And what's broadcast for an agn news bulletin. We have just received word that blueprint aquatics has just been restocked with some of the most sought after shrimp to celebrate the new year, like the highly awaited Galaxy bone shrimp. Offer yours today at bluecom Aquatics.com. Free shipping with plumber code aquarium guys at checkout. That's a value of $45.

Daddy.

Oh, don't be laughed with your friends making fun of your small shrimp. Also, don't forget about our friends at the Ohio Fish rescue. Go to Ohiofish rescue.com to support them. And also dial on your home telephone device at 216-773-0407 and tell him you think he's groomy. We now take you back to your regular scheduled programming. Thank you. Hey, friends, just letting you know that this podcast was pre recorded. We went to Sean kramer's own home, did this on site, and just want to let you know to look in the show notes, we have a YouTube video to show you the entire 2000 gallon aquarium and a little bit more information about our stay. Just wanted to remind you before the show kicks off that we still have a sign up for free plant bulbs from Jim on our website, aquariumgyspodcast.com. Go to the bottom of the website sign up. We're going to be drawing here pretty soon, so get your name in the hat before we're giving away plant bulbs to five individuals. So it's just simply your name, address, phone number so we can get those out to you. Thanks again and happy new year. Welcome to the Aquarium, guys. Podcast with your hosts, Jim colby and Rob golson. All right, guys, today we're here in brainerd, Minnesota. How close are we from brainerd?

20 minutes.

20 minutes. We are here in brainerd, Minnesota, with a fish hobbyist, a fish enthusiast, an extreme aquarist. Sean creamer. How are you doing today, buddy?

Very good, sir.

So thanks again for having us. We just got to experience your aquarium and I think jim's still amazed. He's not tripping. He's just seeing colors. There's no drugs involved, no mushrooms.

Just seeing colors and going, holy crap, this stuff doesn't even look real.

Right? So I'm your host, Robbie olsen.

And I'm Jim colby.

And I'm adamant on the shower.

You guys won't believe it. He's in the flesh. He drove all the way up here to come visit. We got you to get to see him for once. So proud.

It was like a six hour trip.

6 hours. I feel like you went the wrong direction.

No, I got stuck in the cities because of snow.

Yeah. Quit stopping a White Castle.

I don't eat there.

You didn't bring me White Castle? I thought we do quiz notes. That was the meme, guys. Well, again, thanks for having us. So today we want to go over the extreme aquarius. You have a 2000 gallon reef tank and it's blowing our minds, frankly. So you invited us here to come see it. You've had it now for how long?

Five years.

Five years. It's stunning. It's a true reef tank, which the focus is coral. You see there's 200 damsel fish in there.

Yeah, there's at least 200 on top.

Of a lot of others. But it's just not the focus is fish. There's a lot of space and incredible flow. But I want to learn a little bit more about you first before we get into a lot of questions because I know jimmy and adam are both chomping at the bit. For some, they were polite. They held back questions when we went through and checked out the tank, check out the back room. So we're going to unload on you. So forgive us ahead of time.

Wow. Just you warned him for once.

We did. We don't normally warn our guests. We just kind of shock them and they never come back.

That's right. It's what we like about it.

When did you first started getting in the hobby of fish keeping?

Well, growing up on a small dairy farm in wadina, minnesota, called myself in a store, wanted to ran across a bunch of aquariums and just kind of fell in love with the hobby. Started with a 20 gallon aquarium, had that through high school, got into college. Myself and a few roommates were also in the hobby. So we had five five aquariums in our in our home. Everything from piranhas to discus fish.

Nice.

And at one point in time, I think it was early, it's about I would say 15 years ago I moved to more than that now. 20 years ago, moved to arizona and I went into a hobby shop that dealt with reef aquariums and corals. And that's the first time I've ever been around stuff like that. It was just kind of like just hit me. And it's become a passion ever since.

Your 1st 20 gallon trying to rewind back because we always try to get like what was your first fish? No one can remember. But what was the first memorable fish that you kept in that 20 gallon?

Well, the standard stuff that you'd find at a walmart or at that time, it was pamida. I don't know if you guys remember palm.

I remember palanta because I'm an old guy.

Yeah. But I had angel fish and neon tetras a plecky. You guys were talking about them earlier. Thought it'd be really cool to have a huge school of at the time, 20 gallons of ten tetras congratulate. The tetras disappeared. And then I learned that angel fish unlock their jaw and can swallow tetras. I've gone about everything that you can imagine, but that's how it all started for me. Perfect.

So when was the moment that you knew saltwater is your deal?

When I walked in that store, I told you guys before, it's just like I couldn't even believe that stuff like that existed. I never been really outside of minnesota at the time. Never been on a reef, never did any snorkeling or anything like that. So I was really clueless. And when I saw that, it kind of presented a challenge to me because moving from freshwater to saltwater, I'm not a chemist by any means, but loving the hobby. And just like most people, you go through a litany of problems. So that's how you learn and just kind of how I fell in love with that. And that was 20 years ago.

So since then you saw the saltwater aquariums, you knew you had to get into it. How did you get started?

First thing I did is I set up at 100 gallon aquarium and I needed to find somebody to help me with it. So I asked around and found somebody to help me with the maintenance. And I was definitely from that point on find corals that I liked. And I didn't really realize the rarity of some certain corals or really how big that was. I'd never been to a trade show or anything like that. So it was really what was being presented to me in Arizona that we would have in the shop. So that's kind of how I got started, started adding like most people in the hobby. If you've ever been in reef aquarium, I thought it was the lighting. So the first thing I did was I got a really nice light, turn it all the way up and then there comes all the allergy problems. So anyways, that's kind of how I got going in it.

So since then, now we're talking about today you have a custom built 2000 gallon aquarium. And how many feet is that?

Well, it's a little over 20ft long. Perfect.

So what we're going to do is we're gonna have a couple pictures and YouTube clips so you guys get a feel of the tank, you get to see what's inside of it and even have a couple of pictures of the back room. It is really impressive to see you wanted to set up a big reef aquarium. Let's talk about the logistics. So again, 2000 gallons. What are the things that you do for water changes? How often do you water change and how much?

Well, we do weekly water changes. We like to be close to 200 gallon water change every week. I don't know. Everything is just kind of bigger. It's not necessarily different equipment, it's just bigger equipment and more of certain things to make that work.

So we went in the back and we got to see the just for instance, the skimmer, the skimmer that you're used to are just small intank skimmers. This thing looks like, I don't know, what would you put it? One of those culligan five gallon containers just for the top alone.

It looked like a half a gallon or looked like a 40 gallon water heaterally is what it looks like.

I didn't even know they made them that big for private people. Like that's.

It maybe for a zoo. You don't know.

That's what I would assume is it's a zoo quality protein skimmer.

So, a lot of things that impress us so, what I like to do is just, like, virtually walk through the back room with the audience. So, you walk into the back room, and the first thing you see to your left is all of your what I like to call vitamins or chemicals, your supplements for the water. Can you explain that a bit to us, especially for new users that have never had automated supplements?

Yeah. And unlike freshwater, there's a litany of trace elements in order to grow coral. I find that by sending off tests off, I do send almost weekly tests to Germany to be tested by a company called triton. They let me know exactly where my trace elements are and kind of the amount to dose and based on a mixed reef, because I have everything from acropora to various different lps, corals, and mushrooms. You mentioned mushrooms earlier. You can't eat them, but no. June.

Why is everybody staring at me? I don't understand this.

Well, you mentioned mushrooms earlier.

Yeah, that was a long time ago.

I'm kidding. No, I'm not. So, what it does is certain things get drawn down, like iodine or manganese or zinc or boron bromine, those sort of things. So I've set them all up on auto dosing, and we kind of keep dialing in the amount of milliliters per day or per 24 hours to kind of keep those trace elements up. Most for the most part, when you do weekly water changes, you are kind of replacing your trace elements. But, again, because of the draw and the sheer amount of corals in the system, you have to keep on top of some of that.

You mentioned that you send in test to Germany, a company called triton. Why Germany? Why not some other internal testing? I'm assuming they do a better job, but is there other companies that can do it, or are you guys well, there is.

It's just how they test. They call it an icp, and I'm not exactly sure what that stands for, but it's really expensive equipment to pull that off. Actually, doing a test we ran with several different companies, tested the same water at the same time, and got back a variety of different results. None of them are even close to each other. So, for me, triton was one that they are. triton was built by aquarius to hobbyists, and Germany is a place where a lot of the technology that we use today comes from. And so it just seemed like a logical choice, and I think it's a matter of just picking one. I could have picked a local one and kind of stuck with them. But one thing about triton is they allow me to give me give me the amount of a certain trace helmet that I need to dose to bring it up to the right amount.

So it's not just results. You're getting recommendations on top of it.

Exactly.

Got you.

And how do you send that just as a water sample or how do you do that?

Yeah, they have two vials. Do you fill them up with the quarry water and ship them off?

And how long does it take to get there?

Well, usually that test is back within a couple of weeks.

Okay.

And that's why I like to keep up with it, because it changes so much that two weeks is two weeks, so I have to do it fairly often.

A lot can happen there in the aquarium.

I'm not saying that you have to do that in order to be successful. Reef aquarius. Because for me, I just go overboard with everything, it seems.

Yeah, you're pretty extreme.

I will say that.

A little bit out of everybody else's league, I'm happy to say.

So question is, have you ever decided just to see keep them on their toes and just like give them a urine sample instead when you send them to the mail?

That would be excellent. That's a great idea.

Hey, should do that.

I will give you one before I leave today.

Yeah. Really low in iron.

I don't know what's going on. Problem here? potassium high. Yeah.

Let me know if I got diabetes or something, would you?

Something your sugars are really out of this world. So just to try to explain how the the dosing works, you have a machine, it's a brand of Apex, is that correct?

Correct.

So it looks like I don't know how to explain this.

Mad scientist.

Think of you having small, you know, air pumps with two slots in the front, and each air pump has a label on it magnesium, calcium, whatever supplement you're trying to do. And there's like airlines connected to these, and it simply just draws more mixture, whatever you need to trickle into the tank on an automatic basis. So if it sees it low, it alerts you and just simply boost some calcium in the water.

Yeah, just to back up. I mean, to do a system like this even ten years ago, 15 years ago, would be really difficult. The advancement in aquarium automation and tools that you can use, because the advent of the internet and applications on your iphone and things that allow that. Part of that is just kind of understanding the program and understanding how to set them in. But it's all part of my cell phone. I can be anywhere in the world and adjust dosing and look at PH, look at temperature, look at different mechanisms. I have flow meters on, so I know much flow is going through certain things.

So you've been traveling in Florida and your phone alerts you that something crapped out in your tank.

Yeah, there's all kinds of alarms, for sure.

So what's like the worst alarm that.

You'Ve ever been scared with oh, boy. sampa is low, stomp is low.

It might be leaking to the floor.

Yeah, there's been some. Sometimes I'll go in there and I want to top it off. So I'll turn it on, then get distracted, go back in. Oh my God, I got water everywhere. And then I'll call ty, my friend, that helps me, and he we're both panicking and trying to tell me what to do, but so we have ty.

In the studio as well, just in case we have some technical questions we, we can't grab, but we're going to get ty. He is a custom tank builder. We'll get him on another podcast here in the future and get some of his expertise as well. But yeah, the back room. So we went through the supplements, then we keep going. And you have a nursery bed so that you made of acrylic. And again, it's just I don't know how many inches is that? Four inches tall?

No, it's probably I think we're at eight inches in there. And really that was used early on as corals come in to make sure there's not pests. So we did it as kind of acclimating the corals, really. We haven't added any new corals to the system for quite some time. So right now it's used as a we call it a frag tank. But it's more or less if there's a sick coral or it's in a bad area where it wasn't getting the proper flow. Seems to be struggling a little bit. We can move it back there, target feed it, try to get back to health. Some stuff I've got big hands, so sometimes you're reaching the tank and you break a branch off and okay, I got to glue it on something. Get it back room, get it in the back room and oops. Yeah, exactly.

What after you got this tank done and we gotta don't worry, we do have the covers building the tank because I think that's a story of itself.

Yeah.

So after you got the tank done, you wanted to get corals. How does one go out and pick a bunch of corals for a 2000 gallon tank? I'm assuming you go to shows.

Yeah, that was another thing. That was a huge eye opener for for me. My first show was only like three years ago. So when I built this, we had this tank, this 2000 gallon system. I had no idea that in the hobby. That was extremely huge. All my life well, I've been blessed enough to be able to have something like this. All I knew is when I sold my company, one day I'm going to have a big ass refloram, was in my mind. And so basically we measured out here and I go, yes, it's still over 20ft, so here's what we'll do with it. And we never really thought through how hard it would be to control flow on the tank and stuff like that. So really going back to building it and having it set up and the thought process going through it is just a whole nother a lot of things go into it, of course, and most of it isn't from me. I've learned that to be successful in things, you surround yourself with people that are smarter than you. And that's what I've done.

Perfect.

You mentioned coral. I'm sorry I got deviated off the track. So coral three years ago I went to a trade show. First trade show I went to was a magna. It's a worldwide trade show, but it was in New Orleans and you want to talk about an eye opener. I had so much fun walking around because being in the hobby as long as I was and walking through there was everything from fresh to salt water and so there was something for everybody there, which was pretty cool. So I started I met a lot of people along the way. If you're ever going to get in the reef hobby or you're in it, you know how important it is to have a trusted source that you get coral from. Just because pests can wipe out aquarium pretty quick, you might not even realize you have them until it's too late. So I think it's really important to have that. I do get a lot from Florida. It seems to be a hotbed of stores and those that bring in coral wholesale and things like that. Hard to fill up a 2000 gallon tank, but as you can see, I've done it somehow, but it just magically appeared in five years.

How many different varieties of coral do you have in there?

Oh, man. It's varieties of corals really hard. Obviously you break them into a couple of different categories. I have SPS or small polyp stony corals, lps, large polyp stony corals and then mushrooms. It's pretty much a variety that I have in there variety wise. I guess if you go through a name and that's the one thing when you're in the hobby, everything has a name, especially the Aquapora. I was showing you the home record and things like that. Some of those variety of corals I think there's probably, again, not breaking them into families, but there's got to be 700 different kinds of corals in there in terms of different ones, I guess.

That'S a hell of a collection. And you only did that and you said you started two years ago to shows and order it. So essentially three years time you have over 700 different types of coral.

Yeah, it was really and I have to hand this to ty because when we first set the tank up, we ran the lights at 7% just on blue for about eight to nine months. And the purpose of that was not to have any algae outbreaks. I think the first thing, like I said people do is they throw the lights in the tank, crank them up. They have their sandbed and pre and they have all kinds of issues. So we started out that way and we added corals to the system that were very easy to care for, a lot of lps that were very hardy corals that people like, and that's kind of how we started and eventually work your way into stuff that's more complicated. And that's what we've done. I had corals in their course prior to the show that I went to.

So to go into the lighting a bit, you have a very unique lighting system. So a lot of the tanks, you see freshwater tanks, they'll just have the easy hoods. Sometimes they're just the old screw and bulb. A lot of the leds have been working, but we don't really have to worry about a whole lot of spectrum of lights. We do like the label, full spectrum for a lot of these heavy planted tanks, but we don't have to worry about blue shading or making sure we're taking care of 18 different varieties of coral. Again, you have a bunch in there. So you have this unique lighting system. Can you tell us a little more about that?

Yeah, I think lighting obviously is very important. I think having a good spread of lighting is important. If you think about how the ocean is, if you've ever been snorkeling or anything like that, it's basically blue, and most of that comes from the sky. Somebody told me the other day that if you were to just make the sky black and have the sun, you'd have a lot of shading, right? So blue is really a key component. So having that nice even spread over the tank, there's 24 orphic lights over the tank. And we have a custom mount made to allow us to angle those lights if we need to. If something needs more light than others, you can get the right lighting and then using a power meter, a lot of times when I get a quarrel, I'll ask kind of what kind of lighting they have it in, so it's very similar when it gets here. And so you see the lot of the lps in the bottom of the tank because they can't take the light that the SPS can.

Just explain to the listeners, especially the listeners, that maybe only you fresh haven't seen a lot of these lighting systems. These are independent flats that are hanging suspended above the tank, well above the tank. And how you have the tank built is everything is encased in essentially a wood cabinet. So you have doors where you can access the lighting, go above the tank feed, address what you need to, and they're big enough where you can crawl up and into them. In fact, we were doing that earlier, just to look at the coral from a higher angle. But these are again suspended. You have them adjustable so they can go in any direction, but the amount of coverage you have on this lighting system is incredible. There's no spaces generally. You have this one strip going down the middle. It's literally as wide as your tank. These slats are going as long as well.

Correct.

So you have an immense amount of lighting. What percent you run them at now that everything's established?

Well, I can generally run the there's four channels on them, but I can run the blues and violet kind of stuff all the way up if I want. They can take about as much of that as you want to throw at them. The other two channels are really for more. How you want to see the tank, you have to add a little whites in. So you pick up the collars on the fish and stuff like that. So it's the you have to play around with it a lot. And the problem with the tank this big is just the changes happen, but they happen very slowly over a long period of time, and sometimes it's too late. The pendulum is swinging the other way. It's kept to catch it. So we've been very diligent about kind of gradually doing things as opposed to just all at once making changes.

So in the back room, how is the sump built? So you have how many gallons? Just alone is the sump?

I think we've figured about 200 gallons.

So explain the filtration process again. Everything that you have is just bigger that you would need for a normal reef tank. But just for beginners, what elements do you have in that sum for a reef tank?

Well, just to back up, I mean, the sump is actually under size for the size of the aquarium, and that's because we couldn't get anything bigger in the room. We kind of got the biggest one.

You do what you can, but I.

Think the key it's time to add on. I think the key to the sump is the ability to have nutrient export have redundancy. That's why you see two big pumps in there that bring for return pump. So if one does go down, I still have one. And the rock that's in there does provide filtration, of course, but it's also kind of a bonyard of rock that was in the tank. We don't need that one. We'll toss it in the back. I probably saw the mangroves growing in the sump. We do believe in a little bit of nutrient export board. I think if you were just to rely on man grows, we'd have to have a field of them. But we believe that every little thing helps. And we're not really relying on one certain thing to supply the tank. We're multiple ways of doing it just so we're not dependent on one certain thing. So filtration wise, we do have an allergy scrubber that runs 24/7 with lights on, and that's going to grow the allergy in the back control phosphates and nitrates with that. And then we, of course, have the filtration socks to catch a lot of that and as well as particles from the tank to keep it clean.

It makes quite nice light in the back, like a bright pink. I don't know if you've seen for our listeners, a lot of the salt water algae scrubbers, but brilliant pink light to try to sterilize.

Yeah, the lighting is more the spectrum of lighting is really important to grow algae. It grows better under certain spectrums, and if I don't have that spectrum in the main system, then I'll keep that out of there, hopefully.

So just to go over the layers. So in it, we call it, like, the stack of stuff that happens. So you have the chemical, biological and mechanical. Right? So mechanical is the sock chemical. You either supplement with the actual supplemental system do you use any other sterilizers besides what's in the algae scrubber?

Yeah, we run a uv sterilizer. I think that's important, especially for the fish. As far as any other systems, I don't know.

Well, that mangroves look cool.

Yeah, they look cool.

I mean, I saw that in there. Like, he's grown herbs in the back.

Guys.

Yeah, you guys are quiet.

Wow, I'm just so amazed how well behaved you are today.

I'm so well behaved.

It's early in the day.

You haven't beaten me with my stick.

Yeah, I'm going to punch in a throat later, but guarantee you that that always happens.

All right, you guys got to have some questions. Don't let me just dive in the sky.

I am just freaking mesmerized, to be honest. This is one of the most beautiful tanks we've ever seen.

I shrooms.

No shrooms today, dude. Some of the questions I had on this tank. How many days do you spend a week down here just working on this thing? I mean, this thing is immaculate.

Yeah. My wife so it's probably half a notch off of too much. No, I'm down here a couple of hours a day, probably. And for me in my life, I look at it as bubble gum for the mind. It allows me to get away from things and just kind of go into this other world that I have had a passion on since fifth grade.

I'm going to use that later.

Thank you.

Bubble gum for the mind.

So does anybody else in your family enjoy this as much as you are? You kind of all alone in this crazy world.

Yeah, I'm sort of all alone in this crazy world, for sure. My wife and daughter were. You spent so much time down there. I'm like, well, I'm 47 years old, playing with fish in the basement. Yeah, good point. Good point.

You need a mustache with that content.

The whole time, you're talking about going out to the trade shows, and my wife and I have been to several trade shows.

I've been to the.

Trade shows with ty and his wife heidi. And the whole time I'm just assuming that your wife just comes behind you and she keeps smacking the credit card out of your hand.

I mean, now she has no idea and she doesn't come with me to the shows.

All right, and so we're going to call this episode Secret Time.

Secret time.

Yeah. We're in the secret scooby doo room in his layer.

It's pretty sweet. So to describe the set up, you go down to his basement and he's got a bar set up right next to the aquarium. That a full bar. And then you go around and you have these, I don't know, giant they're like super sized railroad ties you have around the edge. And I think that's the most unique design. It allows you. People go up to the tank, they'll either try to lean on it, pressing the glass nope, you have the sweet bar, so you can lean on that with bar stools and just simply enjoy the tank. It's such a great idea. And it's not treated. There's no stain on it, so it can sit there and get splashed with salt water, not a road. It's genius design, I got to say. And then outside of it, you have this nice bar lounge area, so it's really great for entertainment. But we are in his secret room, so he's got this panel that goes you said scooby doo.

Well, so when they asked me when they built the home, I said I wanted a scooby doo room and they said, what's that? And I said, well, just a room that no one knows that it exists. So basically, it looks like the wall is there, you push it in and we end up inside of a poker room.

It's pretty great. You just pushed in the wall. Now we're in the secret poker room. It's got some great amenities and it's.

Worked out really well on here too, from a sound call.

Yeah, it's fantastic in this room.

Yeah.

We tried to do it out by the aquarium, but we kept echoing off the Glasgow figure and the last thing.

That I checked to make sure there's a doorknob to get out did you?

I didn't check. I should have. I really should.

I didn't want to be like scuba doom.

Well, part of that, when you were talking about the railroad ties, it's like a big reclaimed piece of wood, timber around the edges. And for me, I didn't want tapping any fishy. fishy tapping and distance from the tank was important, but also something that we could stand on to get inside the tank was part of that too. And having it all being kind of in a reclaimed it almost looks like the ocean, something you would see on one of the coasts.

It almost looks like wharf, like an.

Old wharf you see down the ocean.

Yeah. That is beautiful.

So some of the experiences I'll try to see if I can put both videos up. You take a picture of the tank and of course, the blue lighting. So you put a filter. It's simply a snap on thing for the camera and it allows to be seen with natural color to essentially remove the blue light out of it. And it turned out really, really well. You had a lot of people come in for videos and other details. Even said last week you had people come in.

Well, it was earlier this week.

This week got you. So the big thing that you did, and I don't know if this was your plan, is you do a lot of fragging because you have, again, 700 different types of coral. You have a lot, you know, over time you're going to have access. And that's turned into kind of like a small side, side hustle for you. how's that been?

So this is part of the trap and the hobby, and those of you that are listening, literally everyone, if you could just imagine being in a hobby, let's say it's baseball cards, and you had mickey mantle rookie card that every year would give you ten more mickey mantle rookie cards. And I collected baseball cards my whole life as well. But I can't when I buy a frag, I justify it because at one day I'm going to break off a bunch of pieces and get my money back for it. Good in theory, except I don't like cutting quarrels. In fact, it's you know, when the Edward scissor hands are in there chopping away, I kind of walk away or get out of the house. I can't stand it. But if I didn't do that, things would grow on each other and they kill each other, listing each other. They kind of like their own space.

So, yeah, you got a lot of different people coming in and purchasing corals, and you have a very unique place. Not even a lot of zeus are able to have this size of tank with reef. So what are some of your favorite coral? Because we can't just list out 700 different species. We'll be here all day. What are some of your particular favorite ones that you've collected over the five year span?

Well, I think it's like most people when they see an aquarium with coral or they see the coral for the first time, their favorites tend to be those that wave around in the flow. So they have a lot of movement to them, which is great. I started off with a lot of that stuff, particularly the Euphylia, ghana pora is another one. Just allow that look of flow and things in the tank. But as far as favorite corals, and they told me this when I got started, wait till you get into Aquapora. Like, I don't know if I'll ever get into Akropora, but of course I jumped in with both feet headphones. So Aquapora, I would say is my favorite. I don't know why more naming goes on there. So everything has a name, everything has the lineage, where it came from and just makes it fun because there's value in those quarrels based on that name. So I never knew again that that existed. But think again about the mickey Manner rookie card. You get a piece of Jason Fox home record, brick off a little piece, and it's several hundred dollars. Of course, I still haven't even come close to getting my money back out of the hobby. I have two goals, right? Keep it all alive. Number one, which makes me sick when I see something that does die, and number two is someday, some way in the future.

I don't know a single aquarius that gets deep into it without having to make some money. I'm going to breed these guys. We're going to sell them, we're going to go to a local pet store. I don't know anybody that does it, but at this scale, when do you think you're going to become, quote, unquote, profitable? It's funny when you see the math.

Because my daughter, my wife, we mentioned them earlier, kind of giving me crap. So it's my goal to pay for her schooling. College with fregs, the guys that were here earlier this week, I'm thinking the market value, retail value, is around 50 grand of corals they cut out of the tank. Kind of makes me, again, sick to my stomach because I like watching everything and seeing that in their pain. I know.

I'm trying to think of how much coral that is. Because you go to a mom and pop shop, they might have just a little bit of salt water in the back, and you're seeing these frags go for 1012, $20, $30.40 at most. So what's like the most expensive frag you sold?

Well, yesterday, if I were to take the top, let's say 20 frags that they cut out of there, the average of those top 20 are over 1000 apiece.

And how big is this frag? Just to get referenced, because we have listeners that never touch salt, salt water in life and fascinated by this, but.

Now we have a lot of listeners who are buying saltwater. Oh, yes, it's all over.

All the same. The frags are anywhere from a half inch to an inch. They're not very big. Wow. That's what I said. Wow. And I'm not saying it to have a big head that I buy big expensive corals. It's just that I've been blessed to be able to do those things and being in the hobby and loving the hobby as much as I do, I like the collecting part of it. I like having something rare and have it and keep it alive and grow it and then at some point trim it and have other people enjoy it too. And there's a lot of friends I have in the hobby that we do backup frags for each other in case their system goes down, they'll have another one. And so it's kind of one of those unwritten rules that you kind of do with your friends, that there's a.

Little competition in it too, isn't there?

Oh, yeah, for sure.

I mean, I've heard some stories from ty and how you guys like to see who can grow corals the fastest.

Well, it is it's a ton of fun. I've been competitive my whole life. I mean, I get sore playing ping pong.

It's just like a no shave November. Like you're just going to see like, give one month who can grow the longest coral.

It's funny. I have a group of friends, we did that the one sent out the exact size piece to everybody and then did a little contest to see who had the most growth on it.

Did you win?

Well, I kind of dropped out of the race.

Shame on you.

Only because I am not very good at taking pictures of stuff and it just kind of I don't know.

We expect more from you next year.

I know.

We'll document it. We'll put on our website Aquariumguys.com. We'll have some fun publicize it.

There's some amazing hobbyists, those that really understand what's going on from the chemistry perspective. And again, thank God I have ty because he's really helped me kind of keep the thing going the way it is. And without that, I wouldn't be sitting here having this podcast with you guys, for sure.

So going back to the cost of some of these frags, people think like, oh great, I made this money. But think of the other portion of this. There's a reason it's rare. It's not because it has the coolest colors, because it probably doesn't really exist in a lot of places. You being able to acquire these different frags, grow them in your tank, spread them off to other people. That's really protecting the species.

Correct.

And that's what you really have to focus on. Not a lot of people get to do that. And it's so amazing to see that succeed in such a rare environment.

When we think about the condition that the reefs are in and the fear behind losing the reefs around the world, I think the fact that these high end corals, which are really one in every thousand that are harvested, can actually be spread out throughout people and, you know, miraculous and kept alive, which is, I think, is pretty cool. So even though the reef, if it does go away someday, at least there's pieces and chunks and all spread out all throughout the world in people's homes or public aquariums and things like that.

Adam, just want to clarify. You're not allowed to use the same excuse for your endlers because they're feeder, gubbies.

Endlers are rare.

Those ones are rare.

If you say so.

You enjoy them. Just admit it.

Just an update on that. I do have like 35 extra that are going around. And now I'm having, because of people listening to the podcast, people are reaching out and contacting me. Do you cut endlers, bro? I'll take some endlers, please. They're like crack, so they're growing. Now, I just released all the babies in my 125 and they're definitely a quarter inch a week type conversation, so how dare you. I have herpes all across my tank.

Now they just reproduce and they'll keep going more and more and more.

They'll leave it over.

Yeah, well, getting back on track, the couple of things I want to go in the back room I thought was just interesting because you don't really think again, I'm a freshwater keeper. I have done a few saltwater. I don't dabble much. So this is an alien planet. I get to see your giant station and I just think it's so great. In the back room, you have a completely workstation you have a labyrinth of different types of foods, powders and supplements. And I'm just like, is that a diamond bone saw?

Correct.

Sure enough, you guys got the entire kit, so you can frag out anything in the back room. I just really don't take the logistics of doing that. So I'm looking in the back and you guys have a bunch of different tricks to frag some of these. So you can use light players to bend some off. You have bone cutters, you can just do a quick snip or the saw, if so needed. So again, you try to stay away from that as much as you can because you hate seeing them snip, tripped and cut. But have you had any issues fragging? Because again, I'm assuming you guys are fragging on a regular basis.

Yeah, issue wise, I don't think it's so much issues as it is just the work. There's a lot of work involved. As I was explaining earlier, especially with lps, you're looking to keep an eye, or one mouth, if you will, in at least one of the frags. And oftentimes if you frag things into, let's say, ten pieces, you might lose two or three in the process, for sure. Hopefully not all of them. Sometimes our fragging is done because we see a coral that is six, so we'll try to save what we can. And the quicker you can act on that, the better. And that's what's so hard about a big system, is that that's happening all the time. So if you're not staying on top of it, you just lose corals. And it's really not a time to be lazy. You have to get in there and do it. And by the way, I didn't say earlier that I wouldn't recommend and the size of aquarium for anybody, even if it was their dream tank, because it's you. Sure, it is ridiculously hard to maintain flow in a system that's over 20ft long and have flow like the ocean is, because they can't stand direct flow, constant direct flow. It has to be intermittent flow. And they'll thrive the best. They can take a ton of flow. And again, those that are listening understand what I'm talking about. It's like it's kind of the key to the whole thing.

So one of the things you described out there where we're sitting talking about the tank and seeing different pieces is you have power heads all over the tank. It is a very long tank. So when you're going through and you're trying to do flow coral, you're explaining they need a lot of flow, but not necessarily continual direct flow. So you have alternating heads across the tank. So imagine I don't know how to explain this they rotate coming from the top and literally just telescoping back and forth.

Correct. There's a company out there that makes a C sweep and a csuite coral. And depending on what you're putting on, the end of that is kind of that rotating, keeping the flow. And it's interesting because ty and I just last week were still adjusting flow. That's a never ending battle and trying to make sure that the pumps are working, because if you just have a few of them that have been out for a while, you can start to see corals that will start to die because they just haven't been getting the flow that they need.

And because of that flow, they need the flow towards them just to collect food. Correct.

Well, that in it takes blows debris off. If something does land on them, they can keep if you think about the ocean, the wave action is really what you're trying to accomplish. And again, I have some friends that go to Indonesia quite often and they say when they're down looking at the coral, they're hanging on the ropes and they literally their feet are hanging out like they're in a flag in a 20 miles an hour wind. So when they told me that, it makes a lot of sense. That's the ocean. But again, they can tolerate about as much as you can throw at them as long as it's intermittent.

It's a hurricane came in the tank. You see some of these small anemones in there. When it's oscillating, it's like an oscillating.

Fan, basically what it is.

And it's all over the tank in all directions and just watching the fish keep up with it because again, you have an array of fish, but even like the small damsels, they'll get sucked in it and they know how to convene as it moves. It's a real incredible deal. But, yeah, that must have been, again, continually adjusting. You figure you get some flow because you're pushing water from one end to the other, essentially. Correct.

Yeah. And that's carrying out, having that nutrient export going through the sump in the back and having that constantly turning through there. The other pumps in the tank are really meant to just keep moving. What's in there around circulating, and again, that intermittent side of it for the coral.

How many gallons per hour does your sump push?

Well, I would say around 4000.

That's incredible. 4000? Well, if you do the math, you want double per hour, so that's exactly the measurement of any other tank.

But how do you really know what that is? I wouldn't think do they make a tool so we know exactly how much we have? That being more of an educated guess based on the gallons per hour that the pumps say that they can do and the percentage that they're running, that's.

Basically what you have to rate it as the pumps. Anything else is I don't know how you would measure that. Put a weird pendulum blade in the tank and just call it good.

But they have flow meters.

Yeah, they have flow meters, but in that size of a tank, when you're making a bunch of waves, you'd have to do it somewhere. The intake, it's like the internal. You measure off the basis of all those pumps.

So there's two times internal so through the sump, two times an hour right inside the tank. It's ten times that amount based on basically the seven closed loop pumps and then the seven internal pumps as well.

Got you going back to the frags. How often do you frag?

About every three months. But if you say how often do you frag, how often do you go nuts? And how often is it just because you break a piece or you're moving stuff around, or it just needs to because it's growing into another one? That happens pretty regularly, I mean, and almost weekly.

So how often per week do you say you have to, you know, frag out?

I think we're we're doing at least once a week to some extent.

Like how many frags once a week?

Maybe a half a dozen to a dozen. Although on Tuesday and Wednesday, there was 500 frags cut in the tank.

So that would be like once every three months for the extreme cut.

Extreme, because it would take that long for things to kind of grow back and heal up, produce more frags, I guess.

So it's incredible to think that the picture that you're seeing is after the extreme frag, and there's still that much in there that really is something to fathom. So I'd like to get a picture sometime before you do that extreme cutting, just to have a comparison. Left to right. Here's this mangrove jungle. And then here's still a full tank.

After we're done, and it almost looks like you haven't really touched it. And I will send you some pictures, too. We had several frag racks that we had inside the tank. We had two racks that hold 200 frags, so we had 400 acropora cut, and then, of course, we had lps, pectina and mushrooms. We had all kinds of stuff that were cut perfect.

Now the guys that came down and grabbed all the frags from you. You're explaining it to us, how they came down and did this and tell them how they take them back to their place.

That's scary. Number one, they cut them all in less than 24 hours. They took them back pack, which, for me, I was kind of panicking because I'd like to have a couple of weeks for them to really kind of get back and heal a little bit. It was a little bit of a challenge. There was three of them that were here working. They went back with three yeti coolers that were just the right size to have as a carry on. And then one backpack yeti cooler wouldn't have had it been yeti, but it was nice because it kind of holds the temp much better in there, and the soft sides are leak proof. So when you have them in there, if you do have something that leaks or whatever of all we basically had think of a small cup with a cover on it that you can put three frags in every cup, and then you just load up the they had a little interesting time going through the airport. You go through security. I mean, there's not many people see somebody coming through with 400 plus frags. So they had all the cups sitting out and everything. They tested a few of them, and then they're on the plane with them and get back and then put them in their systems.

They're looking at you like, no, it's not drugs, but I've don't know what it is. It's glowing.

Well, I was lucky enough because one time I went through with some frags going into a show, and the guy through TSA had his own reef tank, so his head was right. He couldn't believe it, so he knew.

What he was looking at.

Did you just give him, like, one.

Extra one so that he right through? Yeah.

Here you go, buddy.

Just take it.

Here's a little frag. Just the first one is always free. Then they always charge you for the next one.

That's right.

That's how they get you hooked.

Lisa didn't get you with the rubber glove. That's all that matters.

True. Very true.

He didn't fly schmelta. That's why he had such a great time.

We haven't hammered on Schmelta Airlines today.

It's been an entire episode since we've said anything bad about them. Yeah, schmelta, not delta. Not to be confused.

We could not no, I understand that. They're all petri dishes at the end of the day.

Right.

Thanks. I got to fly here a couple of months.

I'll be thinking about that as I'll.

Be using the bathroom in there. So do these guys come up every time and do the fragging for you or sometimes. Do you travel with them?

They do sometimes. I travel most of the time they come up, and again, they do a lot of online auctions getting quarrel from someone like them is very important, and people know it because it's pest free, and they do a lot of processes to make sure that it happens. So I've gotten a lot of pieces that I've gotten from them that have grown out, and you wouldn't think about it, but they're fairly easy to move. People are pretty sought after, especially now. Again, I talk about online auctions and stuff, but that's really been the craze people get on. They've had 900 people at a time sitting in and auctioning off corals, and it's pretty interesting.

So I want you to flex a little bit for our audience, right, or our super nerds. What are like, you know, your four or five most, you know, sought after corals?

Well, I have a reef raf. Canada bleeding avengers. And I have that's just a great name.

Yeah.

I have two guys coral Acrolandia.

Is that kind of like five guys sandwich shop.

I have matt V is another great hobbyist. He's got some of the most sought after coral, so I have several of his, including his looney tunes, which is very rare.

We need to buy this naming, though.

I bought a piece of crust for $1,000 and put crust it wasn't even a frag. I'll just take the crust. But I've managed to grow the crust into a colony, which is great. And again, I'm still fighting to get my money back on it.

I'm going to sell you a rock off your beach here a little bit, because it sounds like $1,500 for a crust.

For a crust. And then one of the corals that I have in there and it's interesting how the naming of a coral can sell the coral, right? Because some of them just have stupid names, and they're $50 for I'm buying.

Looney tunes because it's looney tunes.

I know there's one jason Fox is another great hobbyist, sells a lot of quarrels. He has his Jason Fox homewrecker, and that's the one that it's the home record. The one if you brought your wife to the trade show, they'd wreck your home.

But this is from experience, obviously.

Well, it's what makes it fun, too. And people's say, God, if I can only get a piece of that one day. Again, I go back to being blessed to be able to afford things like that or to find them. Because I've had to hunt coral down. I've heard of it, I see a picture of it, and then I try to find who has it and some of that. There's only two or three of us that have it.

That's half the fun, isn't it, to try to trace down something that is so rare and you just want it just to have it.

Well, in another coral, like, think about names. There's reef. raf. Canada. Angry birds. Well, angry Birds. And it does look like Angry Birds. I mean, it's kind of a cool name. Again, those of that understand the hobby. So I love the piece of Angry Birds, you know, where I can get.

One, but I feel like this has been discovered recently because one was Angry Birds done like ten years ago. So they discovered it, they named Angry Birds, or it just was a name, and then they just renamed it Angry.

Birds because, well, everything has a scientific name, and then they give it a name that makes it sell. And people like Angry Birds and that coral has been around, of course, six, seven years or whatever. It's interesting because you go out to Indonesia, where a lot of these acropore come from, they bring them in and depending on the amount of nutrients and light, they get them to color up. And all of a sudden somebody recognizes a new piece. And Indonesia has been shut down for the past couple of years almost, and it's just now opening back up. So I can't imagine the new stuff that's going to come in.

Are you traveling there soon?

I don't think I could, no. Well, I'm just saying just because of the food thing. Food always have issues. When I go abroad, don't eat rat.

No, you got to worry about like, the water and everything when you go overseas.

Yeah, well, when you go there, if you go there for a week, that's really not even close to long enough, because it takes you two days to get there and two days to get back. And then you're hanging out in Indonesia, going out to these places. And when Steven told me of my friends that he was hanging onto a rope so he didn't blow away, and I could just about imagine me, I can't swim very well, so hangs onto a rope. I don't want my friends to call my wife and say, your husband just blew away into the ocean somewhere. Just doesn't appeal to me too much.

The way I like to float in the ocean. We go snorkeling every year when we go on our cruise and stuff. I find that if you drink half a beer and put your thumb over the bottle, it will keep you floating.

That's awesome.

Try it out. I'm a big guy. I do use two beers, but it works out pretty good for me.

Perfect.

Don't use that as a life preserver. Just want to put that we're going to get sued from that.

I'm a trained professional, dude. I know how to drink beer in the ocean.

So if you guys need tips, call Jimmy. We have a hotline on our website, aquariumguys.com ask. More beer tips.

Yeah.

There we go.

So let's talk about the construction of the tank. So you had an idea. I want a sweet kick ass reef tank. How did you start you just start googling it. How did you get a hold of ty?

Well, so before I could even begin to think about that, I had to find somebody. To help me with it because it's way overwhelming. And so I found Ty. At first I'm super skeptical because we are in, you know, brainerd. And I, I knew they had a tom's pent and hobby used to be.

Here and well, how could we get an expert that just happened to be in the middle?

You know, that's the hometown Minnesota. That's the thing I think is, is so unique about this is that there was somebody actually knew what they were doing and the amount of questions I asked and his answers to it and he, his knowledge was way beyond what mine was and so I felt super comfortable. But again, if you're going to be successful at anything, you have to have people around you that are smarter than you. And I think Ty, the same time, I mean, how many people have built a 2000 gallon reef tank? So you need to have outside expertise. And we did, we sought out quite a few ty had good connections and put it together. How are we going to put in the closed loops? How we're going to do that? Where are they going to be located? Because again, it's all around flow. So how do you design something that big that's going to be sustainable, I guess.

So he was your first real contact and you decided he had some expertise. Let's give this a try and hey Ty, let's see what you can put together for a design.

Yeah, that's exactly how it was.

That's fantastic. So from the design perspective you're like, I want this tank no bigger. How about this tank no bigger.

No, I think we came down, I mean, I basically took a tape measure and I said, yeah, we can just run it out here because again, it's so being so naive that I just wanted a huge tank. It was my dream, right? But I never really knew because keep in mind it was in my home for two years before I even went to a trade show. And when I was talking what it's been that way everyone that finds out about it, I guess, because I didn't realize the extent that it was compared to the rest of the hobby. It's just a very rare thing.

I think what you could probably name your tank is the Holy crap tank. Because everybody comes down here goes holy crap. Obviously this is something way beyond most hobbyists. This is probably better than a lot of small zoos.

Even large zoo.

Even large zoo.

Even large zoos. This is beyond anything that I've ever seen and we've seen a lot in all the years.

While the budget that you would have to have too in a public setting, you have a lot of the same, I guess the type of coral, but not necessarily the rarest type of that coral, you know what I mean? So it'd be hard for them to do that, right?

You have to have either someone like donate pieces, and then you have to have the staffing.

And I have some pieces in there. That one we call the death spiral. I bought it from one frag. It's a monty that just grew into this thing that you can't even get your arms around it now. So that's something that's probably going to end up at a public aquarium, public reef aquarium, because it's just too out of control right now.

Have you donated any of your rare.

Corals to different aquariums? Not yet. Not yet. There is some definite pieces that I think would be great. I do have a second aquarium that has over 100 design clownfish in it and a sunburst and enemies that have continued to split in it. I think you guys mentioned you like to go see that. Yeah, but that's again, the idea of certain things in my aquarium are going to just grow out of bounds. You have no place to go with it. And then rather than throw it in the garbage, you got to make sure that because what am I going to do with it?

Well, they're unique pieces a lot of times.

Yeah.

You said you couldn't even get your arms around it. Well, you can't really frag that and you're losing the integrity of the piece.

Well, you could because well, integrity from how it looks when we say spiral, you can just see, you can visualize it being spiraled. And you've probably seen some of that same type of coral, but maybe not that color. And I think that's a beautiful piece for someone.

So that would be a great centerpiece for heck.

Yeah.

So back to the building process. So you had a vision. You want it this big, you try to design it. And how long did building take start to finish?

Oh, I would say it was a good year and year and a half maybe, of the design and pumps and kind of getting it to the point of and again, going back to the initial stages of it, because I'm sure there's a lot of listeners saying, I think this is a really cool hobby I should look at getting into. I've been in freshwater my whole life, and just the thought of everything that you do, you have to do very slow, very methodical, take your time, because anything you do and try to rush into it, throw a bunch of stuff in there, it doesn't really matter. It has to take time because it has to just create its own, I don't know if it's lifecycle, if you will, ecosystem. Exactly. I think that's a key part of that. And mentioned earlier that we let the lights on like 7% at the peak for eight months before actually turning the lights up enough that a coral can actually live with the carbon source.

So just to go over this 2000 gallons aquarium, in the perspective of freshwater, it's not necessarily that big of a big of aquarium. Big, rich. I think they turned a pool into an aquarium. They have a single stand up aquarium that's like 4400 gallons. But for reef, you really just don't see that, because, again, you already described a lot of the problems that you don't see. The flow alone is the biggest issue for you. So you put it in, you installed it, and a year and a half. I'm assuming that was a lot of changes and learning experiences along the way, that it's not just one guy coming in and trying to install it in two months, maybe we want to do this. There's a lot of thought process. I really want this. And there was some change to it, correct?

Yeah. In freshwater, you have a lot more forgiveness because you're not really dependent on so many different trace elements. I mean, just the cost of maintenance alone of the size of the tank kind of make it out of bounds for most people, just because, I mean, I just CO2 media that I have to help pull or help raise PH. I have my skimmer pulling that air through the CO2 media. I mean, we go through 100 and $5200 a month and just CO2 media none of the calcium, magnesium.

What is the CO2 media?

CO2 media, it's a medical type of media that when you pull, it pulls CO2 out of the air. Basically, think of it as a filter. So you're pulling air through it, it's capturing the CO2, and it indirectly helps with the PH in the aquarium.

A lot of maintenance and upkeep. So when you started and again, you put 7%. How was the start up, the first two years? Because you said three years ago is when you started getting a lot of the different corals. So that first two years, what was your first creatures? What did you learn? Was there anything that went wrong? Because when I started tanks, I'll get certain species that don't work with different species. I'll get some weird algae bloom I've never heard of. How was that first start up for you?

Well, again, it goes back to ty's experience of doing everything slowly. So the thing without too much light in the tank, I have to go crazy on something. So I started with fish, and it seemed like the more beautiful the fish are, in a lot of cases, come from deeper water. So I had several fish that come from 400ft down, and when you come from that deep in the ocean, that water is much colder. So you bring that those fish here, and now you have them in a you know, they're going from 60 degrees to 75 degrees, 78 degrees. Their metabolism metabolism changes. They do grow very quickly, but they don't last as long because of that. So I think certain fish, I mean, I I can't even I wouldn't even want to say how much money I've lost in fish. Just because of that. It's unbelievable. But we've had a chance to experience some of the most beautiful fish in the world. And now that I know that I have to stick to things that I know that are going to live long term, otherwise they may as well just stay in the ocean.

And again, now your goal is the actual coral reef. So you're looking for things that help make sure things are keeping starfish away.

Cleaning, it's a never ending battle. I remember having aptasia, which I think of them as an enemy, but they become a pest because they sting corals and they populate very quickly. And I remember it first happened to me, I saw one, I'm like, oh, that's kind of cool because I didn't know anything. And then it's alive in the tank.

Jen was saying when she was saying like, ooh, what's that? That's kind of cool.

What happened was I thought it was cool and then I got a few more and then it was like microwave popcorn right at the end when it's going nuts. And they were all over my tank. So you go in the store and what do I do to keep we need a pet peppermint shrimp. So I get a peppermint shrimp, but then find out it's the wrong peppermint shrimp. You get this other ways, other solutions to squirt on them and try to juice. I was going to say you like cow clother? Yeah. You can do all these things to try to get rid of them. And the thing that I found that and I go, there's got to be something in the wild that eats them. And so sure enough, I found these nude bronx that all they eat in wild is aptisias. And you put them in there, it takes a long time because they have to multiply, but they literally consume every one of them in the aquarium. And we've done that in here. But with the sheer number of rasses, it's basically just putting a bunch of host of snowballs in there where they just mud candy. Yeah.

And the thing I want to point out is in a tank this size, when you put something in the tank, you're not going to net it out. I mean, there is no way to catch a fish in there other than.

How do you do it, you're completely wrong.

Really?

Well, what I did, because I love fishing, I grew up fishing in Minnesota, so I ordered hooks from China that catch ornamental fish with them ranging from a half inch to two inch. So we had this issue, so many rasses and they basically took out my cleaning crew, specifically the crabs, because they like crab legs. Apparently that sounds expensive. So without the competition of the crabs, we started getting these Esterina starfish that are these little tiny starfish, little hard starfish, and like they're cool except when you have hundreds of thousands of them that I have. So the next thing is what eats starfish? So I bring in we said, well, we got to bring in some harlequin shrimp because that's all they eat is starfish. Well, the problem is I still have the rasses because they like to eat shrimp, too. Ty goes, I don't know what we're going to do about that. Well, I called him the next day and I said, I got six of them out of there. What? And you can imagine when you try to get one of them out, they're like living caves and things. You pretty much have to take everything out of the tank to get them out of there. But I use these little tiny hooks, literally. You can hardly see them, and especially with my eyes, the way they are. And you tie them. I just tipped them with like a piece of mice shrimp, stick it in there, and of course, everybody wants to go around it. I got 200 damsels trying to get it, too, so I had to do it just right, and they would hit it and I'd pull them out.

So your family has to be sitting there around you're wearing a fishing hat, you got the vest on, you got a bucket next to you, and you're you're like, let's do it. And you're like, dad, are you fishing right now?

Yeah, it is. They laugh at me. But there's sometimes you get to realize the tank is really I think of it as harmony or a culture in the tank, right? And you could drop a real dickhead in the tank and it just ruins it for everybody else. And I've had that happen. I put fish in there and they don't have people. I call them people. The other fish can't even stand to be around it. They'll still eat, but it's not as harmonious as it would be. That's just one that I and it's nice because I have sources to bring them to if I need to, but there's just certain ones. You see, there's a pretty big tang in there. I don't know if it's a volume in or what exactly it is, but it's a huge tank. It's huge. It's like a foot long. Yeah, I had another one in there that was about that same size, more in the shape of a sunfish kind of thing. That was a little bit interesting because I actually used a bigger jig that I would use in the lake. I thought I had my drag set. That thing ripped it so, so fast that I thought I had the bale open. And all I could hear and was running around the tank, around rocks and stuff with this jig in its mouth. And luckily it shook the jig loose. I'm like, oh, thank God I don't have a fishing here with a jig hanging out of its mouth. She's just like a little weighted hook. But anyway. And then I moved up to a treble hook with fire line and it bent the treble hook straight.

So for those that don't know what fire line is, it's a braided essentially. It's fishing line that's braided into a cord so it can't snap unless you like bite through it.

Yeah. So I bent the treble hook straight. Then I had to go up to the next size treble hook and then eventually I couldn't catch him with a fish line and they're just based on the dynamics of the tank.

But you figured by this time he'd learn.

Well, what I ended up doing is taking a big net and I kept feeding with that for a period of about two months. Eventually the fish were going in and out of the tank.

You had to deal with them for two months trying to get them out of there.

And that thing would chase fish around in there. It was just a pit. But eventually I got him out. I'm going to mount him.

I was just going to say are you?

Yeah, he's in the freezer.

That's going to be I have no.

Place to bring him. I mean I can't even can you.

Think of a taxidermist that take a tropical fish and give it a go?

Probably we'll find one. Yeah. Enough money though.

We'll send it to German bows.

Just send it to Germany.

Germans are nuts.

Put a little pea sample with it and be like I want you to test this and I want you to mount that.

Don't get them mixed up. So yeah, like a regular net. It would be a half a day just to try to catch a damn damsel in there. It really would.

Oh yeah. And that big fish too. When I got him out, I mean he flip flopped on the floor and I didn't know what to do.

Punt him.

Just kick him. It was crazy. You thought something major happened in the house the way that thing was flying around on the floor. And I don't say that because I know it sounds kind of bad. He didn't mean to be in my tank. He got put there. Got caught. But again I had nowhere to go with him and I thought, well I wrapped him up like I would if I went to Canada and caught a big walley or something and wrapped him up in a towel and he's in the freezer.

Yeah. You get something that large that could destroy thousands of dollars of coral and just by its sheer size.

Well what? Because you'd spook them and they'd run through the acros and look like a frag flying around and it just wasn't fun.

And most people don't have a saltwater tank big enough like even 2000 gallons in a saltwater. I'm going to say it's probably one.

Of the larger saltwaters.

I don't know of anybody that much.

Less reef.

Yeah, much less reef. See I've been playing around so much with trying to catch him that I didn't necessarily pick the night I was going to do it. He just happened to go into the you know so here it is. It's 10:00 at night. How am I going to bring him to the Mall of America, like even keeping this thing alive overnight because I don't have a bucket. I mean, it was just one of those things. Things.

Was there any beer involved in this?

Oh yeah.

Okay, just checking.

They're sponsored by mcgolden Light. One of the things I want to talk about is a little bit of pest control. So you were explaining and I feel the same way anytime you talk to any experienced hobbyist, everybody has their own tricks or something they've learned along in the hobby that's pretty unique and extremely time saving. And one of the things was the coolest thing of pest control. Can you tell us a little about that you were just doing with us earlier?

What specifically? Oh yeah, I don't want to talk to spoil it. Well, here's the thing. So we talked about Aptasia earlier and again, the ways of getting rid of Aptasia. I just happened to load up the tank at one point here with a couple of hundred peppermint shrimp and then I would go in with a laser. It was like a nine watt laser, which won't affect the acrylic or anything. And I go in and I, and I burn them and they crackle, snap and pop. And then later on that evening they get the remains, get eaten by a shrimp.

It's it's amazing.

So it is the coolest thing ever.

He has a freaking laser beam.

Yeah.

So what they did is I had a shark's head.

You got a freaking shark's head.

You talked to some of these guys that gave you the idea and you had a special laser built. So what they have is you see the security guards in the mall comp, they had those magn lights, those heavy metal flashlights. So they did is they modified the flashlight. They have an insert so instead of a light bulb, they literally have the blue laser on the top. And they're powered by these big little bigger than lithium ion batteries.

They look like a diesel battery. They're about that size.

So if any listeners are on it's basically the exact same kind as for vape pens. The big vape units that you get from a specialized vape store. They're rechargeable. They give a lot of watts when you hit the button. And we have to wear glasses, orange glasses just to protect from reflection because when you're shooting this laser, we have to make sure that you're doing at the correct angle. The reflection isn't going to hit anything because if you do, it could burn you your skin.

I have a few shirts that I burn holes in my hands then burnt because of the reflection. So generally I like to have a couple of people when we do it to say, hey, where's the reflection at? So we know where it's at. So I'm not going to burn the house down. What's that?

That's my eyebrow.

Ty's eyebrow? Yeah.

It's always too late, too, when you realize that you're already burnt, you already got a hole. This is unreal.

You go to the doctors like you have skin cancer in the weirdest place.

I don't know what's going on, but it's been great. There's other pests, of course, you can use with it, but it's a way to keep the population down. And if I burn ten to twelve a week or every other week, I keep the population of the apt asias down that way.

Have you ever tried to laser, like, a moving target, like some starfish that's wiggling around?

No, but I've tried to burn the asteroid and is off the glass. Those little starfish probably does it work? Well, it does, but it takes a long time for some reason. And then with the hundreds of thousands of them, I mean, I don't have the time to sit and burn starfish.

Well, then you have to be careful because you have acrylic glass now. The glass is clear, there's no fong to it, so it's safe to shoot a laser through glass. But if you have something on it, you're heating the object on the glass, which could potentially melt the acrylic. So you have to be very careful. You're doing things on the object in the tank.

If you do, you can Google this stuff. And sometimes people have videos of it or whatever. And I just thought it was the most unique way because it's one of the most annoying pests in the hobby, because everybody seems to get them. They seem to ride in on a coral. Many don't even know what they're there. A lot of times people try to pick them. They'll have something, they'll kind of go in there and stir it around. And that's the worst thing you can do because now you just you're spreading it big time.

Have you ever tried it, like, outside? Like in a hornet nest or something? I think that'd be kind of fun.

No. What? I've gone to a football game and I was burned in the back of a guy's head while he was walking. No, I didn't look at him. Holy crap. It was the opponent. I've shot it across the lake. But again, you're not allowed to have one like that. I mean, I don't think the Air Federal faa they call it or whatever, would be real happy with that.

Yeah, you're not shying. It up in the air.

It's unbelievable. I can go all the way across the 10,000 acre lake and shine it on a building if I want.

It's pretty incredible. They have lasers that they've actually used for military contract service. The Navy, was it three years ago, had these lasers installed and they're literally militant lasers and they cost like nothing to shoot because it's just the power for the laser itself. And they're using it because it actually would work as a small gun.

Right.

I can't wait to get home to see if I can purchase one of these. And it costs you, what, around $120?

Yeah, something like that.

I can't wait to give this a try at home and see what's if I can do black beard algae or something in my fresh water tank.

Or let's take out your drone and I'll fly your drone around and you can try to knock it out of the air.

All those will knock it out of the air because they had riots in santiago and a bunch of people had like, the laser pointers and they aimed like 20 or 30 of them at the drones and the police drones, and it actually knocks the drones out of the sky. I watched a video of it. It's actually really cool because nobody knew that it would happen until a bunch of people started doing it.

And it messes with either their IR those are the ones that are per police, the ones that aren't IR, then it would be a different story.

But your friends are twisted.

So many people now are just listening to us. They expected fish conversation and now they're looking up drones and freaking laser beams.

Yeah, it's all over on a shark.

And we're going to get that mole removed on your butt cheek there, Jimmy.

When I saw that laser, I did say to Sean, I said, I spent all this money on a bisectomy and I can probably come over here and had it done for nothing, you know?

Yeah, I mean, he is skilled. He has a good aim.

Yeah. I'm not too sure, you know, if he stayed at at a Holiday Inn Express last night. You know, maybe he is a doctor. We don't know.

Yeah, okay, I'm a pause you there. You made this joke a couple of times. Holiday in Express. I had to google it. Sure enough, it was a commercial. A big meme for a while. So he didn't know that you were a skilled member. You know what?

The next thing, I'll show you what a phone booth is. We'll go over that again.

They don't even have phone booths anymore. No, those are superman to change in, all right? That's what they're exclusively made for. I don't know what the phone part is for, but we'll get to there.

You young kids know nothing.

My grandma had a rotary table of foam.

Yeah, she probably whacked you alongside the head with it too.

He told me. Do you see this, Sean? This is the abuse I have to take on the podcast.

Well, I think that's what makes podcast as good as it is.

And you know the nice thing about a podcast? You can't see the bruises.

That's true.

It's all good orange and a socket of sock. Yeah.

If you feel as threatened as I do, go to the aquarium guyspodcast.com at the bottom of the website. Call us and just check in on us to see if we're okay.

Do you feel safe at home? No.

So, Adam, you've been quiet over there, buddy. Come on, give him the questions. You're holding back.

Well, no, I was just amazed because he's got a black zebra tang, and that's a rare fish. But the harlequin shrimp, nobody keeps those. I mean, they try to keep him alive in captivity, but they don't live very long. How long have they been alive in your tank? I'm more of the fish guy, so sorry.

Quite a while. The thing is that I've had harlequins before. Again, they only eat shrimp, so most people buy like, a chocolate chip starfish and they'll put it in the tank. And the cool thing about the harlequins is that they keep that chocolate chip or that starfish alive while they're consuming it so that starfish will stay alive for a few weeks. You'll see them work together to flip it over, and they actually inject it to slow it's, whatever, down metabolism so they can consume it because they won't eat it when it's dead, but they'll keep that thing alive for a few weeks so they can consume it. It's pretty cool.

That's creepy.

That's all like my steak.

But right now so think about the asterinas are super small, right? We're talking like really tiny. I don't know if it's like potato chips for them in there. I don't know. But Thai spotted one the other day and he said it's the biggest one he's ever seen. Well, that's a big one. Yeah.

So, yeah, you see that? And that's like, right up there with zoo level or even better than zoos or tropical.

Well, the goal is to try to mimic the ocean, right? Everything that you can do that they need. And if you do that right, I think you can get pretty much everything to survive.

So I was going over, I was telling you about the fish spawning, and it looks like you have several tang species that have paired off, and the mandarin gobies have paired off. And I was at a talk, and this guy had talked about being at the Georgia Aquarium. And the Georgia Aquarium, the fish, like you can actually set your watch to their spawn times. So, like, the zebra or yellow tangs would breed at like 845, and they'd have like a 30 minutes window and he could watch this huge group of yellow tangs just breeding. And then from 915 to 930 or 945, it was this other species of tank. You've never noticed any of that? Is that an idea you're going to try to look at?

Well, I never really even thought about that, to look for that. I just know that there's some goofy stuff that happens right before the lights go off. Closing times, everyone's trying to. Pair up and you have to go ugly early to avoid the rush. Oh, God.

Yeah.

No, I'm just kidding. We've had a lot of the snails that have done that. You'll see that spawning take place in the tank, which the corals love. They eat that right up.

Have you noticed any of your corals trying to spawn, like, some of your mature corals, or have you never gotten.

Them to no, I haven't. That level of fish spawning and coral spawning, it's just something I haven't had a lot of experience with or really know much about. It would be pretty cool, though. Have a home record baby pop up on the other side of the tank. I don't know.

I have seen that you have coral magazine. You're a subscriber to it.

Yeah.

Have you been reading their breeding articles? Because every year they seem to come out with more and more rare saltwater fish that they're breeding.

Yeah, I think unless the size of the system I would think if I was interested in having a certain thing and some have never bred in captivity, others have or do I think it depends on how much other varieties of fish so they feel like it's kind of their area. They feel a little safer doing it, I guess, versus safer doing it.

But underneath the club, underneath the stairway, safer there than out on the dance.

With the lights off. Right corner pizza. I didn't own her pizza.

Your whose daughter they open up the box. It's nothing but frags.

Yeah.

So what is the ultimate goal, besides are you planning on keeping I understood about some of the stuff we can only see in captivity right now. It's so super rare is that your goal is to keep a wide variety of the rarest of the rare and have that as like a backup colony to give to a zoo or anything?

Yeah, I think if you look at just the sheer amount of stuff that's in there to have them and those that have been in the reef keeping understand how hard it is to keep a mixed reef, which is really the spectrum of various different corals and coral types. I've had this on my mind for quite a while based on the size of some of the stuff that grow, especially the plating stuff just goes out of control. But I don't really have an ultimate plan for that other than I know that it's going to happen. And we're getting close on a few of these pieces in here now that I just simply would rather create more room for other stuff instead of having something that's the size of a 22 inch tire.

Yeah, some of them are huge.

So when you donate something like that to a zoo, how do you move something that large?

Well, that's part of the challenge. Every shipment of coral, every ship, we keep the boxes of big styrofoam, so I don't even know if we have something that size. So Ty is probably thinking but I would guess in that particular piece we would probably take a 45 to 55 gallon garbage can, fill it up halfway with salt water and drop it in there and put it in the back of the truck with a lid and maybe a heater or something just to get it somewhere. It depends on the time of year.

Sounds like a great tax write off to me.

Oh yeah, I would think so.

Exactly.

Yeah, just call a big rich and be like no, you have to rent a U Haul. Put two guys in the back and fill prime. Fill it with prime.

Yeah, prime is key.

Have you been able to fish breed continually in your tank?

Well, I think a lot of people, if they have cardinal fish, they're probably one of the most prolific breeders in captivity. Because it seems like every so often I've got a bunch of little ones in there. Somehow they make it through. They go buy pumps that are sucking at 4000 gallons an hour, make it by somehow and then we end up with a few of them. We put them back in that frag tank, I'll feed them back there and then Thai may have a home for it or something. If we can get it to go on. It seems to be everybody loves that. You see a little baby back there? Really? That's cool.

Baby bang eyes, right?

Just the bang eye. Okay. Yeah.

You ever see check your filter sock and be like, oh, there's a bunch in here.

Oh yeah, for sure.

Just like come on kids, pick them out.

Have you done a little fake urchin so that they have something to school around and then maybe they'd go out to that?

I haven't done that. But I hear in the wild that's what they do. That's where the babies are to protect themselves from getting eaten. But you seem to be really into the breeding. How many kids do you have?

I have four.

Oh nice.

I know, right?

He's a father of four who charges his kids what is it? Dad tax?

Dad tax on candy is Halloween only.

Okay, that's funny.

You're an ass man. Just telling you, give your kids snickers, they deserve it. No, that's why he's on a schedule. Because all his breeding, it happens at like 09:00 p.m. When he's playing stevie Wonder upstairs and just all his tanks go crazy and.

The kids are somewhere where there's a bunch of spikes I can't get at them.

They're all hovered around the vacuum cleaner at home.

Wait, do we just do another old reference to an old artist? We got to play it right here. I love you. Oh yeah, that was a sweet that probably made me that's what happened.

Really? Yeah, just happened, man.

Stevie Wonder, he's just sitting there blind and smiling because he knows things.

Every time I think of stevie Wonder. I go right back to the guy. I used to imitate him all the time. Come on, help me out on Saturday night live. Eddie Murphy, I left it for you there. Eddie Murphy is going to be back on Saturday live here in the next couple of weeks, thank God. And he's bringing back a lot of those old characters. So nice shout out to Saturday night live.

And for those that don't know, we did actually collect all of these weird song references from our all our podcasts and we have jim's Breeding playlist that will be on our website very soon. It is as cringey as you're assuming, but it'll be a spotify playlist ready for you.

Nice.

I'm an 80s rocker. You know that.

If that doesn't make some spawns happen in your tanks, it's not our problem.

It doesn't matter.

You're doing it wrong.

It doesn't make kids end up in the filter sock. I don't know what else oh, filter sock.

That was the best sock joke I've ever heard.

That was. I understand, right.

My brother who just recently got divorced one day, said something. I said, are you dating anyone now? He's been divorced a few years of stuff and he goes, I bought a new pair of socks. I go, what? He said, I'll send a picture of my girlfriend sent me a picture of a new pair of socks. I don't even want to get into it with him. No, but yeah, that's just weird that's it Christmas.

So we have a secret Santa thing that we're doing. It's not that secret.

I already gave Jim the secret Santa gift.

I'm getting these socks. Adam.

Well, costco has 100 packs.

100 pack of socks.

Yeah. Good gift idea.

Oh, my lord. What would you do with 100 pair of socks?

I'd never come out of the house clean feet. I don't know.

I'm trying to think like my wife. She makes snowmen out of them, actually. She crafts puts a fills them with sand and they're little snowmen creatures. I couldn't think of what to use for garbage. I'm not that creative.

Wow.

We went off the rails.

We did. So back to the point before we leave you today, I think what I like to do, especially classify, use the extreme hobbyists. Clearly. So what secrets have you not told us? Is there like some crazy story or some tricks that you recommend? What are you not telling us?

For what part of the hobby?

Any part. This is your mic here.

I don't think so. I think it's our responsibility as hobbyist to make sure you pass around every little secret that you have to someone else. I mean, I just didn't wake up one day and said, I think a laser would work.

That, I got to say, is going to be the best secret I can melt out today.

And you told me one today with the flow. Because with that many pumps, in the tank moving flow around. oftentimes one will stop still oscillating like a fan would, but it's just not on. And having that little piece of plastic on there to see when it's flapping in the breeze, so to speak, that you know it's working. And sometimes you can tell by looking at the corals, but acropora is hard to do because the polyp extension on them isn't near what a utility would be to see the flow.

Well, sometimes you get to cheat because some of your pump heads have like a little piece of algae for you.

Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes something flex through and it allows you to see it flapping. Baby.

Bangai.

Yeah.

So I guess the real question is somebody's listening to this, right? You flexed on them a little bit, told them some crazy looney tune species, right? And they're going to want to contact and get your coral. How can they get some of the frags that are being issued out? I'm assuming you're auctioning these. Where are these auctioned? Well, there's willing to talk about it?

Well, no. So the folks that came up here are from Top Shelf aquatics in Orlando, Florida, and they do almost monthly auctions. They just went through a pretty good litany of them through Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday. And they'll have another one coming up towards Christmas time that will be the majority of the corals that they cut here from from an auction perspective. And again, the most disheartening thing for somebody in the hobby is to deal with pests and they're hard to deal with. And I would think I think one of the most important things is to have a really trusted source and where you get your stuff from and an example of that. It happened to me in in the past where I've had red bugs as an example. You think your corals are looking great and everything and not necessarily going to kill them, but it's just kind of irritating, right? There's stuff crawling on them. You don't really realize it, but when you see it, you go, my God, it's just it's everywhere. What do I do? So that's the thing, is it's really key because a lot of times you'll you'll show up a trade show and everyone's set up set up the booths, and there's things that you can't see unless you get into that. 15 to 20 time magnification to actually see what's going on and you'll see them crawling in and out of the polyps and things like that. So I think if there is a trick, you just have to be very diligent about a where you get your corals from making sure that you do your coral dips and stuff before you introduce them to your system. Because then you're just bringing in a problem that doesn't need to be there. And that's why I'm so paranoid right now, because everything is so good that if I just go and buy a coral from something money, and I don't go through that process or know where I'm getting it from. You're just playing with fire.

There's the best recommendations. Fresh or saltwater. You always want to do the quarantine process. Never skip it because you're lazy. Always have stuff prepared. You have that nursery in the back. That's again? Yeah.

And that's the hard part to tank that big going through I'm sorry to interrupt you, but going through the amount of dipping and stuff that you would have to do. There's other things too, that we do. I mean, having a litany of rasses. Look at the blue damsels that are in there. The springer eye damsels are very good. They live within the Acropora and Indonesia. Seems like, logical, that's what I should have in here, just in case something slipped through the goal, just to have them there, to kind of be a natural way of mind. There's no one treating the ocean for a red bug, something that's eating them. Right? So you try to do things as natural as you can. And again, back to having such a big system is really dumb at the end of the day. And I think that if I were to do this again and I wanted to go really big, it would probably be in that I mean, again, dream tank for me, not looking as big as probably be in that three to 500 gallon range, maybe a little bit bigger, because now you're where it's much easier to manage. And just the sheer cost of operating a system of that size. So I said, if I can actually someday I'm lucky, get my money back, keep things alive.

But how long do you quarantine your corals for?

Interesting, that things that have eggs, when you dip them, there's a reason that egg protects what's in the egg. A period of eight weeks is really the recommended time. A lot of times you can do it in three weeks because you wait for the hatch. The hatch, you hit them again, then you hit them again in case you miss something. And it's quite a process.

Definitely different for fresh. I mean, minimum is like two weeks. Weeks for fresh. Yeah, there's definitely a different growth cycle for coral.

It is. And again, the hobby is advancing so much that it's allowing more and more people to enter reef aquarium kind of land because of just the technology, the ability to treat an aquarium as a whole for a bug that's getting better. A lot of people are paranoid about putting stuff in there. One of the biggest things that has been used in the past is interceptor, which is actually for or pets, to rid them of worms. So you need a veterinarian to get it from. And you crush the tablets up and make it to a powder and you treat the tank and then you wait a week, you do a big water change, you do it again. But when you do that, you do kill off the copiapod and amiapod populations at the same time. And so you got to be careful not to crash your systems and things like that.

Every tank is an ecosystem. You try to do your best to try to make the environment capable of self sustained, but there's no such thing. You have to do the process. Even my freshwater tank, I have a bunch of different plants. I have everything's based around keeping the ecosystem. So a couple of corridors just to make sure it's mopping up the bottom, shrimp everywhere to make sure everything is clean and polished just in case there's some rogue algae. I have saes, which will leave everything alone. And all of these have to be symbiotic. But even still, I can add one fish, and like you said, have a worm parasite that transfers from creature to creature or something terrible that wipes out shrimp. It's super easy. And when you have it established and set up, there's so much to risk.

It. Is ty his biggest concern. You introduce something like that, and there's certain fish that species of fish that really are prone to carrying stuff that, again, is back to quarantine. And if you would have saw that maintenance room a year ago, we had quarantine tanks for fish. Now ty is able to do a lot of that for me in a shop where quarantine takes place for fish. But we try to be pretty particular and protective of that stuff when putting it in the system. And that's where the UV light comes into. If you do have an IC kind of thing or something like that, you.

Can get especially with 4000 gallons an hour. Yeah, you'll never right in the bud.

Yeah.

Well, you guys got any more questions for them?

Oh, the led lighting system. So, that is one of the top notch led lighting systems I've ever seen. And you said it's the third one tires.

Okay, heather and series, but version four for some reason.

Okay, could you explain that? Because people that don't have saltwater or even reef tanks have no idea about how much lighting it needs for the corals. Like, I was discussing with you about how if you wanted to put metal halides or t fives on that, the heat and the electric bill would just be right.

As the hobby has progressed know you've had metal haylides, and then you move into t five s, and you have a combination of t fives and metal haylides. And I was just thinking about the absolute nightmare I would have not only from a kilowatt perspective, but just the sheer fact of heating up the water then means we have to have chillers. So the more you peel that onion back, you start crying, and then like, okay, we have no choice. We got to go led. But LEDs. The advancement in LEDs are there. And if you've seen aquarium with LEDs, sometimes you can actually see if it doesn't have the right spread, you actually see the beams of light coming into the tank and it becomes very unnatural. Especially if you think about an acropora, branching acropora, how many shaded spots if there's just a single beam. And so the idea was to have this spread across the aquarium to create the sky. That's why from corner to corner to wall to wall, I mean, most of that light that's being ran is just the blue and that's really all they need. And if we ran only blue, then you're kind of missing out a little bit on the colors of the fish because you need a little bit to pick them up. And it's kind of all what the I sees the LEDs. There's a lot of manufacturers of LEDs. I wouldn't put lights at the top of the list of the most important things that you do. Certainly up there, I think flow is probably the most important. But the lights is really key. And again, having one that's really got a nice even spread. The challenge we had with the orphic lights is what I use. It's just the fact that it's a German company and I have to go through email with a German translator to kind of get I've even talked to stores in Berlin that use them. And again, it's all Google Translator communicating back and forth and what kind of programs are running because it wouldn't take much to fry a coral either. I mean, you can burn them up pretty good if you let it run too long or whatever. And pretty particular. But again, the advancement in the hobby allows others to share the programs that they have and what they use. And so everyone's not starting from ground zero again. And everything that I've learned is either some reason I've made the mistake or it's from someone else else. So I don't sit here and talk about how I know everything about reef. I mean, I've literally had my ass kicked over the years with this hobby. So again, I'm not on here acting like I just know everything. But again, it's shared experience. It is, absolutely. And that's what's cool about what you guys do because people learn a lot from these podcasts and it's just again, sharing the hobby. And was this really available 15 years ago? I mean, YouTube, everything is advanced to the point where that knowledge base is getting out to the public a lot more than it ever did.

I'm telling you, there's going to be a lot more people using freaking laser beams happening. Well, again, thanks so much for having us out. We really appreciate the full tour. We'll get the content. It'll be in the show notes for the podcast. You can check out the pictures of the tank and hope to have you on again in the future. And we're certainly going to have tie on. Got to talk about building strange custom tanks and essentially business grade tanks. That's what you do a lot about. So we're excited to have that in the future.

And I'm going to say again, too, for you guys, I appreciate what you guys do. You make it fun for everybody and people learn a lot through the process. And I think that's key. It's giving back, I guess, of all the knowledge that you had and making it fun for people to hear and listen to. And I had a good time. I appreciate it.

Well, thanks so much.

Thank you for being on.

And if you're listening and you want some of these sweet franks, you can message us. But it was top shelf.

You said a top shelf aquatics. The stuff will be in there under the code mcr, which is Minnesota coral reef.

Excellent.

That is my instagram. I don't post a lot there, but you can see pictures of a lot of the corals on instagram and Minnesota coral reef.

Perfect. Well, thanks so much. Go to aquariumgeistpodcast.com. Go to the bottom of the website. You'll find our email address, telephone number. You can message us on discord. If you got any follow up questions, we can certainly message Sean directly after the show.

Appreciate it.

All right, thanks, guys. And let's kick that outro.

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

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

Can I listen to it in my treehouse?

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

What about my man cave?

Especially your man cave.

Yeah.

Only if adam's there no with feeder guppy.

No, they're endless.

You imagine loving Frank sucking mother frank.

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