#39 – The Aquarium Guys Get OVERTAKEN!

FEAT THE MAD AQUARIST & PREDATORY FINS

3 years ago
Transcript
Speaker A:

Hey, guys, I'm just here to remind you that joey Strimchak has excellent tissue culture.

Speaker B:

But the fuck is tissue culture?

Speaker C:

They're plants.

Speaker A:

Plants? Yes, plants.

Speaker D:

Okay.

Speaker A:

They have excellent plants, such as oh, God.

Speaker E:

Alta arena.

Speaker A:

What just started out.

Speaker E:

Okay, next one. Emma, come onyma.

Speaker B:

Okay.

Speaker E:

Hetero, head to rona.

Speaker C:

Just go to the next one.

Speaker D:

Dildo.

Speaker B:

Lopolis. No, dildoapolis. I swear that says dildoapolis.

Speaker C:

You know what?

Speaker E:

Okay, how about this? Rank ran a coral.

Speaker C:

I read the last one.

Speaker A:

The last one.

Speaker B:

Strogar.

Speaker E:

Rooney Strogaruni.

Speaker B:

You know what?

Speaker D:

No, I quit.

Speaker A:

It's always hard to get good help. So guys, go to Joe shrimp shack.com. You can order great tissue cultures free of disease, culture tissue cultures free of disease snails and whatever else. They're 899 apiece shipped to your door. Use promo code Aquarium Guys to check out for 15% off your entire order.

Speaker D:

Don't feel bad.

Speaker A:

No one can quiz. No one can pronounce these plants. And, guys, don't forget about our friends at the Ohio Fish Rescue. They wait, rich? Rich, is that you? You came all the way wait, no. What are you doing with that? You'll put that down.

Speaker C:

Wait.

Speaker E:

Yeah.

Speaker A:

Welcome to the aquarium, guys. Podcast.

Speaker E:

Welcome to the aquarium, guys. Podcast. And as you can see, I am not rob's olsen.

Speaker B:

He is actually tied up in the closet back there, and he's not going to be with us tonight.

Speaker E:

No, he wants to be. He's a little tied up right now.

Speaker B:

So you guys seen that the Aquarium Guys podcast just took over our YouTube channel. Well, tonight we are taking over his podcast.

Speaker E:

Tonight we have what do you want to call him?

Speaker C:

Legend.

Speaker E:

The Legend. We also have all the way from boca raton, Florida yes, that is the superstar in shipping. You guys don't even know this guy ships daily. So any questions you guys need, this man will be able to answer this. Is the superstar called Rodrigo rojas himself.

Speaker D:

Or just a prime MINEC works too.

Speaker E:

Arapimanack from Predatory Fence. Now, he's going to be here to answer all your questions and anything you need to know about shipping. Our question, Rodrigo, our first question is we don't have no big fish from your selection, brother.

Speaker D:

We did.

Speaker C:

We shipped the sturgeon.

Speaker E:

Remember the long time ago? Shipped us the sturgeon. You did fly up and did the whole Greg Whitstack video. That was the fish release video. Yes. You guys should look back in our videos and see this, because Rod actually he was the man that day. What was it?

Speaker B:

The niger. Cat.

Speaker E:

The Niger cat jumped out of the net from the people inside the 4400 gallon tank, and this thing jumped, and there's only like a foot and a half room above the top of this tank to the ceiling. This fish hit the ceiling and then started heading down. Rodrigo caught it mid air and ran to the pool and released it. And then I pushed them in behind.

Speaker D:

That was your way to say thank you, right?

Speaker E:

It was awesome.

Speaker C:

Fish that'll mess you up.

Speaker E:

Oh, that has bones sticking out each side. And they will cut you. They will cut a hole in a pool. Pine. They are vicious little fish and not little. This was a four foot monster. Rod caught it like he was holding his baby for the first time ever.

Speaker D:

I hope my baby doesn't look like that.

Speaker B:

Why? That would be an improvement on you, brother.

Speaker D:

Not alisa.

Speaker C:

No.

Speaker E:

Cute girl. And you know what? We appreciate you how you caught that and saved our face and then put it in the water. And I looked back on that time and I should never have pushed you in, brother.

Speaker C:

Don't worry about it.

Speaker E:

No, he got me back. He pushed me in later that day.

Speaker D:

That's right. That was a great, fun time, though.

Speaker E:

It was a great time. tonight's topic is about shipping.

Speaker B:

So we're going to give a run down from small fish all the way up to the big gigantic fish and how we should ship them any do's and don'ts to any people that don't.

Speaker E:

Know anything about it, right. We all look at each other like, oh, well, rod's been shipping forever. He knows what he's doing. You've been shipping. We know what we're doing. But we take things for granted. So we need to get out the information for the people that don't know.

Speaker B:

And we can also throw in some story time here and there. We got a few funny stories.

Speaker D:

All right, so let's start with small fish, for example, right? We ship them ups overnight. Priority overnight. So we pay a little more choose for that service to be able to arrive between ten and 12:00 in the morning.

Speaker E:

Well, you know what, everybody's, the go to thing used to be airport to airport with somebody that had an account there, and it turns out Ups overnight is great. And it's been the new go to thing, right? Yeah, it's working really great for everybody.

Speaker D:

I say larger fish or fish, there are higher price tag on it or those fish. Definitely 100% airport. Airport is the safest way. But Ups is definitely for, in my opinion. I tried usps. I tried fedex. Ups was 95% to 98%. The fish arrived alive and no problem.

Speaker E:

And it's a great service. So it just costs just a touch more.

Speaker D:

Right.

Speaker E:

But it's a great service. It's the go to service of the day. Now. That's what everybody's using overnight express.

Speaker D:

Well, I heard that there's people that ship like, two days or three days and the fish to arrive alive.

Speaker E:

I just put fish are packed in pure oxygen and they take precautions for that kind of stuff, and they can last up to that. But overnight express is the most mentally forgiving shipping method on this topic.

Speaker B:

Speaking of how long a fish can live in a bag packed in pure oxygen, what is that timeline? How long can a fish last in a bag?

Speaker D:

Yeah, well, it depends on the size of the fish and how many fishes in a bag. But I've had a customer that actually purchased from another store and he said the fish took a week to get there and he arrived alive. It was a channel catfish.

Speaker C:

So the species of fish because if you guys are importing direct for country of origin, stingrays are an ideal item for shipping. The only thing the problem with problematic with a stingray and shipping is if the box gets flipped over and over and over again. But a stingray has such a low metabolism rate for absorption of oxygen levels, as long as it's kept at an even temperature, it won't burn through the oxygen quickly. Discount for example, as well. They're ideal for shipping. They just sit there, they calm right down. You don't even have to trank them and they're good, perfect for shipping. But you put anything that's a high stress push like an iridescent shark or any barbs or tin foil barbs or any of those speedy high energy fish, they're a nightmare. You got to trank them or something to calm them down. Otherwise they burn through the oxygen too fast and put the water stay or.

Speaker E:

Too far or a pia. Exactly.

Speaker D:

Those types of fish. 100% better to do airport, right?

Speaker C:

Differences in Canada back in the day, we used to do airport to airport, hobbyist to hobbyist stores to hobbyist, whatever way you wanted to do. Now a lot of things have changed. In 2001, the world changed in the Us for 2001 had ramifications globally and then now with the new situation in Canada, I can't take a box of fish and ship it at the airport. Even if I wanted to, I'm not allowed to. You have to.

Speaker D:

Oh really?

Speaker C:

You have to be an approved shipper within Canada. And my dear friend who owns a big wholesale operation here the hoops he had to go through. He has to have biometric locks on his building. He has to have 24/7 live 4k cameras that monitor everything that they can go in in turn. Check the video to show that the minute every fish that was caught is always on video from the time it's caught out of the tank till it's bagged, till the box is taped up. Because once it leaves the building, it can be X rayed. But with the technology today, the way the world is today, the political climate of the world today, everybody's always the bad people are always looking for a way to screw it up. Right?

Speaker D:

It's funny you said that. I don't know if you guys heard of this, but years ago there was a big shipper bringing cocaine inside of that coy through Miami. And the Fish and Wildlife officers, the first time they came, they checked it out and they're like wow. I'll of them came in dead. So they were like, whoa, this is really weird. So the next time the fish of the shipment came in, it was double the boxes and all the fish are dead. So one guy actually opened up the bag and flip over the fish and he was all stitched up and it was full of cocaine, all the boxes.

Speaker B:

Didn't you used to deal in dead coy?

Speaker E:

Listen.

Speaker D:

Death bun fish I don't want to deal with.

Speaker B:

That was too good to pass up.

Speaker E:

No, that was his buddy Ray.

Speaker C:

You go back years ago when I was breeding fish on the large scale, I was always just a hobbyist. I was never a commercial exporter. But I would ship fish regularly to I remember shipping regularly to Korea, China, Japan, some different weird countries. And I could value was easy back then. I could ship air freight. It would probably cost, you know, $100 Canadian, which is about $8 American now. And we do breather bags were exceptional because they just took I could ship ten times the amount of fish if I used breather bags because you didn't put any air in the bag whatsoever. And I've had fish for four days, five days. Honestly. I've actually been to a fish show and I've bought things like kilifish, low oxygen requiring fish, bagged them up at a fish show and brought them home, everything through the whole trip home and thought I landed everything and then weeks later finding a bag of fish and you think they're all going to be dead. They were fine, just landed them. They were a little emaciated, but it happens.

Speaker E:

It does.

Speaker D:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

So while we're on the topic of bringing fish across the border, while we have Ron on the podcast, I'm going to get his input on this. We have a 40 inch Arapaima up in Ontario right now in Canada that the guy is wanting us to rehome because he got into some financial trouble. Now he's getting rid of his house and whatnot.

Speaker E:

But let me say this, it's on the side. He's two list coming across the border. We're kind of sketchy, we don't know. We called the border patrol, they said no big deal, blah, blah, blah. Then they need to talk to the people in the United States. We called the United States Border Patrol. They're not open. Now can we go up to Ontario, pick up this fish, which Canada says it's no problem, bring it to across the border to Ohio?

Speaker C:

Canada is irrelevant. This one, because you're not bringing it to Canada, you're taking it from Canada.

Speaker E:

Or taking it to Ohio because our border patrol is not open to give us any answers.

Speaker D:

Yeah, but brig Rich, because it's a site species, the people in Canada have to apply the reality when we ship arabimas to Canada, for example, we have to apply for a site is here and they have to make sure that they tell them that it's a site is species because they get inspected. You see what I mean? So bringing it to the Us. They might require to come in with site is paperwork.

Speaker C:

And that paperwork usually takes about three to six months to actually process, too. Really?

Speaker D:

Maybe this is the wrong way, but maybe just try to bring it in without saying anything. That might be the only way if they're closed.

Speaker E:

No.

Speaker B:

There you go. Speaking on that, we don't really want to do anything illegal. Do you happen to know anybody up there by Ontario, Canada, but right outside of Toronto that would maybe possibly want this fish?

Speaker D:

I don't. I mean, we can make a video and an announcement, somebody that can go.

Speaker E:

We did the same thing on Ohio Fish Rescue, and if you want to do it on predatory bins, that's up to you. But it's a free 40 inch arapaima that we cannot get across the border right now because of bullshit. But if somebody up in Canada wants it, they can give it a good home. We're more than willing to give them the location.

Speaker B:

It's a 40 inch arapaima, three red tailcast between twelve and 24 inch, and a pleco. Back to the discussion topic, shipping fish.

Speaker E:

Shipping fish. Now listen, here's two different opinions, okay? When people get fish shipped in and they're in co2 oxygen, pure oxygen. My bad, my bad, my bad. Okay, when they're in pure oxygen, here's the thing. If you was to take that fish and open that bag, at that point, the PH is going to change instantly. The ammonia is going to change because it was an O, two pure oxygen, and now you're opening it up to regular air, the chemical difference is going to change things. Here's the bad thing. Now if you get fish shipped in, and it's not in two pure oxygen, you can float it in your tank, you can let a little water in, you can acclimate it, whatever, and then release it. But in fish that are in pure oxygen, here's the problem, that pure oxygen stops a lot of things from happening. And the moment you open that bag, your PH changes and your ammonia level goes up. So what you want to do is pour that fish out of that bag after you've acclimated it, and let it float in your water for like an hour or so, half hour. You can then pour it through a net and let all the water out, and you just take the fish itself and put it into your new tank. You do not want to put the water in there, and you do not want to acclimate that fish, too, because you're stressing that fish at that time.

Speaker C:

When we take a bag and we float a bag, the only thing we're doing is acclimating to the temperature. That's it.

Speaker E:

There's a temperature, right?

Speaker C:

But bottom line is the most important factor, and the thing that's often ignored by people when they're buying fish on aqua bid and they're shipping between hobbyist or stores or buying fish from Rod. What the water chemistry is in the bag. At the time it was bagged is rod, what was your water when I bought the fish? It's irrelevant what it is now. I just need to know what it was like when I bought it. Because when I get it, I can just quickly test the PH. And if it came from if it's high, the problem, you run and the PH drops because of the organic load that's in the water. The minute you start dripping water from your tank into that, you're going to release all that stray ammonia and you're going to kill the fish in the bucket, the bag, whatever, before it even.

Speaker E:

Has a champion ammonia burn thrust. Yes, all kinds of things.

Speaker C:

So that's more importantly, that the people know us and nobody asks that. Nobody ever asked me when I used to ship fish. Well, what's your chemistry like that's to me, the most critical factor, because that's your starting point. Because then you know what? Now you can work from what it is now.

Speaker D:

I think that honestly, it depends on each individual shipment because I'm importing all.

Speaker E:

Over the world, right, rodrigo, let's say your PH is 7.8 and you're sending to Singapore and their normal water PH is 6.0 or something.

Speaker D:

Let's do it this way. I'm importing from Columbia, right over there. It's acidic water, right? So, for example, I built that acclamation system to make it easier for us, because you're talking about 20, 30, 40 boxes at a time. It's impossible. So what we do is literally, we look at the fish first. If the bag looks clean, the water is not dirty. Okay? What we do is we get a bunch of the same fish put in a container, and then we slowly open our water, right? Our brand new water that's already filtered, and that starts washing out the old water. But we also add ammonia remover in the water just to be safe for in case of ammonia spike. So we do that to every single order that comes in. But if it's a fish that okay, look, he looks like he's going to die, okay? The water is bad. We could take that fish out right away and try that. Comeate as fast as possible. I don't suggest that because you're shocking the fish even more, but to try to save it, doing it slowly, terrible.

Speaker E:

Situation, and in bad water conditions, and you put it to good water, they can make a full recovery real quick.

Speaker D:

Yeah, if the fish are going to live here, you will. It's better to do it faster than slow. But if the fish, they come in in good healthy condition like I just had a shipment from Colombia, everything was perfect. So that's what I did. I put everything in the rack, open my water, just let it 30 minutes later, I take the fish out and put in the tank. None of the fish died. But I suggest to all my customers, when they get the fish floating in the tank is like he said, you're just doing the temperature.

Speaker E:

Not the amount, not nothing.

Speaker C:

Right?

Speaker D:

If you can do a drip system, if the water looks clean, just do the drip system. 1520 minutes. Take that fish out. Don't put the water in your tank. Just take the fish out and put it in tank 100%.

Speaker C:

From a chemistry standpoint that people may not recognize, you ask the average occurrence what PH is, and they just know it's PH. They don't know anything more about it. But it basically means parts of hydrogen, right? And going from PH of six to PH of seven is not one point. It's actually ten points. And that can be very, very severe. But, like, exactly what Rod said. 100%. If you have a fish that looks like it's in stress, it can adapt a hell of a lot easier to dealing with levels of PH or hydrogen levels. Then it's going to be able to adapt to ammonia problems, nitrate problems, anything else? So exactly what Rod said. I agree with. 1000%. Get that fish under the water and into the tank.

Speaker D:

Thank you. I went to school for many years for this.

Speaker E:

But his woman slapped them around a lot for this. We'll leave them for the next podcast.

Speaker B:

That might be for our livestream. We can get it face to face.

Speaker D:

All right, I'll be there Friday night. But honestly, I think one of the subjects changing the subject real quick, one of the subjects that should be discussed for everybody to know people buy fish and they don't have the tanks. That's the worst thing. I deal with that every day. Every day. And I tried to be polite, because sometimes I had a call the other day, the guy's like, hey, bro, my fuck was dying. What do I do? I don't even know who you are. Would you get a fish from for me? No.

Speaker C:

What are you calling me?

Speaker D:

But I tried to help. But 70% of people that are buying fish right now, they do not know how to cycle or tent.

Speaker E:

Hey, Rod, let me stop you right there. The only reason we back you is because you do try and help the problem, right? No. You're a pet store and you sell fish and blah, blah, blah. But you do help the problem. And I want everyone to know this. This is why we back you. This is why we show up at your show every year. This is why we love you. And you take care and try and help the problem out there and try and educate people we love that, right?

Speaker D:

And I appreciate that, big Rich. But what I'm trying to say is, sometimes people just call. They don't even say, hey, how are you? They don't even care. What are you doing if you're busy or nothing? It's just like they call expect an answer to save their fish. You know what I mean? And it was so simple. If you just did a little research, it's all over the place. You learn how to cycle a tank, no problem.

Speaker C:

Nobody looks anymore.

Speaker D:

It's just nothing.

Speaker E:

90% of the population don't know about the cycle of a tank.

Speaker D:

No, and that's something that is insane because this is why I envy asians when it comes to aquarium keeping and fish keeping. Okay, yes, they might overcrowd the tank, but these guys would spend a shit ton of money on filtration. And then the fish over here, we do a different we don't spend any money on filtration, but then we want to spend money on fish. And then we worry why the fish die.

Speaker E:

But there's that new fx Six that should take care of all my problems.

Speaker D:

True, I don't like canisters at all.

Speaker C:

But yes, they want to buy the aquarium used at the cheapest price possible, diy. They want to make their own junk. They want to pressurize a five gallon bucket they got from Home depot and fill it with hair curlers that are used. And they want to do all this stuff. And then they want to go buy a $600 flowerhorn or $700 lift or something, and they want to throw it in the tank. And then when there's a problem, they can't understand why.

Speaker D:

Look, don't get me wrong. If you do a diy, you do it right. Yes, you can 100% save money. But look, a majority of people go, my fish die and I have it running for three months. Okay, what do you have? It there just water. You know what I mean? So it's like they don't know. That's one subject that people don't know.

Speaker C:

And you're on the retail side, so you get all those questions every day. Like Rich said, you and me have never met. But I commend you as well for someone that's willing to you work in the retail sector. You answer emails, countless emails every day, you're taking phone calls, countless phone calls every single day. And you're helping people, genuinely helping out of the goodness of your heart. But you're also doing it in a way it's an investment in yourself and an investment in your business. Everybody that phones in is a potential customer down the road if you treat them properly. And the reason it was not just because you're knowledgeable, it's because you are exceptionally passionate about what you do. And you're going to give back in that way. And maybe one day when they get the proper knowledge that you're giving them and they start reading, they start getting into it a bit more, then you're going to have a customer for life. And that's probably the main pillar of the success of your business.

Speaker D:

Yeah, be 100% honest. I just want to save the fish. If they call back to buy fish, it's not the fish fall, they're dying. You know what I mean?

Speaker E:

One of the reasons we back predatory fence, they still sell paco, and we don't back any store that sells paco. But that's the one main problem on our whole situation. But we back predatory fins because they do care, and they do try and help, and they do a lot for the fish community.

Speaker C:

Do you know that every time he sells a paco, he sends a flyer and it has all the information about the pacu and everything exceeded the size of your aquarium. No need to buy a bigger aquarium, just contact ofr and here's the information.

Speaker D:

But see, a lot of times people ask me that question, like, where all these big fish go? And you'd be surprised how many people out there have massive amount of ponds and big tanks, and they don't even want a pocket. They want monster fish. To be honest with you, you might not even like this big rich, but a lot of the pocos I take it goes to hawaii, because in hawaii, they don't have a lot of land for cows, so they're buying paco to grow them and breed them for food.

Speaker E:

And they're probably one of let's not talk about food.

Speaker D:

I don't eat fish. I don't eat fish at all.

Speaker C:

I don't eat fish either. But the pacu is in brazil that is probably one of the most cherished food fish because it's main diet based.

Speaker E:

And it eats fruits, I've heard it's really good, and I don't want to admit it, but it's really good, I've been told.

Speaker C:

Here's another way to look at it. We're talking about all these big fish, and maybe some shouldn't be sold in the hobby, and some meet an untimely demise due to the care given by the caregiver, and they didn't have the right size tank and stuff. And that's all true, and I'm not saying I have a solution for that, but let's look at it on the exact opposite of the scale. Let's talk about cardinal tetras or neon tetras. These fish are harvested by the tens of millions for the pet trade globally. How many, if they catch 1 million neon tetras, how many of those neon tetras do you think honestly end up in an end consumers aquarium?

Speaker E:

I bet you probably very little. 1000 or so.

Speaker C:

Catches for $0.06 or $0.08 or $0.11 or whatever it ends up being. But they're extremely disposable to people that can handle so, so much abuse. I don't warrant the abuse, but it can just handle poor water quality, small tanks, bad feed, and live through it, all right? It shouldn't be when it happens. And these fish persevere through all of that stuff so they can end up one day at big rich's place.

Speaker B:

So let's get back into the talk. Rod kind of started hitting on it, and he was talking about how he was shipping small fish and how he does it, and we'll just climb our way up the ladder.

Speaker E:

Yeah, let's go up to big fish. Now, how the best way to ship a big fish? That's a big problem across the United States.

Speaker D:

Do you guys saw the vinyl bags, right, that I use before? That is my number one bag. Like, if you really want to fish to go through anything, those bags are the way to go. They're hard to get, they're very expensive, but they're the best way.

Speaker E:

I'm sure you can only get them from Kevin Y from Stingray Biology. Well, that's kind of true, but we're.

Speaker D:

Actually we got some planes going on. We might be bringing them in and start selling them.

Speaker E:

They're awesome bags. We love them.

Speaker D:

And for bigger fish, you have to make sure you purge them for at least a week.

Speaker E:

Oh, yes. purging people, you got to understand, do not feed your fish for at least a week beforehand.

Speaker C:

Well, no dependent type of fish. Big monster fish. Yes. Small, little sped up parisians and smaller fish that have higher metabolism. 48 hours and chops. You go any longer than that, these fish are going to die before they get there.

Speaker D:

They'll be weeks for shipping. Yeah.

Speaker E:

And I believe in that. I believe what you're saying. But even let's go with what I'm used to as monster fish. We even sometimes take and put epsom salt in the water. It's a diuretic and it makes them pass everything. And three, four, five days before shipping, we do the epsom salt and they pass everything. And next thing you know, they can stay two or three days in a bag of a three foot fish and can make it to their destination.

Speaker B:

Speaking about monster fish and transport, I know you've got some guys on the podcast tonight that know a thing or two about transporting massive, huge monster fish. And I know I personally went all the way across the United States to pick up some big old fish. My dad made a trip to California several times. Raj transported monster fish. And I'm sure California right the same.

Speaker E:

Place I've gotten the fish.

Speaker B:

I'm sure Chris has had his whole ordeal of transporting monster fish as well. So we can go ahead and talk a little bit about how each of us maybe it might be the same way, but we might have different ways that we transport fish.

Speaker E:

That's great. All right, let me tell you my story about going to California and then bringing these fish back.

Speaker B:

Well, we don't have to talk about the story.

Speaker E:

We just talk about the technique. Right? Okay. Now ride with the same trip as me. And I don't know his technique, but here's my technique. I took a few big tubs and I put some big fish in there. And I had a 5000 watt inverter in my rental truck and I had an extension. Cords going in. I had heaters going. I had linear air pump that ran every single sponge filter that we had running at the rescue that was pre formulated with bacteria and was running on many different tanks. I took them and kept them running all the way to California. And then when I come back, instead of just blowing air, I was blowing a sponge filter.

Speaker B:

Don't put a prime in the water, guys.

Speaker E:

Don't do prime. Prime works great unless you have your son sleeping back there. Because you all know that story, right? anyways, we ran the air pumps and the air sponge filters, and everything was great. We didn't lose no fish on the way back.

Speaker B:

The first trip, essentially, what that's doing, he's saying, preceded filter. So you're automatically having to put air on these fish if you use a sponge filter.

Speaker E:

Well, wait. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker B:

It's not only giving your fish oxygen, but it's also filtering the water at the same time. In some of the larger tubs, we go ahead and we actually take a barrel filled with bio balls or whatever media you might want to do at the time. You actually take that as a precedent filter set up. And you can stick a pump down in your water. Say it's a six foot round tub, which is what we use at times. You start getting this water sloshing around it in there and say you have that intake halfway down and it sucks air while you're driving down the road. You might not see it driving down the road, but you pull over at a gas station, pump hasn't been running for two, 3 hours. You got fish dying with the pump on it. It sucks there. It'll start right back up and still shoot your water out.

Speaker E:

And you know what it's doing? Is it's taking your ammonia from your fish that you may or may not have not fed for three or four days like we asked you to, and they're peeing. They're creating ammonia. There are certain different biological aspects of this that turns ammonia into nitrites and then into nitrates and then makes it less harmful nitrates. And your fish can live with that. The point is, you have to have some sort of biological filtration on a long distance trip, rods made long distance trips from California all the way to Florida. I went from California to Ohio. It was a 37 hours drive. 37 hours there, 37 hours back. And the fish made it. I didn't. I got hurt. I fell out of the truck. I ripped all my tenants off my right shoulder. It was horrible, but I was seeing things. I was hallucinating. It was a horrible thing. But I drove 92 hours straight. It was crazy.

Speaker B:

You guys got our perspective. Let's hear some of these other guys perspective and how they do things. Rod says I just ship them.

Speaker C:

I've never done anything like what you guys do where I live. The closest city, like the social Cave city is 8 hours away. All the major Canadian cities are all, like, 810 hours away from each other. It's just the way it is. So, like, I've never, ever experienced the way you guys have done it is you guys start out at the get go, at the very beginning. Once you first started offr, even when you first started keeping fish, saying, hey, I want to drive across country, and I got to how am I going to go pick up a four foot catfish? You guys didn't plan that. You've grown and grown and grown. You guys have had all sorts of mishaps and follies along the way, and that's what makes you watching your channel so important and so integral, is the fact that it's a thing, it's real, you guys not polished. It is what it is. We're going to drive across here, and we've got batteries, and we've got air pumps, and we've got water, and there's going to be something that you're not going to think about. You know what I mean? Like, you get a flat tire in the middle of the night or something, and you let the truck turn the truck off and the battery the air pump kills the battery on the van. Now we're stuck here overnight. There's so many things that could go wrong that you can't plan for, but you guys have been doing this long enough that you got it down to a pretty good science that you guys know that no matter where it is, hey, we want to drive to Maine to get something. You've guys might not just jump in the truck and say, hey, let's go and get it. You guys got a planet, but you guys have done it for so long that you know what you're doing, and that's why you guys are the people that people look to for this. Sorry, I'm not docking against Rod. I don't know rod's side of it. Rod said he just ships fish. I wouldn't have a clue how to ship anything big like that. Anytime that the wholesaler here gets anything big coming in and out of Brazil or anything like that, it's always packed. If it's something bitty or spiny, they put it in literally a plastic gas tank. They cut aside out of it. They throw the piranha or whatever it is in the gas tank. The gas tank goes inside a fish bag, and then the wooden crate goes inside of a box. Then they ship it on its way. But I've never dealt with anything bigger than, like, a royal Panac that's 24, 30 inches long.

Speaker E:

The stuff you guys go it's cute.

Speaker C:

Yeah. Look, the stuff that you guys have driven across country and there's been many of your adventures have been on your channel and stuff. The stuff that you guys go get, that's why you are who you are. Nobody else is willing to go to those links to the same degree.

Speaker D:

Yeah, no big. Rich that was crazy. California Drive. Now, when I went over there, I just made kevin and I bought a bunch of really large boxes and we shipped everybody back to Florida. It was a lot less stressful for us, but to get everybody packed up, mainly the main thing we do is we don't use their tank water, we use fresh water. And if the fish is like he was saying, if the fish is going crazy, you just put a little bit of ice in the vendor bag. I try to keep that ice separate. So let's say I'll get another bag, put the ice inside just to cool the water now for them to calm down and ship. But that was it.

Speaker E:

Kevin was there and Mr wu told us all these things. And we took that 30 inch tarpon and we put them in the six foot round tub and filled it half full of water. It was about 1500 gallons. Now, we thought, no problem. I tell you what, within a half hour, that fish died on us. And it was because of sloshing around that we were doing while driving on the highway. It was slashing back and forth.

Speaker B:

Now, to be fair, tarpon are so hard to transport, it's going to look that's just the fish that, you know, as a fishkeeper, you probably shouldn't transport at the side.

Speaker E:

I felt a failure. I felt like a failure because we weren't even an hour out and this fish died on us. It was so upset.

Speaker D:

No, but that's how we learned. nobody's going to teach us how to do it.

Speaker E:

We learn on our own. Well, how many people know how to move a 30 inch tarp?

Speaker D:

Exactly.

Speaker C:

It's totally opposite end of the spectrum for you, but you feel like you failed excuse me. About moving a fish of that size. People that export corridoris and rod, if you import corridoris catfish the little pepper from hundreds of species. Most people never knew about it, but back in the day when you were bringing them in and you would lose a fairly large percentage of them, and people could never figure out what the trick was to ship in, they thought massive oxygen potential or something different. No, the trick is the fact that Corris will stress out like crazy once they're in that environment of a box and they release a toxin into the water that essentially is going to poison them. So people that generally really know how to work with corris. The top cory people in the world, in the UK, in the States, in South America, what they do is once they catch the corris out of the tank, I'm talking the tank at the packing station in St. manaus, Brazil, and they're ready to export that bag of quarries. They put them into a tub with clean water, and then they keep repeatedly kicking that tub for a few hours to stress enough that they release that toxin out of their body, and they keep changing the water. And once that's done, then they package those curries up and send them on their way. Now, you think about that, how long would you have to figure out that was the problem, actually poisoning themselves to be able to figure to ship them properly. And I don't know whoever figured out, but I know Ian fuller in the UK and Rob lecler in the States. Like a lot of these big shippers that move corey's all over the world that are freedom, this is a trick that they all use. And that's the only thing you can do to guarantee success rates. So you're dealing with a tarpon, like exactly like Josh. That is a horrible fish to ship on a good day, even a small one would be a horrible thing to ship on a good day.

Speaker E:

It's a challenging fish to 30 inch tarpon. And I was so happy to have him and I thought he was going to be a staple at Ohio Fish Rescue. And then I couldn't keep him alive. It was crazy. Within a half hour of moving him, he was dead and I was in tears. I was just like, I'm a failure.

Speaker C:

Have you ever gone to, like I know you transport with different tubs and stuff like that. Do you deal with seasonality temperatures, like going to California versus Ohio? You're going to deal with massive temperature swings. Do you guys insulate anything? Do you use enclosed panel trucks? What do you do?

Speaker E:

At that time, we used a truck. Now, mind you, nobody knows this. Okay, what was the truck called?

Speaker C:

A reefer.

Speaker E:

And it's made for refrigeration. But that refrigeration truck can keep the inside of the bed of the truck at about 80 degrees. All we needed was 76 or so. I did not know that. You can keep I'm looking for a heating truck, but refrigerated trucks can keep the temperature up to 76. Now, they're made for being about 40 degrees and saving produce and all that kind of stuff, but they can keep it up to 80 degrees. Well, the nice alter, we read a produce truck and they kept it at 76 degrees all the way home.

Speaker C:

That's awesome.

Speaker E:

Yeah.

Speaker C:

You guys ever heard of I don't know if any of you guys have any experience with this. I just know about it because I've met with them when I've gone with the wholesaler here to Interze in Germany. A lot of the massive producers of some of the best Koi in the world are in Israel. And Israel as a country. All the fisheries are all biosecure, which is a huge thing in the industry right now, particularly with Koi, because of Koi herpes virus. Now when you talk about what the thing that they did is, I remember the very first shipment we got in from Koi, from Israel, there were probably 20 koi all over a foot in size. They're going to be the size of your forearm. The koi itself. And it looked like they took the adult fish and threw them in the box and then misted them with an inch of water and then sent them on their way. And they had this little tiny we thought it was a heat pack but it wasn't a heat pack and it was actually the same type of material that's used in deep sea divers masks for scrubbing nitrogen out of the air. And they had these little things taped inside the bag. Like you can't put a heat pack inside the bag because it defeats the purpose. Right? Heat packs have to be taken box or the lid. But this thing was called like an oxygen scrubber when it's inside of the thing. I've never seen it used anywhere else in the world. I don't know if it's a cost thing. I don't know if most people don't know about it but I'm not kidding.

Speaker E:

Did they fish wood.

Speaker C:

When they're importing from these guys in Israel they'll pack 1001, 5000 hundred adult guppies in a box. Not 500 like a Florida producer would like I'm talking 1000, 502,000 in a box. Rams guppies.

Speaker E:

Maybe we can learn something from them.

Speaker C:

I've never seen anything like it before and I remember going when we were over there the guy said, he said, he told us what it was and how the technology used and stuff and it was all from deep sea divers. It was something called like a scrubber. That was the same type of material that was used for scrubbing nitrogen out of their masks. And it revolutionary especially for people like you that are dealing with larger fish and Rod who's trying to ship bigger fish across the country. I think this thing could revolutionize the industry if it wasn't cost prohibitive. I don't know.

Speaker B:

So we have a question from one of the listeners tonight and they're wanting to know about placement of heat packs. They said that he was told on top of the box but heat rises so I assumed the bottom.

Speaker D:

The problem with the bottom is if the bag leaks and there's no more heat pack. Yes.

Speaker E:

There you go.

Speaker B:

And also another thing I come to find out if you're shipping smaller bags and that water sitting directly on the heat pack that water can get very hot and your fish might perish from being too hot. So you always tape it.

Speaker E:

It can also perish from not being hot enough.

Speaker C:

You don't think the same way we do in Canada. Like in the wintertime we're buying fish from Florida from Florida fish farms. Well it's super hot in Florida but they've bark from freezing where we are. So we got to put in the right type of heat pack that it's not too hot when it's packed because we don't want them to cook while they're still in miami airport. We want the heat to kind of kick on as they're getting up north. And how long that air pack are they packed for? We get in sometimes when we bring in from India. And you have to put in even depending they have to put cold packs in the boxes in India to ship to Canada in the middle of winter. It doesn't make any sense, but that's what we have to do because it's too hot there.

Speaker E:

That brings a lot of holy shit. I didn't think about that to the table.

Speaker B:

When you get a phenomenal shipper, these are all the things that they think of for you that you don't think of.

Speaker E:

You don't know at all. All you know is you want that base shipped to you. Thank God there's people out there like you, Chris and Rodrigo that that that know and think ahead of time as to what to add to these fish being shipped to you.

Speaker D:

You know what I learned the other day? What's that we were packing I think it was like 60 boxes. And now I'm dealing a lot of smaller fish like plecos and stuff like that. Every single pleco that we pack, they pooped in the bag. So we had to open all of them over again.

Speaker E:

They repacked their poop factories. You know that.

Speaker D:

No, but there's no way for you. Even if you're not feeding, they're still eating stuff around the tank. So now he was saying now what we do is we put them in a container, we wait a couple of hours, we leave them for less, they poop all over the container, and we take them out and put in the bag. But that's the whole discussion we're doing. You learn as you go. So that's what I'm saying for you. Big rich don't feel like a failure as a child. He messed up. Listen, I know exactly what you're talking about. I imported a huge Tiger ray when I first opened the business, and I was in love with it. It was like something out of a movie. I never seen one in person. And I was just so happy. And I acclimated too fast. I turned around the things upside down, and that was the biggest, by the way, I've seen in my life.

Speaker E:

That's horrible.

Speaker D:

It's a mistake that we did, and we learned from it. We don't do it again.

Speaker E:

Hey, you know what? You learn from your mistakes and you become better fishkeepers from it. And you know what? But people rely on you, Rod, because you are an international shipper and you supply people all over the United States with great fish. You know what I'm saying? I've not heard bad things coming back. You are a great seriously, a great pet store and a great shipper fish store. Okay. No. You have done what other people have wanted to do and dreamed of doing. You have taken over and done it. You just out of nowhere, started a pet store, and next thing you know, you're taking over the country. I mean, you are doing great things.

Speaker D:

I'm in for the hobby. I want to see these fish. I want to make sure they're good, they're healthy. Like I said, if you were just to build a store that's cheap, I would just be like everybody else. But I much money to build a display and just so I can enjoy myself, but also to be there for other people to enjoy. It kind of like what you do, but totally different.

Speaker E:

Just know that we love what you do and we appreciate what you do, and we recommend you to everybody.

Speaker D:

I appreciate me. You guys are like family.

Speaker B:

So speaking of shipping, to kind of go off topic just a tad bit, we have our good buddy Joe rockwell, who is also one of our moderators and admins for the Ohio Fish Rescue. Well, we were sitting here drinking one night. We were having a good old time. Now, my good bubble Joe, he's single right now, and he was feeling very lonely. So we're sitting around the table on wherever we're drinking.

Speaker E:

Wait a minute, what does purpose have to do with anything?

Speaker B:

I'm just telling the story for all the listeners out there. So we're sitting around the table drinking, and I'm sitting there thinking, I'm like, you know what?

Speaker C:

What?

Speaker B:

Can I shift this poor lonely man? So we're all coming up with ideas, and I'm like, you know what? I got it. And I go on Amazon. I'm like, you know what, Joe? What's your address? He sends it to me. I'm like, oh, you sucker shit. And I've done that. I go on Amazon and I type in the words pocket pussy.

Speaker C:

Oh, my God.

Speaker B:

I get the first one that pops up, this supreme thing. And I'm like, you know what? Send this to Joe rockwell.

Speaker E:

No problem. It was like $50.

Speaker B:

It was ridiculous. But we go ahead and we get this shipped off to him, and I forget about it like three times.

Speaker E:

Dude, we forgot completely.

Speaker B:

Joe hit me up and he's like, you motherfucker. He's like, my mom intercepted that package. He almost opened it in front of my father. So he proceeded to use this as a fish tank decoration.

Speaker E:

And he called it a Neil trap.

Speaker D:

Well, it is.

Speaker E:

He calls us and he's like, I hid that at your house. And I'm like, what? So now who knows who's going to find it where?

Speaker B:

Wait, you're skipping over something entirely here. This man went through customs on an airplane with his pocket twissy.

Speaker E:

Yes, he did.

Speaker B:

Something like that because they didn't know who was there, didn't know it was there. He brought it here to hide it.

Speaker E:

Yeah, he brought it back here. Now, this man, he stayed here for the weekend, and then he went home and he's like, I want to challenge you guys to find that was funny. You guys sent it to me, but I left it at your house and now I challenge you to find it. We looked everywhere. We could not find this thing.

Speaker C:

This thing is now a community one. This is basically it's been used been.

Speaker E:

An official community pocket busy one.

Speaker C:

It's available to ever stays over.

Speaker E:

Right.

Speaker B:

I personally don't think he brought it because we ripped this house apart and we could not find oh, my God.

Speaker E:

We ripped this house apart.

Speaker B:

Yes.

Speaker E:

Oh, he's still single.

Speaker B:

All right, so we have another question from our listeners. They're asking about what? About using chemicals like methyl and blue and clove oil.

Speaker E:

Well, clove oil has to be administered in a no.

Speaker B:

We're going to be honest, clove oil sucks. I will never use it. Clove oil is so just harsh on a fish. I saw one person use clove oil to put his catfish out of misery, and it was the worst thing I've ever seen in my life happen to a fish. This thing was thrashing around and you hear these stories that they peacefully just go to sleep. No, these things thrash around and you're basically putting poison in the water to sedate this fish or put them to sleep for good, depending on how much you use. So all these good stories about clove oil, I would personally not use it. And I don't know about you guys and your experience with clove oil.

Speaker C:

There's no reason for anybody to use when there's actually proper products that are available in the marketplace for shipping things properly covil for the purpose of actually euthanizing something for whatever. If you have to end up at that scenario, then I agree with that. But I agree 100% with you, Josh. Otherwise, there's no way any of us can control the volume or the dosage or anything like that to administer it properly.

Speaker E:

Oh, my God.

Speaker B:

So use the proper products out there for shipping a fish. Now, we have a question about methyl and blue and shipping. Have you ever used that for shipping, Rod?

Speaker D:

No, to be honest, I just use brand new water. I don't use the acquiring water. That's it.

Speaker E:

He's back to the old adage, fresh water the best medicine ever. Clean, clear, good water is the best fish medicine ever.

Speaker D:

I feel like adding more chemicals to the water. You don't know what could happen in five to 10 hours later.

Speaker B:

There is one thing that we used to use that we don't know more. And they were called bag buddies. It was a very mild, mild sedative, and they also released oxygen into the water.

Speaker C:

They were a jungle product. They also had methylene blue in them, but they also increased dissolved solids in the bag, like, exponentially.

Speaker E:

It was not a good product, but.

Speaker B:

It was the closest one that we actually used.

Speaker D:

Yeah, I think just clean water and bridging your fish.

Speaker E:

Clean water is the best medicine, period. I will. Let's go ahead and wrap this up a little bit. Josh Rodrigo, predatory Fence. We thank you for your patronage tonight. We appreciate you being here, and you're the only Mass shipper around the world that we back.

Speaker C:

We love you.

Speaker E:

You're a good guy. You do good things. You also run a rescue, and that's down in Florida, in boca raton. This guy goes up and above and beyond just owning a pet store. He's not there for the money. He's a good guy. So you guys should all check him out. Chris biggs, thank you for your knowledge and your patronage. We love you. You're a good guy. I appreciate you being here.

Speaker C:

Any time, brother.

Speaker B:

It's always a great conversation with bubbles of you guys. It was a fun time. We had a little bit of story time. We shared this fountain of knowledge. Thank you guys both for tuning into the ofr takeover of the aquarium Guys podcast.

Speaker E:

Who's robbed?

Speaker B:

Yeah. We don't even need that guy.

Speaker E:

You don't need that guy. We can run his show, no problem.

Speaker B:

But don't get used to it.

Speaker D:

I'll see you guys pride in them.

Speaker E:

It's been a good night, man. I appreciate it.

Speaker D:

Have a good night. Be safe.

Speaker C:

Cheers, guys.

Speaker E:

Take care, brother.

Speaker A:

Thanks, guys, for listening to the podcast. Please go to your favorite place where pod podcasts are found, whether it be spotify, itunes, stitcher, wherever they can be found, like subscribe. And make sure you get push notifications directly to your phone so you don't miss great content like this.

Speaker E:

I never knew that a Minnesota accent could be so sexy until I heard adam's voice.

Speaker D:

Go frank yourself.

Speaker A:

Don't you know that's my boy don't you know.

Episode Notes

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I was tied up, so you don't get notes!

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