Finally we made it back. Couple updates. We've been paused for the podcast for a good while now. There's been a lot of life changes for mainly me. I have a new baby. Her name is amethyst. It's my first daughter. I've been a proud dad. Finally taking some maternity leave. And jimmy's been working, you know, eight days a week. And Adam has multiple jobs. So we all took a bit of a break from the podcast, but we had another one in the chamber all ready to go. So here's that podcast. Going forward, we will be doing the podcast intermediately. There may be a time where we do a burst of one week after week after week and then go into a low. Again, we did not disappear. Just giving you guys a heads up of how podcasts are going to be done. Instead of a hard schedule, we're going to be just focusing on the content when the content comes up and working between our new schedules. So excited to get this episode out. The new thing is join our patreon in the episode. You'll hear a clip that won't be able to be played on the episode, mainly because we shouldn't. So we have it on our patreon instead. You'll find the links in the show notes. Patreon aquarium, Guys to think it is, but certainly help us out. Throw a few dollars that direction. It helps when production comes and, you know, enjoy the show. Welcome to the aquarium, guys. Podcast. Holy, holy fish. No, Luke. Thank you. Something to swear. It's been forever, guys, since we've sat in these chairs.

It is so good to see you back out of prison. I really it is. I really miss you while you're away.

I don't know why they put teardrops underneath my eyes. Apparently it means something tattooed. I don't know, but I had my pockets out.

Oh, yeah? What does that mean?

I want to see your pocket, guys. Welcome to the podcast. I'm your host, Rob dolsen.

I'm Jim colby.

And I'm Adam.

On the Shire today, we're catching up for those of the listening. We've switched our podcasts going about every two weeks, and we had a lot in the hopper when we decided to make that decision. So there's a lot that we haven't sat in these chairs since the beginning of June. And right now, I'm looking at the calendar. It is the 2 august.

Happy August.

I mean, honestly, we took the summer off, basically. It was kind of nice. Then we missed you guys a lot. So we'll get back in the swing of things. There's going to be some improvements, but we're going to be doing a patreon what. So for those that don't know, like Jimmy, patreon is a better way, a tool that people can tip us for our content and get exclusives for our content.

You're kind of a tool, right?

I do my best. So today there'll be one bit that we have to pull out the podcast that has to go to the patreon only because it's too dire for young ears to hear. But we'll get that to that later. This episode is going to be all about questions and answers. We have questions going back to March, even, that we haven't addressed. We need to catch up. We're going to do some work today and get your questions answered. Jimmy, what questions you got?

I got a lot of questions.

Well, first of all, were you popular in prison? Popular in prison?

I'm just saying. Did you get a boyfriend right away?

Friend?

I guarantee you you got a boyfriend right away.

I don't know why, but they were really into that pocket thing. I don't even know what that means.

It's still funny. Is it? Yeah.

So did you have any news you brought to the table this week?

I brought all kinds of flipping news full of news. I could just not news.

Oh, news.

Okay. Well, just before I came over today, like Rob said, it's August 2, and our local not local, but to the north of us, Grand forks, North Dakota, there has been an aquarium that has approached the city, and the name of the company is called Sequest. And Sequest is looking at purchasing a building in the city of Grand forks, and it's the old kmart building. And they're going to bring in an aquarium in so much of the fact that the city is actually going to offer them about a million dollars the minute the second they announced this, there's public outcry. Because an aquarium because it's an aquarium and Sequest has been supposedly not good to their animals, and I have not had a chance to do any research on this whatsoever, but they're looking at putting in all kinds of things inside this building, such as a petting for stingrays.

Is this like a SeaWorld thing? Is that what people are getting for?

Yeah, it is kind of sea quest.

They're going to have sloths because who does like a sloth?

I guess.

Sloths are amazing, but they're horny as hell all the time.

What? What?

Plus most of what wait, wait, I need to roll that back for a minute. So sloths are horny? They're the slowest moving creatures. Just because they know all the time. Well, I mean, they're gonna give what, what, 60 humps a day?

I don't know. They're just horny all the time from the zookeepers that I know. Sloths are always horny.

Well, and then most slots work for the dmv.

I need to know who you're yeah, you're hanging out with.

I mean, honestly, what what movie was that, Adam?

Zootopia. zootopia, yeah.

That was hilarious.

Flash, flash.

Hundred yard dad.

All right, so so Grand forks is putting in sequest or sea sequest. Sequest. And they're worried that there's going to.

Be abusive animals, that there's going to.

Be mammals, aquatic mammals. They're going to be bringing in no.

The problem is that they don't want anybody petting their stingery. I don't know. It's just public outcry. They just announced it today and they're already whining about it.

I mean, I could see the public outcry because we saw what happened with slushy, Marine Land, the whole shamoo fiasco and Sea World. So I could see, like, they're already having a bandwagon against that. But if that wasn't there, then I would be like, well, what are they mention about?

I don't know.

Hang on. Doesn't Grand forks flood literally every year?

No.

I'd be more worried about the animals.

Getting out and swimming around in the rivers, fluke and river.

Damn it.

Wow.

We were on a roll there.

Nobody said the fword.

We made it almost five minutes.

Almost. Almost.

Almost. Grand forks. You're welcome.

The second the Grand forks flooded back in the city burnt town, they went ahead and they put up flood rings or whatever you want to call them, stuff. They have not had a problem since the city of fargo to city of fargo, which is, what, 80 miles south? They are still to this day fighting with the local farmers and trying to get their dikes built. But Grand forks has had it done for 1520 years already.

They got super powered dikes.

Yeah, I don't think you say that.

It's not the correct term. Dikes.

Yeah, I think you say dikes. Yeah, damned dikes.

I ain't censoring it. All right. This podcast already lived in splicit on purpose.

Wait, why don't they have to have I thought they were just going to reroute the river.

Who, Grand forks?

No, fargo. I thought that fargo morehood was going.

To reroute the river.

Well, the biggest problem they've had is that they want to just take all these farmers lands and just flood it when it whenever it's flooding season, and of course, farmers aren't having for it. And then the city of fargo keeps growing immensely, and all these people who have got these nice fancy houses on the outskirts of town are in the floodplain. And so it's just been a fiasco. They've not had any luck. They haven't gone anywhere. They haven't put up any dikes. I do believe there's some dikes over there by Wall Street, which is north by the airport. Now, it's because the airport had them put it in, but that was pretty much it. But I've got more news. Please, so talk to our friends of seagars Farms today. Singapore shutting down because of COVID again. So Singapore will not be exporting for at least the next two weeks, which they feel is going to be the next two, three, six anywhere that they're.

Not getting these shots. They're just purposely spiking out. Like, what was the state that just announced today that they're turning back on the mask policies? I think it was Washington and Dakota. It wasn't Minnesota.

I don't know. But there's a lot of crying and hooplawing about it and I don't have mine.

Well, your fish are now going to be affected because of Singapore. Singapore is massive for all types of bread and butter.

Stock platties, mollies, guppies, a lot of sharks, ball of sharks, black sharks. So those things are going to be a problem getting a hold of here very shortly, because if they shut down cigarettes Singapore has, they've shut down everybody. So it's been flipping amazing how we almost made it to the point of no return. And now we're back to sucking it up.

That's all right.

California'S going to run the bacon.

Yeah, I heard that, too.

What's the world coming to?

Any other no bacon?

No, that's all the depressing news I've got.

I figured that you'd be making all kinds of jokes about the Delta variant.

Okay, let's bring that up.

We don't joke about Delta variant.

Let's bring it up.

If they said Schmelta variant, I'd be on board.

Is it is it coincidence? I don't think so. I don't think so. I think the Delta variant, which is wrecking havoc now across the United States.

I think we just kind of want.

To look and go, what's going on?

What's going on here?

Airlines. I can't believe that they have not put me on the no fly list yet, but I'm still working on it when it happens.

No fly list for everything.

You should be, because you're a freaking terrorist, that's why.

No, I have not got damage him.

I believe he said it in Vegas in October.

Okay, then why wear the turban?

Yeah, I don't wear a turban.

Not even the diff turbine. Okay, you are I'm glad to hear.

That we can't make fun of Adam.

All right, back to fish things. Yes, let's get back to fish things. That's what people came here for. So, since we've last talked, it is now Monday. I got news.

Oh, God. Is your wife pregnant again?

All right, hold yours, hold yours. It is Monday, legitimately. Two days ago, Saturday night this week, I just topped off one of my nice aquariums.

What happened, Ross?

I went upstairs because it was my birthday weekend. I had a shitty birthday. No one would go to midget wrestling with me.

Yeah, so that was pretty sad.

I wasn't going to go my birthday alone, so I just went home and figured I'd just put up some tanks, filled up my night party. I'll cry if I want to.

Thank okay, go ahead.

Thank you. That's exactly the song I was singing.

Yeah, I bet you were.

So I go upstairs after filling up all my tanks, and then my wife's like, what is on earth is that noise? And I stop and pause the show, and I hear the only thing that could be described as, I don't know, noah's flood. So I run in my basement wait a minute.

Your wife's expecting did you once think maybe her water broke?

She was next, okay, she was the one who said, what's that okay.

It's her first child. Maybe she doesn't know what maybe it is.

Maybe I'm just asking. You hear people that have stomachaches every five minutes?

Yeah.

Anyways, so I run downstairs and I look over to my 90 gallon cube and the entire side of it is split wide open letting a deluge of water and a deluge, yes. Of water in my basement. So that was a lot of fun.

What happened?

I ran over to it, screamed for my wife and roommate.

Like a little girl.

Absolutely. I pushed the glass back closed and held my face against it for over 45 minutes.

Like, hey, man.

Until my buddy came back with clamps so we could seal the tank. Then I, of course, had to deconstruct the whole tank. And now it's sitting there with clamps, staring at me, waiting to work on this next weekend.

If I was you, I would call the person you bought it from and I would see if there is any guarantee left on it.

Jimmy, is there any guarantee?

No. That's why I sold the son of.

A gun, you rat bastard. Just one.

That's not even the best news.

What's the best news?

He found all of our presents, Jim. That's the news I had.

He did?

I did. A lesson to be learned here. Check the health of your seals. And if you have a rimless tank, put a rim on it. There's a reason that rims are there and they're to hold the tank's pressure from taller tanks. Especially if you have some weird constructed cube or maybe a 60 gallon tall or something. If there's nothing there to hold it and the seals are old, it'll just find an excuse, like, I don't know, filling up the tank all the way that you haven't done in a while and then spills all over your basement. So check your seals, ladies and gentlemen. They do get old.

And also check your Walverses, because they can't be trusted. Yes, walruses and seals. Terrible. That's a dad joke. I haven't told one yet in a while.

Kind of rusty are lee. Last thing is, like, you guys said you guys decided to prank me with this mystery weed.

Wait a minute. Mystery plant?

Okay, Adam, tell the story.

Well, Robbie wanted to know what I had for the plant and he wanted some and wanted some and I wouldn't give it to give him any because I didn't think he was responsible enough.

To have it since these guys suck at stories.

Plus, you're a dick.

Adam has a plant that can only be described as what we believe is the most invasive living plant on planet Earth. It looks like some really strung out java moss. Kind of, sort like strung out, like.

On drugs or something.

It doesn't clunk real well. It just kind of grows in whatever direction it wants to spread.

It has no direction.

Right. It just goes wherever it wants, and I've yet to be able to figure out a way to kill it. Adam had it. And I said, hey, Adam, you should give me some of that. I've been begging for it for years. Well, apparently he sent some mujimi. And Jimmy puts just a little tiny bit in each one of my tanks.

When you weren't around.

And I have neglected a couple of my smaller tanks, not thinking there's fish in there. And they've completely swallowed the mole. So I don't know what the plant is. We were on the Secret History, living in the aquarium, alexander williamson's YouTube. We're doing a live stream, and we showed the audience what it was. So still don't know what it is. Not a clue.

But a girl's good, doesn't it?

I know for sure. I soaked one in oil. Didn't kill it. I grabbed a couple of pieces, put in the wheel. No, still green. Yeah, yeah. Tell them what it did to your.

To your infestation tank.

My infestation tank? You have to remove tank.

The tank that you had all your Wish shit in.

Oh, yeah. Well, it kind of spoils it for future episodes. But here the aquarium Guys podcast. We set us up a little bit.

Of money, a million dollars.

Still planning on trying to see how viable products on Wish are for the aquarium hobby.

Yes, aquarium stuff. Not the other stuff.

Right. So we bought a bunch of shit off a Wish. I put it in some tanks. And the main thing is, they have these, what they call mystery seed packets. And the mystery seed packets, you can go to a lot of youtubers to see what's in those. They vary every time. I've never gotten the same pack twice, so I just dumped some of those in each tank and the shit that grew out of it, I mean, a lot of weird stuff grew. But they released this bacteria through the tank that I've never seen before. It was completely clouding the entire tank, left a residue on everything. It was basically a giant petri dish. So that was just I was just let it do its thing. And apparently Jimmy put a couple of pieces of those in those tanks and it killed the bacteria, lived through all the death and destruction, and then overtook the nutrients from the bacteria, and eventually the bacteria died and went away.

You're welcome.

I don't know what this mystery weed is. We'll try to post you a picture, but go on to Alexander williamson's YouTube channel, secret History, living in your tank. You'll see the live stream of us. You'll see the plant. Give her a go, and you let us know what that weird plant is.

So Adam gave me a little little when I say a little piece of plant, he gave me a little piece of plant in a Ziploc baggie. Probably about two and a half inches long.

Yeah, two and a half inches long.

Yeah, maybe like five strands. And I came over here and just took little pieces. When Robbie and I were doing a podcast, and I think you're talking to Adam, and I was looking at your tanks. I was just dropping it in here in a couple of different tanks, and I took it home. That what I had left in a ziploc bag, threw it on my counter, down on my bagging station in my fish room. And I pulled my bagging station away from the wall the other day because something fell behind there. And here's a ziploc bag with still some of this plant in it. It's still green. It's been four months, and it's been laying on the floor behind the counter. So it's good stuff.

You're welcome.

Tried, tested, and proven. All right, well, let's get into some questions. We have text messages, emails. We haven't even have a voicemail that we got to go over. If you got questions, go to aquarium guidespodcast.com. On the bottom of the website, you'll see our discord. That's where we have our community. And people are actually listening to us live right now and throwing in questions as we're going through. So let's see what we got for a voicemail. Are you ready, Jimmy? And again, just because we've done this so long, we might be answering the same question twice or someone is asking us again, it's extremely hard for us to keep up, especially when we have done this so long. So we don't want to miss any questions. So if we've done it once before, forgive us. Here we go.

Hi.

My name is wyatt. I'm from Florida. I've been watching all of your episodes.

Now.

I've been listening to, and I'm really struggling. I'm trying to find some larger fish that I can put in with black neon tetra. I'm trying to find something that won't.

Leak down larger fish with black neon.

So for those of us well, it.

Is a Florida man.

It is Florida man. Florida man wants to put large fish with tiny fish. Florida man gets what he wants.

Oscars. Absolutely.

Oscars. So you see how they gobble down. My favorite to put with those is actually some larger rainbow fish. I haven't had a lot of problems with them hitting it. In fact, I've had a single black neon that was just dropped off at my door set by someone with rainbow fish for years, so really? Yeah. Nice and nice and community tank fish right there.

I like that idea right there. Brad, what do you got, Adam?

Well, I'm trying to run, you know, knifefish could actually be a good one.

So those get massive?

Yeah, they get big. Well, no, not a clown knife, but, like, the black ghosts or the brown ghosts.

Another one that could see it.

Another one that might work like an elephant. Elephant nose? Yeah, elephant nose would or dolphin. If you want to have bigger fish, it all depends on what you're looking for and how much action you want in your tank. If you want some real action, you take, put an Oscar there and and chase them around.

See, I like our spectrum here. I go safe. Adam goes bizarre and risky.

I go off the grid, and Jimmy.

Goes off the grid. All right, more questions.

Maybe we should tell why it were to go to look for fish behind secrets farms in that little canal.

Yeah. If you go in Florida, there's so many different types of lakes and streams and whatnot that used to be connected to fish farms that maybe it's an old fish farm that was broken down or a flood hit them, and then you'll find them in ditches and whatnot. It's such a cool thing. They'll be like, looking down in a ditch, and you just see angel fish swimming by.

Yeah, and sore tails, like, what's going on? I don't think they're natural to Florida.

They actually just found sicilians in Florida, too. The ones that look like giant penises.

What?

I'm not making this up. They found sicilians in Florida in the canals.

What's? The ciccilian? I don't even know what that is.

A sicilian is like a legless snake looking amphibian.

Oh, I thought it was somebody that made pizza.

No. That's sicilian.

Okay?

That's italians. No, they're called rubber eels. You know rubber eels, Jim. You can get them from seekers farms all the time.

Rubber eels?

Yeah.

You find them on the fish list.

Okay.

They have a whole bunch of different names, but sicilians is how I've always known them. They're basically like a snake looking giant. I've seen them get up to 2ft. The ones I think they found in Florida are the brown and yellow ones, and they're native to the Amazon and to South America, and they found them in Florida reproducing. I honestly don't even know how they got there, because that's not a common pet trade thing. That's not something that people bring with them at all, because they're just not worth nobody wants.

Yeah.

Well, if you're listing here, do not put your goldfish, your sicilian, your anacondas, do not release them into the wild. Do not yet.

Don't release anything in the wild.

Jimmy'S living room, on the other hand, that could work. But not the wild.

Not the wild. No. Release them in my pond out front of my house.

So we get a lot of text messages and whatnot, and again, if you want to text us, you can. The numbers on the bottom of the website aquariumgeistpodcast.com. We get a lot of people messaging us saying, hey, can you ID this fish? Here's an example. I said the pick is horrible. No way to tell me. Shows me a bunch more. The best way. If you want help iding your fish, go to our discord. We have people down there that actually love the challenge of going to ID fish. So this one looks a lot like a siamese algae, but I don't believe so. It's an American number, some sort of minnow that he probably caught. I see a crick in the background, but doesn't matter if it's a traditional aquarium fish, something you caught wild. Go to the discord. We'll help you idea it out.

Is it a gara? agara? I'm just asking.

I have no idea.

I'll google it.

Giggle it on your inner tubes.

Yes, I will while you do that.

Hey guys, love the podcast. I've binge every episode over the last month and don't know what to listen to. The next episode drops. My girlfriend and I currently have two 3.5 gallon tanks and recently acquired a few tanks for free on Facebook. She liked the 20 gallon hex and I took the 20 gallon long and a 5.5 gallon. We built a stand for the hex due to no one really having a stand that accommodates this hex tank. It really came out well. So now that we've cleaned it, we put it on the stand, placed gravel in it with decor, we filled it with tap water, treated for chlorine. And now the important question. Can we do a water change in the 3.5 tank and in the water that we remove place into the 20 hex to help start the process of establishing the tank? It would be hard to switch the filter media due to how small the 3.5 is compared to the filter media that goes in the 20 gallon filter. Once again, great job on the podcast, except it for your response.

Wow. And here we are. That was in June and now it's August. We're answering it, right?

Well, actually, I text him back.

Did you?

Yes.

That's a nice looking stand they've got there.

Yes, it is.

Very nice job on the stand.

It looks kind of like they're going for like a barn door to look in the front and then they stay in the shit out of it. It looks really nice.

It is beautiful. You could always take. If you have an established tank that's doing well, just do a gravel back out of your gravel and take that nasty cruddy stuff that you suck out and just put a pint of it in and it will skunk up your tank looking terrible for a day or two, but it will take off like a son of a gun. And that is just the way Steve or vicki from Angels. Plus, he's now selling seated sponge filters online. But he's the one that said, take your best tank and just take that sponge filter, take it over to your other tank and just squeeze it out a couple of times, put it back in his original tank, he says you'll have that thing seeded in no time. And that is probably the best way to do it, the cheapest way to do it. I mean, you could buy a lot of chemicals. You could buy a lot of stuff to help start the bacteria process and stuff. But if you have an established tank, definitely would just take out the guck from the bottom and put it in the new tank in the litter rip.

So I actually messaged him back when this happened in June and told him that squeeze his sponge filter directly in there. You don't have to switch your media out of your tank. You can just squeeze the cartridge or the filter media or the sponge and just rinse it in there and wring it out. Put it right back in your 3.5. I do it all the time.

Like, over at my house, I've got a 25 gallon tank, and I must have probably 15 sponges in there. And they're just there in the tank with a few fish. And every time I set up a new tank, I can reach and grab a sponge filter that's already ready to go. I can put up a brand new tank for a sponge filter, and I don't have any problems.

Nice. All right.

So, yeah, I do have a question.

Hit it.

So if you custom build a stand for your fish tank, do they still avoid the warranty?

That's a good question, man, because I.

Remember that they used to.

Yes.

And so if you built your own stand, even if it was for a custom tank like this hexagon or a bowfront or anything, if you did not have a I'm using all glass because I'm pretty sure all of them did the same thing, and they're all owned by the same company anyways. But anyways, if you did not have an all glass stand or any of the stands that they made specifically for that fish tank and your fish tank cracked or leaked or whatever, it was null and void.

That's what I told Robbie about his tank.

Dick all right, so question from the audience. Where are you guys selling this most invasive plant on planet Earth?

Are we selling it?

See, here's the deal. When we find something so egregious, so horrible, our first inclination is not make a buck, nor is it released into the wild. We're going to keep a lid on it and burn it with fire.

That's the only way to kill it.

Burn it with fire.

And then if for some unfortunate reason Robbie dies, we'll have a tank full of it, throw him in there. And that's the way.

That's the way. I will either go.

I know you would make some great fertilizer.

Well, if you guys got questions live on the podcast, put it in podcast live chat. We'll hit it up as we read through the other questions. So, Jimmy, I think it's time you got to read the next one.

Where is it at?

Right here.

Oh, great.

Yeah. Put on your reading glasses, pull up your microphone, get a cup of gin.

Wow. Do you want me to read this animated or just normal.

I mean, you read it however you feel. The audience needs to hear it.

Hey, guys, love the podcast. I think jim's the best. He kills me. He's really freaking funny. I've been listening for the last few weeks at work all day. It definitely makes my day go by so much faster. And you guys definitely know how to brighten up people's days, especially when I have a bad one. I've been in a saltwater hobby now for about a year, and I'm having three tanks, and I'm thinking I knew everything about it, but now I've definitely learned a lot from you guys, which is hilarious because we don't know nothing about saltwater tanks that much of a question. Just wanted to let you know.

Keep it up.

Love from New Mexico, Joseph.

Even if you send the messages in, love the feedback. Now, Joseph later figured out that because we texted him back within, like, 20 minutes of his text message, and he didn't expect it. So he sent us a picture of his tank and then has an extra question. So go ahead and hit that up.

He goes, hey, guys, I recently texted you didn't ask a question this time. I do have a question. I recently bought this tank from a coworker for $20. I wonder if that's American or pesos.

That's American. All right.

I'm just checking.

American.

Welcome to America. He told me he believes it's a 30 to 40 gallon tank. It looks about 30 gallons to me. I have two salt water and one freshwater tank style. I want to make this one a freshwater planet tank. I've never seen a tank like this. I'd like to know if you guys can get pictures, but I attached a picture of this. Anyway. It's a tall, round tank, and the dimensions are 27 x 27 x 14. anyways, my question is, what would you recommend for escaping this tank? I prefer driftwood, but where could I get one big enough for this tank? I'm going to try the filter pool sand, like rob's recommends. But because I only like sand, this guy's a reject.

Hey, remember, he liked you more than me.

This guy's like sand.

Joseph, man, it's not for having fun on the beach for your aquarium.

You know what? I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt that he's a good guy. All right, so he says, what would you recommend for stocking fish in his tank, considering it's not that typical size of a 30 to 40 gallon tank?

Thanks, guys.

You're the best. I threw that in. You're the best. Well, I threw that.

Darn right we're the best. So on the tank above, he's got what can be described as a half circle half moon. It's a full half moon tank. It looks to be probably I don't know the dimensions because he put the dimensions in there, but definitely the 40 gallon variety. So it's not a bowfront. It's a full on half moon. And the big rules, they've had them in petco. I've seen every now and again. They're there.

When they first came out, I saw them where they had them back to back. So it's like a full circle. But just for those of you that are listening, if you've got a tank and you don't know what size it is, just go on and Google aquarium dimensions and all. Glass and some of these other companies will come up and you'll see all these different dimensions and you should very quickly be able to figure out what size it is.

As colby told me once, giggle it on your inner tubes.

Giggle it, dudes.

So this, because it's a complete half circle in the front, it's not a boat front. So the steels are going to last a lot longer because they're flush against the square back. But on this I'd like to put a center column. If you're going to put a piece of driftwood, only put it in the center and make sure it's raising high. If you can't find a decent piece of driftwood, you can't buy driftwood online. I mean, I hate saying that you can get a random variety, but you don't know what you're getting. So you're looking for what we call a centerpiece in the tank. Go to your upscale mom and pop shop or drive. To do this, I have to drive 4 hours to get to a place where I can go and find a pallet of driftwood to find a centerpiece, find one nice piece where it's in the center, and then find yourself full fish. I like seeing discus. I like seeing angel fish, maybe some showy sebrums. And you're going to see them from all angles on that nice curved half moon front.

Yeah, I really like those tanks. To me they're more of a piece of furniture than they are an aquarium because they kind of create a statement because they're so different and oddball. But rob's right. One piece of good driftwood, you can go on Aquabid and they have pictures on Aquabad of one piece of driftwood with the dimensions and you can spend up to 40, 50, $60 for one piece of driftwood. But alicia, it's kind of what you see is what you get if you're somewhere like we are. We're 4 hours away from Minneapolis and it's hard to find that perfect piece.

I like this one of the people put on the Chat private message me saying it makes a statement. Yeah, still a virgin. That's unfair. Hilarious, but unfair.

So a tank like that says I'm a virgin.

That's more of a statement of like a tiger king thing. You got to show your exotics and woo. What's that, Adam? That's like tiger king.

What's up, mother?

Oh, boy.

I can't believe you're saying the word. Oh, no, we're going to have to edit that out.

Our editor finally got back in the swing of things. Thanks, guys.

Turn your keep.

All right. If you were a stay at home parent with two under four, how would you go about making money with the aquarium hobby? Aquarium business.

How old are the kids?

Both under four.

What are the child labor laws in that state?

That's start there. Let's start there. Jimmy always uses child labor for cupping. Betas.

Yes.

Actually, you know you do what? Go ahead, jimmy, you go first.

I've told the story a thousand times. When my kids were bad, I made them cup betas when they were young, and we used to get in 4567, 800 bedas at one time, and they'd sit there and cut bedas and just be mad at the world to the state. And neither one of those kids have an aquarium. Sorry, guys.

I'm going to get him a fish.

Tank each rut, row, rut row.

Rut row. Do you know what I would have them do?

What would you have them do?

Count cherry shrimp.

Oh, that would be evil.

That's what you have them do?

Yes.

Count cherry shrimp. That's about the shrimp. And you have two kids under the age of five.

Yeah. There's no chance whatsoever those kids will kill any of those shrimp.

Yeah. There's no chance that none of the kids throw cookies in the fish tanks because the fish tank the fish are hungry. Accidentally throw something at your fish tank and break the glass. Pour bleach in there because the tank is dirty. I wouldn't do it.

I wouldn't do it. So is it he or she? Who is it who wrote this to us?

Oh, this next one.

No, we haven't finished.

We never answered the question. We don't get he or she. It's just a text message.

Just a text message.

Although it did say joseph, so I'm definitely going for a she.

No, that's the first one. I'm talking about that person that wanted to know how to make money with a couple of kids in the house.

Oh, well, that user is jerome.

Jerome.

Jeremy.

Jeremy.

It's a weird spelling. I'm going to go with Jeremy.

Is it weird spelling?

Are you planning on?

All right, so they're looking to make some money with kids in the house during COVID Try to make some money.

Confirmed. Jeremy.

Jeremy. Yeah.

So what would you suggest? It me. I suggest I don't have kids yet. I'm going to find out. I'm taking your guys'suggestions. You see, like, kids at a very young age, although the parents get nervous, have a natural instinct at a tiny age that infants can swim. Didn't know that. No.

You're not putting your kid in the fish tank.

I did.

Do you see anything?

Start with a dry one. Start with a dry tank.

I'm just saying there was some way they made that nirvana cover.

Oh, yeah. That was meant to.

And I think that guy was a fish keeper. That's all I'm saying.

Yeah.

And then he jim, are you going.

To go and baby proof the house for him and his wife, because to.

NASA robbie's how do we put it? I feel bad for tanasa having to be a single parent with Robbie in the house so she'll have a baby and Robbie to take care of. But tanasa is going to be fine. But I'm going to have to put some electrical those little plastic things over the electrical outlets for Robbie. I just hope it's his tongue in there.

I just can't wait till me and my daughter to lick our first window together. You know that you're going to be.

The one that teaches her how to lick the window.

Okay. I'll make sure to make note of that as well. Yeah.

It'll be two years from now, there'll be a knock at my door, Jimmy.

And they go, Uncle Jimmy.

I said, oh, hi. What are you doing? Pull my finger. My daddy said, you pull my finger. You're going to send her over to pull her finger, right. Two years old. More than that joke.

Pull the finger. All right, let's go to the next one. I'm going to have Adam read this one. Adam, I'm going to send you a.

Message so they can read it even though it's named not on there.

Well, I mean, sure you get that one, Adam.

Yeah, I do. Hey there, Jim and Rob. I've recently acquired some axle atlas, and although I've been doing tons of research, I would love to hear your thoughts on proper care for them. I was wondering if you folks knew any experts on the subject and if you'd possibly be able to invite them to your show. Put me in touch or lead me to literature that you would feel is helpful. I'm also interested in eventually getting some more amphibians when I get more established and would love any information you could provide. Finally, I just want to say, as a fairly new aquarium hobbyist, I am extremely appreciative to have found your show. I feel like I learned 30 things each time and find myself pulling over on my trips to my lfs to take notes. And I've been ripping through your content. Please keep it up. All the best to you both. Thank you for all that you do. Luke yeah. He didn't even like me.

No, apparently not.

So skip it. Just skip it.

Yeah, I drove a lot of people, and I'm not going to help him. No. We've actually had axel model on our list for a long time. There's quite a few people in Minnesota because we don't have to put heaters faxlados. In fact, if you put heaters, you're going to have a lot of that axial models. Yeah.

There's a person up in the fargo morehead area that's raising axe lottles and Jackie geraldine erickson. Sure.

There's a gentleman in fargo morehead. I probably have to reach out to him because I love having local content. Right. If I can find that one guy who never talks about his hobby is really good at it. That's the guy who won on the podcasts. I'm going to tell you some shit that no one else talks about. And this guy, he had man stacks and stacks, his kitchen, living room, all kinds of rubber made totes the dude was almost farming axolotls. And he had every color of the rainbow. And then fargo Morehead added chlorine to the hunter.

Yes.

And didn't tell anybody to make an announcement and killed all his stock. The dude was doing it for I.

Would lose my shit.

Oh, he lost his shield. I think he tried to get some action against the city board or whatever.

That ain't going to happen.

Yeah, there's nothing you could do. It's not intended for axolotl.

Quick story that has happened. A lot of these smaller cities here in Minnesota will run chemicals the spring to try to prevent an algae bloom. And all of a sudden, your water will be really crazy, funky, weird chemically for a couple of weeks. And I've talked to more people in this area that that's happened to where they've done a water change just like they always have, and all of a sudden kill a bunch of fish. So it never hurts to talk to other aquarium hobbyists in your area to see if that's happened in your area, because it's cheaper to learn by other people's mistakes.

Actually, Grand rack would actually tell me when they were going to flush the systems.

Yeah, that happens quite a bit.

So ask your local fish store if you got one in your town.

They try to keep up with it. They try to keep up with it, for sure.

Yeah. And then they'll tell you, because my place would tell me, or the city would tell me, and they'd be like, yeah, just let you know we're going to flush the lines on this date. Don't do anything. So I would just make sure to top it off before and then I'd wait for a few days or a week or two.

See, Jimmy and I are in a little town called perm, and we have a secret inside connection on how to know when they're going to flush the lines.

Oh, you know a guy?

No, we just know how they do it. So in perram, they have a lot of really old lines. Who knows? Maybe we're the next flint, Michigan. But who knows? Sorry, I'm trying to keep my smile together.

That explains why I see visions, right?

We tested the water many times in perm. It used to be soft. Now it's hard. But as far as the water quality, it's gross as hell. It's great for fission plants, terrible for people to drink. They don't hardly do a thing to it in here in perm. But when they flush the lines is generally when they do any type of chemical treatment is in the same flush. So when we turn our faucet on. If the water looks like water, it's safe. It looks like you just shit into your hand washing station. Like poopy kaka. You know that they're flushing the lines. I'm not kidding you.

No exaggeration.

It's not tea, it's literal shit. It looks like you just defecated into a bowl. So that's what we have to deal with here. It's like, oh, well, we're going to have to run the water for about ten minutes and now we'll be set and ready for our fish.

It's kind of like after you eat it too hot.

Mongolian grill.

The plant could survive through it, your plants.

Oh, for sure. It can survive motor oil. It can survive this. Let's do a question from the live audience, shall we? So I'm going to go to the most recent to be nice. Good evening. I have a goldfish with an oversized wean. He or she is having current and are currently having trouble swimming upright. Is there anything I can do for this poor baby? And they sent a video.

See if where is it?

Oh my. It's an aranda swimming upside down.

That's an extraordinarily bloated. Aranda. I'm trying to get the video to buffer. Gen pi is the one who posted, but yeah, that that is a very swollen fish. Unfortunately. It could be from a parasite, most likely some type of bacteria infection. At that level of swelling, I don't know if you're going to get the fish back.

Air bladder problems.

Yeah, you can try gently pressing on the swelling to see if it's actually air bladder. But yeah, that looks extremely engulfed.

It is very common in arandas, but.

Yeah, fortunately for that fish, there's not a lot of things you can do. I would say if you're experienced, you maybe have a small chance that it is just a swim bladder swelling and you could try a needle, but if you've never done it before, the odds of you getting it successful are pretty slim and you're pretty much guaranteeing to kill your fish. You try to prevent it before it gets that bad with salts, better water. I mean, it starts with better water quality, but a lot of times with those, the types of arandas, you could also get some inbreeding something else happening. So it's hard to tell from that little video we saw.

Yeah.

When I bring in arandas, which I do quite often, if I buy a bag of twelve large arandas, like about the size of that one, I usually have two or three that will swim funky and they'll do that for one or two days and eventually they will come out of it. So I don't know if that's a brand new fish that he just got from somebody that just got from the pet store that just got it in. But after a couple of days, because of when the fish are sent in the airplane, the cargo space is not pressurized and so they'll actually fill it. Really? No, it is not pressurized. I have talked to them considerably, a lot about it. So when they're hauling mammals, dogs, cats and stuff, that is pressurized and heated. But in the luggage area where your tropical fish go, it's not heated, it's not pressurized. And so when they send me a bag of fish, the bag will be full of water, a fourth full of air, and then when I get it in, the bag is kind of like super inflated sometimes. But if you open up the box and let it sit there for a little bit, it goes down on its own. So the air pressure in the airplane will screw up. Spent. Especially a random they're a swim blood or whatnot, and they'll usually come out of it after a couple of days. You can also try to change in their diet. peas, mashed peas. Sometimes they'll eat, and that seems to help a little bit. I've heard green beans, different things like that. Do your research on the Internet and see what other people have had success with.

I feel like dr. Fish is going to be you, the stick, after telling him to EPS.

What? No.

All right, well, two other questions from the live discord audience. Hey, guys. How did a light bulb hit the water and explode today? The tank is presently cycling. I did an immediate 50% water change. Is this tank finished? Will the chemicals from the bulb poison the tank? I was hoping to move my babies in there soon.

Incandescent fluorescent.

Well, it shows here that his tank is more of an indoor or patio pond style, as you can see here from the picture, Jimmy. So it looks like it was just a regular round bulb.

So really, Incandescent, we're going to put.

You back through HR training.

So again, you don't add up.

You say it's over chemicals in the bulb brewing the water.

Yeah. If you did a water change and stuff and you got the glass out rather quickly if the glass fell in when it broke. That's the thing that's terrible about incandescent bulbs. Incandescent bulbs get very hot and there's a little splash of water onto the bulb when they explode. I've had actually fluorescent lights fall in the tank and explode.

I'm not going to lie to you. I suddenly have the urge to pee in a bulb. Like I want to see this happen.

You want to see that? Why?

I mean, why not?

Ted?

Don't you ever let you have the moment where you just want to see some shit explode?

Yeah, but not near my thing. No, no, no.

That's why I it's the great idea, Rob. Yeah, definitely do.

Don't know.

Think.

Hear me out, Rob.

I'm going to go buy a 500 watt light bulb.

You put yes, you put something ally you put something between you and the light bulb and then you are shot over into the bulb.

Old.

No, that isn't going to work. You need to get a metal allied and pee on it.

Yes, metal.

Wait until it gets really hot, leave.

It on for a week, wait for.

About five minutes, and it gets to that sunburn stage and then pee right on it.

You know what? Because that'll make a great story at your funeral.

You guys are the best.

Yes, they will.

When Adam and I do without you explaining to everybody how you died, it will chuckle the room.

Well, again, if you feel laughter, if you guys got fish in there, take the fish out. If you can restart the patio pond. Restart the patio pond. If you really want to risk it, I recommend that anytime that you have any type of chemical issues in a tank of any kind, whether it's chlorine, which we know for sure can oxidize out of the water, start with an aerator and do frequent water changes until you feel comfortable enough to put fish in. Just reset it, man.

I've got another. Great.

No, go ahead. Drop Jim.

Jim job. What? Rim.

Go ahead.

He called me rim job.

What do you call that's, your nickname in high school?

Rim job.

Amos. The rim job.

That's right. So just another thing that if you've ever had a light bulb that's incandescent break inside and all the bulbs gone out and it's still inside the little screwy thing where it screws into, an easy way to get it out is to take a potato, cut it in half, unplug it, of course, and then jam the potato in there. And then you could usually unscrew it. It's just another tip from your Uncle Jim.

There you go.

I thought that those fluorescent bulbs had mercury in them, and so if they've got mercury in them, you're never going to get it out.

Well, this, I don't think, is a fluorescent bulb. Yeah, it definitely looks like incandescent.

Looks like.

So that it should be okay. If it was fluorescent, I'd say take the taint, throw it right in the garbage. Have a nice day.

Well, a bigger risk is later you're going to be, like, redecorating and then slice your finger open with glass. I don't know. All too well what that's about. Got a message back from Gen Pie. Says, I've had the fish for two years. It's the same goldfish that we talked about before. Says water quality is great. I do weekly water changes. Guys, there's only four goldfish, only 75 gallons of water. But I just recently transferred them to this large tub. Maybe it's the stress I would go for if you're changing from one container to the other. I don't know if there's an underlying issue. Could be age of goldfish that had some sort of defect and now it's finally showing up, and then the stress of moving it just really raised the problem. Again, you're talking about the aranda, which is a bread goldfish to be genetically terrible. It's it's made to have a ball giant flesh over its head, fins that don't match how it swims. I mean, it's just it's a monster of a fish. Don't get me wrong. I love fan tail and fancy goldfish, but they can have a lot of these problems. So if you've had it there for a while yeah, I chalked it up to a weaker breed of fish. Now it's stressed out. You've had it for a while, and who knows what could have happened? You're rolling the dice at this point.

Yeah, I'd give it a couple of days. I definitely wouldn't give up on them, that's for sure. But the problem is when all of a sudden, they cannot get underneath of water, and their belly, because they're laying on their back, is exposed out to the air. Then all of a sudden, you'll start getting bacterial infections and all kinds, and it just creates from one bad thing to another.

What is going on in adam's world? Any new and exciting venomous animals? Adam, what's the agenda for the future that just may put him in the hospital?

Oh, gosh, I can't wait.

Don't leave your audience demanding more, Adam.

Well, I tried to get Alex to send me some murder hornets for a friend that I know.

I did find out. You can get dead murder hornets.

What?

I don't want a dead one.

What do you want a regular murder hornet for?

Apparently, murder hornets, when they're, by themselves, make really good pets. I know somebody who wants low. I find people things, and then I give them to them.

Like herpes?

No, not herpes.

Okay, let's check it out.

I find things that people I am.

An acquirer of things usually illegal and dangerous, and then I help people find the illegal and dangerous things, and that's how I know so many people.

And what happened to that people? What happened to that guy on YouTube that had lost a couple of venomous snakes in his town?

Okay, no, he let him go. No, that guy was a dim drink.

They shut him down.

Yeah, they took all of his stuff, which they should have.

He lost like, 63 snakes.

Well, nobody should be wandering around with freaking zebra, cobras, and everything else that he had and going I don't have the anti venom, idiot.

Okay, so, if I may, again doing homework. You find dead ones. Apparently, there is a bunch of people illegally keeping murder hornets as pets, and they're having murder hornets quietly as pets because there's a whole giant bug collection group out there. And apparently, it was done before this became a giant crisis in the United States. But now local dnr and whatnot are making it extremely illegal to have these, especially in Washington. You can't do it in Washington for sure. I would check with your dnr before ever trying to purchase a hornet from anyone. It's just the craziest thing that now we're getting a bunch of people asking about how they can get their pet because Adam brought it up on Live Stream.

Yeah.

Are they really?

Yes.

Thank you, hassell.

So, I mean, you tell people they can't have something and they're going to do it and they're going to do it. So you know what? I'm going to tell people they can't have you can't have jobs. Go and get jobs to people.

Yeah, actually. So I did find somebody that had a sea snake.

Really?

As a pet. Now, even I, and I like to mess with things will not touch a sea snake.

There is non venomous sea snakes, but.

There is no arbitrary have the non venomous kind.

Well, yeah, then you're dumb. But apparently as far as them biting you, you have the least chance of them biting you because they're just so chill. I still wouldn't try it.

I'd be like, I have a limit to things that I will mess with. I'd messed with those stonefish that Jim will bring in, those super deadly toxic things.

Well, I'm glad to hear that you have limits, Adam.

Yeah, I still want my blue rings, but actually, I was thinking about if there's a way to breathe the blue ring octopus. Like, I kind of want to do this now. And then my wife took the garage after she found out about blue rings.

Oh, she found out? She listened to the podcast?

No, I accidentally let it slip. And then she goes, I'm taking over the garage, so my garage got taken away from me.

So what do you have left the dog house?

Dog house?

You're just allowed to be in her domain? Pretty much. Poor man. We'll take donations for you to see if we can rent you a hotel room.

Well, it's not that. I mean, she asked me because you remember how on the Facebook page somebody showed me the book of venomous things?

Yes.

I bought the book.

And of course you did.

My wife filed the book and then.

She goes, why do you need this? And I said, well, I'm going to get some blurrings.

Yeah. You can thank our lovely fans who listen to the podcast. They went on our Facebook page and they posted this. And so many people do this. They go to our Facebook page and add Adam just to see venomous shit, jokes, all kinds of goodies. So you're to blame. He took it as his blurring octopus. Stream away.

This have anything to do with Adam telling me how he could get a blu ray octopus to help me get rid of my ex wife? Stuff like that?

I mean, it could be something like what it was. It's karma, honestly.

Actually, I found a place that will sell just the dried up venom of the blu ray octop.

All right, onto the next question. Jimmy, go ahead and read it.

That one up there?

Yes, the one up there.

And.

You should pull your microphone closer.

Put my reading glasses on.

Right.

Hey, guys. jim's, my favorite. Love the show, by the way. What?

Yep, Jim is your favorite. Continue.

Yeah, sure. Hey, love the show, by the way. I have a question about setting up a planted tank. I'm setting up my 1st 30 gallon with six tetragol glow fish. They weren't my choice. Like most fish people, the two were gifted to me in a two and a half gallon tank. So I'm trying to improve their situation. I've got some river rock and spiderwood in the tank right now, along with fake plants I'd like to replace with real runs. Rear runs.

Rear runs, shaggy.

Unfortunately, the tank is in the process of cycling right now. Should I wait to plan it until it's cycled or should I go ahead? Right now, I like to recreate an Amazon river scene. So if you have some suggestions on what to put in, that would be great. I also have some go shrimp and a common plea go in there as well. lastly, I'm in Minnesota. Oh, crap. He knows where we live. I'm in Minnesota as well and wondering where you would recommend going for supplies and plants and fish. Sorry it's so long. What does that mean, it's so long?

The email.

Oh, the email.

Yes, Matt, thank you for the questions. Yes, put in plants, river rock, spiderwood right away. Anything that can help treasure to extract ammonia from the tank is fantastic.

Wait a minute, wait a minute. He's got the regular pleco? Yes, that is ant.

Plants are delicious.

I mean, I'm looking at my tank right now that's fully planted and there is a massive 14 inch placo in there and it just leaves all the shit alone.

Does he? Stupid, that one.

Yeah, that was well fed, I think is the term.

That might be it.

He's just a festive.

Feed your pleico, right? Get some nice wafers. Not those wardly shitters. Because it's terrible. If we're going to shit on any brand, wardley is the one.

Oh, that's right. Because they turned us down for membership or whatever we were asking for.

Okay, can we get sponsored by wardley? I'd rather be sponsored by smelter.

No, I don't rather be look what smelter started now with this whole variant thing.

I'm just saying we're scared. There's never a time we needed to be in the just gathered together as a community to essentially put our shotguns, point it into a barrel and shoot some Wardly fish. You know what I mean?

Wow.

What?

Why is shooting wardly fish?

It's a metaphor.

Oh, yes, because we don't condone killing fish here on Aquarium Guy's podcast.

No, but they are delicious.

But we will put babies in aquarium.

When it's dry, only to shoot the nirvana album cover. All right, that's what we're going over.

So that album cover, if you got one of the early ones, when the baby had a little his thing was sticking out. The little wiener thing.

Right.

That album is worth a lot more than the other one.

That was kind of wait, there's two different album cover.

They brought back the Wiener, actually, due to a lawsuit of artisan and whatnot what. So Walmart even stopped offering the ones for years that didn't have the wean. Now they brought back the Wayne.

So we should get a T shirt. Bring back the wien.

Bring back the wien. Back to this core, guys, question in Minnesota, where do you find what would you recommend for efficient supplies? I'm betting this guy somewhere down south. So he hit up Forest Lake pets. That's like, the place to get your shit. I love that place. It's like one of the best places in Minnesota to get some stuff. World of Fish. Wonderful, wonderful place.

There's. The one in duluth and cities, sea level.

There's lots of great places.

I mean, pick one. You're not going to get bad time for many of those.

Walmart was good.

Go even pick on Joe.

Go. Joe shrimp shack.

Yeah. There you go. To Joe.

Joe shrimp shack.

He's got all kinds of decor, have plants, and if he can't go order something for you.

So you did me a favor the other day.

I did.

You did. So our buddy Joe from Joe shrimp shack contacted who's the guy?

Oh, they bought the wood?

Yeah. Who's the guy?

Maverick falcon, otherwise known as Jim tang. puntang. He's a big supporter of the podcast.

Yes. So anyway, he bought us a bunch of trolla wood a while back, and I picked it up when I was down in Minneapolis. And then when I was down there talking to Joe, I said, Joe, I'm taking this troll of wood, and I'm putting it in my tanks, and I'm putting in little anubious petite plants into the troll wood, and I'm selling the crud out of it. I said, But I want some odd shaped chola wood. And Joe called his guy and where is it? New Mexico. where's he at? I can't remember. But the guy that cuts all the Cholawood for Joe don cholo. Don cholo. There doncholo and anyway, he sent me a box up to he brought it up here to our neck of the woods. He dropped off his dad's house. I didn't know where his dad lived. Robbie was nice enough to go get me this box, and I opened up this box, and it has got the most incredible, cool pieces of cholera wood in there that I'm so excited about, and he just gave me a hell of a deal. So cholerwood comes in many, many different forms and sizes and stuff, and I was really excited to get something different. So thanks to Joe for doing that for me. I appreciate it.

And don cholo.

And don cholo.

All right, let's see. The question came in. Let's try it out. We have a breeding group of young super Red playcos dropping like flies. Test the water. everything's perfect. Not sure what could be happening. We had a lunch that the sand might be holding some deep gases, asking for a friend. Super Red personnel's play goes to be exact. Nothing is visibly wrong with the bodies. Okay. Are you asking if the sand is holding gases? I'm assuming that sand has been in there a while. If your sand has been in there a while, before you add fish, stir it. Take a stick, bro. Go to your local Asian restaurant, get a real bamboo face feeder and just swish her around in there like you're trying to find treasure dare.

But you'll go out to the yard, get yourself a stick. Get yourself a stick and just stir it around.

Stir it a little bit off.

Jim'S favorite favorite thing?

I'm not going to answer this because I freaking kill. I can't raise a plea to save my soul.

What the dildo?

No, agent trumpet snail.

Oh, yeah, I can raise those. bingo.

Wait, I do have a couple of questions for this guy. All right, so the baby plea goes are dying.

Correct.

Okay. A what's he feeding them? Do you have any calcium in the water?

I was going to say that. I'd start with the food over. Any pests or gases in the tanks? He does say the adults are dying.

The adults are dying. Does he have a diatom algae problem?

That could be. It could be. how's the oxygenation in the tank? Is it a small tank filled with a ton of these things?

Yeah.

Honestly, you got to start from the top. You got to go for your basics. how's the water quality? how's the PH? Are you aerating the tank? What temperature are you doing? How much have you been feeding? I'm not kidding. If you really go into these issues that people have, beginners, advanced experts. 90% of the problem is how they feed. I deal with my neighbor. I've had fish for years, but they're dying. We'll find out that they're feeding four times a day. Four times a day on a tank that's at 70 degrees, feed every other day lightly. Right. Fish, they're not warm blooded. They metabolize from the temperature they have in their tank. We're shooting in the dark here. We don't have a lot to go off of, but that is, yeah, our big ones.

If you're losing adults, I definitely say it's water quality. And start by doing 20% water change every day for a week. But if it's just the babies that are dying, which doesn't sound like it, but if it's just the babies that are dying, sometimes the babies will starve to death. And you get started on in through what's the green powder called spirulina. Cocaine. So you want to feed them cocaine? You want to feed them cocaine?

Not just cocaine.

All right.

Spirulina is what we call evergreen cocaine.

There you go. Spirulina. That's the word I'm looking for. And one of my friends raised plague Goes, he had a huge, huge tank and they were dying because he couldn't get the food down to him. It was about 150 gallon tank. And what he did is he took like a one half inch plastic hose and he mixed the powder in a cup into a slurry green solution and then he poured it down a tube down to the bottom of the tank, right through the mouth of the cave. And then he had great success. So sometimes when they're too little, they won't come out looking for food far enough.

That's all we have to do. Your chili feet just put a tube down your face and just pour it in.

Don't tell me how you have lunch every day. Yeah, we all know.

Hey, I do have a question about that spirulina. Can you get it to stick to things? Because you know how the discus breeders back in the day used to make an egg yolk solution? Yeah, you can make a paste with the plates. Will that stick to a plate so that you could just put the plate down and then you could feed them better that way?

I've even seen some people use some sort of weird gelatin to mix in with the green and I've never tried it. I wouldn't recommend it unless you do some research.

They make a really good pleco food rapache. It's called morning wood.

Oh, my God.

And I've used it. It works good, actually.

It worked great.

It works great with a fish.

The most I've done is take your micro pellets, or even normal pellets and brits them. Like put your food that you're going to put into like a little dish, spritz them with a couple of sprays of water, toss your spirulina in them and then shake them like you're going to do wings at Buffalo wild wings. Toss them in the spirulina. See how that goes. It'll only stick for so long in the tank, but hopefully it's enough to have them hit the pellet as long.

As you deliver it down to them fast enough and they'll come out and eat it. But if you're having problems with everybody, I would start doing water changes like a mofo.

Here we go. Got some more information. Sponge filter, ten gallon tank for adults, down to 110 gallon tank for fish that grow four inches. Not real great. There's not going to be enough food in there. You said that you feed green pellets daily. Do you take those pellets out after 20 minutes of them being in the tank? Anything that's not being actively sucked on, honestly, most of those algae wafers they put in, if you put in too many of those, those break down and turn to toxic in your tank.

Those cheap algae wafers suck.

If you have a lot of mouths to feed, you know it's going to disappear for sure. Otherwise feet sparingly scoop anything that's left over out of your tank, because it's going to turn to horrible ammonia in your tank.

And especially this time of year, especially.

In the ten gallon tank where there's not a lot of water.

If you want to try to keep down the ammonia and the different problems you're going to have with all this stuff, go out to your neighbor's, wait till it's dark. Go to your neighbor's garden to seal a zucchini and cut a zucchini.

Bingo.

And put a small piece of zucchini, weight it. Put it down, put a little rock on top of it.

I'd much rather see some cucumber zucchini than see wafers in the tank, especially in that smaller tank.

Those wafers really pack a lot of stuff in them, and every wafer is different until you find the right quality wafer. The guys from reflux have some great stuff. Oh, cobalt. aquatic cobalt, yes.

Yeah, they got some good stuff. All right. Should we do another question, or should I read my letter?

What letter?

Okay, for those that are listening in, we're going to cut right about here. If you want to hear this letter, you either want to have to listen live, and you can do that by following us on discord. We put the announcements up generally sometime in the middle of the day if we're going to go live that night. Or you can go to our patreon page, which, by the time that this episode's airs, better be up. Koreangistpodcast.com bond. The website. You should find our patreon. If you sign up to be a member of our patreon, you can get exclusive content such as this fan letter we got, which is too erotic to read on the podcast.

It's a handwritten letter on a yellow legal pad page.

It is. So go to again, quarryguyspodcast.com. Go to patreon. Become a member. Help support us. It helps. Keeps the lights on, helps us get equipment, finding ways to get new guests on, hosting. I mean, this isn't free.

I'm scared because I've never seen a handwritten letter in the last ten years.

I mean, we're working our way to keep it free for you. You just have to help support us. Now on the questions. Jimmy now we're done with the patreon audience, we're going back to the real one. Okay, so we have Maria says hi. Listen to storytime three today I have a comment about the June bug story. I'm in Sweden, where I live, the June bug is called I'm going to butcher this, forgive me, olin bore. Olin bore, which translates to Allen head of penis bore drill. So it made me laugh even more. I hope that gives you a chuckle to stay safe and keep your sleeves wet. I like that. Keep your sleeves wet.

What's that?

Adam?

I didn't know we had people listening all the way to Sweden.

Oh, we got people all over the world.

All over the world. That listen, because not only are we demented, there are a few people out there that are also demented.

I mean, why do we have to have the June book story out there? As a question? But hey, they liked it. The fans get what they want. All right, should we do Adam Fried one?

Yeah, send it to me.

All right.

Hey, it's our buddy Peter. Sir. Buddy.

There you go. Adam. Hello.

I have become overrun with plecos and have been giving some L 501 black phantom plecos.

Wow.

I was able to find a lot of information on my do you guys know much about these? Are they just a different variant of green or blue phantoms? I believe they come from the same water, but either then there's not a lot out there. Kindergarts peter the sunfish guy.

All right. So for those that don't know, you could look up plato's by their L number. Their L number generally is L, followed by all the way from two digit to I think now they have four digit numbers.

I was going to say they have four.

So this one's, L 501, the black Phantasm playgo, sounds like a superhero.

And this phantom phantasm.

No, phantasm. If it's going by that L number. He said phantom. It actually is phantasm if that's the correct L number. And most of the time they go by the L number.

Oh, because I went on Planet catfish and that's what they put is phantom.

Yeah. This one, I'm going off of Planet catfish as well. L 501, it is phantasm.

Yeah, I see it again.

The placo is gorgeous. It does have the body structure, but it seems to be smaller than the green phantoms and whatnot. But it has these brilliant perfect circles all over its body, like polka dots. Fantastic placo, very rare in a lot of different communities. Trying to find these over here is not exactly the easiest thing to do. When you breed them, they breed kind of gold color like most placos. And then as they age, they get more brilliant dots and darker coloring.

They are beautiful.

What was his question?

I don't know.

But first of all, congratulations on breeding those. Those are gorgeous.

But I think no, I think he got them given to him.

They are.

They were given to him and now they're breeding for him and he's overrun with them.

Yeah, they come from the same waters. Honestly, I don't know. So many of these playcos, all the different L numbers share so many different streams. Again, Google L 501, they'll have a full species profile on that. I would follow up by the L number. It's the best way to go in it rather than trying to get people butchering names.

And peter's been a long time listener. He's been with us since the very beginning for the most part, and so he always looked up some fantastic questions. But thanks for sharing that, Peter.

All right, next one is from John. I have a pair of parades. grammys, two white cloud tetris, two cherry tetris, two plattie, fish platties, two dwarf algae eaters, one single male emperor gudgen, which I call Mr. edgar's. Name is Fish. I love those names. I wish I could come up with more. Question is, if a territorial spar breaks out between a male Paradise grammy and the gudgeon, who wins? I'm going for gudgin. Here. If I'm picking a winner, I'm throwing my money down on the gudgeon. 20 to one.

Because they're dirty suckers. They're dirty.

They know how they can pin themselves in a corner and they'll lash out. They just have better positioning than the Paradise scrummies. But on the Paradise grommet front, I know that they are excellent snipers to just eat eyeballs eyeballs. So remember, Jimmy, when I bought last time from you years ago, I bought, I don't know, 300 romy nose tetras.

Yes, they were beautiful.

Well, in that already precycled tank, I had a pair of Paradise grummes and they just kept whacking eyeballs left and right. Took me about 20 in a minutes to figure out, like, why are the eyeballs missing? And then I watched them sniper style eyeballs off of my rummy nose.

Those weren't rummy nose. Those were hybrid blind cave fish. Clearly they just hadn't lost their eyes yet.

Although it's a good contender. If we're going to pick out fight night, I'm picking the gujan.

I like that also. What about you, Adam?

I'm going with the gujin. I've seen them things fight. Have you ever seen them? When you get a pair of them.

Fighting over territorial over a rock, they're just stupid. I'm fighting for this rock.

Yeah, they don't care. They'll fight to the death.

All right, next one is from Rex again, a longtime fan of the podcast. He messaging us all the time, communicates with us back and forth. So happy to have sent us another one. Rex did some research for us. We had a question. I don't know if it was on Dr.

Fish.

Another episode. If the magic eraser sponge by Mr. Clean is safe to use aquariums.

Who is it?

He said, did some research on these things, came up nontoxic. I'll be sure to do a vinegar wash on it after, but I believe it could be a game changer on secondhand aquariums with water synths. If it works. I remember to update you guys on how it goes. And we'll finally get my fish out of totes and in after the one cracked in the bottom of the panel of glass. So he's showing here some pictures of, like, really old gross tanks. I said, My dude, thank you. I know the Australia hardware store has them, and I wouldn't have a clue the rest of the world does or not. You might be able to get them online. And then he shows a finalized product. And let me tell you, the pictures show like you can't see through the glass. It's so stained to absolutely crystal clear.

And he's the magic eraser.

Magic eraser. I think that even if you're using the magic eraser, maybe there's a little bit of toxic chemical on there. You can still do a nice washing afterwards, maybe even do a bleach treatment. Or you use something like barkeeper's Friend just to make sure that there's no residue left over.

Nice little vinegar and water juice, but apparently it's working. Oh, you got that?

That's it.

You get to be sitting the corner, though.

Yeah.

Another one from Rex was the YouTube link you posted recently, or discord Your Episode or something else on YouTube. Oh, are you going to do more of them? We've been having a couple of people asking us about YouTube. We stop posting to YouTube. We put a bunch up. We get hardly any listens because people already do the podcast subscriptions and they're just audio only.

Just audio. Nobody gets to see our beautiful face.

When we get to the next part of our streaming and we do more video streaming once discord is about to launch it, then it'll be easiest for us to post back on YouTube again until it's paused. I mean, what do you want from us? We do what we can.

I think we should have, like, cowboy night, our first night. We all wear big cowboy hats and boots and do it in our underwear. Kind of fun. Just a thought.

Oh, God. All right, you get to read the big one, Jimmy.

The big one.

This one was from Coal.

From Coal. All right. Back in January 2020, myself and my son got into the hobby. My son, unfortunately, has an allergy to pet dancer, and we rehomed our two cats due to this. Oh, okay, I got it. So they had cats and his sons had to get rid of them. So I thought, hey, what about a.

Fish tank to get rid of his son, right?

No, he kept the sun get rid of the cats. I don't know, I'm 50 50 on that. So I thought, what about a fish tank? So we now have a fisherman in our basement, rather mediocre with some guppy breeding going on. We have bred Epistagamas and Daniels and have been lucky with the plants that we keep in a low tech approach to the hobby. We've had some plant and fish shells, but COVID-19 restrictions up here in Canada have certainly put a damper on things from time to time. We have some predators in our fish room. We've got two Polyptic senegales store.

Oh, nice.

Yep. They were store bought from petsmart, and we've had them since October 2020. They are about nine inches, and we're maybe about five inches when we got them. They appear to be male and female in regards to the information that we have found online out of the poly. Why do you always give me the hard ones to read how do you say poly?

I read three of them before.

Polyporius species. Okay. I'm going to say senegalis.

Palpurus.

Palpiturus. This is why I don't teach it.

Hold on, there's a Google thing for this?

We should google it.

It'll be great.

Yeah. And we'll edit all this out and it sounds much better.

No, this is good banter, Jimmy. This is how we live and pay our bills.

How is it pronounced?

All right, here we go. pronunciation. Oh boy. It's loading.

Polypterus. What? Say that again.

Polypterus.

That doesn't sound right.

I like it. polypterus.

So out of all the polyprus species, this would be the one I am most comfortable in keeping as they stay relatively small compared to the other eleven species of polypterus. Thank you.

Robbed.

They are also tank bread here in Canada, so that makes me even more comfortable knowing that they're made here in Canada. I truly believe these other species should also be in the hobby, unless they're tank bread.

What should not be in the hobby.

Should not be the hobby. Unless they're tank bread. So he wants tank bread? Fish. Is that what he said?

Apparently we use the same food as.

A store to ease the transition from the store to our tank. But come January of 2021, they're rejecting the following foods bug bites. Yeah, I know. Crazy, right? Because everybody loves bug bites. North fin, predator, pellets. They don't like them. Haikari sinking pellets. Don't like them. And tilapolia.

All right, so I'm going to help you out the the polyptris. We're just going to call it the bashir from now on.

Okay?

Sorry.

Single bashir.

Yeah, I know.

We want to be scientifically accurate. We're we even put an ad in the bashir manual.

That's right.

We can't do that.

Word. Yes.

All right, so continue. Well, so anyway, they've been feeding all.

These top selling foods and he goes, because they are still juveniles, their appetites are large and more frequent eaters compared to when they age. So what we're doing, one decent feed a day appeared, that was not enough. So we split that feed into two feedings, one in the morning and one in the evening. And that seemed to work. But after a week or so, even with a different food the other day, they rejected most foods and were very aggressive towards each other. We were overrun with Daniel and weird. What?

We were overrun with Daniel rearers. It's a type up there. So they had a type of Daniel?

Yeah. And they were under COVID-19 lockdown, so they couldn't sell the daniels or even give them away. What are they doing up in Canada, Robbie? So I decided to drop two daniels into the tank because we have a ton of guppies, but honestly rather not use them for food because my son would kill me. And I'd rather like oh my God. I'd rather like the Pacific reteculata and wings. Yes. They are all guppies in the end genetically lol.

This guy is slaying me.

I'm going to drive up the camp that punch him.

He got the scientific names for varies of guppies. That's how much I love you reading this. This guy's my favorite.

You set me up for failure, you dick. One.

He's my new favorite.

We also have an L 144, which comes with a ton of conspiracy as well. Oh, lordy. Anyway, next morning they were gone and both our bickers were rather docile.

The shears.

No, the shears. I'm going to punch you in the throat. I'm going to punch you.

Throw it.

I'm going to punch him and throw and they're rather docile, seem content. I'd rather not do feeder fish or life feeding. But with a predator fish, I found that the occasional life feed will simmer tempers. But now with doing life feeds, they are more reluctant to pellets and tilapia. So we have fed them krill, which they soaked up in seconds. Also, they're now eating bloodworms. Well, God. Can you find anything more expensive to feed these fish?

Josh pickett's going to stab us all.

Right in the forehead. I'm sorry, man, that we have butchered all this stuff, but here's his tank specs. He is 125 grams from being crazy. What is this?

All right, tank specs.

There you go.

140 gb temp home main will be 125 gallon.

What was that?

I think the bee was intended as another type of that's some Canadian thing. 40 gallon for now, wants 125 sand substrate over a rock, soil mixed for plant growth, glass lid, marina, Led, 20 gallon light sponge filter, 200 watt heater and then a mixture of sword plants, frog bits and java. Sword. Really appreciate the floating plants and anubis that keeps them floating. Well, super sensitive to sounds outside aquaria. Rather skittish when maintenance or water change is being done. Sorry about the page email. Now for the question.

Oh, my God.

All right, so this guy has I'm.

Not answering any of this.

Question one as I go for feeding them live food for feeder fisher Daniels, I would say no, but they're not necessarily the best for them. I mean, if you can feed them other things. But if you're in a pickle and you have to feed live food, especially for small ones to get feeding, if you're in a in a real crisis and they're they're starving, you gotta do what you got to do. Should we stick next question two. Should we stick with crustaceans and krill and continue try feeding pellet food? Absolutely. You need to go to number 54 of our podcast. We did a Bashir deep dive with Josh pickett, who made the Bashir handbook, which I think you can still get a couple of copies from.

If not, it's almost sold out.

Yeah, I mean, they'll probably do a second run if you beg nicely or.

Buy a digital copy.

I'm pretty sure there's digital copies out there. He talks more about. Bringing them and how difficult it is transitioning them to normal food. Number three, is it normal for Bashirs to, like, you have them pet their head because one of them seems to be more like a puppy than fish. I've heard this more than once. That not necessarily human interaction, but just interaction at all. Hey, some fish honestly like to interact with their human koi, I find, like doing it or they're eyeing up for.

Food and they're going to eat yet.

I was going to say, like my dojo oaches. They're just looking for a snack, so they'll try to pile drive your hand to see what they can find. Number four, have there been any Canadian fishkeepers on the podcast? I would like you to feature any stories or experiences canadian fish keepers can be on the podcast. Well, there's I mean, our favorite Canadian, Chris biggs, the mataquarist, like, go to his YouTube channel. Tons of stories. The dude's real inspiring. He does more than just fish. He does all kinds of different types of bug creatures. He's got a farm. He's a kudo human being. And trust me, a plethora of knowledge you never wanted to know, but you'll just be fascinated and glued by. So check it out. We're basically Diet Canadian here in Minnesota.

Diet Canadian. There's nothing died about you.

You can kiss my maple syrup.

Maple syrup.

Okay, first of all, there is a particular Canadian fish keeper that's pretty famous. But he hasn't made a request to come on our podcast.

I wouldn't either. This sucks. Adam, what do you got? dude? Help me.

Well, first of all, the guy was being an asshole.

Who?

The Canadian. I thought Canadians are supposed to be nice salt of the earth people. And he's like he's very dick.

Wow. This is the last time I let you guys drink.

You know, it's just that you keep us off the air for three months. There's a lot of venting going on.

He didn't do anything wrong. everything's fine. He's just I wouldn't be too worried.

What he should be worried about is.

All those COVID restrictions, how bad they've got. The COVID restrictions up in Canada, you can't even do anything up.

You know, at the bottom of this, I want to point this out that he says, thanks for taking time and reading the email and getting back. Great show. Listen to religiously when the fish are doing maintenance, water changes and even sorting guppies. Have a good one from Canada Coal. Well, he messages us this July 4 because he knew that we wouldn't read it with our national holiday. So now we're getting them back to him a month later on the podcast only. So I think we did him dirty.

I am sorry, Cole, for butchering all those big words and stuff, but Robbie let me drink today, so it was a good one. It wouldn't matter if I sober anyway. I still couldn't have done it. But back to Cole sorting guppies. Make your kid do it.

Oh, someone's message in the podcast. chess is why hate on Canadians. We're free right now. There's no hate. We just love the jealous. We're jealous. It's different. We can break check, too.

Fire smoke down here.

We can break check. Hockey, too.

That's right. The bastards from Canada have been sitting there smoke down here. forgot about that. Now I am kind of mad at the Canadians. They got all these fires going up there. And in Minnesota, it's been very smoky, so I'm mad.

All right, next question. What?

Adam jen, you know how they said that you can't go to Canada? I can get you into Canada.

Canada is open here in another week. You just got to have a shot and a passport.

I can get you into the secret password.

No, passport.

Oh, passport. If anything like a password like that, here's my covert card. And the password is you bet. You bet. You yeah, dark. You bet.

Your sweetest is getting in today.

But let's make fun of the Canadians for oil.

All right. Hey, they're making fun of us. Like, at least we're not talking about our new shit stir with all right. Hey, guys, I wanted to know if you could have Art penham as a guest at some point. He used to have a podcast called Tank on Fire. Was really interesting. He could explain anything. And his high tech all would have. Keeping fish simple. Loved tank on fire. I would like to know what he's up to now. Love your show. All regards. Keep your hands wet.

That's from Maria in Sweden.

That's Sweden. So I said, of course, we'd love to. So if you're listening to this or if you're a friend of this Art panema of Tank on Fire, I also used to listen to Tank on Fire and was a bit of an inspiration of kicking off the microphone for this. So I'd love to have you on the podcast, make you a regular. Come on. Come on down. You're the next is right.

I'd like to have art.

So if you know Art, send them to us. Tell them that playing this episode. Tell him that he is. We have a chair here waiting for him, and we'd love to have him on.

All we need is his name, address, phone number, social Security number, and last four digits of his credit card. Right?

I mean, I do it for free. Just for the first one.

Free it is.

Free it is. All right. It's a long one. We should have Adam read it.

Oh, of course.

Holy holy handbast. Holy Batman.

All right, send it down.

All right, I'll do it. It starts. Adam.

Hey, Graham. Guys, jim's my favorite.

Jim is my favorite. I think that's how they all start when you read them, isn't it?

I read them, yeah.

Holy shit.

This is a long one.

All right, I know a little aquarium.

Guys, let me start off by saying, okay, I've been binging your podcast as of late and unable to finish an episode off along my morning and evening commute. That's a hell of a commute.

Yeah, we ramble on a lot.

An hour and a half. Yeah, 45 minutes commute.

Guy sitting in his car.

You know what, Nick? Get a better job.

Yeah. I'm writing to you, hoping you can provide me with all your thoughts and or advice on a huge custom community take. I'm imagining and reading to pull the trigger on. My goal is to have tons of movement and a few eye popping fish. However, I'm getting to the point where I have so many stocking ideas that I'm starting to question myself and would appreciate your advice, Laura. My stocking ideas and taint plans. The tank custom built 400 gallon acrylic, or L shape acrylic drop ice.

Wow.

90 x 30 x 28. And then knowing full well maintenance issues of this type of aquarium. Minimum 100 gallon sump pump or sump packed with biological filtration. Larger if stand interior permits. Rock work with caves and broken sight lines. Sandy substrate, easy to keep plants. java fern large. anubis Amazon swords with possible CO2 injection.

Let's just take a pause here so we can grasp more details with this. The drop off tank. Imagine that you have a normal 55 gallon tank, but then below it, you put, like, a 30 gallon tank. So it's just one L that you put in a tetris pattern sideways.

It's like an upside down L. Yeah.

Like you took the L and rotated at 90 degrees to your left.

Never seen one.

They're quite fun. Popular with saltwater goers, but extraordinarily expensive and virtually you can only get them, like, custom built. There's very few people that manufacture them.

Got to be expensive.

Oh, yeah, very expensive.

So should we go into the fish?

Okay, just to crack them off here, I'll just read down the fish. 150 cardinal tetras, 50 to 100 rominos tetras, 50 to 60 lemons tetras, 30 to 50 diamond tetris. Geophagus species. He's got three listed there, and he recommends having small numbers. Actually, four geophagic species. denison barbs having a few of those. cory doras are of one type, not mixed. He wants fairy spotted cory. He's giving us different. So he's got, like, six different varieties of cory's to pick from. Then dwarf sedantis, flagos, which he would list as bristlenose green, phantom gold nugget, and leopard frog. Your thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks so much for the hours of entertainment. You give them to the podcast. Well, if I'd start with picking on the geophagy species, otherwise known as earth eaters, they will destroy anything that you have in the tank. So the best place to have a Geophagus species is when you have really hard, heavy, heavy rock displays, and then all around it is just your gravel and nothing can be planted. They're just going to have their own fun. Essentially, make yourself a sandbox tank. If you're going to have a bunch of Geophagus species, they're going to want to be territorial. They're going to dig and mouth your gravel all day. They will siphon through every inch of your aquarium. Do that as a separate deal. I would not add that to a community tank. They'll also hit and potentially eat your other fish. The other species I really have no problems with. I mean, even the dwarfs, that is pretty tame.

But he could have more than one gold nugget in that size of a tank. I've kept pairs of them in 20 gallon months.

Yeah, he's only got listed one species per type of play. Go. Highly unnecessary. You can go for a few. In fact, it's funeral to see them cave out and breathe. I see some of those activities go on in your tank is a lot of fun.

The problem you're going to have in a tank like that if they do start breeding, is you're never going to catch them. You're never going to get the babies out of there. You know what I mean? Because that is an odd shaped tank and it's very beautiful. You're going to have to do some serious type of filtration in that just to keep everything from having dead spots. I mean, we went and saw that huge saltwater tank in the brainerd area and he had what, 20 some different.

And that was a coral coral tank. And he didn't have a drop off and he was having problems with flow. This is a drop off. Again, it's freshwater. So there's ways of doing it, but you have to be really creative. You got to put the inlet on the left hand side where it's the top edge and then have essentially outlet all the way to the bottom of.

The base of the L blowing up.

That way you have a complete circulation from one another in the tank. Otherwise you're going to have a lot of dead zone issues.

But, yeah, I think it's a very, very good project to do. It's going to be expensive.

Now, here's something to research for you that's specific to this tank because you have the drop off in your tank. Look up how to make yourself a gravel waterfall. You can make yourself an intank sand waterfall. Generally, you have to make them custom. And you can use airline tubing with just a plastic tube. It'll suck up the sand at the bottom, it'll blow the sand over the ledge and it creates a virtual waterfall inside your tank. It's a whole lot of fun. It's a great way of moving sand in little tiny pieces to make your own moving bed, if you will, to catch biological material and create a biological filter. And it's really, really cool if you can get them to work right. And a lot of species, especially like small tetras, love swimming through it and.

They love eating sand, getting impacted and dying.

Well, don't have stupid fish. I have had no problems with this in the past.

What is your sand saturation? rob's?

What is your your sand hating?

Nobody likes sand. What else we got on this?

I just feel like you, you know, nobody likes sand. Lost your virginity on a beach and you got chafed.

Very possible. That was probably by myself, too.

Oh, by myself. You got to go to Adam.

You a metal allied. You get a peanut when it's on.

I'll get right on that. All right, should we hit the next question? We only had a few more. You want to do the easy one, Jimmy?

God, thank you very much for let me do an easy one.

I just want your bitching to stop.

God. Well, you've kept me off the air for two months. I got a lot of stuff to say.

All right, get it out.

He goes. Dear coron fish guys, jim's my favorite.

No.

My name is Jeremy. From dayton, Ohio. Go huskers or whatever. I don't know. Who's in Ohio? husk. I don't know.

They're offended now. I am a longtime listener.

First time mailer. First time mailer. Oh, like an emailer. Okay. I was wondering if putting driftwood in a tank could PH shock a fish or if putting it dragging a rock in a tank could PH shock a fish. I have a five inch juvenile sebrum in a 65 gallon. The tap PH is around 7.4. Just fake plants and gravel currently. Thanks for the time and input. Love you guys. Especially Jim.

All right, I got this one. Number one, if you put any wood in your tank, it will leach tannins into the tank and lower your PH. That's just a given. It's not going to be enough to, quote, unquote, shock an aquarium effect. Very slowly, very beneficial. No matter how very slow, no matter how much tannins bleeding through your tank, it's slow rocks. However, rock suck as long as they're clean and don't have chemicals that were sprayed on them or paint or something else. And they're actually a real natural rock do more or less the same, but they have more of a chance of being PH neutral than bleeding anything into the tank. Sometimes you'll get calcium, minerals, but it's not going to, quote, unquote, shock it. Unless it's some weird special rock I haven't dealt with. Or again, it has invasive chemical sprayed onto it. Do we still have Adam with us?

Adam here. Shock the monkey.

Anything to add, my friend? No.

I mean, I've never don't pull your driftwood out of the river and then throw it in your fish tank.

Yeah, that would be shocking.

That would shock your fish tank. Because I've heard of a lot of people oh, I got this really cool.

Piece of driftwood out of the river.

Through to my tank and then everything died.

Yeah, that's why you need to go to a place where you trust and know that you're getting good quality rock. Like stealing it from your local bank, right, jimmy exactly.

I always go to the bank and get a quality rock. I go, oh, my God. The other thing you can do, if you're one of those people like rob's who's cheap and goes out and gets driftwood out of the river, you can always put it in a garbage can, like a 40 gallon garbage can. And soak it in there for a good two, three, four weeks. Do water changes and just see do some water test on it and stuff. And I know a lot of people have done that and stuff and had great success. So if you can find yourself a pretty clean river, good luck. Then you might have some free driftwood there.

All right, let's wrap this up here. We got coal. Oh, you know what?

You know, it would shock your fish.

Tank, but coal, if you peed in it, coal gnomes. What phosphate?

Isn't that that rock or which one is it? Is it phosphate or magnesium that starts on fire underwater with water?

Where the hell you know what, guy?

I think it's potassium. It's potassium.

You throw potassium in there and then that that'll that'll shock you.

Dank I feel like we're just taking all these questions and like, how can we blow some shit up with this question? All right, cole hey, guys. rob's, my favorite. Wanted to send a quick email to thank you for responding to my email last year. Episode 57. I was avoiding aquascaping tutorials as a topic to listen to as we were more wrapped up in keeping and breeding fish. So I've never listened to that episode. My bad. But recommended your podcast to friends and local fish store worker who sent me a message today letting me know that he heard your question being answered in the episode. All my crap. Well, maybe more than one. Great episode. What an excellent guest to have on. George Farmer. That guy definitely knows his stuff. And a great podcast as well. Thanks again. Really appreciate the response of answering my question. Great podcast, excellent balance of being informative and comical.

What?

There you go, ops. My son is six years old. That's why I listen to my podcast in my own time. I can really relay the appropriate information to him after, but keep on talking.

Good idea.

Shout out to Liam, his six year old son that shouldn't be listening to this. Should be listening because it's filled with schmutz and adult material.

So here playing this part. Hey, Liam, keep up the good fish work.

Yep, you're doing awesome.

Doing awesome, Liam.

Love it. All right, back to schmutt now. Yeah, I think that catches up for some of our collective emails again. Keep them coming.

According to podcast guy sending one about fish, he wants to quarantine bottom of the website.

We were so close to being done so close.

All right, I tell you about he wants to quarantine 28 kuilojas, this shrimp grombie.

Put them in a pickle jar. That's where I put them.

No, don't put them in a pickle jar. But are they the regular? Are they the old ones or the black ones?

What are we asking here?

He wants help if he needs any issues looking for his newly acquired 28 kooly loaches. The only thing I would say is make sure you keep up on water changes because the old kooly loaches just come in salt.

He's got the banded ones. The banded ones are super fragile. Yeah, he's got to be.

Remember what we found out by Dr.

Fish?

He actually had that on the episode.

Yes.

Rackish.

Yeah, salt them up. Salt those puppies.

Salt the crap out of them.

You could do one to two teaspoons of salt per gallon.

Salt those suckers up, booy.

Yeah. When it comes to cooly loaches, the banded ones are probably the most popular with the more fragile.

Like Rob said, there's black and banded. Those are the two common cooly loaches you find and black or bulletproof. Banded need to be salted.

I think bulletproof is probably overstating.

I could pee in my tank right now. And the cooley loaches are the one to survive.

Okay.

And the plant.

Challenge accepted.

Yahoo.

Mountain dew challenge accepted. I'll be over here right now.

We're going to have to do a separate podcast called Fight Night and just have which is the stronger fish.

God. Yeah, we haven't got those people mad yet.

No, not at all. So 20 spoons of salt for a ten gallon. Yes, that would be the measurement. Start slow, melt it. Don't just like, put salt in there. Take a cup, scoop out some water, melt it into a cup. Don't let any of those granules go down, because the moment that you have those granules go down, your favorite corridor is going to come up. Feel them with his feeler, and then have the whisker burn right off and start slow.

I mean, do five now, do five tomorrow, do five the next day, do 20 the next day.

Yeah, just pretend it's like your grandpa with a heart condition and he's just sneaking salt from the table.

You know, that's great.

Or you're trying to slowly kill a loved one. Right.

As long as it should a little.

Bit at a time.

Well, guys, love you. We're glad to be back in the studio. You'll keep seeing podcasts out every two weeks. Go to patreon. Right? Support us. We could use it. And again, you got more questions. We're going to keep hitting them, but I think this is a better way of not going to model the park when you send them in.

Yeah. And we do love it when you give us names, people that you want to have on this show. We will definitely seek them out if we can. If you have their information, and you could forward that to us privately. We will not share that on the air. So, rob's, put that letter away.

And again, if you send this letter next time, don't Soak it.

Don't soak it.

Got anything else, Adam?

No. That's a horrible way to end the podcast. I was having all kinds of fun until you brought that back up again.

Oh, really?

All right, you got to go to patreon to find out what it was about.

At least you're not in the same room as I am.

Hey, should touch this letter. Jim, dude. bye, guys. 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 make sure you get push notifications directly to your phone so you don't miss great content. Like this, I suddenly have the urge to pee in a bulb. What's up, mother?

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