot.

Of the breeders will want to plum all their tanks together just so that goes through. I always worry about disease and if you have one pair go bad you don't want them taking everybody else down because they get something we've all been experiencing. We get something brand new. We're excited. We don't quarantine it like we should dump it in. Dump it in.

Watch it get eaten by fucking catfish.

Catfish. Yeah. Still kind of a sore spot isn't it Rob? God.

God damn it Jimmy.

How much money was that?

I want to so about the angel subject here. It was not eight grand or right it will shut your mouth and keep you.

It was a lot of money and Robbie cried. I'm just saying. But anyway what I prefer to do is I prefer to pull the eggs. Some people love to have angel fish that parent raise which is a beautiful thing to watch and stuff but if you're doing it to make money if you're doing it to get numbers everybody's going to tell you that you should pull the eggs and hatch them yourself.

And again when you're doing these angel fish because they're so close to discus they will on some occasions brood the fish. They're not going to necessarily nurse the fish like a discus but they will protect their area. They will assume around them especially if you're well fed. But the bigger problem with doing that is not just the risk of what the parents could do, because again, maybe the parents are inexperienced, but it's more of you have to crank the heat on these tanks to a nice degree for them to breed. And then the moment one of the eggs die, the fungus goes faster than they'll pick out.

Absolutely.

So it'll easily wipe out half the eggs before they even start hatching. Minus the parents trying to pick off the dead ones.

Right. And then once they get frustrated, I've had them just walk away from the eggs and just watched the whole batch go bad. So by pulling them and putting them in a gallon jar, a two and a half gallon tank, the more water you can give them, the more success you're going to have.

I must stop you one more time. You've shown me do it the cheap way, learn from everybody else's experiences. And generally when I'm going online, I'm seeing these breeding. They have separate tanks, they have separate sponge filters. It's an entire ecosystem. They're done. Number one is not the same water. You're risking that you're putting them to another tank. They could get contaminated and just that change easily kills eggs bad number one.

Yeah, PH, temperature, anything.

So you should put them in a gallon container. So what you do, and I've seen you do this quite a few times, is you have a massive collection of old pickle glass gallon jars. And when I say pickle, go to your local Walmart, go into the bulk foods area and you'll see a giant glass gallon jar of elastic pickles. You've collected these. I don't know where you got it. Maybe you have a pickle fetish. And he saves these things, cleans them out and lets them, of course, dry out. Treats them to make sure that they don't have vinegar left in them. And he's been reusing these pickle jars forever. So he takes the water the parents are in, so no change. You put the slate in there, which fits the twelve inches exactly, and then you fizz the hell out of them with bubbles. And you can treat the jar with methyl and blue or whatever else you want to do for egg fungus.

Yeah, there's several people that do different things. Everybody has success with what they do. I always use methane blue. A lot of people don't like methane blue for the fact that it stains. And if you've seen my pickle jar collection, they're all blue. And right now if you try to go out and buy one gallon pickle jars, they run you about $6 a piece if you go on the internet to buy them. What I did is ate pickles. Yeah. No, I didn't eat pickles. I went to my local recycling guy and said, hey, do you guys ever get any gallon jars? And they said, all the time. I said, hey, I'll buy you lunch if you can save them for me. They had 150 of them in two weeks.

Let me get this right. You bribed the guy with lunch?

Yes.

And he just, like, dumpster dives for pickle jars?

No, it's a recycling shop where everybody brings in their recycling where they sell the aluminum cans and they bring in the glass jars. And so my cost of 150 jars were zero.

Well, I mean, let's see. This was, what, 15 years ago? So 695 at denny's.

Yeah, exactly. Actually, it was a couple of domino's pieces, but that's still cheap.

I followed through tip your recycle guy, because he's broke.

Yeah, but I love glass gallon jars. A lot of people want to use the plastic ones, but you can't see what's going on.

I tried that because, again, I want to see if there's some other better method. And I had these we live in a factory town in Minnesota here, and we have this candy store and they have these plastic containers. But the plastic containers didn't hold up at all. They crack. And above all else, if you're trying to use any chemical, you can actually wipe the blue off on the glass jars. You can't do that to any plastic. It stains everything.

And then the more that you try to clean the plastic, the more you scratch it up, the worse.

Absolutely.

So what I like to do is use the gallon pill jar. You put the slate in, and then you put an airstone I'm sorry. Let's back up. When you put the eggs in, put the eggs face down. It's still at a 45 degree angle, but you put the eggs face down and you put the little bubbler, the little the air stone, the airstone. I'm sorry, I just drew a blank. Yeah, you draw the aerosol underneath it and the methane blue will then rotate in there. Nice. And to keep the oxygen levels very high. And then you can take and watch the eggs kind of from underneath and as they hatch. And they hatch within about 48 hours. If you keep them at about 78 degrees, 48 hours, you'll have baby fish.

And the reason that is not necessarily because you want to just spread the chemical around. Most open faced eggs need fanning. They need oxygen because they absorb it through the outside of the egg. So if you see especially sickwood families, you'll have mouth brooders which will clutch them in their mouth. And that again, they'll just fan their gills, making sure the eggs get full on water flow around them for oxygen. If you see discus or angel fish, they will sit and fan and take turns and fan the eggs to make sure they get the oxygen to them. So you're just essentially imitating this. And what I was blown away and learned from other people's mistakes and experiences is you just turn that thing up like you fizz the damn jar. It's like you're just blowing a hose through it.

Yeah. I like to keep it at a pretty high rate. The water is not boiling, but if you use a fine airstone, you'll keep it on there. And once you see the baby starting to thread out, which I call when the tail comes out and stuff, they'll sit there and they're still adhesive, they're still kind of sticky, and they'll stick to that slate. And after they hatch, I usually like to wait for like about and here's another thing you want to write down exactly when they were laid. And that's when your clock starts, and it's within reason.

People have a damn day job. You see them at home, guess what? They did it today. You have a market that it was during the day.

Yeah. And if they're all done, they probably got done, you know, 4 hours ago, right. But you take a piece of masking tape, you put on the jar of the time and date, because this comes really important when all of a sudden you've got 25 spawns and you're going, god, who laid this win?

And they're all blue jars.

And it looks like a bad experiment going on down in somebody's meth lab. I mean, if you used to come down there where I had it, what I did is I made myself a it was probably 3ft by 8ft and six inches deep, and that's where all my jars sat in. And then they sat in six inches of water, and that water was heated. So rather than running one heater in every jar, I ran one heater for 50 jars. And I put a little airstone in that, which kind of rotated the water through there. And so with one cheap heater, I could run 50 jars is what I could put in there.

And now we got to remember, we need to talk to the other audience as well. So you're putting labels on just because, again, you're trying to essentially do a small farm on these, right. But let's say I'm just a hobbyist. I have a 20 gallon tank. I love angels, and I have a pair, right. They're going to spawn every 14 days at least. And sometimes they'll do split spawns. So if you have a slate or two slates, because they're going to pick out a spot, they'll spawn the first day, and then they'll respawn with the remainder of the eggs. And another is a rare situation, but it does happen. So putting a label on those jars even matters when you have one or two pairs.

Absolutely. And especially if you have your fish in the community tank. If they are in the middle of laying and they get distracted defending that area, they will quit spawning, like Rob just said, and then they'll probably spawn later on once they get whatever fish is bothering them away.

And I've seen it where I pull the sled out, figure they're done spawning, and then suddenly you'll have it on the side of the glass or you'll have it on, heaven forbid, your over the hanging back filter or even worse, on the damn glass heater.

Oh, yeah. And that does nothing but make a nice, smelly mess.

It's gross.

Yeah. And so the whole thing is, if you're trying to do it to make some money, you want to save as many babies as you can, because later on down the line, you're still going to be culling for bent fins and deformities, which you always have. The whole theory of it is to try to save as many fish as you can, because if you're going to be selling the pet store, you want to have a large amount, because most pet stores will take 25 to 50 a week.

And this is not necessarily like that one store that maybe has fish in the back. This is a pet store, it's dedicated to pets. It's something that is their market, so it can even be a low rate for that amount, because angel fish is like a bread and butter fish, just.

Like your guppies plateaus and swords.

And coming from a couple of wholesalers and online sellers, the bread and butter fish are, like you said, the barbs. Your angel fish, you have your basic sharks, even though we highly discourage those in a lot of cases, unless you have a sufficient area. Goldfish, neon, tetras and I think guppy's angel fish.

Right.

Just the stuff that you'd normally see, even though Walmart now shut down. Applause applause but the stuff that you normally see, it like those retail shops that they would have.

Yeah. It's just amazing how much fish that a small store would go through. I was just simply amazed. I've got stores right now that you would drive by and go, they're not doing any business and they're selling 40 bedds a week. And it's just simply amazing.

So just to dive in a little bit further, you got a bunch of jars going or maybe a jar, and the first thing that happens is they hatch and you have wrigglers in the bottom.

And once we got wigglers, you've got about and when we say wrigglers, you.

Be surprised when you look down and you're like, what the hell is that? They literally still look like eggs with a black dot on them, which is their eyeball. And then you suddenly see, like, a little thing flicker on them.

Yes.

Literally no change. It's amazing how small they are. Yeah.

You almost need to take the airstone out, take a pen, flashlight shine down there and you'll see that they're all stuck together because they're still all sticky and they'll be in one clump and there'll be 200 tail sticking out of there and we'll sit down there and they'll vibrate for another probably three to four days. And then all of a sudden, you'll come one afternoon, one morning and you'll look in there and you'll have 300.

Little fish and that time frame that does change with heat. colder, slower heat. And we're not saying crank your heat up when it's in the jar, keep it stable because you want these to live. You're not caring about is it going to give, cut another 12 hours off, keep your heat stable. But again, that does change it. So if you had a 90 degree tank, now these are burning 90 degrees, it may be two days.

Right. And the other thing you really want to watch for is you don't feed any of these fish until they're up and free swimming in a cloud, like a mosquito cloud, or you've seen clouds of bugs. And until they come up, they are still absorbing their yolksack. And you have to realize that they are getting fed with their yolksack and they still are dropping their excrement in the water. So you have to do water changes in these jars. So now you have a blue jar at 48 hours and they're wiggling on the bottom. And day three, you need to do probably a 20% water change because there is no filter in there.

And you got to be careful when you do this water change, it's best to use either a neighboring jar or even though we're introducing again, it's a separate tank grab for mom and dad's tank, especially if you kept at the same temperature. That's what matters the most is the temperature. So even if you have to grab that water, put it in a separate jar, bring the temperature up, make sure you're monitoring it, and then do the water change, because this is the most crucial thing at a time that you'll lose stock.

Yes. And then you have to be on top of it every day. You need to do that 20% water change. And as you do this throughout the week, you'll see that the jars that you've been doing the water change on now are getting clearer and clearer and clearer. And then once they're up and free swimming in a cloud, that's when you start feeding the live baby brine shrimp, which you have to hatch.

And for those that are intimidated, oh, brine shrimp, it's not that hard. We'll certainly post them in instructions further, but yeah, once they're free forming, when I did it, I still gave them a day before I feed them, and then day two, after they're free swimming for the second day, that's when I give them food.

Yeah, you'll get really good at it. You'll be able to look and see that their belly is totally absorbed because the yolksack is kind of a pale yellow and it'll eventually become gone and it'll look like a little baby guppy. And you'll start feeding them, and after two weeks, they'll start developing and looking like a little angel fish. And they're absolutely cute as a button.

So, again, from brine shrimp to crush flake.

Yeah. And then most of the breeders will stay on brine shrimp on every other feeding. Most people feed two or three times a day when you've got small fish like that and this is for the.

Sake of trying to raise fish as fast as they can. For a private breeder you can still sit there twice a day. It may be risk once a day. This is a hobby. You want them to grow long term.

Yeah. And the thing is that they're pretty resilient the angel fish. If you're doing this to discus, the discus breeders who are artificially raising the discus are feeding six to eight times a day. That's over in the orient over the Tony Tan people and the different discus breeders and stuff and I've done just deep research and for the hobbyist if you're going to do discus but the only way to do it is if you're at home all the time for the first three weeks to get them going.

And that's if you're not nursing them either.

Right.

With mom and dad, right.

Most people that are doing it overseas are pulling the eggs.

Right.

Especially when you're talking that kind of money for those type of fish.

Well fantastic, that gives us a real picture. And I know before you had growth tanks, once they got wriggled, after you give them a week you put them all together, you batch brine together, there's ways of doing it. But again, for the hobbyist, use the jar, use the slates, move it into an independent tank, wait for the wrigglers, feed, brine shrimp two weeks roughly and you should be set right.

And then flake food, the highest protein flake food that you can find out there and there's a lot of great food out there. Now this is where we normally would.

Insert in a sponsor so please contact us, use the email in the podcast.

I'm pretty sure Capital One will probably call me and say hey, you still owe us at eight grand.

Not sponsored by Capital One.

I paid them.

Thank God.

But yeah, it's a wonderful hobby. It is so satisfying when you've got a tank full of 300 baby fish and people come over to your house and go holy goddamn, that it's beautiful. And I like swimming speckles, they're cool. Yeah. And getting into the breeding aspect, there's so many different colors and varieties and different things you can do. There's people that have been working for 30 years just on Koi angel fish which are an angel fish with a lot of orange on them.

So the angel fish started out again, we're pulling a lot of this because there's a lot of breeding knowledge based resources. wikipedia does do a good job. However, there's a ton of stuff lacking a normal fish. The bread and butter fish that we told you about earlier, there's a lot of data on. So trust wikipedia when they do have a resource because again you can go back and see where the resource came from. But the aquatic hobby again, started originally as a big to do in the 1920s. So people didn't know what to do. They took them out of their natural environments. They knew that they needed oxygen, and they went from there. There wasn't essentially scientists making sure we have all the data on these fish as we did the hobby. They just, will it work? Will people buy them? Who cares? And they started figuring out how to breed along the way. So this has been a hobbyist passion through and through since the 19 hundreds.

If you look back into ancient Chinese and you see some of the goldfish that they used to keep in bowls, and they were doing water changes twice a day, that was for royalty, was keeping goldfish, nobody else was.

Yeah, the modern aquarius hobby has been done just during this period of time, and there's exceptions, and it's mainly the wealthy. You'll see the Victorian era aquariums with literally lead casings and all kinds of crazy shit in museums. But as far as the hobby goes, documenting started in 1900, worked up the way popular 1920 worked up. So the angel fish started as the original wild breeders of the altum, which is the classic black stripe. But then it had a more warm as, like a brown golden color between the bars. And that's really where these fish started. And again, 19 six was when they were finally described as a species and bred off from there. It was pretty quick again, right. Even says right here, 1920s and 30s angel fresh for bread and captivity, for pet usage.

Yes.

So once they did that, we started having different colors past the wild altums. And again, you can still get the altum gene out. Now. You can find them in pet stores or not request it. They're very beautiful. They're extremely social and very aggressive and very expensive. Very expensive, yes.

The altum's, there's some new ones that I've seen out there are the the dante mal Albinos that are very beautiful. You're looking at $35 to $50 for small fish. But, you know, a lot of people have been breeding them. There's a guy over in Israel just doing a fantastic job, and they're getting imported into this country, and you're seeing a lot more out there right now and stuff. So there's such a wide variety. Find your favorite, pick it out, decide what you want to do.

Think of it as a dog. People don't want to breed an altum with a standard angel fish that it really crosses the lines. They will breed together. Don't do it if you have one or the other. Don't breed them. Keep the genes pure. They do hybrids. That's how we got the white one. They did not cross with an angel fish. They kept them to the original altums. The altums even have the red eyes. So a lot of the traits that you see, like the black angel fish, still pop up from the original altum, but the colorations that we see now have changed. So the original colors, as soon as we started selective breeding, was the traditional silver. It's the black bars with a silver stripe between them that went on to make a marble, which has the black with the splotches, generally silver splotches. And then we actually started seeing a little orange color from the altum and then the full black. And those are essentially the three main colors that we have in Angels up until the last 70s when they popped up.

Well, yeah, you're looking at so many different varieties that people start playing with, and you'll get 300 fish, and you'll get one that, like Rob said, with red eyes, they go, oh, that's beautiful. I want to enhance that. And then you'll try to find another one like that and try to breed your own colors. And that's what people really love doing. And depending what color you really turn to, some colors are much easier than others. Just for instance, when Rob just said that they have red eyes, red eyes are generally considered almost albino. And there are albinos, and the albinos are a son of a gun to raise for the fact that the babies have such poor eyesight that they cannot find food. And that has been a problem for years. And so hence, when you start trying to raise albinos, you want to have a not a completely bright tank, but a pretty well lit tank. But you want to have put black paper all the way around the tank and so they can see the orange brine shrimp swimming. And a lot of people have lost a lot of money, again, on albinos trying to breed them because their eyesight, as small fish, is very, very poor.

I haven't even seen people use special lights. So they make them pop.

Yeah, it's a whole new thing. Black angel fish are not as prolific. They don't breed as often as, say, a silver. Silver is where you want to start if you're a novice.

They're the hardiest by far.

Yeah. And the breed like rabbits. Once you get them going, it's hard to get them to stop.

So, again, the colorations, those are the main types, but there's also, again, just standard white that isn't albino. You don't have the traditional red eyes with the normal albino.

Some people call them gold.

That's the other thing. So it blends into there's either white, which they call pearl, and then they have the gold, which is the silver white with just a tinge on the top of that altum color. So they're going back to the original roots. And more recently, you spoke about the koi. So they literally have the traditional black, red, orange, white patterns of a koi fish onto an angel. And they're very beautiful, extremely sought after.

Yes. And there are several people that do a fantastic job on them. And you can do your research on aqua bid. On the Internet. The one that I've always been impressed with is Steve rubiki from Angels Plus. And if you want to be bored to tears, he has got so much great information about raising angel fish and he gets into genetics so deep, you have to be a physicist to figure it out.

Yeah. Shout out angels plus. They've been breeding crazy stock and they still sell breeding stock. They're real high prices. But it's worth it because, again, it's proven. They've done a few batches and he'll have unique species, which a couple of them, the huff super reds, which are almost entirely bright red across the entire angel, which is a strain of a koi. He'll have half and halves, meaning half the body silver, half the body smoke, or like that dark color. And then you'll literally have another variation of the blacks, which are smokies. I've seen as Brendan in the aquarium hobby, where they're entirely that charcoal color, not black.

Yeah, he was the first person to ever sell fish on the Internet, and that's his claim to fame. And he is Mr. Genetic. And if you do business with him, he's out of newly in New York. He is a great guy. He will give you all kinds of time. You become a customer of his. He'll answer your questions and stuff. But, yeah, his stuff is not cheap, but genetically, probably the best fish you'll ever find. They eat like monsters. He's known for his double dark blacks, and he has actually gotten to the point where he probably had about 20 varieties ten years ago. He's probably down to about six varieties now because he's concentrating so hard on the koi.

So if you go on his website and most of the stuff, as soon as he gets a pair up, they sell out. He is not afraid of marking up a single pair for $500 and it's worth it. And they're gone because a normal batch, they'll do 40, his will do 100. Plus he'll have the stats on them. He'll have number by batch. It's a proven breeding site.

Proven pear. Yeah, I've had pears from him and they'll average 200, 300 fish, easy. I've heard that much. Yeah, there's people that have on his website that have had up to 500 per spawn and he'll sell an average koi. He has three different varieties of koi. He's got to select and he's got, you know, a small medium or he's got three different sizes and stuff. But it's not uncommon to spend $75 for a fish, for an adult fish that's ready to go. But consider this. So you buy a pair from him and they're high end orange. And you have 300 babies. 400 babies. And all of a sudden, you go from selling to your angel fish from a few bucks to now you're top. On aqua bid $15 a piece for babies. And people will pay for it because he has got a reputation and he does a bang up job. Fantastic.

Well, I think that dives in for breeding, selected colors, the stuff. We haven't gone over is a specialized diet so again any we'll say bread and butter tropical fish especially the discus they love any type of frozen bloodworm and the big thing that they use for breeding for discus is beef heart.

Correct. Frozen beef heart.

So I have not personally fed these guys beef heart. I know they'll take it. The stuff that I've had is mainly just that it doesn't take a lot for these things to breed. Do a water change, turn up the heat. And if lungs are paired, they'll just find a way. So there's not a lot of inspiration. You have to. But if you do want to encourage them, don't be afraid of those types of foods and live foods.

Yeah, if you have live food or some of the stores in the larger area sell adult brine shrimp now. And to raise brine shrimp to adults don't do it is a lot. Of work. So what I prefer to do is I like to go get a high quality frozen bloodworm or frozen brine shrimp. And I've had more luck with frozen bloodworms than brine shrimp. And once you get them on to that frozen food. They don't even want to take flake. But I've got people that swear that flakes only way to go. And I've got people that do frozen food. But I personally had the best luck from Frozen. Brine shrimp. And you'll get them so they're breeding every ten to 14 days. And you can keep track on your tank. Put a little recipe card on there. And let's say they breed. August 12, you break down. August. 12. And every time they breed, you start watching that, and after about ten spawns, you go, oh, yeah, they're breeding every twelve days right on cue. And then all of a sudden you go, oh, here's a place where they spawn after seven days. And here's what usually it is. It's usually a heavy thunderstorm or in our neck of the woods, a heavy blizzard where heavy, low pressure comes through. And low pressure. You've talked about people who fish. We're from minnesota. People love fishing up here for the walleye. And when a storm comes in, the fish start biting like they're crazy.

That goes for breeding for a lot of the majority of fish. I've done.

Absolutely.

If you want to see something happen, you wait for a low pressure system. There's fish that are no longer legal in Minnesota called dojo loaches, or weather loaches. They literally are called weather loaches because they're so sensitive to low pressure systems. They will get squirrely and dart around the entire tank the moment that a storm starts to brew. Very common.

Do yourself a favor, just jot. Here's what's weird. So you're breeding them in your basement, and most of my spawns are downstairs in the basement. And I have the lights on during the day, and at night I turn them down. I usually leave one light bulb on so they don't settle to the bottom. But do yourself a favor and keep track of the weather. And you'll go, Holy cow. When you've got 25 pair and all of a sudden you come down and you got 15 spawns in one day, and everybody's off their swan.

You collected pickle jars.

Yeah, exactly. You sit there and just go, oh, it's going to be a long night.

What's Jim doing in his basement with all these blue pickle jars? meth, ladies and gentlemen, meth. That's how he moved on from losing eight grand.

Is that how you do meth? I don't know.

It's blue. It's all I know. Blue instead of basement. It's all that matters.

That's right.

So as far as food goes, again, breeding, you know, those live foods, frozen blood worms, frozen prime shrimp, if you want to encourage, but you don't really have to, in my experience, because a lot of people go with the micro pellets versus the flake. Microbelts work great for a lot of fish. These guys will absolutely hit micro pellets, but flake gives their slower fish, flake gives them more time. And I've just had a lot more success with a flake. If you're going to choose a traditional.

Food, that flake will stay right in their system for a longer amount of time.

That's to be debated. All this whole, like, constipated bullshit. Just make sure it's a tropical fish, high protein. Look where you're getting your flake from. If you're going to get like some shitty wardly stuff from Walmart, stop it. You're potentially doing parasites or infections. Make sure you're getting a good high protein flake.

That's all you need. And there's a million there's bright shrimp flake, there's black worm flake. There's all kinds of flakes out there.

Just look at the protein ingredients in the back. And then also, like any fish, look for ash content. And that goes for any pet. If you have a cat, you want your cat to have a urinary tract infection, don't feed them shit. Look in the ash content in the back.

I've been doing the pet industry for over 30 years and not only sold a lot of fish, but sold a lot of, oh, hamsters, gerbils, stuff like that over the years. Because that's what people are looking for. Because I'm going to the pet store anyway. But I used to get this, this great pet product news magazine, and they did a study and they took the most the number one dog food in the nation is Old Roy.

It's most sold. And that's Walmart exclusive. It was named after Sam walton's dog, if I remember correctly. It is.

I did not know that. Anyway, so it's the number one dog food in the world for tons amount produced and stuff. I mean, that's the number one. And so they did a study they took I don't know how many dogs it was. There was quite a few. I mean, it was a pretty ridiculous study. And and they fed £50 of old Roy and they fed £50 of some high end food, and out of the old Roy, they took out £37 of waste out of the yard from that dog, out of a 50 pound bag of food. And the good stuff, they took out £12. So, you know, when it comes to pet food, what are they shitting out.

Is what's left over, right?

You know, so you go from £37 of waste in your backyard to £12 of waste from £50 of dog food to that. It just says a lot.

And again, we can pick brands. My favorite over time, just because I know the ingredients and I've seen it prove on color longevity, I always use a new, like, spectrum. There's a lot of great independent guys. I think you were talking about kens, is that correct?

Yeah, kens Fish has got some good stuff. Angels plus has got some good stuff. Just recently I was trying to do my research because we started raising shrimp and trying to find some different shrimp foods that are out there. And the best shrimp foods that are out there are overseas, and we can't get them over here out of the guy. Just did a study on food for shrimp.

We're going to do a shrimp podcast. Don't you worry, that's going to be a good podcast.

And anyway, they did this incredible study on shrimp food and the top ten were all from overseas. And we can get one here in the United States right now.

That's insane.

And it's $20 for 3oz.

We got some insider trader secrets on shrimp. Don't you worry, we'll get to that. But I think the last thing about before we get off food is there's been a small trend in the this really came out from the organic area where they're doing like, no filter, all plant tanks, and they're doing this with a lot of other fish. They're starting to see success in using this with angel fish and other discus is the new vitamin supplements that they have for fish. So if you get, let's just say, a peacock cichlid from your local shit pet store, hashtag walmart's closed. You'll see them have color, you bring them home. They'll seem to as you're feeding them, going over time, their color fades, but they look healthy, they look full. They're getting up to speed. It's because they're juiced, juiced up. Juicing is so damn common for cichlids. It's almost impossible to find a good, real, true colored cichlid in the market if you're trying to go wholesale at all.

And we've tried. We've really tried.

Oh, we've bought batch after batch after batch. We have people we can get it from, but it's so impossible. So that's how they have been using juicing for a while, is they soak the food in essentially the juicing elements and they brighten up the fish. So they're now actually doing this with vitamin supplements you can buy online. They do have some of these supplements do have the juicing element, but read your reviews, do your homework, and some of these supplements, if you just soak like a pellet into it, you'll see these things and not necessarily encourage bread, but you'll see them fix the fin repairs. It will be essentially your first go to supplement when the fish gets sick. So give that a try. And what we'll do is there's a couple again, Jim and I are trying things all the time, so we'll try to share our insider secrets and we'll post it on the podcast site. But we'll put some vitamins up there. We're going to try some ourselves, give it a go and see how this works. And again, we're not encouraging juicing, we just anything to help the growth of the fish and the overall lifespan.

And anything with a beta carotene will help increase the natural color of the fish.

I just feel like if you say beta carotene, you have to have thickest glasses in me and go in yannie Doctor Ozacarotene. He's not lying, though.

But yeah, that's naturally. Just like if you drink enough Mountain dew, you'll turn kind of a green, right? I mean, seriously, you'll have a green glow about you. I read more. My wife's a nurse and we've read all kinds of different things and hey, people that eat a lot of carrots turn what? Orange.

I don't believe that for a minute.

But I've never eaten a carrot.

There is a proven fact that if you drink purple was it rock star?

Yes.

You'll piss like anaphrase. It's pretty great. You got to give it a try.

If it would only glow in the dark.

I don't know, it was pretty bad. It was like I should have fed it to a dog. The news it didn't.

That would have been a great bar trick. Hey, come in here. Look at this.

Check this out. We see your dick again, rob's. Put it away.

I had somebody who was at a card party out deer hunting, and they ate a pound of blue jelly beans from Jelly belly. And the next morning they murdered a smurf. Yes. The next morning when he went to the potty, he yelled at all the other guys, come look at this. And my friend said he got halfway into the bathroom and he said, I could see a blue glow in the toilet. So, yeah, what you eat goes directly in your system.

So be wary, be careful what you eat. So, back to the subject. So I think the other things that we need to cover is just general care. So the overall lifespan that you've seen Jimmy in Angel Fish, because you get these estimates online, but it depends 100% on space, water quality, feeding habits and beer eating if they've bred or not, completely changes the lifecycle of a fish.

Absolutely. A lot of people in the industry, they'll burn out a fish. If you're laying 300 eggs every 15 days, every twelve days, every ten days, there's only so many eggs that fish is going to produce. And so what I'd like to do is I'd like to let them go for, like, four months, and then I'd like to retire and sell them to somebody else. And if somebody else wants to just have them in their tank as a fish, that's great.

Oh, don't let him kid you. He has a back 40 that he puts them in just because he doesn't want to let some of them go.

Some of them my keep along because.

They'Re damn right you do.

They're my friends and it sound like a jerk. I mean, I know a lot of people that do that, but what they'll do is they'll sell the male to one store and a female to other store because they don't want any competition. Which makes sense.

Makes that clear sense.

Right. But we're here to help people. We're not here to blow smoke up your butt and tell you things that aren't true. We want you to be successful in what you do.

He's already burnt up his eight grand. There's no way he's going to make it back. He's given up and gone to a podcast.

That was the first year, rob eight grand. We could talk about 30 years, we could talk about the first ten years, and you'd throw up in your shoe. It was not good. But you finally get to the point, you're going to go, I can't buy this fish from this person because it doesn't live, and vice versa.

Absolutely. Trade. It's not trade secrets, it's experience.

Yeah. So you buy your goldfish from the goldfish people, you buy this fish from this fish, and all of a sudden you've got five or six suppliers that you like because their stuff lives.

So moving back to the life cycle you mentioned before, again, they only have so many breeds. But also, on the other hand, let's say you never breed it. You have a female, right? She's fat, she's egg clutched. Being egg bound for too long, exponentially shortens the lifespan of a fish.

Right. And I've seen egg bond fish that look like they swallowed a marble.

It'll kill them over time. And it's not that the guarantee being egg bond will kill them, but it'll certainly shorten their lifespan.

Yeah. It's like being constipated for your whole life.

I just want to nut, Jimmy. I can't do it. I just need to nut. So, again, how long, on average, do angels live, in your experience?

I've had them two and a half years.

Come on. I've seen people now six years.

Oh, no. Really?

Yeah.

Holy cow. You know, two and a half, three years in a community tank.

Oh, no. These were alone they were their babies. It was real weird shit.

Yeah. Once they start getting to that age where they become very territorial, and that's when you usually start having your problems. And the older they get, the more territorial they are.

They're just old pissy people that just want you to get the hell off their lawn.

Get off my damn lawn.

But no, let's say the average lifespan of a non breeding male, because again, they're not going to be egg clutched. You're going to see in a normal tank, you're going to see that five, six years, but they can go up to ten.

Seriously?

Oh, yeah.

Did not know that. What's going to be school today?

You keep them for breeding so they only have such a life cycle. I deal with the long term. Oh, I've been donated a fish. So to give you guys a bit of background here, jimmy and I opened a business that we had for a while trying to sell fish online. We got hosed. We were working with the post office, trying to get shipping services locked down. And it was right during that perfect peak time that Amazon decided they're going to go with the postal service for the last mile. So all these little guys that were working on contracts got shut down. So my shipping prices went up exponentially. We couldn't ship fish like we wanted to because we can beat anybody's prices during the time. But when you want to buy a $6 fish and you have to pay $26 shipping, it doesn't feel good.

No.

So we got out of that. You still wholesale, I still help you. And what we did is, with the business, it was publicized that if you have a fish, don't flush it down the toilet. Don't throw it in a pond, for God's sakes, and don't throw in a laker.

River. No.

Instead, contact us. Contact the Minnesota dnr. Maybe we've lost our number with them. And in doing that and teaching people, don't do that. That's how we have invasive species, number one, that's how we bring disease to our fish. Number two, and it's inhumane. Those fish are not going to survive in let's say it's not a Minnesota climate. Let's say it's another climate and another one. Either they're not going to survive or not built for it, or they'll destroy the habitat. There's no good ending for you dumping a fish.

No, absolutely not. And it's not fair to the fish.

Oh, absolutely. So what we did is we decided any fish that you have, if I can't hold it in our warehouse, we will find a home for it. If I got to call a zoo, whatever else, I have plenty of contacts. jimmy's been in this thing for 30 years. He's a ton of contacts. And I think the oldest recorded angel that I've had is twelve years.

No kidding.

It was a big black pole. He was alone. It was just this one guy's pet fish. I think the guy passed away and his kids like, what am I supposed to do with it? And he lived another year.

That is amazing. Probably died of loneliness.

His eyes were glossed over like they had cats. But damn it if he could not smell food. Yeah, and they had to splash the water on top to let him know there was food there. It was real weird.

He had to get a dog fish for him, like a seeing eye dogfish.

Oh, yeah.

That's incredible. I had no idea they lived that long. That's incredible.

Yeah. You just got to quit working your sex house.

Well, I'm not the needy Greek guy on wikipedia. I'm just out there just trying to hustle and make a buck, I suppose.

So as far as care goes, there's always debate like, what's the opportune space you should hose for these? And it depends on how you're going to keep the fish. If you're just going to breed them for short term, have a breeding tank. 20 gallons is perfect for a breeding tank if you're going to grow these out and that's going to be their, their space, especially in the community tank, you know, give them some space. We don't recommend anything under a 40 gallon. These things can grow. Like, take your hand, spread it out. That's a, that's a good size angel fish when it grows up, especially a bowl, that's a humdinger of fish. And it's not necessarily gallons that we like to measure, but the overall distance. So angel fish are flat, tall fish. If you can have a, you know, 30 gallon tank, but it's tall, you can easily have a pair of angel fish, live happy. But if you have a 100 gallon tank but it's real shallow, it's going to be a nightmare for angel fish. It's not real built for it. So make sure that you have if you're going to do that. Their traditional 55 is a fantastic purchase, or a 40 tall is great. That will keep them long term. Otherwise you'll see that people say, oh, it's too small for the fish. Well, they're only selling it there. It's only going to be there a week if they're doing their job right in a pet store. So it all depends on how you're going to keep them long term is what we like to focus on for care. So 40 gallons is great for angel fish for a minimum. And if you're going to have decorations, some of these have veil tail issues as well, so they can freight at the ends. If you have a freight, injured fin causes fungus, a lot of other issues, infections. So make sure you're not using a lot of sharp decorations. And they love tall plants. If you have like a dwarf stage that's grown to the top of your tank, they'll swim between it. Nice, flat decor, makes it real nice. They're not going to cave they'll maybe hide in the corner, but give them space where they have stuff in the open water.

And then the other thing is great, especially if you're doing a community plan or community tank and you think that maybe I have a pair here, buy yourself a plastic Amazon plant. And the reason I say that is normally they like the wider leaves and.

They'Ll breed on it and they'll breed.

On it, but you can pull that leaf off. Usually they'll pop off and you can take that leaf off without disrupting your.

Entire and then pickle jar it and.

Pickle jar the heck out of it.

So the other decorations well, not decorations, the other issues that people say to the community tank these guys are aggressive. If you have just males and you're so lucky to be able to sex them for some reason, if they're older and you have just males and they don't pair off, they're much more docile and you don't have a lot of risk. And you can have a diverse community tank without them necessarily wapping or hitting something. In defense, if you have a pair, they will defend a corner no matter who comes close. So if you have an other Cyclid that's not aggressive a great community partner. If you have a neon tetra, one WAP and you'll see a poof of scales and they'll be gone. And you'll start seeing neons just suddenly disappear.

Oh, lots of dms disappearing.

So when they say that label of semi aggressive know when they're aggressive, they're aggressive when they pair and they're going to protect their area. Have a fish that can either handle it or notice it. Get out of the way. You cannot have docile, you can't have a guppy, you can't have a neon tetra other than if they're not paired.

Yeah, if you have a Beta or guppy with a large flowing tail, it's just a target. Back to what Rob is saying about when the fish are paring off. So if you can't tell the male from the female and I've had where two females have paired together or two males and it does happen, it doesn't happen a lot, but it does happen. But if you're looking online, you'll see some great pictures. But the best way to describe it is once they become to the point where they start picking at a slate.

Picking at anything, if they're hitting the glass repetitively in the same spot, you know it.

Yeah. And then you go, I think I got a pair here. And just before they spawn five, 6 hours, 7 hours before they spawn, they'll drop their breathing tubes, which is right between the Petrol films and it's not.

Some alien horror film tentacle that pops up. It's just sometimes it can be as small as little bump. Sometimes it could be like is that Wang we're seeing here?

Yeah. Well, an adult male, his unit looks like a pencil point. It's sharp, it's thin and it's not that long.

That's why you like angels.

You can relate. Yeah, exactly. Now, he threw me for a loop.

I did. I got him unexpected with his pants down.

Yeah. We're doing this podcast naked. Yeah. So anyway, a female will look like an airline tube. I mean, like, the airline tube is used for your pump into your airstone. It's not quite as big, but it's more round. It's more long. And once you become used to that, you'll be able to see when they start, let's say you have a dozen in a 55 gallon tank and they start spawning off. You'll be able to pick males and females left and right. But after they lay their eggs, the ovipositor goes back up and it's no longer visible. And so you got to kind of take notes. And it's nothing wrong with keeping a recipe card alongside that tank and saying, well, it's the silver fish with the two spots above its eye. It's hard to keep track of them sometime.

So if you want to see exactly what this is, because again, we can only describe it, this is a podcast. If you want to see and get the image of, like, what the hell is that? I think my fish has Wang. Just go to Google out angel fish breed tube and it'll be like the top two picture results. You'll literally see like a circle diagram of where they're circling. This is what we're talking about, right?

It's the Wang chung.

The Wang chung.

Wang chung.

Tonight, I think we have a title for this podcast.

That's right.

But yeah. So as far as care, again, just to recap, 40 gallon tank. It's all about height of the tank. So they have place to swim in that middle column to top column.

That 20 gallon high is great for a pair.

Wonderful. Even a decent 20 gallon, as long as they have that foot, 14 inches, it's great. Again, they're breeding it short term. You're not keeping them there forever. It's where they're going to grow and live out that you want to keep more height. And as far as temperature, you can have these things anywhere from I've seen 74, even 72 is too little low in my mind all the way up to like I've seen 92 degrees for these things.

Yeah, that scares the heck out of me. I don't like going any higher than about 88. If you have a pair that just won't quite get the job done, quite.

Frankly, a little bit, just a degree.

Or two, two degrees might take it. You know what? Sometimes a water change, if it's 82 degrees, do a water change of put a five gallon bucket in of 78 and it will cooled off. They'll respond like it's a natural cycle because in the wild, they breed after it rains. And when it rains, it cools down the Amazon, which is where they're from. It's a change a. PH change and sometimes the water changes, they'll go crazy and they'll drop their ovipositors and you'll have eggs the next day. So a lot of people, if you have a pair that just you can't quite get there, try a water change.

So I've bred angels a handful of times and every time I did it, I kept the tank at 80 because again, they had a few other fish in there that I wasn't really trying to breed but I saw them picking, I turned it up two degrees, 82 and they dropped every time faithfully.

Yeah, just a water change, something different. And what's interesting is that and I cannot tell you why, but my whole business was in a basement. And so there was no outdoor lights. For instance, like a window being open. But once you have them on a schedule, keep your lights on a timer. But normally, almost 90% of the time with me, I would feed them flake in the morning, and then in the afternoon, I'd go in there and feed them frozen bloodworms. And at 06:00, they'd start laying eggs. 06:00 p.m. In the evening. So I really believe from everything I've learned that the blood worms was enough to kind of push them over the edge to breed and so in the morning I'd feed them flake, they look at me and go what are you retarded? I don't want flake, I want blood worms and I feed them with blood worms and they go oh, here's some babies for you.

So the last thing I think is one of the last things is water requirement. So I've kept them hard, I've kept them super soft and I know being in the cyclists, cyclist family, normally that you think hard but there's a lot of diverse cyclists, especially discus, that love soft water so it's not necessarily about what they'll be in. Know where your stock came from, what they have if you bought it from a store, ask the owner for what his PH is. Know that you can't really change your PH but at least give you an idea. If you have 7.8, I'm 6.0 at home. Don't just do the 30 minutes bag transfer, do a trickle transfer, meaning open that bag, let it float still. And then you can just take a liter bottle, fill it up with your aquarium water, take an airline hose, attach it to it, and then just pinch it so it just drips slowly in the bag. And you can take your time.

Like an IV drip.

Like an IV drip. And you can take your time, take, you know, 2 hours if you want, as whatever it takes to slowly acclimate the fish from PH over. And this is a very hardy fish. It will take a lot of different ranges. Notably, we can even see online. People have done I've done 6.0. They say 6.2 all the way to 7.8. So it's a very hearty fish, don't necessarily worry about it. Just note, you know, what's your PH at your store? This. OK, I have to do the do the drop trickle change.

Yeah. For like us when we go buy fish from like a pet store sometimes up here in the rural north where you have to drive 75 miles and there can be a huge difference in water quality. And the other thing big time that Rob was saying about trickling in your water into the shop's water, after that point, do not take and pour that water into the tank. You don't ever want to put anybody else's water in your tank.

So pretend that, you know, this is a stranger, right. And the water represents having sex with that person.

That is right.

We're a damn condom.

That's right.

Don't put your shit in there. Don't put her shit in there. Keep everything separated.

Yeah, I import a lot of fish and that's a completely different deal. But again, you deal with PH. You're dealing with them putting in some sedatives in the water so the fish kind of are drugged a little bit so they don't pee and poop in the water so much. And so I do the same thing that Rob was saying, dripping the water in and stuff. And then I reach in, I'll pour that bag of water through a net in my sink and then put the fish in and acclimating. Spend the 30 minutes rather than spending 2 hours going back to the dam store to buy another one because you didn't have the patience to do it right.

Also, for care, this is an Amazon species. What do we do with Amazon species, Jimmy? We fill it with almond leaves. We love that tannins all day. So you can get tannins from having natural wood in your tank. You can get tannins from again, the most common way is almond leaves. You can do banana leaves, you can do tropical fruit leaves. But also, again, each leaf provides their own different types of bacteria. So using almond leaves is a proven tested way. But I've seen also people go outside and take oak leaves and get great tannins off of them. Do a quick, not microwave. Put them in your oven for like to 120, I believe it is. You don't want to start a fire.

Fire is bad.

Fire bad. You can bake them. I don't. I just make sure they're nice dried out. I'll pick through them. I might even rinse them before I put them in the tank. Just make sure we don't have pesticides shit on them and use those and you can even treat them. Take your pickle jar.

Ask my pickle jar, dude.

Put your leaves in there. And that's where you soak the water. You can just take your tenants. You don't have to put the leaf in the tank if you don't want to. And you can test the tenants before making sure that another fish test them in a quarantine. You can put a guppy in there. You know what I mean?

They're expensive. Guppies are so expensive.

$8,000 and just pour the tannins right into your tank. Amazon species love tannins always.

And for the people who are super lazy, like myself, blackwater extract.

Blackwater extract.

You can buy blackwater extract.

I feel like you've got some, like, 17 hundreds miracles here with no most.

Pet stores carry blackwater extract, which is.

It has heroin in it.

It could be. We don't know.

So what is blackwater extract? Help me out.

Blackwater extract is just, again, the tannins. But it's already bottled. It's already ready. It's like pouring in a little bit of coca cola in your tank. And a lot of the fish like that, too.

That's so expensive.

It is. And I like the idea of the oak leaves and stuff, and especially if you get them out of your backyard, because you know what pesticides or what you've done in your backyard and take.

The time there's other trees you can do. Do some research online. I know oak leaves work. I don't know what elms do. I don't know what your box elder does. Do your homework before. Make sure that people have tried this. Oak leaves have been used for a while.

And another one that's very popular is alder cones. And alder cones is like a little tiny pine cone. We have big pine cones up here in the northland.

Now, they sell the shit out of these for shrimp.

They do. And shrimp people love the alder cones. They swear by them. I've got alder cones in several of my shrimp tanks, and the shrimp just go gaga over it. And it does turn your tank a little skanky brown. But if your idea is to keep them breeding or keep them healthy, you want to keep that in there for them.

And don't smoke them like you'll find when googling alder cones, you'll see some tropical fish, people literally, like, freddy light them out. Like, dude, cones don't do that.

Don't smoke pine cones.

I can't believe I have enough to say that shit. Thank you, Internet, for riding me.

Please don't use your hair dryer in the shower, dumb asses.

Please don't invest in guppies and get $8,000 in debt.

The first year. The first year, yeah, year one.

Well, I think we got a pretty deep coverage of the species. If we miss anything, let us know on the website. And this has been a fantastic first episode. I think we can continue diving in. Let us know what you want. I know shrimp is the big one on the list.

Three, four years ago, amazonas had a crazy thing about shrimp, and I thought, this is going nowhere.

People lost their goddamn mind.

I was so wrong. So wrong. We we have both become huge shrimp fans. We both have a lot of shrimp. We both have tried many different things. And once you get them breeding. We have a local pet store here that I have sold so many shrimp to. When they get new shrimp and they put it on Facebook and they sell out.

So shrimp have not been a new thing. Shrimp have been done for years. Go shrimp. They've had shrimp. A mono shrimp forever.

Sure.

But again, it comes down to what people think looks cool, and the moment it pops up, that it pops up like an amazon's magazine. And you see these red, white it does candy cane crystal shrimp. Wow. They have color. And then the hybrid breeding begins, because it's very easy once you have good circumstances to breed shrimp.

Right. And then the nano tanks are so affordable. Affordable. And you can have several of them on your desk at work.

Hell yeah. So this whole industry loaded in the last ten years.

Oh, huge.

And unlike the fish, where we have any other fish, especially freshwater, we have communities where you can post up people, give their own results, their own experiences, and it just shared information. It's so fast and people are seeing so much dollars even in the smaller hobby. Like, you know, if you're just a breeder that does angel fish, you're going to get a few, you know, what, a quarter a piece from at a pet store or fifty cents a piece, you're not going to get a lot of money. But because they're so niche that everybody can come up with their own color, doing hybrid breeding, that prices have skyrocketed. If you go online for shrimp, you'll see easy. I've seen a $320 single individual crystal shrimp.

I should buy a bunch, like $8,000 worth and just get going and just lose your ass.

But no, we'll do a dive in. And because of that, I just want to get to the point because of that, there's not a lot of shared information online of what to do with shrimp that the do's and don'ts, how to feed them, what's going to encourage breeding, what's going to do certain colors, how to best call, what you look for in a call. There's so much information that people just don't share as they do with other fish. I think that's going to be like the Master episode. We might work our way up. It might be next. But let us know what you want to talk about on our website and any other notes.

Jimmy no. We're here not being experts by any means, but just trying to share information. We want you to be successful. Here's what I don't want. I don't want you to go out and buy a tank, go home, set it up, kill a bunch of fish and go screw it and throw the tank in the closet. And then a year or in a.

Pond, for God's sake, right?

And then in the a year from now, I buy it from the secondhand store because you gave it to them and you've just blown $300, which, by the way, is nothing compared to 8000.

You're not only killing the hobby for yourself, you're going to have a bad flavor in your mouth. You're going to tell other people, why the hell would you put fish? It's a fun, rewarding, relaxing hobby, and a lot of good can come from it. So we're here to help.

And you know what else? There's a lot of great there's a ton of great people that are in the hobby, and they will help you. And it's fun to help the younger people especially, because when I was coming up, there was a lot of people with tanks. And now with the Walmart getting out of it, it's being exposed. As much as we don't like the Walmart selling pets, if Walmart isn't doing.

It, if Amazon can't really touch it, guess what? I mean, there's business there, but we're more concerned about the hobby, right? We're talking from the wholesale perspective. You'll hear a lot that just gives tricks of the trade and experience. But if you got questions, we're going to try to make a website, a forum to share, and we encourage you to go to any other forums, and we'll continue talking about different Facebook groups, different forums, different reddit feeds, anything to help grow your hobby. And even if we're not the experts, we're happy to go out and get the experts on this podcast.

Anything is not really defending Walmart for doing fish and stuff. But here's what I did like about Walmart is where else do you expose your children? You got a lot of young families at Walmart. They go through, the kids see the fish and they're interested, and, hey, mommy, can I get a goldfish? Now you don't have that anymore. I mean, nationwide, they've dropped carrying fish because of all kinds of different reasons. And we've known many people who have lost their jobs because Walmart is no longer carrying fish, because they did sell a lot of fish. But now you don't have that exposure for young kids. So what do they see? I see these video games, and of course, that's where this whole hobby has gone to, is kids playing video games. And like I said, there's nothing wrong with that.

I still play fish.

I know you do, but as much as people want to harp on Walmart, at least it was being exposed to the kids. And the thing is, without the kids, we're not going to have a hobby in 20 years. And I won't care because I'll be dead.

But he's here for me. He cares about me getting into debt for eight grand just to feel the revenge.

I need to check for eight grand before I leave tonight.

Eight. That's our goal. Once we get eight grand, we're going to take this podcast and we're going to that South America.

South America. That's another trip. That would be another great podcast. That's always been a dream of mine to go overseas. And they have these great tours where you go out and you collect fish in the wild, and you have to get your malaria shot before you go because you're going out into the Amazon, and there's some great stuff out there online. If you watch people that go out and do this stuff, it's incredible. It's incredible.

So, again, the point is that the fish hobby deserves to be more than your window screen saver and share whatever knowledge you can. That's what we hear about, is to share knowledge. If we're not an expert, we'll go get the expert. Go to our website, certainly request what you'd like. If you need help, we'll be there for you. And we want to grow this podcast. And I think the easier goal if we want to stairstepping is let's get subscribers. Share this with your friends. We want this to be an evergreen podcast. So if you want to look back and see that there's angel fish, help you'll go to that episode. And above and beyond all else, we want Florida should be before the Amazon. So we'll get subscribers. We'll get enough. We'll do go to Florida again, talk to some more fish farmers, and then the Amazon there. We've made the first episode. You got to set the goal, set the tone. We've on that.

We've done that.

Well, thanks again, guys, and we will see you guys next episode. Let us know what you want.

All right, thanks again.