Has your aquarium lost its wow factor? Bring that wow factor back and get it a Piece of the Extreme back in your tank. Go to J Four Flowerhorns.com and find award winning flowerhorns better than nowhere else. Find yourself also piece of the Extreme of arowana, gar, eel and stingray. And also just released J four flower horns. Food pellets. Make your flowerhorn award winning bring that Piece of the Extreme by using promo code Aquarium Guys at checkout for 10% off everything in the store while your friends today bring that extreme to your tank. Also guys, I want to thank you for your patience going forward with the podcast. We have delayed episodes. We have now found a new editor. We'd like to welcome skelly Boy to the roster. skelly Boy is our new editor in chief. He will be helping us put out more episodes. We are now going to be on a every other week basis going forward and get ready for great content. And don't forget to send in your stories. We want to do a story time episode like we've done in the past. You haven't listened. It started. Episode 18 is where the fun begins. We want you to submit your story to the Aquarium Guys podcast. Go to aquarium, guyspodcast.com. You can find our email address and contact information. Send us your written story, video story, audio story. However, we want your story. Let's kick that podcast. Welcome to the aquarium, guys. Podcast. Adam.

Yes.

Adam, you had news.

Oh, my God.

Which which news?

Is your wife pregnant again? No.

No more kids.

So I'm your host, Rob Zulsen.

I'm Jim colby.

And I'm Adam ella Shire.

I want you to hold the news. You actually had real news, and I believe it was about the state of New York. Until then, I'd like to introduce our guest we have from the Greater Cleveland Aquarium, mallory haskell. Did I say that correctly?

Yes, you did.

Wonderful, Mallory. Welcome. There we go.

These guys always get in their Vikings and stuff and from their state. And I'm always over here. Come on. I need someone on my team. And by the way, I'm scrap jaw. I'm the editor. I haven't been on the podcast a little bit. Sometimes I interject a little bit. But anyway, that's my little bit of home state.

Yeah, I love your home state.

I can't help but not shit on the Browns because they're already brown. But you actually guys have been doing great this last year, and I can easily say, go Browns.

I'm not a huge football fan, but any other Cleveland sports, I'd be happy to talk about.

Let's talk about volleyball.

Wait, do you guys still got betty White? Because that makes you the superior state.

Wait, betty white's from Ohio?

I think she's in Hawaii. Ever since that show hot in Cleveland.

No, that's make believe, you pieces of crap.

Make believe. I watch it every night before I go to bed.

Jimmy rob has an obsession with betty White. Just ignoring she's a beautiful woman.

That's because she's wonderful.

She is a treasure.

She's outlived all the other people on that show.

I made my wife a promise when I married her that never cheat on her except for betty White. Really? And she stands to this day?

Stands to this day, absolutely. I'm so proud of you.

Before we get too far again, we're going to have this conversation about the aquarium from the background of doing it, and specifically the care and how the aquarium gets taken care of in the background, because you are a specialist of animal husbandry at the place with you listed here. A strong background in quarantine and vet practices.

Yeah. So I worked in a quarantine facility for another aquarium for four years, and then when I came on into Cleveland, I've been in charge of the quarantine rooms, and I work very closely with our vet with treatments, and he comes once a week and we do vet rounds and all sorts of stuff. So I actually really enjoy that part of the job.

Wonderful. It's better than a normal vet that actually has to express glands. Fish, you don't have to do that with, last time I checked.

Jimmy no, not at all.

I'm looking at the dog owner in the room, just making fun of them.

Yeah, that's exactly what my wife does. My wife's a nurse, and she does rounds with the doctor when they come in.

Oh, I thought you're about to say express gland.

No express anybody's gland.

Also, if someone's first on hearing that, don't Google it. At least not until after you've eaten.

Keep your mouth shut.

Yes.

While you're doing it. Yeah.

We got to get to some news. But first, Adam, what is your news?

Okay, so New York is pushing for a bill to ban interstate travel and shipping of all animals. So dogs, cats, fish, reptiles, birds, you name it, they want to ban it.

Sea monkeys.

Not sea monkeys.

Sea monkeys.

Oh, no.

And the whole thing is New York is also a port of entry, so if that goes through, you basically lose the eastern seaboard. They just had Fish and Wildlife in Florida ruled against reptile owners in Florida. So that states.

When you say that state is fluked, what do you mean ruled against? What was the results that you're vaguely speaking of?

Okay.

They basically are banning 17 species so far because and some of these shouldn't be pets, to be quite honest. anacondas, burmese pythons, that type of stuff. Some of the green iguanas got put on the ban list because they're destructive.

Tegus were put on there, weren't they?

Yes.

Which ones are tegus?

Tagoos half of these things are already established to the point where I don't know if anything would wipe them out, except for literally going and killing every single one of them that you find.

Do you know what there's always going.

To be a little bit left.

These things don't even survive above a certain latitude line anyway, right?

It rains. iguanas in Florida. Every time it gets cold, they fall out of the trees. But here's an interesting thing. Pet owners will have 180 days to meet new regulations that insist they're properly caged their reptiles with a concrete enclosure.

Wait, was this the same bill that also banned surmix a lot?

No, because anaconda don't no, don't sing. Quit singing. Come across there and strangle you.

Just because you're a big guy does not mean your surmix a lot. Awesome.

Hey, I'm too white for that.

The only thing you mix a lot is food in your belly.

Mayonnaise. Any other horrible, depressing news of doom and gloom, gentlemen? Or do we have a happy story?

No, there's no happy story.

Excuse me, what? You stated yourself that Lady gaga got her dog stolen.

She did.

Was that a happy story?

They were returned.

She got them back. They found them tied up to a light pole just in an alley.

I guess this instance also inspired the signing of a crossover between the airbud series and A Star Is Born. So key Dog Mix by Lady gaga. That's my prediction.

You can find more about that on the battle on Bee.

I do know that the poor dog walker got shot.

What about the killer was awful.

No shit.

Several times. Got shot?

Yeah, he got shot several times. He's in the hospital. And that's why I'm like, how is this a happy story?

Man, that dog walker could do a.

Rap album, ring Central Camera or something.

Oh, it was, yes.

You can look up the video.

He was walking three dogs. They grabbed the two, and one took off running. But they caught the other third dog, got that one back. All three of them are Lady gaga's. They're thinking now that it wasn't related, it was just a kidnapping of dogs. Not that it was Lady gaga's dogs, but she gave a half a million dollar reward to the gal that found them, and now they're all uptight and trying to find the people that shot that poor man.

Uptight. Yes, they're very uptight.

When I was a kid, we had a golden retriever, and at a time, there was some word in the area that people were trying to find bait dogs, and they had told dogs inside, I wonder if there was a grudge with the guy who was the dog walker or whatever. And then when she put out that reward, they freaked out and we're like, oh, crap, we stole the wrong dog. Time up in an alley and then have a friend of ours call it in.

It's got to be some crazy dude that's sitting there just like, how dare you? You gave him a biscuit. I didn't get a biscuit. And then he sold the dog.

Somebody were to take one of my dogs. I got three phone calls I can make and I'll get my dog back.

One way or you got one phone call and you can get anything from anywhere.

That's what worries me a little bit. adam's kind of like crueling bodies. I think adam's kind of like in the mafia, but he never tells us.

It's not the mafia.

Okay?

It's not the mafia.

So I talked to you earlier about what happened out in Heck. Was it Texas during the big freeze? Did you read about that? Adam? I sent that to you.

The fish tanks being frozen?

No, the invasive species, they're really hoping that they invasive species that are in Texas. They're hoping that it got froze out and they're listing all the invasive species that are in Texas, tilapia being one. And of course tilapia can live in very cold water. Also they're hoping that they're what's the mullahs that we always talk about, zebra mussels. Zebra mussels and zebra muscles.

They don't die from that?

No, they don't know that yet.

No, but they're hoping that they would.

Well, the zebra muscles can survive in Ohio and Lake erie. I'm sure they can survive a freeze down in Texas.

You can literally survive them.

Northern Minnesota, where it gets like 50.

Below, you can literally freeze them.

But the one that I didn't know that was an invasive species in Texas is apples snails, and they're hoping really? Yeah, and the only thing that really killed was some invasive species of cold stunned bats. I can't remember what they're called.

No, they weren't invasive. They were native bats, mexican free tail bats. I read about that article too, the.

Snails, is that what you're saying?

No, they were dying.

They're dying cold, too cold. So I thought that was very interesting that all these invasive species just live in all these crazy weather patterns that we're having right now. So kind of sad. Texas has never experienced cold so much like this and so they're really hoping that would take out some of their invasive species, but basically just knocked a few bats out of the air.

What was it like?

They got like half a million bats.

Yeah, we got 52 below like a few years ago. And it killed off the ash bore beetle in Minnesota.

Yeah, but then they came back, the.

Eggs are still hatched and here they come back till it goes.

And on a brighter note, there were some 4000 sea turtles that were all cold. Shocked people actually saved them. They put them in bins and everything or helping them out spacex.

And Tesla donated some batteries. They had some huge generators to keep the place going and keep it heated.

Yeah, I always thought that the apples nails were invasive. I knew they're invasive. I always thought they were always not wanted anywhere because that they eat all the vegetation and stuff and out compete everything else. But they also carry parasites that affect people, which I didn't know. So, interesting reading of over the weekend.

Do apple snails die from the cold?

They said that they were able to burrow themselves down in the mud enough where they survived.

We don't have them in Minnesota, do we? I've never seen them.

There are some in southern Minnesota. Yes.

I had nothing to do with that.

Oh, sure.

Nothing at all.

Nothing at all.

Nothing at all. All right, so we got a couple of user submitted questions to start out. Hey, guys, just wondering why it's so hard to get desert gobies right now. From what I know, there are some captive bread. I also don't know why they're still at or at a standstill. Also, do you know of any other gobies that stay around that size, that work in freshwater and that will eat non live foods? Jimmy, what'd you got?

I got nothing.

You got to get the mic.

Yeah, I don't know anything about desert gobies, honestly.

How big do desert gobies get? Aren't they like, three inch?

Yeah, they're not supposed to be very big, I think.

Candy cane.

Candy cane.

Remember we did that? We did a thing on them. Fish of the week, candy cane gobies.

Oh, yeah. But the problem is, most gobies are really hard to find. Right now, fish wholesalers have focused on bread and butter stocks because they're not willing to risk all this money on these new elevated shipping costs and get anything what they deem as a risk. So you're seeing all these obscure species get dwindle. Not dwindle out in the hobby, but definitely surge in price and in rarity. So I think the best place right now that you're going to find something like that is those weird obscure places in Facebook groups that don't sell fish, but to the same places that don't.

Know anything about that.

When they have raffles, they call them waffles because the Facebook police will get them.

Wait, if they're talking talking about desert gobies, they're from Australia, so legally, you can't have much from Australia.

Not dessert gobies either, just to let you know.

No, I know, but I've never seen those. Why don't you get, like, peacock gunjeans or something? That's easy. And that's available.

I have peacock gunjeans, and I love them to death.

Yeah, they're amazing fish, like candy cane gobies and peacock gunjeans. And then you don't need to worry about dealing with Australia's archaic animal export laws.

Yes, but the desert GOLBY is really cool looking. It's got that yellow tinge, and if I remember correctly, it's like a black and white anal and top fin. It's really flashy and cool.

Yeah. Right now, cigars Farms, all they have on stock right now is bumblebee gobies, dragonfish gobies, and Indian butterfly gobies and a blue neon stiff. It on gobi.

And to give you an idea no.

That'S fresh for those fresh crackish.

Actually, those newbie people that are listening, seacrest Farms is the number one wholesaler of freshwater fish in the United States. So if they don't have it, it's not that other people don't. But let's put it this way, it's rather unlikely. And you're seeing that there's certainly a disparity see in gulping.

You probably have to go to a real specialty place to find them and stuff right now. It could be that they're seasonals also. A lot of times stuff is seasonal and you can't get it.

You're just hearing that one kid in his basement with his fingerless gloves, hands just rubbing and glee. I have them and you don't.

What illegal thing do you have that I want?

See, that's all Adam wants.

Adam'S got plans.

Just all the illegal things. How dare you? All right, jimmy, do you have any other things about your week?

My week was wonderful. After being 35, 37 below actual temperature here in Minnesota, we had a pretty good week last week. It was pretty warm. Our car started. We went to work. Nobody died on the highway. That was great.

When you count your blessings in Minnesota, is when your car starts exactly.

That's all you go after. That's the highlight of your day, people.

It's also 40 degrees above zero down here, so we went from negative 20 to 40 above in three days.

Yep. Adams in southern Minnesota. We're in northern Minnesota. So quite a difference. Pretty good sized state. The our friends at cigarettes farms are also going to be changing the way they do shipping now, and they're going to have some shipping available here on mondays or start sending fish out on Sundays very soon. So if you're a listener who buys some cigarettes farms, make sure you check that out.

Does that mean it's interesting because we get fish from cigarettes farms at the aquarium, so it's interesting now. It's always been. You expect shipments in on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.

Yeah. They're having a heck of a time keeping up when the extreme cold happened across the nation two weeks ago when Texas got so bad.

Oh, I can breathe.

My god the hell?

I thought I was muted.

You are not professional at all.

Thought I was muted.

I'm sitting here on the dock and a freaking beluga whale just came by. And blue was honestly freaking blowhole. Was because of the cold ups and FedEx stuff. I didn't want to take anything. And so they actually didn't ship. Was the first time in years they didn't ship. Pretty much all week long. They only took care of the locals down there and stuff. So last week I wanted to order fish from them. They were so extremely busy. Couldn't get any fish this week. I ordered today. I won't get it till Thursday. So it's extremely busy out there.

Do we get to do a live podcast from schmelta airlines?

What's that?

Do we get to do a live podcast from schmelta airlines next week? Yeah, sure. Yeah.

Does not have that many beeps or flukes in his vocabulary.

Life is a whole nightmare.

So I have a problem with airline. No, smelt airline.

Oh, that's film sensor.

They see me coming, they look at me. We're going on break. They just leave the front desk.

I'm going to take a smoke break. You don't smoke, kathy.

Yeah, that's right. So Rob wants me to mic up and go in there because I have gotten in trouble on a couple of occasions.

Where there's a couple?

Yeah, several.

Yeah. You can bluetooth headset us in, and we'll just we'll be right there with you.

I've been doing it for about 30 years, and 28 were not nice. The best.

Just make sure your state is a single party consent when it comes to recording. Okay. Then if it's not, don't do it because you'll get in trouble. Now, Ohio is, and I only know this because I'm going through some stuff that I needed to do it for.

This is a secret camera thing, and we'll have to muffle them and be roll.

That's right. We'll disguise your voice. I'll be arguing with the peanuts from snoopy.

Yes, that's what we'll do.

The teacher.

The teacher.

Good grief.

Yes. Well, that is all I got for questions from the audience this week. But a couple of things for me. I have figured out where to put the quarter. Me and my wife are now expecting a bouncing little bratz in September.

Congratulations.

Well, thank you.

That's exciting.

Three more to catch up to me.

I was going to say, I got to quit hanging out with Adam. This is not what's supposed to happen.

What?

My wife for those that don't know, my wife has been battling cancer for better part of a decade, and we're told we're not supposed to, but we're not good listeners.

Not good listeners.

We're not good listeners.

You got one pass home plate.

We did?

Yes.

Go. I think.

Wait, that's completely different.

Not the soccer.

Thanks for showing up.

Damn. Well, Mallory, again, thanks for coming on the podcast. We always start by asking you what got you into the hobby, but in this case, what got you into this career?

So ever since I was a kid, I knew I wanted to work with animals. I worked on a farm for ten years, just a local place. It was called the Farm Park in kirtland, Ohio. Animal care. Went to school for zoology, and then when I graduated, the aquarium happened to be opening that same year. And so I managed to get my foot in the door as guest services and then worked my way up from there to do actual animal care. And I love it. So I didn't necessarily go into it with the intent of working with fish, but I'm really happy I got to where I am.

So you want to do animal care, and now you get to work with a fun aquarium. Was there an aquarium hobby already in your background or just fit the animal care. And you followed the wave?

Yeah, I just followed where I was going to have opportunities. So, like I said, the aquarium opened right after I graduated college, and I think when I had a year there, where I was doing guest experience, and then there was a part time animal husbandry position opened, and I think they knew I was a hard worker, and they looked at my animal care experience with the farm. And it may not have been fish related, but they knew I was willing to get my hands dirty, so that kind of just really opened the door. And then I got a full time job for ripley's Aquariums after that, and then I came back to Cleveland. Full time job.

Ripley'S Aquarium, like ripley's Believe It or not?

Yeah, they have three.

Really?

Yeah.

I did not know that.

No. Neither did I.

So, myrtle Beach, Gatlinburg and Toronto. They're very nice. I enjoyed working for that company.

Were they ever featured on the old episodes of ripley's beard or not?

I used to watch it all the time. I never saw anything like that.

I have no idea.

See, the ripley's Aquariums, those are for the family friendly, where the television shows were showing that the shrunken heads and the shit. That scared you?

Yeah. One of the big questions when I would tell people that I work for ripley's for a while was, do you have three eyed fish and stuff like that? No. Normal animals?

No. Do you want to pet the stingrays? Yeah, I do. I don't want to pet the race.

I've been at the ripley Museum in Orlando, Florida. Very interesting. A lot of two headed calves, a lot of weird stuff, a lot of shrunken hands. But I would rather have gone to an aquarium, to be honest.

Yeah, they're very nice. The first one was myrtle Beach, and the newest one is in Toronto. That's only been open less than ten years. I can't remember the exact year it opened.

So are they doing freshwater and saltwater?

Yes.

And are they doing anything are they doing, like, a SeaWorld thing where they're doing dolphin shows and stuff, or are they just doing aquariums?

Yeah, no mammals. There's penguins and gatlinburg and I think myrtle Beach, if I remember correctly, but no mammals.

That's okay. I'm okay with mammals being phased out of aquariums, to be clear.

I agree. Yeah, I agree.

Have you guys checked out the thing that there's a guy that goes on Joe rogan's podcast, like, about once a year. He's out of Canada. He's been in a big legal battle with the walrus.

Was it marineland?

Marineland, that's the one.

Every big name in the industry I think there's three big ones, are all been after him with millions and millions of lawsuits. I actually reached out to him, like, let me guess, you really can't go on many shows because of the legality yeah, they'll come after you if you're too small. That's why I have to go on stuff like Joe rogan. I'm like, oh, thanks for messaging me.

Is that the marine land? That's in niagara Falls. Is that the one you're talking about?

Marineland has it all through Canada and a couple of other countries, I believe. I know.

There's one in niagara Falls.

Big business, for sure.

Now. Is that the marineland? Is that the one where the killer whale was shipped down from there because it killed somebody and they put it down to SeaWorld in Orlando?

That is correct.

And it's killed two people down there?

Yes.

And that's their bull. That was they still have it?

No, telecom passed away?

No. Really? Yeah. I have not heard the dad, like.

Was it two or three years ago?

Interesting.

Rest in peace.

Because I was told that they would never get rid of him because he was their breeding bull, and they're just going to put up with him honestly and stuff. But the first person had gotten killed by the thing by the mammal fish up in Canada, and then there was somebody that snuck in to Orlando in the middle of the night and jumped in the tank with him, and that person got killed, and then the trainer got killed. And actually, we were there about two months before that trainer got killed, and we actually had lunch with her.

And that's why you never hot tub with your homies?

No, none.

And if you'd like to know more information on that, it's his. The guy's name is Phil demers, so if you look him up on Joe rogan, he tells that whole story.

It's an interesting thing. But back to the subject at hand. So you got in. What were your first responsibilities? Because how many years have you been at the occurrence Aquarium?

Okay, so I've been back as full time a little over two years now. But I was at ripley's full time for four years, and then a year of part time animal husbandry at Cleveland. So I guess what you add that all up, it's almost eight years of experience just in animal care in aquariums.

I have so many is what's the weirdest, what's the funnest? What was the worst? But to hold those back, do they send you places? What qualifications, or did you learn off of your peers?

I have gone to conferences, which are really fun, but it's all on the job learning, for sure. You have to have a degree because it's so competitive. I can't say anything. I've learned with my degree. I've been able to apply much on actual work experience. It's all hands on experience.

So what are some of the exhibits that they have at the Greater Cleveland Aquarium?

Sure, we have our shark exhibit, so of course, that's one of the most popular. We have sand tigers and sandbars and nurse sharks. And then we also have, like, stingrays, and there's a barracuda in there and some drum, all sorts of stuff. We have our stingray touch pool, of course, is always very popular. We have our freshwater. We have a giant guru, his name is toby. He's the only one, our only fish that's named, and he's become an official mascot for the aquarium. He's pretty cool. But we have Ohio species, Asian species. We do have some birds now. We have a couple of curl. crested are serious. We have fruit, doves and some partridges.

I bet that's popular on Christmas.

Yeah.

Now selling a pair of trees at the gift shop and jimmy's just cringing right now.

That was actually when algebra speaking about the Eric. They're actually a hard bird to find.

Yeah. I don't know where we got them. I know we got them from a supplier, but I can't remember where exactly we got them from. We've had them for maybe two years now.

We may be taking a road trip to Ohio soon.

There you go.

Yeah, absolutely.

So when you guys acquire new livestock, you must have your certain suppliers that you use and then tell us a little bit about how they're shipped to you, how you quarantine them, how long you quarantine them for, things like that.

So we use different suppliers, we try to get surplus animals from other aquariums whenever we can, rather than buying new or taking out of the wild if we can avoid it. But we work with quality marine seagrest dynasty, and when they come in, our saltwater animals have a whole quarantine routine. That's 40 some odd days where they're going through just antibiotic treatments. And we'll have like, metronidazole. Chloroquine is a big one, which I know that's been hard to get with everything going on with chloroquine lately with the pandemic. So the marine fish take a long time to get through because that chloroquine breath is 21 days. And then our freshwater fish, we do not do chloroquine and they're usually in and out quarantine about a little less than a month and then we'll acclimate and put them in.

Now, is the issue with the chloroquine, is that because it's hard to get because of supply or is it because of restrictions?

Yeah, so we were using chloroquine phosphate and when it was decided that hydroxychloroquine was going to maybe cure COVID or whatever, the suppliers stopped making as much of the chloroquine phosphate, which is pretty common in aquariums, to use. It's hard to find. So we've been using the hydroxychloroquine and that's been a bit of a learning curve, but it seems to be more stable and it worked just as well as the other one. It's just a learning curve from there.

Right on.

Because there was a little snafu in Arizona with a lady who had apparently given it to her husband and herself and he had died. And it was a weird thing. They politicized and we all know not to take things that are meant. For animals because one of dosage and two, because sometimes they're combined with other things.

Right?

Yeah. I think she had given them the chloroquine phosphate. I know the hydroxychloroquine is used as a medication for people with lupus, but the chloroquine phosphate, as far as I know, I've never heard that for human use, but I could be wrong.

Please consult your doctor.

Consult your doctor.

Are you guys aza?

No. The goal is to become aza. We're not quite there yet. We're working on it, though. We're definitely working on getting things organized. So hopefully in the next year or two, we can go through that process to explain that.

Thank you.

What aza is?

Yes.

So aza is the association for Zoos and Aquariums. And basically you go through this big I went through it with ripley's, and it's this big process of making sure all your records are kept. You need two years of records, minimum, so you have to usually be an aquarium that's two years or older. It's just all these rules to make sure that the animal care is top notch. Sorry.

And treatment.

Yeah, it's just a standard. So if you're an aza accredited facility, you've met that standard of going through the process of being reviewed, and you're doing the best animal care, the best treatments. You're recording everything, the knowledge. I know when we had to go through it for ripley's, they came through and asked anybody, it didn't matter who you were, they could come up and ask you, what is the motto of the aquarium? And you'd have to know we want to make sure that everyone is on the same page employee wise. So it's really just a standard that you get.

Yeah. It's comparable to how the FDA regulates things. You also need to have somebody regulate zoos and to make sure you have the proper care of the animal and records and where it comes from and stuff is very important. Now, you said earlier that sometimes you guys get different animals from different aquariums and stuff. Now, do they charge you for that or do you guys do some trading or how does that work?

Typically, it's just the receiving facility will pay for shipping. Very rare. Any of the facilities selling the animals. Maybe if some places breeding, they might be selling, but typically it's surplus and receiving institution pays shipping. And then because we're not aca, sometimes we're restricted. There are certain facilities that will only send to other aca aquariums, so we sometimes don't get picked. If we're asking for animals that are.

Put up stuff with, like, ssps, I'm assuming.

Yeah, we are part of the ssp for sand, tigers and stuff. Yeah. Even though we're not aca. But yeah, sometimes it makes it a little bit harder to get some of the surplus animals because we haven't gone through the accreditation to prove that we're going to be taking care of them.

So it's an ongoing process to get to the point where you can become.

Accredited, and then it's every five years. After that you have to go through re accreditation, and it's expensive.

And so that's something you have to pay for or the institute has to pay for. That something that's federally granted or how does that work?

It's the institute that pays for it. I'm not sure how it would work. If it's like a state run facility, I don't know how it works there because I've only worked for private aquariums, privately owned aquariums, but that's something that we would have to pay for.

I do know people in animal shipping that could help you.

What Adam is saying is that he knows how to bring stuff from the black market. Is that what you're saying, adam guy.

I'm not saying this.

Adam always knows a guy to get.

Things from point A to point B.

Adam is like, you got a tax guy. I know a guy, he worked.

The other nice thing is the guys Ohio fish rescue, their quarantine system is really well done in that they're able to get fish and move fish to aquariums as well, which is not normal for a lot of small operations. Not that they're a small operation because they have some massive fish. But that's also another side note there about them. They have really good quarantine procedures.

At ofr quarantine is tough, but it's so important. So that's my favorite thing to do is go through quarantine with the animals. And it's just a challenge, but important. So I like it.

So I think we have a ton of specific questions about aquariums, but at first I want to do a little mini virtual tour. So you gave us an idea of some of your different galleries. First of all, I'm just going to go the galleries off of your website list because that's how they're topicized. So number one, you have your local lakes and rivers in Ohio. What you have in displays for that, just as a high level.

So we do have invasive species there. So we have some sea lamprey and roundhead gobies, but then we have like our sporting fish. So there's like bass perchgar that's in our big game fish exhibit. And then it goes to some native turtles and salamanders and frogs. And then our river fish, which are just the smaller fish like darters and dates and nino's that you would find in the streams.

But what about snakeheads? Do you have snakeheads in there? No, you said invasive, and I had to say snakeheads because I know yeah.

No, our invasive exhibits are pretty small. They just have the lamp prey and gobies.

Those aren't in Ohio, are they? I thought they were only in Florida.

They're oh, yeah, we got snakeheads for sure down in the river.

Terrible. That's awful.

Adam, do you know a guy get rid of those.

I know a guy who would be more than happy to take them terrible.

So the next one is asia and indonesia.

Yeah. So that's where our giant guami is. And he's always a big attraction. We have rainbow fish, archer fish. We do have a snake, emerald green tree python, some solomon and island eat leaf frogs. Sorry. Yeah, they're cool. And then we have some small, like we have panda barbs and some dojo loach and stuff like that as well.

I'm a big fan of the dojo loach. They're legal in minnesota, so of course I have them. We're seated grandfathered in since before they were illegal, and they're the last batch I can have.

Jimmy yeah, they're cool. I like them a lot.

I see you have a big picture, and I think this is a really cool environment. So it looks like you have some sort of giant maple tree coming out of the main centerpiece tank at the asian indonesia section.

Yeah. Our manager that's in charge of all the front of house theming is incredibly talented. And yeah, he made that big. It's supposed to be like an asian maple tree comes right out of there. It's really cool.

Is that actually in the water, or is that just surrounded by water?

No, it's actually in the water. So the trunk of it goes down to cover the pipes and everything that come in and out of the tank.

Yeah, it looks very beautiful.

Yeah.

So next on the list, we have the tropical forest. And this doesn't feel very fish themed.

I can't remember what the website looks like off the top of my head, but that is where our aviary is. So that's where we have our birds. We have our tegu there, but the room itself is mostly fish exhibits. So we have a large amazon tank that has freshwater stingray, a couple of different species of turtles. We have red hooks. Trying to remember what else is in there.

It looks like piranha and mata. Mata.

Yeah, we have a mata mata in there. We have our own separate exhibit with the piranha. We have a discus tank. We have the suriname toads, which are really cool. They're the ones that have the babies come out their back. Have you ever seen those?

Yes, I have.

Yeah, they're really breathable. Yeah. So we have an exhibit of those. And then in that room, we also have our poison dart frogs, which are pretty popular.

She's a part of poison darts.

Blue species.

How dare you have them?

I'm not an expert on poison dart frogs, unfortunately. We have the black and green. Are they the army ones? I think blue and black. We have three different species, and I don't know the actual names of any of them. That's unfortunately not my exhibit or my strong suit.

Jimmy should make a donation. See, Jimmy has this new website that he put out. No, jim scrotumdiscus.com, we're not talking about that. So see if you make a donation.

I had all kinds of toad licking jokes and I just left them on the table.

Did you?

Yeah, I certainly did leave that on the table. You brought yours right out. So I want to hear more about this crazy frog that shoots babies out of its bag. What the heck?

Yeah. The Suriname toads. So the females will have the young live in like little holes in their back and so when they start to born, go look it up on YouTube or something.

We're googling it.

Oh, that is they look like they've.

Been run over by a car frog.

They're an aquatic frog.

Yeah, they're called surinam toads.

This is not cool. But they look like those are not commercials. They look like those videos where they're trying to get you to donate money and people are like taking those out of their feet. Little holes calluses and they're taking bugs out.

Yeah. This is gross. But it's very interesting.

So super interesting. Yeah.

Do they breed there near your facility?

We have not had them breed. So we have staff that's there 24 hours a day and our overnight staff hears them clicking at each other. But we haven't actually seen any mating yet. But we haven't had them super long. They've only been on exhibit maybe a year, so hopefully one day it'll be pretty cool.

So you have staff there 24 hours a day. When you pull a night shift, what do you do while you're there? Are you actually physically cleaning tanks and feeding and stuff?

Our second and third shift people are our lss staff, our life support systems, and they'll do some if we have backwashes or general cleaning and stuff, they have that. They don't do too much with the animals themselves because the lights are off most of the time. So it's really rounds cleaning up. They're huge help for us Aquarius because sometimes they unfortunately get stuck with the dirty jobs that we just don't have time to do, like spray socks and stuff like that. But they're huge help making sure that everything is running properly through the night. They're the ones calling us at two in the morning when the power goes out and we have to come in or something like that. So they're good at problem solving because anything that goes wrong, if they can't fix it, most of the time they can. We're the ones being called in to help them out.

See, I thought for sure it'd be like the night of the museum. That's when all the animals go free and they have to do interpretive dance music to the musicals.

Rob, the next time you use a microwave, close the dam door because I think the freaking microwave is going right into your brain again.

I didn't ask if they had the tiki man. They asked Gum gum dum dum gum. Is that how it went?

No, I don't know.

I see that you have a giant Pacific octopus.

Yes, that's my exhibit. And I love her. She's wonderful.

Do you put treats in peanut butter jars and make her open them just to mess with her, or no?

Yeah, so she's still pretty young. She's pretty small right now. So when I throw toys in with her, I try not to make them too difficult yet, because I want to get her used to having them in. And then I'll start to put the lids on a little tighter. She's really interested in just playing with people, though. She loves to just crawl up your arm and very interested in hands, but she will play with her toys. I'll put food in. I guess it's not Mr. Potato head anymore. We have a potato Head and we have different peanut butter jars. We have, like, dog toys or those blocks, the boxes that kids have to put the right shaped little piece of plastic in the right shaped hole. I don't know what they're called.

How good is does she figure that out? Pretty easily.

I haven't given her that one yet with the pieces in because they float, so pretty much they come out and just clog up the outflow of the exhibit. But I'm going to start planning on I don't think she'll be able to necessarily get them out, but I want to put the pieces in with the food, so she has to dig around through all those pieces that's mixed in there.

So is that the same octopus that was hector from Finding dory?

I believe that was the one that drove the truck?

Yeah.

No, they're related, though.

Okay. We like that movie here.

I just remember I went to see that movie, and I was sitting next to my mom, and I was just horrified at how the aquarius were completely incompetent, and they were shipping these fish from California to Cleveland with no air bubblers, no lids on the tank. And my mom leans over and she goes, but you're fine with the fact the octopus is driving a truck?

It's all in the detail.

That's fantastic.

Yeah.

So what do you feed an octopus?

I love shrimp.

Children's toes.

Shrimp is her go to, but any fish, some mussels, but definitely shrimp is her favorite.

Now, do you ever have a problem I know, like, I can order octopus, but they always put them in a very black bag so they can't see any outside, because if they ink in the bag, then they pretty much kill themselves. Now, does she ever get startled in your tank and ink in your tank?

I have not seen her do that, no. I think we've maybe had one in the past that inked at one point, but I don't think it was an issue with the filtration and everything in the exhibit. I've never seen this one. She's not easily scared. I was diving with her the other day, and she did not care that I was in there. She was crawling up my leg and stealing my scrub brush and everything, so she's not scared very easily.

How big is her exhibit?

It's an arch exhibit, so it's like a small arch. So you walk through the middle, kind of, and I'm really bad at guessing gallon age, and that's an odd shaped.

Exhibit, so it's like the size of.

A small house, maybe smaller than that. It's not very deep, so, okay, let's see. One side of the arch is probably like maybe six to 7ft by I'm looking at my hands and trying to figure out how far apart these are. Maybe like 4ft. And that's one side of the arch. So then you go up over the arch and it's about the same size on the other side. And I can stand up with my head above water and I'm only five two, so it's 4ft deep, maybe.

What are some of the challenges of keeping a giant octopus in enclosure of any kind, much less your enclosure?

So one thing that we've learned is along the outside or on top of the water, around the entire exhibit, we have astroturf because their suction cups won't stick to that, so that helps keep them in.

Brilliant.

Yeah, but honestly, the exhibit is plenty big enough for her to move around even when she's full grown. Our last octopus was probably close to 6ft. Tip to tip of the arm, she could reach across the entire exhibit, the short side of the exhibit.

What size do you have to be careful of people going in there?

Octopus.

What size of octopus? You have to be careful, like, we're not going to go that deep today.

So we dive with the octopus at any size. We have two safety for it, though, so if the octopus were to attach to the diverse face, we can easily be pulled out. But because we dive with them, as soon as they're young, they get used to us being in the water with them. It's never been an issue with having to worry about size and them being bad or anything.

And you don't necessarily have to worry about aggression either, beak biting you or anything like that.

No, I've never had to deal with that. I haven't heard any of our divers have any problems with any of our octopus. Normally, especially when she gets older, they tend to just be more indifferent to the divers. They'll just go on the opposite side of the exhibit. When I was in with her last week, that was the first time someone had been in with her, so it was something new and she was very excited by it. I imagine as time goes on, she's just going to avoid divers when we're.

In there now, how long do they usually live?

A couple of years. Not very long. So as soon as they release their sperm or eggs, they'll start to go into senescence. So they're not a long living.

Are you going to get her a boyfriend?

No.

Adam knows a guy.

No, but the Astroturf thing, that was brilliant because I'm going to get blue rings again on purpose this time. I will actually put the Astroturf on the sides because apparently they walk on the beach. So that is good to know, to keep them in the aquarium.

Yeah.

So blue ring, octopus walk on the beach in Australia.

There was one that came actually out of the ocean and went on somebody's beach towel in Australia and just sat there on their towel, and everybody freaked out. And I'm like, they live out. They can live out of water for half an hour, I think.

Yeah, I think all species of octopus can.

I also heard squid get, like, piny coladas and caught in the rain. Do you feel that sigh? I heard it. I felt it.

God, I just want to punch you in the throat.

You guys are in throat, and I got to pull you out of it. Okay, so what do you do again? You talked about some different toys and puzzles for food, but is there ever again? Astroturf keeps it out. What do you would do for tank mates? Or is there just no tank mates in the giant octopus tank?

There's some starfish in there, some anemones. We have had some green leans in with them, and that's because the green leans sometimes will fight with each other in their own exhibit, so they get punished to go in with the octopus. It's never been an issue. The octopus has never eaten one, but it's a time out tank. But when we got the new octopus, we had to move the green lane out because we didn't want it to bully the octopus. But I'm sure eventually there will be some in there again.

So do you do that with employees who show up late? You come late, 15 minutes, and you have to go sit in the octopus tank for a while.

Oh, it's cold. That would be a serious punishment.

What is the water temperature?

About 55 degrees, 8.7 degrees celsius. So whatever that is in fahrenheit.

We're from Minnesota. It's cold.

Yeah, it's cold. When I was in the longest I've lasted in there is about an hour and a half, and I could not feel my feet at the end.

Now, would you put on a scuba skin suit or what do you put on?

Yes. So we have a wetsuit and booties, hood, gloves, that stuff. And I mean, honestly, because you're in there and you're scrubbing and you're moving around, you can stay pretty warm for a while, but your feet get so cold because you're not moving your feet much.

That makes total sense.

So next on the, how do we say trip on your galleries, here is your coastal boardwalk. Now, the first thing I see when I click on the coastal boardwalk for your gallery is a lot of traditional different aquariums places, even like bush gardens had them when we went Jimmy. They have these wonderful stingray corrals. Do you guys have where you can do stingray petting or how does that work for you guys?

Not too much extra work for us. That it's a touch pool, honestly, sometimes it's less work because we'll let people feed them. Sometimes it takes something off our plate. But no, it's actually a really nice exhibit. We have kano's Rays, Southern Rays and an Atlantic Ray in there. And yet people can just come up wrist deep, two fingers, and any of the stingrays that come up close enough, they're allowed to pet them on their backs.

So the stingrays I've always confused on how those exhibits work because I'm just mystified by it. So you have these essentially really large pools. Stingrays keep moving continually and you give them enough space to glide across from one to the other and everything's very much fin friendly, so they're not gouging their fins. But how does that work for it's just mass filtration. You can't put a lot of flow in. I'm very unfamiliar with these and just find them amazingly fascinated. How do really those work for care and maintenance?

So ours, we have two huge sand filters on it that have to be backwashed and stirred weekly just to deal with not just the animals and the poop and the food and everything, but also just the hand sanitizer, especially right now, stuff like that going in. So we have to have really good filtration on it. We have ozone and uv on there, protein skimmer. It's a fairly standard setup for any of our other salt water exhibit filtrations. It's just the biggest one other than our shark exhibit.

Now, raise they seem when I was doing this in places like Bush Garden in the past, they seem to interact with you. Is that the case or they're just trained to look for food?

It's a food response. So we feed them at the surface a lot so they might see a hand in the water and think there's food. Because our touch pool is fairly deep. So if any of the stingrays are not interested in coming up and being touched, it's impossible if they stay down low. So it definitely is a food response when they come up to the top near the hands.

Now, do you have any other touch pools?

It's not an invert touch pool right now because of COVID we've turned it into coral, but it was a little invert touch pool. We had some of the cleaner shrimp and starfish and stuff like that in there, but because the way it's set up, you couldn't do social distancing. So now it's just a coral exhibit that's covered. But there used to be our invert touchpole as well, which will come back when things loosen up, for sure.

So what are the things that affected the aquarium due to COVID? Like, how have you guys had to scale back? We understand social distancing, but is there anything that has really hurt other than of course people don't go out in crowds anymore?

Yeah, our numbers weekends we still are doing like sell out weekends but our sell out weekend is maybe average busy day of what a normal weekday would be now. So just not having the ability to have the amount of people come in so money is obviously a little tight with that. We unfortunately had to lose some people guest experience and stuff because we used to have a guest experience associate in every gallery and now we can't do that with how some of the galleries are set up. We had dive shows. The divers would have a full face mask and do a speaking show where people could ask questions underwater. And now that can't happen because we don't want people congregating. We used to do feeds so random exhibits through the aquarium. We would have a scheduled time like the Amazon exhibit is being fed at 03:00 on Wednesday but we don't do those anymore because we don't want people congregating. So it's really just more getting people to walk through and trying not to get them to linger too long in one place other than maybe the touch pool.

So that's how it's certainly been limited, but there's got to be ways to expand it. I know for instance, people at business, they do virtual meetings now if they can't meet in person, they do virtual do you guys have virtual exhibits that you offer people tickets to?

Yes, we have. Our education department will do like, virtual field trips where it's like a personalized tour via, I think, zoom or whatever so the kids can still see the aquarium even though they're not physically there. This week is actually our pass holders Appreciation week and we have a virtual dive show. So anyone who wants to see the dive show that we used to have in person can sign on and watch the virtual dive show as well.

You have a lionfish. You can have bachelor parties, pay to get stung by the lionfish to see who can take the pain the best.

I'm sure that our boss would absolutely love that. I will suggest that at the next.

Meeting I can just hear the insurance guy shoot his pants.

Adam, can you spell your last name for her? So you get full credit on this?

I have been stung by a dwarf one and I'm assuming that the violets that you guys it looks like it's a violet would hurt twice if not three times as bad.

Never been stung by one, but I can't say that I know someone who has and it was not pleasant.

It's not.

They have a virtual story time.

Do they really?

Oh, yeah.

Story times are allowed on that?

Yeah, we'll call and share our stories with them and we'll get shut down pretty quick.

21 plus.

Yeah.

What's that?

Virtual story time like I honestly don't know. That's something I don't know a lot about it's outside of the animal care range.

No, I want to say this for.

First graders, so it May preschool to first grade, so maybe that would work out for some of our guys here.

Robbie, could does it say who's doing the actual storytime reading on there?

No, it's a sharks gallery. Tropical forest, little coastal boardwalk and coastal boardwalk.

Because we do have Captain neo, who is one of our mascots, and he's very entertaining and I could see him reading stories virtually for the kids. Probably be fun.

I think the next question is what fish are you looking for at the aquarium? Because we know a guy.

We know a guy.

But for real, is there any upcoming exhibits or changes that we can get to sneak previews for?

Yeah, so we had to redo our industry and habitat exhibit. So that's where the lion fish are and stuff. So they're actually off exhibit right now, but should be back out within a couple of weeks. I think their quarantine ends the 14th or something like that. So they should be back out pretty soon. That's going to have lionfish. We're going to have our snowflake eels, bunch of little small tropical fish. We have a new species of jellyfish coming at some point. It hasn't actually been confirmed what we're getting, but it's looking like we're going to have a new species of jellyfish here soon. So that's some fun stuff that's coming up.

Do you guys have to have a special round tank for that jellyfish?

We're working on converting. We have very tall I think they're like eight foot tall narrow tank that we're trying to round out the bottom a little bit and see if we can get the flow. We're going to have to do a lot of testing with water filled gloves and stuff, but we're going to try and retrofit appraisal, I guess, into a tall rectangular tank. We'll see how that goes.

It seems like you've got moon jellyfish here in your neck.

We do.

That's really cool.

You do have moon jellies.

See? Can I make sure? See, you guys need to have I'm just saying, just as an aquarium enthusiast, you guys need to have a paco exhibit. No, there is nothing better than having 80 pound freaks of nature as an exhibit to teach people what they shouldn't buy for their aquarium.

And that's why we have Rob on this podcast.

I'm just saying he's the 80 pound paco.

You could have kids feeding the maricorn. It would be a lot of fun, actually.

A funny story about big fish and aquariums. So I was at the Boston Aquarium, and they have golden monkeys above the arijuana exhibit. So they have this big, like, South American thing where the arijuana swim in the base of it and they have all these tree branches above the water, and these golden monkeys are like running. Back and forth on the branches playing. Well, they had a little baby golden monkey running around, and the arijuana was circling it, and then it jumped out and missed this monkey by inches. I think the monkey probably shit itself and was like, terrified, like, saw its entire brief life splash between it before his eyes. And then there was a big splash. So of course the aquarium person comes over and blames me, obviously, and was like, what happened? And I said, Profile the airport jumped out of the water to eat your monkey. It can't do that. I have seen videos of them taking birds out of the air.

Absolutely. Especially if it was a small one.

Yeah, I beat a monkey all day long.

Just watch. Circle the gun.

Sorry. Go ahead.

No, go ahead.

I have to talk about because these are one of my favorite animals that we have in their mind is we have our weedy sea dragons, which are super cool. I love them. They're real fun. We did get them. They had eggs last year. We had a few hatch, but we didn't have success actually breeding them because we were not prepared at all when it happened. We hadn't seen much cording or anything. So now I'm working really hard on light cycles and temperature cycles, hoping that we can get them to breed again and get some babies here soon.

We had some previous guests on here that specialize in that.

Who was it?

I can't remember. offhand. Do you remember?

Yeah. alyssa Seahorses.

Oh, I don't know.

She is a seahorse farmer.

Okay.

And all she does is high end seahorses. So we had her on the podcast and she had a lot of different crazy insights on breeding tips, and it went pretty in depth.

But seahorsavvy.com, I believe, is that right?

That is correct.

Okay, so if you do get some baby weedy sea dragons and you're not a za yet, so they won't technically be counted if you make it past a certain stage. I'm just saying I may or may not know people who are interested.

Hey, I know myself. We got to get a T shirt. I know a guy.

I know a guy. I may or may not.

I know a guy.

Are those sites or anything? Or are they on the ssp for you guys?

There is an ssp for them. I don't know that we are on it, actually. Yes, we are on it.

I'm not going to take them from the ssp.

Yeah, because when I had my eggs, when transferred the eggs, I just happened to be in Florida on a vacation, and I had set up for that day a tour with one of the aquarius down there who takes care of their sea dragons and seahorses. So it was actually, like, perfect. I went down and he helped me answer. He answered so many questions because I had no idea what I was doing at that point. But yeah, we're part of the ssp and stuff for them.

I just sent you links to it. It is Seahorse savvy.com, and the episode number is 70 for anybody listening that would like to check that out that.

Hasn'T I see it.

So the last time I saw any weedy seahorses, it was at seaworld. And they had them in a large cylinder, probably twelve foot high and eight foot around and stuff. And they were absolutely gorgeous. I've never seen them. That's the only time I've ever seen them in person, and I was totally fascinated by them.

Yeah. You'll have to come to Cleveland. I will do crs.

I have a feeling that I'll be banned from the Cleveland Aquarium by the time this podcast is over.

You might be banned from this podcast by the time this podcast is over.

Hey, I know a guy.

I know a guy.

He has to check his breather bags on the way in.

All right? So for those that are listening, how can they participate and support the aquarium?

Obviously, come to the aquarium, buy tickets. We also do have our splash fund, which is our nonprofit. So that's way to support some of the stuff we do. We work with the spotted turtle program. It helps with education groups and stuff like that. So if you just go to our website, there's lots of ways to help support other than just coming to the aquarium.

I posted links to both your YouTube channel and your website in the live.

Chat and on the website, it's Greater Cleveland aquarium.com. If you click the about tab, you'll see become a sponsor, and they have plenty of sponsorship, advertising opportunities.

I'm looking at that now.

I'm just looking at it. Can we sponsor? I know a guy.

Okay. You see that most of the zoos and aquariums there was like, oh, sponsor a tank or sponsor a gallery. I want to sponsor an employee. Whoever has to clean out the socks and the night. Yes, I need to sponsor the night.

Sponsor them.

Yeah. They'd love it.

Yeah. We'll send them a domino's pizza.

Yes.

They wouldn't say no. I'm sure.

See?

Wow.

They just want theirs in a zucchini.

Now, are there opportunities for anybody to volunteer up there?

No. So, because we're for profit, we can't have volunteers through the splash fund. We can have some volunteers with our spotted turtle program going out and tracking and stuff like that. But at the actual aquarium, we don't have volunteers.

Okay?

Now, they didn't say anything about sweat labor camps, right, Jimmy? That's where you go outside, you help do parking, get paid minimum wage.

That's called a homeless person trying to wash your windshield as you come up to the aquarium. You just run their ass over.

I work for the aquarium. Squishquart rubber rub.

I told you what happened when we went down to Tampa last time, and you could all hate me for this, but I wanted to see the Ringling Brothers and Bartima bailey's Circus before they closed.

Shame on you.

Suck it.

Anyway, did you feed him a peanut?

I grew up. As a child, ringling brothers and bartman Bailey Circus had a two hour special every year, and we watched in amazement. And love me, hate me, I don't care. Your kids, if they don't see an elephant, they're not going to be able to love an elephant, to want a protected elephant. You know what I mean? Think about it. It's like going to a zoo with no animals. And they've got their good points, they got their bad points. But as we drove over to the circus, 30,000 people were there. It was the last show they had in Tampa. My wife and I flew in, we went over there, and we get towards the area where we needed a park, and there was a homeless guy out there with a bottle, a squirt bottle and a paper towel. And we stop at the stoplight really quick, and the guy comes out of nowhere and starts washing the windshield, and the guy in front of us, and the guy was just peo, and I couldn't you only see what's happening in front of you. And the guy took a dollar bill and just threw it out the window, and it went blowing down the street, and the homeless guy went chasing it. And so we happen to park right next to him because they're directing you in to where to park. We parked right next to him. And I said to him, because I'm from Minnesota and I'm a nice guy, go, hey, so you got your windshield wash? He goes, yeah, with urine. And that's why he was mad. But he was a local. He was from there, and he knew exactly what he was getting. And I'm just glad because I was driving a convertible, because I'm from Minnesota, and I'm going to drive a damn convertible when I go to Florida.

That's the last time you buy a convertible in Florida.

Dang, you're right. So that's my happy story of the day.

I'm shocked. I need to get back to a happy place like the aquarium. This has certainly been enlightening. But before we go, can you tell us a fun story of something interesting that happened at the aquarium? Something that no one knows about?

The dirty, dark SEC no dirty, dark secrets.

Do you feed homeless people? One time that the giant octopus grabbed her foot and wouldn't let go see, tada took her shoe, and now her shoes gone forever.

I want to hear about the giant gourami a little more. How big is the giant gourami?

Because he looks he's big. He's I'm the worst at estimating.

You can lie to us because we'll never know. He's 12ft long people.

Yeah, 12ft. No, I'd say he's probably going to be way off.

Two and a half pizza.

Zucchinis.

I'd say 3ft long, maybe four really? My chair? I don't know.

They got that big.

They're huge.

He's huge. So he was a donation, actually, someone had him in their tank at home, and when we opened the aquarium, he was donated. And we're guessing he's probably 20 years old somewhere in there. Wow. Yeah, he's a big boy. And he's fun, though. He has a lot of attitude.

Go for it.

Sorry. Yeah, no, if I'm cleaning the window, or any of our staff is cleaning the window with one of our blue rags, he will try to attack the rag through the acrylic. He likes to chase little kids. Yeah, he has a lot of attitude, but he's really fun. People love him.

What's his name? You said he was the only one with a name in there. Yeah, toby.

He came with that name.

That's awesome. My son named it. We have a little blue garami we have rescued from a family member that wasn't so good at fishkeeping, and his name is Mr. belly whiskers.

I'm going to call Rob that from now on. Mr. belly whiskers.

Do you guys still take donations of fish?

No, we have people come and try to give us, like, turtles and stuff all the time, but we try to avoid that because we don't want we don't know the background of it. We don't want it to become a habit. No, we don't usually take donations. I think when we got toby, it was a special circumstance where it might have been a local supplier. Someone like a local fish shop owner had this in or whatever.

Yeah, he was terrified. What do you feed a giant drummy, whatever it was.

He loves grapes and romaine lettuce, his favorite. He likes fruits and vegetables. Every once in a while, I'll see him accidentally eat a piece of fish, and I don't think he does it on purpose because he wants his fruits and vegetables. He's the only grammy I have experience with.

I wondered. I watched my garami. He's in my 20 long, and there's some java moss in there, and I see him picking in there, and I always thought maybe he was just grabbing food out of it that maybe got stuck there, but maybe he's actually eating some of that.

Yeah.

Most guarantees deal with protein. They'll pick, they'll hunt for stuff out of it. They'll try to kick things out of different plants, but definitely more of a protein creature.

Yeah.

I was at a pet store years ago down south, and they would sell you a grape for a dollar, and you could feed them. They had three or four giant grommets in a pond and a dollar of grape, and people were doing it. And obviously it's working for him because I'm sure grapes aren't cheap to be buying them every day. Wow.

Fresh grapes every couple of days.

Cut them in half. Or does he just eat them whole?

He can eat them whole, but the turtle that's in there with him. Also really likes grapes, and sometimes I have minor panic attacks watching him try to eat a whole grape. So I tend to cut them in half so that if the turtle gets one, he doesn't choke. He is Asian. striped neck turtle.

Okay.

You don't want to get these guys talking about turtles, because then they start talking about how they breathe out of their butt and different things.

That was not expected. What would you do, Jimmy? All right, you're talking to someone that's a turtle expert, and they tell you that they bury their heads in the dirt when they winterize and they breathe out of their butt. You would have an aneurysm.

You talked about it for two weeks, and you're still talking about it your fault.

Mallory, is there anything that we have mistakenly forgot as a large topic? Our shark exhibit that's not missed.

That's a grand finale.

Okay, that's the grand finale.

Other than that, some of our smaller exhibits, we have flashlight fish, which are really cool. What else have we missed? Just some of our tropical fish. We have a big system of look downs seahorses. Other than the sea dragons, we have seahorses as well, corals, stuff like that.

So you have to finish with the best part. Tell us about your sharks.

Sharks. So we have, like I said earlier, we have our sand tigers. They are huge. I think the females so here we go with me guessing sizes. Again, the females are probably close to ten plus feet long. It girls. And then we have our male, who's a little bit smaller. They're really cool. Our shark exhibit has a tunnel that you can walk through, so people love to go walk through the tunnel and look up at the sand tiger teeth because they look so vicious, even though they're not. And then we have our nurse sharks, which are big puppy dogs in the water. Not that I would suggest anyone go up and pet them. And our sandbars are the smaller species, and they're always zipping around, and they're fun to watch eat because they're the ones that shake their food around and make a big mess.

How many pounds of food do you guys go through?

Let's see, in a day, I would say depending on the day, we'll go roughly £25 of food, not including the shark feed. How much is the shark food? So the shark food, what we do is we have 20 we'll get 20 large fish, so, like 20 mackerel or 20 herring, and feed those out. And I think that probably comes out to probably close to 1015 pounds for just the shark feed.

Feed that a day, three times a week.

And they don't even always eat. For such vicious predators, we a lot of times have to shove the food in their mouth because we pole feed, we have to shove the food in their mouth. They're very lazy.

That's how I feed Rob.

Take it.

Leticia that's just how you just put a funnel in his mouth and just pour it in.

Wait, what was that? llama off into pulling dynamite. tina. tina, eat your dinner.

Never see that.

Do you have any turtles with them or anything?

No, we don't have any sea turtles.

Okay.

We would love sea turtles. They're hard to get when you're not a za.

You could have got some in Texas when it was cold, because they're just washing them.

Yeah.

I'm not going to say anything, but.

Adam got six because he went in Texas.

He knows the guy.

He knows a guy.

He knows a guy.

I would love to get spotted. Eagle rays. That would be great if we can get those in there.

So your aquarium has been established for a very long time. Have you guys ever considered expanding or creating something new, or are you just happy with what you have right now?

So it hasn't been around too long. It was opened in January of 2012. Nine years old, I guess young compared to a lot of other places. The plan is to expand at some point. I don't know where those plans lie right now with COVID and funding, but yeah, the plan is to grow as we can. We're limited a little bit in a historic building and with everything that's surrounding us, but we'll see. I'd like to expand the year after.

COVID doesn't seem to be the target audience there, Jimmy.

No, but I put it in dinosaurs. Kids love dinosaurs.

They're going to have to get that celia cance.

What?

Yeah. The spa fish.

Yeah. There you go.

Actually, you don't see those in an aquariums very often. Is there a reason why?

I don't think at all.

I don't know. I don't know why you don't see them in aquariums.

I heard that they're deep water species. I don't think they want to take them out until they have them checked and measured.

So you have flashlight fish, you said? I've seen pictures of them, but I've never seen one, actually. Are those a big fish? Are they a small fish?

They're led they're generally small. They're like, maybe three, four inches long. I mean, to look at the fish itself, they're not a very exciting looking fish. They're like a blackish gray. But the way we have our exhibit set up is they're at the end of a darker hallway. So as you're walking up, there's no lights around it other than a very small one lighting up the sign. And you just see all the flashing in the exhibit. So you don't even really see the fish very much. You just see the flashing. It's pretty cool.

They look like little teal colored neon lights running around. They're like little aliens. It's cool.

Yeah, they're really cool. I like them. They're a lot of work trying to keep them clean. Are they unhappy?

Are they a deep water fish. Is that why they have them? So they can express the light? Or is the light useful? Is it used for breeding?

So they're not necessarily deep water, but they'll go into caves and stuff like that during the day, so they prefer darker water. They'll come out more at night, so they can tolerate some light. They're not deep sea where they just can't tolerate light at all. But they prefer the dark. They're like nocturnal fish now.

Do you feel they're communicating with each other when they're blinking, the lights and whatnot?

There's a lot of research on that, whether the blinking will change during mating season or during feeds and stuff like that. I don't know that anything has been for sure, determined. But you can see, like, when I feed them, you can see their flashing gets a lot faster. So I think there is some sort of communication and coordination with whatever's going on in the water around them.

That's cool.

No morse code decryption yet.

They just eat regular fish flake or what do you feed them?

I feed them chopped fish, and some scrill is their big one. They really like to eat, and they get really fat. So they are on a bit of a diet right now, so I'm trying to give them more low fat foods right now. So like shrimp and eskrill and lower fat fish.

You know, it'd be really cool if you had anglerfish. That'd be awesome.

No, that any place they're so deep. That'd be quite the process, getting them up into an aquarium. A decompression chamber. I know you can bring other deep sea fish up with decompression chambers, but I don't know about an angler fish.

Wouldn't it be a compression chamber?

Because well, you would decompress them slowly as they came up. Yes, it would be a compression chamber. I was thinking scuba diving and decompression.

Truth.

Boy, that'd be a hell of a thing to quarantine, wouldn't it?

Yeah, that would be accepted, right?

Yeah, something's scary to quarantine.

Dinosaurs. If you got dinosaurs there that kids love dinosaurs.

Yeah.

G, grandma. What big teeth you have.

I feel like you put in some stock into jurassic Park or something.

We used to have alligators. Those are dinosaurs.

See?

Exactly.

Jimmy knows what's up.

Do you want alligators again?

Adam?

We got rid of the alligators. They were just on loan from a place down in Florida. But people, they didn't move, so people were always thinking that they were fake, and it just wasn't very exciting. So they went back to Florida, and then we got tortoises for a while, which, again, were on loan. And now that exhibit is where the aviary is fun.

If you guys want to see something fun, go to the Greater Cleveland Aquarium. You just might see mallory play with an octopus. mallory, it was a pleasure.

Yeah, thanks so much for having me on.

Yeah, thanks for coming on.

It does. Our pleasure. And guys, if you like what you hear and you want to support, keep the lights on. Go to our webpage Aquariumgyspodcast.com Bob, the website. You can find our link to our discord, where you actually record these things live on mondays. So come join in the debauchery. Otherwise, you can throw us a buck, buy a T shirt, or support our sponsors, and certainly consider going to the Greater Cleveland Aquariums website and becoming a sponsor of theirs. Yeah, Jimmy, you got anything?

I feel satisfied with this whole thing. I feel like we've covered most of it and stuff, other than we didn't.

Get to the Dirty Dark Secrets podcast.

Another podcast leader.

I felt like you guys behaved yourself pretty well, considering some of the other podcasts I've listened to.

Oh, no, actually, robbie's over there vibrating on his chair. I think he's going to have tourette sitting over here as soon as we get off the air.

No, I'm going to have zucchini pizza, which, by the way, for those that don't know the meme, we do sound checks because for the podcast and we ask Adam, what do you have for breakfast? kombucha. Gross. Jimmy always makes him think about skittles and vodka. And then mallory said that she made a zucchini pizza.

And so what's your website, though?

Your zucchini pizza recipes.com eater?

Cleveland aquarium.com.

No, we can't get out of trouble.

Jim Scrodingdiscus.com.

It's actually a website. Jimmy didn't believe me, and then during the podcast, I bought the domain and made the website. So you're welcome.

You know what? We should let mallory on there, too, and then she put her zucchini recipes on there, too.

No, that's a brand distrust thing. You need to have recipes. There scrotum discus there.

All right.

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

No, because as anaconda don't don't sing. Quit singing. That's called a homeless person trying to wash your windshield as you come up to the aquarium. You just run their ass over.

Aquarian scorch squish script.