#81 – Questions & Ethics

TALK ABOUT THINGS MOST CONTENT CREATORS WON'T

2 years ago
Transcript
Speaker A:

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Speaker B:

Guys.

Speaker A:

Merch line. And we have added a new line of merch saying I love cock. Now, cock kok is the ball on the front of a flowerhorn. So certainly check out the silly new merch line. Love for you to pick some up. It certainly helps the show. And certainly at mention J four flowerhorn on social media just to let him know that you love cop guys, keep the stories coming in. We want to do a user submitted story time for storytime four. Certainly send those in. You can send them to Aquarium Guys podcast website. At the bottom of the page you will find our contact method. You can email it to us. You could send it a text message, whatever is most comfortable for you. Hell, you could even send us an audio recording of you telling the story. But send those in and let's kick that podcast. Welcome to the Aquarium guides podcast. Hello, governor. I saved this whole British bit, Jimmy, because we were going to have a sturgeon farmer on, but he doesn't realize that he had to use internet and he has to have a microphone to join the podcast. So I don't know how to spell prerequisites to people better nowadays.

Speaker C:

I'm kind of giving difficulties.

Speaker A:

I'd like to join the podcast. How? Well, you need a microphone. I don't have that. Okay, next. So it's us tonight, guys. I'm your host, Rob soulson, and he's.

Speaker B:

A fine example why you shouldn't run your microwave with the door open. And I'm Jim colby, the voice of reason.

Speaker D:

And I'm Adam Elizabar. And I know a guy.

Speaker B:

Suck it, terrible.

Speaker A:

I need a I actually need a catchphrase because I feel like that's insulting.

Speaker B:

It is. That was insulting. Don't run the microwave with the door open. Well, speaking messing with your head.

Speaker A:

Speaking of insulting, we have a few different options that we've kind of jiggled around for backup plans and where guests decides to not have internet or microphone.

Speaker B:

And nobody liked my idea. I wanted to go streaking and nobody said everything.

Speaker A:

Yeah, but this is an audio podcast.

Speaker B:

I know.

Speaker A:

As much as I'd hold a microphone up to your dong, I don't think it would talk.

Speaker B:

We don't say that.

Speaker A:

I don't think it would talk. So, guys, we're going to be talking about ethics in our hobby. The one topic that you probably would never guess would come from this podcast, but we're going to hit it anyway because why not do it before we lose money, right?

Speaker B:

Have we made money yet?

Speaker A:

I don't think no, but I feel like we're going to get something tonight. So, guys, we need to get into the news. Adam, I feel like we should have, like, a broadcast thing. Welcome to for this world news tonight's top story by Adam Eldeshar. Adam, how's it going? Pretty good. And the top story, they found out.

Speaker D:

That cuttlefish can pass a test, a cognitive test that human, children, and maybe even you can't pass yet. rob's.

Speaker B:

Exactly. Wait, no.

Speaker A:

Is it how to put members into a small opening?

Speaker D:

No, it is the memory test. It's called the marshmallow test. And it's a cognitive test that so far, I think whales, elephants, corvids, so that's like crows and stuff, dogs maybe, and apes can all wait because they know that they'll get something better later on.

Speaker B:

So like a reward.

Speaker D:

Yeah, basically. Tell a kid, I'll give you one marshmallow now, but if you wait five minutes, you get two marshmallows or five marshmallows. And cuttlefish waited, like, 15 to 30 seconds, which is pretty good for a cuttlefish. And they can actually pass that cognitive test. Can you pass that cognitive test, rogs?

Speaker B:

Well, look at him. He waits, like, four days and gets 3000 marshmallows and eats them all at the same time.

Speaker A:

It's unfair. All right. This test is bullshit. I have diabetes. They did this on purpose. No, not fair.

Speaker B:

But I'll be the first one there to help cut off your leg.

Speaker A:

I'm sorry.

Speaker B:

That was insensitive.

Speaker A:

Was it? Yeah. We'll forgive you. I did not expect that to be the top story, but do you have anything more? We're going to make Adam do the news each week. That's what we should do, right?

Speaker D:

Well, okay.

Speaker B:

There we go. There.

Speaker D:

Adam is coming up with shit.

Speaker A:

Adam is now going to do the news. We'll get a news reel in here and we'll make it happen. So, Adam, what else is in the news?

Speaker D:

That was all that I paid attention.

Speaker B:

To, because it rhymed. Zebra.

Speaker A:

It's zebra.

Speaker D:

What about zebras? Or zebras?

Speaker B:

Come on, Adam. We talked about this all last week.

Speaker A:

Yes.

Speaker B:

As we did zebra muscles.

Speaker A:

Oh, yeah, the zebra muscles. Wow.

Speaker B:

Thanks for showing up, my friend. My goodness.

Speaker D:

Whole zebra muscles were found in moss balls yes. At Petcos.

Speaker B:

All across 26 states so far. Yeah.

Speaker A:

I was going to say not just Petcos, but Petcos were probably the ones that were most affected.

Speaker D:

Okay.

Speaker A:

Apparently that was traced back to a Ukrainian supplier.

Speaker D:

Yeah, that was their first problems. And you can never trust the ukrainians.

Speaker B:

Oh, yeah. Let's make them mad now. Adam right.

Speaker A:

We have such a fan base in Ukraine.

Speaker B:

You know, if you pull up zebra mussels on wikipedia, it says that they started in Russia, in the Ukraine and stuff. So it makes total sense. That's where they came from. And it's mostly the ones that you see in the pint container at your local big box stores.

Speaker A:

Yeah, they're prepackaged. They're not just loose moss balls and aquariums that will scoop for you. That's why it's really targeted at petco, because that's the ones petco really focuses on.

Speaker B:

Yeah. And our local dnr in their code of Minnesota are all going around to all the different Pet stores and they're checking them out. The particular place where I get mine from, they got the green light, so they had no issues with theirs, but they have a different way. But what I found out is that when they get their moss balls in, they keep them in a refrigerator in no water at 45 degrees for up to two weeks before they even send them out to try to eliminate any pests that might be in there.

Speaker A:

Mosses, though.

Speaker B:

No, I don't think it kills zebra mussels, but it was just something they've been doing for different parasitic things that may get in them.

Speaker A:

I was going to say with zebra muscles, that's actually a dnr's method is letting the boat dry. You take weeds off of it, and that's just a measure for all invasive species. You let your boat sit and dry at least for five days.

Speaker B:

Yeah. And what they're telling people is that you either need to take your moss balls out and actually put them in the freezer for a few days, or you all take and boil them. But not just to take them, throw them or flush them down the toilet. Especially because zebra muscles have been known to take over sewers. sewers and piping systems and stuff in cities and stuff, cause huge damage. So if you have a moss ball, first thing you want to do is go take a look at it, kind of squeeze it and open it up a little bit. Because these zebra muscles have been inside the moss ball here at the Aquarium.

Speaker A:

Guys podcast, we want to do a public service announcement to let you know to squeeze your balls.

Speaker C:

Well put.

Speaker A:

Thank you. Thank you.

Speaker D:

That didn't go over like you wanted.

Speaker B:

Yeah, no, that wasn't funny.

Speaker A:

That went over exactly how I wanted. So forget you guys. So any other news from you gentlemen?

Speaker B:

No, I don't got nothing. My whole week involved the zebra muscle thing. I actually got questioned over at my store by somebody who may have been a DNA are. I was over there pulling them all, and she goes, I want to buy one. I said, they're not for sale, and she seemed really kind of mad, but I wouldn't sell her one. I said, just out of respect for this whole thing, I'm going to pull them even though these have been cleared, and we're taking them off the market for the time being and stuff. So if you've got some, be careful.

Speaker A:

It's a genius part of yours, Jimmy. Number one, you're not encouraging selling of a product that may or may not be infested, even though it was cleared. And then also, you now have a wonderful stock of clean, zebra free muscles on your moss balls. There's none there. So when everybody decides to destroy their moss balls, you're going to have your own limited supply.

Speaker B:

Yeah. Prices went up ten times $50.

Speaker A:

Mos ball.

Speaker B:

That's right. At least.

Speaker A:

Really?

Speaker D:

I'd have made them $100, but okay.

Speaker A:

Know your margin is all we're saying.

Speaker B:

And here's the whole thing. We're going to do this podcast on ethics and add them, sell them for $100. You're selling them for 50, and I'm just keeping them for myself. So who's a good guy?

Speaker A:

Hey, after everything is cleared, we might do a giveaway.

Speaker B:

No, we're not giving one ball.

Speaker D:

No, no, no.

Speaker B:

Out of air of caution, I'm just going to sit on mine. And until I hear otherwise from the dnr, they are not going anywhere.

Speaker A:

I've had my moss balls probably for three and a half years without getting any new ones. So I have a tank full of moss balls that I'm just staring at going, sure, I'm glad I didn't buy any.

Speaker B:

That's right. So you should just go ahead and give everybody out your address, and we'll invite everybody over here to check out your malls.

Speaker D:

Per, Minnesota.

Speaker A:

The dnr will be here. Just like that?

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker A:

Hi, mandy.

Speaker B:

Mandy will be here from the dnr.

Speaker A:

I have news.

Speaker B:

Really? I hope it's good news.

Speaker A:

Well, I think do we announce last podcast that I'm having a child?

Speaker B:

Yes.

Speaker A:

Okay.

Speaker B:

Well, you aren't.

Speaker A:

Well, you're right.

Speaker B:

Your lovely wife is having a child.

Speaker A:

She's better at it than I am.

Speaker B:

You really didn't help all that much, to be honest.

Speaker A:

I've been trying for years, and I just keep getting his gut and doesn't do anything for me.

Speaker B:

No.

Speaker A:

So we'll keep working at it, but I've got a 1952 Ford F three pickup with a V eight flathead.

Speaker B:

And you don't recall that?

Speaker A:

Midlife crisis.

Speaker B:

A big paperweight.

Speaker A:

Hey, I got it running.

Speaker B:

Oh, did I get it running? Okay?

Speaker A:

I got it running Sunday, so pretty tickled. Although the carburetor spewed gasoline all over the whole thing, and I started a fire, but besides that.

Speaker B:

Besides the fire.

Speaker A:

Yeah, we got it out right away.

Speaker B:

That explains the short hair, but I.

Speaker A:

Did have to get new seals on it, so lots of weird random hunting for parts.

Speaker B:

Sounds like a make work project to me.

Speaker A:

I'm pretty excited. So, Jimmy, we have a couple of reviews that I want to go over before the two questions we have. Number one, might I say two of my favorite reviews yet? Review one. One star. The title is casually misogynistic. I couldn't get through five minutes of this garbage. Honestly. I have one rebuttal for this that.

Speaker B:

We'Re professionals casually misogynistic.

Speaker A:

We're three dudes bored that can't go out to the bar because of COVID What do you think this is going to be? We're not going to do it on purpose. Right. We're married people and we're not real terrible, but this is a bit of a brodeal and we understand a what? A bro deal?

Speaker B:

A brodio.

Speaker A:

No, a brodeal. Although brodio, that makes it sound like some sort of like I need better boots.

Speaker B:

No, brodeo sounds like a bunch of brothers at a rodeo. Like a bunch of rednecks sitting at.

Speaker A:

A rodeo for lack of term. brodio. This is a brodio. And we definitely need more female inspiration in the podcast.

Speaker B:

Yes, we like to have some females on this podcast.

Speaker A:

If you have a radio voice you like fish, contact us. We'll have you on his regular. We don't pay, especially because Adam is getting upgraded to the news. So we need adam's position.

Speaker B:

Adam went up to the newscast desk.

Speaker D:

Okay.

Speaker A:

He's been upgraded. So now we have the vacancy of the guy that knows something, knows somebody.

Speaker D:

That doesn't go away.

Speaker B:

No, it never gets old. And so we got one star.

Speaker A:

We're going to get was that from that one?

Speaker B:

Was that as low as they could give us?

Speaker A:

That I think is yes.

Speaker B:

Well, hell, I'll take that.

Speaker A:

That was a pretty good one.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker D:

What episode did they listen to? Like, I'm surprised. I want to know what episode they listen to.

Speaker B:

Probably the one where Rob is old man corruption.

Speaker D:

Or is it the one where you're talking about throwing dildos in somebody's tank?

Speaker A:

That could be it.

Speaker B:

Or the one where you're just rambling about nonsense that's every episode you yeah.

Speaker A:

So next review is actually five stars. Great info. Says came across this podcast last summer. It's awesome fun. This is from Minnesota and I am from there as well.

Speaker B:

That's why he gets it. Just gets it right.

Speaker A:

Just got into the aquariums two years ago. A young ish 25 and looking for ways to keep and get more people into the hobby. Question. How come Adam is not announced at the beginning of the podcast? Yeah, we're going to upgrade that.

Speaker B:

Are you going to well, I was.

Speaker A:

Like, can we pay the guy to say three names? So instead I'm pretty sure with the new intro we're just going to be like, no names and then we're all even.

Speaker B:

Adam'S got three names. Adam elnashar. If you go into three names right there, you know what you should say? You should do the damn podcast. It's just Adam, El, nashar and just skip our names well, if you go.

Speaker A:

To the discord my mother Raiders had a lot of fun with this. So if you go to the rules of her discord and discord is actually where we do this podcast live, people.

Speaker B:

We have rules.

Speaker A:

We do. So we come to the discord, go to aquarium guidespodcast.com on the bottom of the website, you'll find our discord and you can come join the debauchery. We do these podcasts about 07:00 Central on mondays.

Speaker B:

About is used loosely.

Speaker A:

It is. We start at 7715. Look at 730. If you go to the rules, it'll say here, welcome to the Official Adam elnashar and the Aquarium Guys Discord Server. This discord is for Adam El nashar and the aquarium guys. So clearly they thought it was funny enough to put Adam as the featured headliner above us. It's from Bob Ross, right?

Speaker B:

Bob'S been dead for years.

Speaker A:

Thank you, Bob Ross, for changing that to the Adam and the Aquarium.

Speaker B:

Guys.

Speaker A:

Discord surfer.

Speaker D:

I want official Bob Ross painting. Does anybody know where I can find one of those?

Speaker B:

I have long stories about Bob Ross painting. So whenever you're ready, I'll tell you about them.

Speaker A:

Secretly. There's a Jimmy nude Bob Ross painting.

Speaker B:

No, but no.

Speaker A:

We need to get that fixed. We need to get Adam upgrade, especially now with his new title as a head of news.

Speaker C:

Is that the only hookup that you don't have, Adam?

Speaker A:

What?

Speaker C:

Getting into an official Bob Ross painting?

Speaker A:

Well, yeah.

Speaker B:

How do you not know a guy?

Speaker A:

Because it's not illegal, that's why.

Speaker C:

Oh, never mind.

Speaker D:

Are they illegal to own?

Speaker B:

No, I am a big Bob Ross fan. I love Bob Ross. And Bob Ross started out he was in the military up in Alaska, and that's when he's drawing all the happy clouds and crazy trees and stuff. And he would do an entire season. An entire season in two days. They would come in there they would come in there in the morning, and they would do episode after episode after episode after episode. And they would do this for two or three days and do the entire season. And at the time, he wasn't getting paid anything from PBS and wasn't making any money, but could see that he could get a brand going with his Bob Ross tutorials, that he would do every one of those episodes. He did three paintings. He did one before, which he kept off to the side so he could look at it. And then he painted the one he saw on TV. And then he did a final third one to give to a local PBS station.

Speaker A:

See, I thought it would be like a speed run. Like you're a video gamer. You try it once, you do it alive, and then you do it for the record. See how fast you can go.

Speaker B:

Yeah. And so anyway, he was so good at cranking these things out. A lot of these were given to the PBS stations, the local ones, and they would put them in their lobbies and whatnot. But to find one, an actual Bob Ross one, I have found two in the last year, they run anywhere between 10,000 $15,000.

Speaker D:

Holy shit.

Speaker B:

Yeah. And there was always a question about where did all these paintings go? Because there's no way that they're all gone. Well, there was just an interesting PBS had a special on it. One of the family members has all of them in a warehouse. And I want to say it was like up on the East Coast somewhere, and they have them.

Speaker D:

I know a guy from the East Coast warehouse district.

Speaker B:

There you go. So you might want to give him a call. So there is a lot of a lot of Bob Ross paintings just sitting there. There is two or three that are in the smithsonian and stuff and really? Yeah. And so if you love Bob Ross, there's a great documentary on PBS or on YouTube and stuff. And very interesting dude. And the reason he had that crazy perm is that he was so broke in the beginning that rather than be able to pay for a haircut, he got a perm, which then would last for three or four months, which he could skip two haircuts. He was so disappointed in himself that he did that, because when they started out with all the Bob Ross tutorials and stuff, and every item that they sold had his picture on. So he had to keep that afro for the rest of his life, and it just drove him insane. And if you look, too, when Bob is doing a paint on his left hand, he's missing a finger or two, and that's the one he holds with the easel. And that happened, I think, in the military, if I remember right. But yeah. Bob roth's. Cool, dude.

Speaker A:

The coolest of dudes. I really wish he would have done an aquarium painting or fish painting, but it's always just happy little trees. Yeah.

Speaker B:

And I think there's only, they said one or two, maybe three, that had an actual person in the painting. They never put any people in the painting. Interesting. So there you go. There's your Bob Ross fact for the day.

Speaker D:

That's good to know. I'm not even going to bother saying because they might as well have to edit that one out.

Speaker A:

I'm proud of you that you're growing.

Speaker B:

As a podcast host and a CIA agent. You got another question, Rob? Are you just going to sit here?

Speaker A:

No, I just want to warn you guys, this podcast again, to talk about ethics, I'm trying to come up with some ethics. No, what's the word when you try to waste time at these events? Like you're trying to filibuster? Right? I'm trying to filibuster the topic, but I have an honest reason to filibuster. So for those listening, please skip ahead quite a ways. If you're looking for the topic of ethics. We're going to go through a few long questions because it's been a while since we've done some of these. Number one, we have. Brian says I just wanted to say thanks for the start. The podcast makes my work day more enjoyable. I'm actually going to read this from my phone. It's easier. I'm trying to keep it private so the twitch stream doesn't see it as well. So again, from the top, just want to say thanks to start. Your podcast makes workday so much more enjoyable as well as my hobby knowledgeable as well. Been listening since episode two or three have used all your advice for amateur breeding and angel breeding and relistened those episodes to death. This story is about an intermediate level angel breeder and a big mistake. It goes into detail. I have been raising angels for about a year at this point. Brought a bonded pair of blue marbles that have been raising fry to sell to sale size as well. Growing out gold marbles to pair off. My golds had paired and laid eggs sooner than expected. They are just over a half dollar size and less than eight months old. Of course, my blues laid eggs at the same time as well, so I figured I was ready for a double clutch. Here I am. Hard water so eggs have to be pulled at a low ppm tank to keep them viable within 4 hours of laying 80% distilled water 20% tank tab water I decided that this double clutch mid summer was perfectly in line to supply my local fish store all winter and then some. Sorry guys, it's rather rough. Written enough supply for my fish store all winter and then some, so I went in for it.

Speaker B:

Okay.

Speaker A:

It's just lacking commas and I'm clearly epileptic.

Speaker B:

So he basically thought he had enough fish to supply his pet store for the rest of the winter, right?

Speaker A:

Right.

Speaker B:

Okay.

Speaker A:

I was happily raising 500 to 1000 fry in a five gallon. I had reached about the smallest size. You can tell that it's an angel fish. Daily water changes and double prime was keeping up at this point. I started noting burns from ammonia not being covered fast enough and ready to move them into a large grow tank. In my haste and excitement, I started scooping 1 CM angels onto the large hang on acclimation containers. I had three of these just stocked with my angels and two and eight account moved them to a larger growout and started to see a ten minute timer to acclimate. The temp stepped out of my room and the timer went off. Pretty sure I went to smoke, walked back at the ten minute mark and all three acclimation containers were no longer full of swimming fish. Instead, their bottom was one third of solid sleeping fish in apostrophes completely spaced oxygenation for the containers. 90% of them were all co2 gas and passed out slash dead at this point, I drained the five gallon tanks into a water bucket, tossed in a double airstone, started dumping angels as fast as possible. Luckily, some began to bounce back as soon as they hit the oxygen water. However, most didn't. I ended up with about one third of around 200 surviving. I stopped counting the dead fish at 50 and this was a one fifth of the pile. In hindsight, would have been more than I could have dealt with long term, as I have been struggling with the remaining stock. Six months later have plenty of angels going out. A dozen plus a week with no end in sight. So you provided a picture, rather familiar picture for us, Jimmy.

Speaker B:

Yeah, I'll show you some pictures from last week.

Speaker A:

Last week. Well, I guess loss does feel better when someone else shares it. So, what did you lose, Jimmy? Oh, you're sharing a picture of what are those two inch angels?

Speaker B:

Medium sized angels.

Speaker A:

Medium sized angels gone.

Speaker B:

Ordered some from one of my suppliers and came in all dead poof.

Speaker A:

It happens to the best of us. And to remember that you have oxygenation that you need to keep, especially in buckets. I think every beginner deals with that as an issue, trying to keep a bunch of different fish in the same tank. If your heat is raised, know that your water does not keep oxygen in the water near as well as cold water. And you can't have some of these fish like angels in cold water, so you have to keep stones on them even when acclimating them.

Speaker B:

I want to point out just the obvious that I've been so guilty so many times myself. But the phrase has been coined by my buddy ty who says, always hedge your bet. And so if you've got 1000 angel fish in a growth tank, you probably should have six or eight grow out tanks. So if you lose one tank, you don't lose the whole cabbage. And I've been guilty of that too. You get lazy. They've all done fine altogether in a small tank, so they'll all be fine in this bigger tank. But after, after you get that many angel fish in there eating and pooping and stuff, it's hard to keep up with the water changes and whatnot. And I have walked away from a huge tank full of angel fish like that and I was going to do a water change on a Monday night. I thought, well, I'll do it Tuesday when I come back and I get there Tuesday and they're all gone. So you can never stress enough about doing a water change or even having a drip system when you have that many fish in a tank.

Speaker A:

Yeah, hedging, the bet definitely helps. Generally when I'm trying to prepare for breeding, I have to have grow out stations. You can easily have a clutch happen anywhere, but you need to know how many you're going to have and what your success rate is to be able to know how to hedge it. I have a 90 gallon filled to the brim with placoes. They breed in there, and I probably have a 50% success rate dumping placos in there. I have to overfeed continually to keep up with the stock. And then I need an outlet because there's no way I can brood much past an inch on placos. So I'm lucky to have Jimmy being able to pump those out to different grow out stations and depending on size, directly to stores. If I didn't have that, I would easily have to have probably 2015 gallon tanks just to grow all these out in different batches to hedge my bet.

Speaker B:

And always the other thought too is everybody goes, I can't afford another 20 gallon tank this week. Think about it this way, you got 1000 angel fish there. Even if you're getting a buck a piece, that's a grand. You can afford an extra three or four tanks if you want to get your money back.

Speaker A:

And don't be afraid, fish always says.

Speaker D:

You can get more tanks, right?

Speaker B:

Dr.

Speaker A:

Fish says it's accurate. Dr. Fish is on next week.

Speaker B:

He is. So if you're looking for something fantastic next week, dr. Fish from Secrets Farms will be on. Answer all your questions, but don't feel bad.

Speaker A:

Been there even in situations where I begged, fish, had a customer tell me, oh, it's just 30 minutes to their house. I said, okay, there's oxygen in the bag, but this bag is begs so dense they don't have any other bags. You can't go any past the 30 minutes. Well, sure enough, they decided to go out to eat and let's stop here and go shopping. And they got home and their fish were dead, right? I mean, it happens to everybody. You just got to do your homework, head your bet and don't feel bad. Those are beautiful angel fish and you still got quite a few. Most people, when they are doing it, if they're a decent breeder, if they can do 50%, even to 25% to medium size growth. So you did it, in my opinion, yeah.

Speaker B:

Don't lose faith. Keep on trucking, keep on doing it. Another thing, as the weather warms up, I know there's a lot of people that keep fish and also lizards and whatnot. In my store we sell 2000, 3000 crickets. And it's a small community where my store is at two to 3000 crickets a week. And I tell people, even on Friday, the weather here in Minnesota is getting nice. And I said, we're going to put in your 30 crickets in a bag. Are you going straight home? She goes, yes. And I said, when you go home, I said, make sure when you lay it on the front seat, you throw your jacket over. And she goes, well, I was going to leave it open so the sun could keep them warm. The sun will fry them in a matter of minutes. And I've had customer after customer after customer that have come back and said, yeah, they're all dead. And I get home and I always ask, did you have them sitting on the seat in the sun? Well, you have to keep them warm, so try to listen to your people at your stores and stuff and they give you a little bit of advice like that. I replace crickets way too often and I don't like to it doesn't make me any money, but it makes my customers happy. So it doesn't take long for something to go wrong in a bag or an aquarium or anything like that.

Speaker D:

I want to say I think that a bag of like if you put a dozen crickets in one of the little fish bags, Jim, I think less than in the sun, even on a cold day. Ten minutes, tops.

Speaker B:

Yeah, absolutely. Because that little bag is nothing but what a greenhouse. And it shoots up to 100 degrees in there and it fries our little brains and we don't want that to happen.

Speaker A:

I just got the craziest alien sci-fi picture in my brain. Next question is from Rex. From Australia. Hey, guys, what on earth is this? And he sent us a picture. If you guys want to participate, go to the discord. Adam it is in podcast live chat. There's a picture. We see some placo tubes. I'm going to actually go forensically, zoom in on this one. I'm assuming he means this thing down here. It looks like a leech, kind of.

Speaker D:

Do they have leeches in Australia?

Speaker B:

I'm sure they do.

Speaker A:

I would assume it's some sort of.

Speaker B:

Parasitic thing, I'll tell you that.

Speaker A:

See, here's what really throws me for a loop, right? It's shaped like a leech, but I also see like a mouth here, like it could have been a baby fish or something.

Speaker B:

Could it be a fry?

Speaker A:

It's really hard to see. Is this the belly? Is this the top? I think more angles at the object would help, but first thought, is it some sort of parasite, like a leech? But you don't see white or blonde.

Speaker B:

Leeches without knowing what else he has in the tank. But seeing that he's got placo caves.

Speaker A:

I see it looks like ghost shrimp or mono shrimp. They look like ghost, actually.

Speaker D:

Yeah, I don't think they have ghost shrimp in Australia because they're pretty limited on what they're allowed to bring into the country.

Speaker A:

Well, this shrimp here that he has is pretty spotted, but you don't really see a whole lot on a mono shrimp imp and you don't see the full big body. So it looks like it could be ghost.

Speaker B:

Any more information? I don't think it's going to be kind of hard to make a decision what that is.

Speaker A:

We'll see what the community says, so certainly follow through. Good, ordinary.

Speaker B:

I'm sure somebody's seen it before. Out there, so just let us know what it is. What else you got, rob's?

Speaker A:

I have scoliosis. Matt emailed us. So I've been listening to you guys for a while and love it. Doomed to Fail episode was a great dose of reality. Again, I need to go do this on my phone. I need to learn better here.

Speaker B:

Is that that whole episode that we talked about in my first marriage?

Speaker A:

Yeah. Doomed to fail. Absolutely doomed to fail episode. Reality could see this one as a series for me.

Speaker B:

They apparently know that we suck and we fail a lot, so maybe we.

Speaker A:

Have to do this more often. For me, I have two dtf to add. I'm not sure what that is.

Speaker D:

Doomed to fail.

Speaker B:

Doomed to fail.

Speaker A:

Oh, yeah, it's our own little acronym. Shit, I'm high. Brackish Tanks. Let's face it, brackish fish are either monster fish species or there's a whole list that he put lists that are either monster species, monos, scats, archers, colombian sharks, datinoids species, puffers, bumblebees gobies, mudskippers, or fish that do just fine in freshwater molly's, rainbows, or priscilla tetras. There are only very few brackish fish that live a full cycle in anything 55 or less. Other one?

Speaker D:

Bumblebee gobies.

Speaker A:

He listed bumblebee gobies, but apparently he listed under an other line of species that doesn't necessarily belong in a normal tank. I don't know why he would assume that. One for bumblebee gobies, but anyways, we'll continue. The other one is what I like to call noah's ark community Tank. You go to the pet store, buy a 29 gallon setup, and you buy two feeder goldfish, two mollies, two angel fish, three neon tetras, ooh, you splurged, and tubing hana plants, and just to top it all off, acute Jack dempsey. And one of them, they're algae eaters. The angles, or excuse me, the angles. The angels, he wrote Angles and molly's die. By day two, the neons stay hidden behind the plant, and on two weeks, the jacked embassy has killed them and the goldfish. After five to six months, the tank water level has dropped so low that the heater burns up and kills the solo seven inch placo. By now, you try to sell the hardwater stain tank and craigslist for $300, saying I paid five when I finally got it. You finally sell it for $50, and the new owner ends up with a ruined tank, gravel full of Malaysian trumpet snails, but a nice stand. haha. 97% of people that set up a tank do this, but keep it up, Matt. ps. I'm glad Rob stops saying biotypes instead of biotopes. Maybe someday. Little bit difference between a breed and a species for next.

Speaker B:

Yeah, me and Adam are going to start doing something new next week, and we're going to do a fact checked on rob's at the end of the podcast just to see what suit he messed up on. Wonderful.

Speaker A:

Don't worry, we have listeners for that.

Speaker B:

If you ever listen to dax what's that? Podcast?

Speaker D:

Adam armchair expert.

Speaker B:

Armchair expert. dax shepard and stuff. And that's what his gal does to him at the end of the thing. They do a fact checking. That's pretty hilarious. So check dax out. He made $9 million last year on his podcast, which was $8,999,950 more than we made.

Speaker A:

Ufta.

Speaker B:

Yeah, I know.

Speaker A:

All right, last one. We saved all the good questions this week. Hey, I'm dusty Joe. I've always had a love for fish and found y'all's podcast and quickly become obsessed. When I was younger, ten or twelve, got my first aquarium was a five gallon. I got picked as catfish in an angel fish. I eventually upgraded to a 20 gallon, and my angels grew so fast. She was the only angel I had in the tank, and I never realized until now that the only reason she would lay eggs is because she was by herself in front of the glass, and likely that I had the temp just right and treated her with dried bloodworms. At that age, I thought it was so cool. She lived for quite a number of years, and even with my extreme lack of experience, let alone knowledge, fast forward to twelve to 14 years to the current. I have recently gotten back into the hobby. Since being 15 or 16 years old, I've gotten a 60 gallon with an enheim canister filter running Amazon swords, three koi angels, three silver striped angels, four honey gourmet, and five green cordy catfish. And once again, I find myself obsessed. But my question is recommending it. What do you have to do to start a saltwater aquarium? I've just bought a 125 aquarium with a stand. That said, the stand doesn't have room for a sump due to the way it was designed, so I've gotten two eheim canister filters that cycle 240 gallons per hour after head pressure, so it should cycle the entire tank approximately 3.9 times an hour, theoretically, assuming I won't have any dead spots, of course. And also planning on getting crushed egg night for my substrate along with lava rock. With the intentions of eventually becoming a reef tank with fish, I was thinking of acclimating a few mollies to saltwater condition, being that they're brackish fish and relatively affordable to get with the nitrogen cycle started. The main fish I'd love to have in this tech is a porky pine puffer and an assortment of other community fish, including yellow tanks and clowns. What recommendations would you have for me to get started? I've seen videos online about reef information I'm looking for. Maybe I just can't get satisfied. Was there something that I need to know about before I get started? Yet put them in the water? As of yet is literally sitting empty in my den. I'm hoping to buy the substrate and a rodi filter to get started next week on my paycheck. Do you all have recommendations? Seen any red flags. Anything I should absolutely know. So I'm a pause there, and Adam is way saltier a person than I. What would you recommend, Adam?

Speaker D:

First of all, live sand, not the crushed argonite.

Speaker A:

Ooh.

Speaker D:

That is the only time that you will hear me recommend sand as an actual substrate.

Speaker B:

I know. It's because you're not nuts like rob's is. Yeah.

Speaker D:

And instead of using the black mollies, although I know that they will work, sailfin mollies will acclimate to pure saltwater. Also.

Speaker B:

They're a lot better looking fish, too.

Speaker D:

Yeah, they're way bigger. And they'll pick at the LG.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker D:

Let's see what else he wants to get. A porcupine puffer.

Speaker A:

Yes.

Speaker D:

And how big of a tank is it?

Speaker A:

125.

Speaker B:

Plenty of room.

Speaker A:

Yeah.

Speaker D:

But the problem with porcupine puffers, if I'm correct, every time you get them to inflate, I think they release poison really? Into the tank.

Speaker B:

I've never heard that.

Speaker D:

I'm not 100% sure because I never really kept any of this of the Marine puffers, but I'm pretty sure that they release toxins into the tank when they inflate.

Speaker B:

You know, I've sold, and then I saw a lot of those over the years. I've never seen one inflate actually, I've.

Speaker D:

Seen them in flight.

Speaker A:

I've never seen them in flight either.

Speaker D:

But that's usually when bad things are happening.

Speaker A:

Send your inflatable questions to the Aquarium Guys podcast.

Speaker B:

What else you got, Adam?

Speaker D:

Well, I'm just trying to think here. I also would definitely get a couple of powerheads to make sure that you don't have any dead zones. Put a little bit of flake food when you have the mollies in there, and then you can see wherever there's a dead zone in your tank. It's a nice little trick. Rather than using, like, methylene blue or anything else. I've heard of people using food coloring and that type of stuff.

Speaker A:

I mean, I like power heads just for the sake of chaos or filters do eventually plug. So even if you have flow correct, give it two weeks and it may be 50% plugged, and now you no longer have the same flow you did a little bit a while ago. So you can't trust it where a powerhead is going to give you consistent flow on that spot ongoing.

Speaker B:

And and what I like about adam's idea about the power heads is if you're going to be eventually putting corals in there, you need power heads just to bring food to the corals and spend the extra little bit of money. And you can get some of those power heads that rotate back and forth.

Speaker D:

You can set them for those are really nice.

Speaker B:

Yeah, you can set them for 80 degrees, 90 degrees, 130 degrees to however you want, but I totally agree with that. The other thing that I would do is put on a protein schemer right away and get yourself educated about saltwater and don't skimp on good equipment, because, I mean, if you're talking, you're spending $50 a fish. $40 a fish. Why are you worried about spending, you know, $60 on on a good Powerhead and why you spending $90 on a good protein skimmer without the proper stuff, you're just wasting your time and money. And the more fish or animals that you have in there, more often you're going to have to replace the salt. And salt is not cheap. So get ready to spend a little money on your tank. But they are a wonderful tank, and.

Speaker D:

I'd almost think that you could put the hang on back filters instead of the canisters.

Speaker A:

Well, next question actually addresses that a little more. He keeps going on to say, do many people say you absolutely can't use canister filters for a saltwater tank, but the main reason for that is you always see that it's too much work. I don't see that how it checks out to be too much work. They seem to be easy to maintain. I'm already accustomed to doing it for my freshwater community. It has four rather large trays for biomedia underneath the bottom tray, I was planning on putting ceramic disk to break up the gunk in the tank to keep the fossil from stop getting extremely quick, and a sponge to go over the intakes on both canisters. In the very bottom tray, I got polyphil chemical free as a mechmedia, and above the two trays are very porous biomedia one tray at the very top prior to additional floss filter. So clearly he's stacking this whole canister filter with his own media choices. He says, I even use chemical help such as charcoal or zeolite, etc. I can easily remove and administer medications. I'm also planning anything two heaters powerful enough to keep the tank around 78 degrees. Whether my next returns from each tank or by the intakes, I'll just adjust and see whatever position maintains the best across the tanks. Thanks again, dusty. Joe so you say even hang on the back filters will do the job. I'm not accustomed to speak to salt. I'm a plant guy, so some tanks, I don't even run any filters at all. I just put maybe a sponge filter in a 60 gallon and kind of let it go. So with salt, there's a lot more requirements. When you're having growth, it's by animals in the tank as well, which can create their own ammonia. It's a different world. So, yeah, you said hang on the backs even, right?

Speaker D:

Adam yeah, that's what I would use. Like, do they still make the emperor for 100? Yeah, I'd throw three or four of those is on. Those are great filters. They're damn near bulletproof. I use those in my store.

Speaker A:

You can't get but I think three on the back of a 120. Oh, no, you could do a 125 long. You could do four of those.

Speaker B:

Yeah, I don't think you're going to ever overachieve there. I mean, I think the more filtration you have, the better luck you're going to have. Like Rob said earlier, if one craps out, you have another one that's backing you up.

Speaker D:

And then a really good protein skimmer. When I had my seahorse pair, I had them in a 20 gallon high with a protein skimmer and just a sponge filter because they don't like the current. And they did really good with that, especially with saltwater.

Speaker B:

I mean, we should all be using titanium, what do you call the grounding units? Because in salt water, saltwater absorbs electricity much, much worse than regular water. And so if you've ever cracked a heater and you put your finger in the tank and you've gotten buzzed on freshwater, you're going to get knocked on your butt on saltwater.

Speaker A:

We'll call this episode Questions and Ethics because there we go. We have done a lot of questions so far. Keep them coming. We'll pause there. We'll do some more questions another time. Let's get into some ethics. So, Adam, ethically speaking, how should we proceed?

Speaker B:

I don't know.

Speaker D:

I just think that we should talk about I just wanted to talk about this basically because of the zebra muscle thing. If you know that there is something wrong with like the Thunder dome tank that we had a few weeks ago. As a store owner, I did my best to try to sell my customers and give my customers what the right thing was for them. So when I sold puppies, I went out of my way to not find puppy mill puppies. I went out of my way to make sure that the dog went with the person. I had a customer that wanted to buy a parrot. I had a pink cockatoo because she thought that the cockatoo would fit the deck core of her house. It was a $1,500 cockatoo and the cage and everything. It would have been an over $2,000 sale. She would have paid it. But I told her no because of this. And then I said, if you want to buy it, read this up. I gave her a book to look through, told her all about the bird, and then she backed off. And that's why our animals get pulled.

Speaker B:

Exactly. You do the right thing because a bird will live 20 to 50 years, depending on what type of bird it is.

Speaker A:

I think that people get this conversation because I've seen some discussions, YouTube videos, some live efforts, and I think that the issue that people are doing is that we have the pitas of the world. We have so much cancel culture that happens just in general on every facet of life that people are, especially nowadays, are so apt to point the finger at someone for doing the wrong thing. And in our hobby, above most other hobbies, we have an ethical responsibility to a live creature and people don't respect it like that. So what we see is we see two problems. We see people that come in just like we described on Doomed, that doomed to fail comment. You painted out perfectly. You get a couple of everything and you're expecting that it's going to be so cool and so great. But they didn't take a minute to realize the ethical responsibility that they would have to the fish and know that they're going to kill each other. It's not going to be the right thing to do. And you didn't do the homework to take care of that creature and you failed that creature. Which is why we have the outcry on the internet. If you go to places like reddit, you can't talk to people and ask questions because they're so shut out and so calloused to people abusing fish and not doing what's responsible to the creature. So you see people that say, no, you can't have a beta in anything but 55 gallon tank. No, you can't even keep this a certain type of fish because they're normally in an open ocean environment and you see a lot of extremes going the other way and they shut out people of the hobby. So that's one facet and then you have the again the facet we talked about the people that I just want a cool pet because I think it might be fun. That's a wonderful experience to go. But you have a responsibility that is a live, living creature. And now you have to do what's best for that along with growing that passion that you feel. Man, this would be fun to have some fish. And every person in content creation, every person within the hobby that has to cover this, has to deal with this somehow. And now we're seeing on top of it ethics in taking care of the environment with our hobby. Like we see these zebra muscles. Jimmy, you pulled your moss balls off the shelf. There's different questions we have to continually ask ourselves and make the correct decision because it's our responsibility to do what's right for these creatures. So in doing that, I think we could all have some points on different things that we believe is ethically correct because of our research and responsibility.

Speaker B:

Yeah, it is. Been so in this cancer culture. Like you said, Rob, I like cancer culture exactly what it feels like. I mean, I get it. We talked about it. Adam and I talked about the other day the walt Disney film, Song of the south. Now that is offensive when you watch it. Now back then, I don't think anybody caught on that. It was offensive. But how much is that worth now, Adam? You're saying oh, I want to say.

Speaker D:

That if you find a video tape, a vhs tape is worth like a.

Speaker A:

Have no idea what you guys are talking about.

Speaker B:

So Song of the south was in probably the 60s, I'm guessing, or the late fifty s. And just the characters that and they were all kind of racist as hell. racists as heck. Let's take okay, let's step it up to something. You know rob's Space jam with Michael Jordan, right? And now they're doing another space jam. But who have they kicked off? Who have they kicked out?

Speaker A:

Michael Jordan. Because he's old.

Speaker B:

Michael Jordan because he's old. They got somebody else. I think it's lebron. But they kicked out peppi Lapu. peppi lapu is from loony tunes. He is the skunk that keeps falling in love with that black kitty cat. And he's always up there kissing on her face and going, ooh. And anyway, they kick him off Space Jam because he he won't take no for an answer. That's exactly what I read. So Adam and I had this conversation over the weekend. One of my favorite Dr. seuss books, If I Ran a Zoo, has been now taken out of print. And how many, Adam, did you say that they took out a print? Six. So they took six of the Doctor seuss books out of print, and Amazon won't sell them anymore, and they all made in the top ten sellers last week on Amazon. But, Adam, you were telling me so you can't buy a Doctor seuss book anymore on Amazon, but what can you buy?

Speaker D:

It's actually ebay. You can buy mine.

Speaker B:

Comp by adolf hitler.

Speaker A:

Okay. Fun story.

Speaker B:

There is no fun Nazi story.

Speaker A:

No, not a Nazi story. So me and my buddy dabi has been on the podcast. Actually, I went to West Virginia. We helped him with his fish room, dabby and I, back and forth for a while. We were getting each other books. So him knowing that I'm in the.

Speaker B:

Backup you're getting each other offensive books?

Speaker A:

It didn't start offensive, all right?

Speaker B:

I saw some of the books.

Speaker A:

So he got me a book says how to Teach Your Cat gun safety and other things. It was cute because he saw that I had guns and that we're in an area that is kind of pro gun. Right. He had to pick Fun and I have cats, so he thought it would be a fun combination. So then I sent him back images not to play with yourself, too. Then it downgraded from there. And that's how I found out you can buy Mine come on Amazon. And found out that his mother opened it in West Virginia. So don't do that to your friends. I did that. This is a public service announcement. Don't buy your friends myself.

Speaker B:

You know, I mean, I get it. I really do. But where do we stop? I mean, now on The muppet Show, there are several episodes that come with a disclaimer. A lot of the Disney films are coming with with disclaimers.

Speaker D:

I mean, they do that with dumbo, and that's on Disney Plus.

Speaker B:

And I get that one, too.

Speaker D:

The cats on lady and the tramp.

Speaker A:

All right, so that's like cancel culture for the sake of racism or some other ism we're seeing this same trend happen in aquarium culture, and it's been happening way before. I'd say counter culture has really shifted into fifth gear. One of our moderators, bless his heart, and decided that he was going to go to a popular I'm going to keep the form name out of it, a popular aquarium form, and see how long it took him to get banned without doing anything offensive. So he decided to pretend to put himself into a position where he's a new fishkeeper and says, hey, I really want an arijuana. I think I have a 40 gallon tank to put it in. And he posted it, and not only did he get a response, no, you shouldn't do that, you should really consider something else, he never got that. He just instantly got permanent banned from the website and privately messaged that he should never keep fish. How closed and horrible of a community this happens continually. Was that and that's not just one place on the Internet that's the majority of fish communities close you out instead of telling you, no, you shouldn't. There's no explanation of why. Yeah, I mean, where's the responsibility to teach someone else?

Speaker B:

Why are we not trying to bring in younger aquarium keepers, younger listeners, and teach rather than scold? And if you're a parent out there and all you do is scold, you reap what you sow, or sow they reap however that goes. If you don't treat your kids with respect, they're going to treat their kids with a big ahold. As you are, is what I'm getting at and stuff. So I don't know why we don't open our arms out to people. That's what we try to do with new aquarium keepers and asking they ask some questions that we think are pretty easy, but they're asking them for a reason. And why ridicule these people so we.

Speaker A:

Can pick on some targets of ways that we believe aquarius should be responsible? And note that each person at this podcast adam, me and Jimmy all have different opinions on different responsibilities. So you'll get a touch of gamut. Number one I can go after is invasive species. That's pretty easy. You'll see that destruction of zebra mussels, invasive plants, like, we have eurasian milfoil here, take over legs, kill ecosystems. And it's a pretty big given if you decide that or hear news. So, like the mossball thing, that your stuff is infected, educate yourself. How do I treat that? How do I get rid of that? Where am I supposed to go to find that? That's a given. But also invasive species in your area. Was it last week? Adam we talked about different species that are now propagating in Florida, even more like the arapaima is now a big invasive species that are expecting it to take over some certain waterways in Florida that was banned already, but a fishkeeper wanted to do it and there went into a lake.

Speaker B:

We're talking about invasive species. We did have a little bit of good news last week where I sent it to you guys after you read it. The offspray, the birds, the offspring are making a huge comeback in Florida because their main food source is applesnails, which is an invasive species in Florida and any southern states. And these birds are eating these apples nails by the millions. And now the birds have really turned around and they are coming back and breeding very well. So we got lucky there because, I mean, a lot of these times when you find out that there's an invasive species, we just bring in another invasive species to try to take care of that problem. It's like I got cats in my yard, so let's bring a dog in and the dog chased a cataway, but now I got too many dogs in my yard, so let's bring a cougar in. I mean, it's just ongoing, it's nutty.

Speaker A:

So you see invasive species, sure, but then you also see non invasive species where we're in Minnesota. What is a risk of tropical fish in Minnesota? They're not going to survive the winter. There should be no harm, no foul of dumping fish. Well, that's absolutely incorrect. Those fish carry diseases. They carry pests themselves and they can greatly affect waterways in Minnesota. What was it three years ago we've talked about on the podcast a couple of times where somebody just let off goldfish and completely eradicated all carp species from the lake. What if that would have been another species to kill all other fish in the lake? It can happen. And it has happened.

Speaker B:

And then we've had people have released piranha which will do havoc all summer long until winter kill and stuff. But we've had anglers who have caught piranha and going, what the heck do I got here? And going, it's a red breasted piranha and pacos and they'll eat a tremendous amount of our local walleye babies and, and different sunfish babies and stuff. And that's how Minnesota makes all their their money tourist wise, is we have 10,000 lakes and we have the best fishing in the world, so we all have to take a responsibility to make sure we keep all these things out of our lake streams. And even I was surprised when I read about the zebra mussels and how they can invade pipes in your home.

Speaker D:

I didn't know that.

Speaker B:

I didn't know that either until I read it. I went, holy crap, these things are indestructible. So when the apocalypse comes, I guess I'm going to hide under some cockroaches and some zebra mussels and hopefully muscles.

Speaker A:

Run on the menu for you.

Speaker B:

That's right.

Speaker A:

Yeah. No, the trumpets are going to be what comes and gets them.

Speaker B:

Yeah, trumpet snails. I got a feeling when I die and people come to my funeral and stuff that everybody will come in with a handful of trumpet snails and just dump in my casket and. Giggle.

Speaker A:

I know I am.

Speaker B:

Jimmy yeah.

Speaker A:

Even though you're going to make sure.

Speaker D:

That does not happen.

Speaker B:

What's that?

Speaker A:

You'll make sure that doesn't happen?

Speaker B:

Yeah. Everybody will come out and say, oh, Jim looks not so good.

Speaker A:

Why does he have a baggie of coke in his left hand?

Speaker B:

Why does he have a blue ring octopus sucking on his face? Oh, Adam was here.

Speaker A:

No, that's his left nipple. So down. The other part of the list is fish food. We'll get into health later, but specifically fish food. And I think bigger ethics is not just the choices of food. So your fish has the best life. How it's ethically maintained is a big thing for people. We're not going to argue the fact that meat is murder. That's not the podcast where we're going to have here, fish eat smaller fish. That's the cycle. And if we have to propagate that in getting shrimp flakes, having salmon put into fish food, I'm not going to be the one to argue that. I feel like that's perfectly humane and mundane. We eat a lot of those same ingredients as a culture. So if we're eating it and the fish are eating it, I have no corals. I'm not about to go there. But if you're doing live foods, I see so many people purposely see and add creatures to their tank just for the sake of watching the carnage, because they find entertainment in that. I can't argue with the fact that watching a piranha bite into something with teeth that are razor sharp with no mechanics like that's, nature doing that is impressive. Watching a sharp go after its prey and Discovery Channel is absolutely entertaining. But you have a moral responsibility to treat that with as much kindness as possible. So if you have a fish that is a carnivore and you decide which we don't really condone here at the aquarium guys podcast to take other fish as food because there's more nutrition value in other foods, such as, like, massive ore versus a goldfish. You're going to get a balanced diet, you're going to get vitamins added to it. You're going to get way more out of a predator food than you ever will a goldfish. But if it's one of the scenarios where the fish isn't eating, it's a rare scenario where you have to do that. Don't just put it in because you want to watch it get mauled, do it because you're feeding. I've seen people put in bigger fish just to fight and wrestle. And we've heard stories in the podcast where it happens. It happens. We understand the moment or the uniqueness or the craziness of the story, but we still have a moral responsibility not to put a Jack dempsey with a piranha and see who wins.

Speaker D:

It's usually the dempsey.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker A:

100% the dempsey.

Speaker B:

I actually just had somebody give me a pair of dempseys on Friday and I brought them home and I gave them away on Saturday, and I just didn't want them in my tank. It's just one thing I'm going to feed. But if you're one of those people out there that has 2030 tanks, which we like to call a nice start, then something dies. I always had an Oscar. Somebody gave me an Oscar a years ago, and I kept this Oscar in a 55 gallon tank by himself. And every day, if you've got 25, 30 tanks, if a fish dies, you can feed the dead fish to the Oscar, and I don't see any problem with that. And if nobody dies, then the Oscar doesn't eat or he has pellets that day. So if you have the big predatory fish in your big fish room and stuff, that's a good way of disposing the carcasses is what I'm getting at.

Speaker C:

Rather than flush, I keep snails for that.

Speaker B:

Yeah, MALAMPA treasure snails.

Speaker C:

Snails work a little slower than one big old chomper, but they do the trick, too.

Speaker A:

Yeah. I mean, we had Charlie the catfish for how long?

Speaker B:

Years.

Speaker A:

Rest in peace, sir. And he had a balanced diet, but he also was fed what passed away. He's a scavenger. And that was part of the circle of life. But we've had comments about our last story time episode of thunderdome, and we're there to tell stories because we've all been in those situations. How the struggle? Is it's going to happen to other people as well? And to share relatable situations, not condone the idea of those. In fact, they've openly said on that podcast that that's not the way to treat fish, and they were surprised they were even put in those situations to begin with. But know that the ethics of your taking care of the animal also has to do with the stuff that you put in the tank with it.

Speaker B:

That was beautiful.

Speaker A:

Adam, what is your views on fish longevity now?

Speaker D:

I've had fish, if you take very good care of them, live for a very long time. It also depends on the size of the fish. The longest fish that I've had well, okay. I have my Enler group that I've saved and kept them going forever. I know one of my green and ols this is not a fish, but one of my green and ols I had for, I want to say, eight or nine years. And he was an adult when I got him. He was huge. He outlived, like, four girlfriends. And then on the fifth one, when the fourth one died, because all he did was breed. He died after that. But you got to give them their space. And that I mean, I don't know how to really say it. Any fish can live a long time. Like, what's the average age for an Oscar? 25, I think there's a couple of.

Speaker A:

Arguments on the longevity scale. You have to ask yourself what shortens a fish lifespan? Well, number one, heat. Heat. Number two breeding, how often they breed. I think that both of those are kind of incalculable. If you're going to have someone measure a fish by and say that you're shortening its lifespan by half because it bred well, that's nature's intention on what should have happened with that fish. In nature, they have a shorter lifespan because food is more scarce, they have to fight for it and they breed. They do what they're intended to do to pass on their genes to make another species. So if you're breeding a fish and it's healthy, happy, and it's lifespan cut in half, I'm going to argue that that's not really going to be a good argument to say, oh, you're being cruel to the fish and shortening its lifespan. No, that's what it's intended to do. They're a happy, healthy pair. They live their life to the fullest and onward and upward. Heat. Most species, again, that you would have, such as like discus stuff that have high heat, are intended to keep that for that. But you can have species that in the textbook, say 74 degrees, but yet they be comfortable at a 82. It will shorten their lifespan, but that's just because of how their metabolism goes. I wouldn't call that unethical either. It's the other ethical ones that we are concerned about, such as the longevity of keeping a fish that isn't supposed to be in a smaller container long term. Short term is fine. Jimmy and I have to move a lot of different fish, different stores. And Jimmy, how many neons do you keep in a 2020 gallon tank?

Speaker B:

I keep about 200.

Speaker A:

And how long do those 200 stay in your tank for?

Speaker B:

Ten days, tops.

Speaker A:

Ten days at most. Two months. They're not going to be there for long. They're kept short term, and then they go to a permanent home. And that's another ethic requirement.

Speaker B:

Even in my store, I sell neons up to a 50 count. So the more you buy, the cheaper they get. And I'll dump 100 fish in there, and I might have two customers that come in and grab 50 at a crack, but those fish seem to do so much better when they're in a large group. So talk about ethics and whatnot. We have the glow fish, which drive people insane.

Speaker A:

Should we get right into modification since we've talked about longevity?

Speaker B:

Might as well.

Speaker D:

Might as well.

Speaker B:

And so the other day, I went down to my store and I delivered fish and I purchased 25 glow tetras and 25 glow daniels. And these fish are not painted. They've actually been modified by DNA of, say, a jellyfish for the red fish. And depending on how you look at it, I mean, you're looking at animals that have been bred who are a cheap. I mean, zebra daniels are cheap retail wise, and so are white tetras. And so there's so many different flip sides of this. I mean, they get these brightly colored fish that get young children excited and adults. But then you go, well, they're red and a green now. Well, that's the natural state, though, actually. When they breed, they'll pass it on to their youngsters. So that's one flip of the coin. Other side of the coin, you got the ones that are dyed where they're actually put in water like an Easter egg, and they're dyed. And I don't think that reduces the amount of longevity on those fish. But the ones that drive me crazy are the ones that are injected, which they don't do a lot of that anymore, but they would inject them with stuff underneath the skin, and that is totally wrong.

Speaker A:

What do you mean they don't allow that anymore?

Speaker B:

Well, you don't see it a lot anymore. I mean, when I first started the business 30 years ago, there's a lot of stuff that was injected, but like the fruit tattooed and tattooed, the fruit tetras that you see now are all tissue absorbed. But the ones I'm talking about, too, aren't that painted. Glass fish are actually taken out of the water, and they'll paint a bright green stripe or bright red stripe on that, and after three or four months, that will come off. And so they're just trying to take a cheap fish and to get more retail out of it. So, I mean, there's so many different debacles that you can talk about.

Speaker A:

I think that there's a standard that I keep myself doing modification for fish number one, I didn't do it. That's not a good enough excuse, in my opinion, if you're going to get yourself a tattooed fish, well, I didn't do it, and he looks like he needs a home. Terrible excuse. You're supporting the industry that continues to do that. Someone's in the back with a paper and pen going, how many fish should I sell this week? Shit, I sold a lot of tattooed fish. You're supporting that to encourage them to get more in. The best thing you can do is not purchase that fish if you disagree with how it's being treated, how that fish is being fed, how that fish is modified, any of the environments. You need to stop yourself as a consumer and know that your dollar speaks more than anything else. So if you're a person that goes on YouTube and you can find hundreds of these videos, I saved a fish from Walmart.

Speaker D:

I hate that.

Speaker A:

Or I saved a fish from petco, you're dumb. You're flat out dumb. And I don't even care if people get offended by me calling them dumb for this. The entire idea that you're going to there spending the retail prices and saying, I saved this fish is completely, maybe, factual for that one fish. But you have promoted that same behavior to continue to go with your dollar. That's the worst thing you can do.

Speaker B:

People can take anything and spin it to however they want it, and everybody has their opinion, which I have no problem with. I had somebody that stopped me and said, I heard you on the podcast and you said you like the elephants at the circus. And that's wrong, because they put them in little tutu skirts and make them dance and stuff. And I go, My theory was that if you don't ever see the elephant, you cannot fall in love with an elephant and then want to save an elephant. But here's the flip side. So she had her two little girls with her, and I said, you take them to dance class. She goes, yeah, they hate it. I said, So you take your two little kids to dance class and you force them to dance, and they don't want to do it. Yeah, but they'll get to like it. I go, that's kind of the same situation as the elephant, isn't it? She wasn't impressed. I compared her two little cute little girls to an elephant. I apologized to her now, but I thought, you know, there again, I'm trying to wait.

Speaker A:

Were they kind of chubby?

Speaker B:

No, they weren't. They're cute little kids.

Speaker A:

Did you give them a peanut?

Speaker B:

No, I did. Hey, I should have done that. If I had peanuts, I would have gave them they said, here's a peanut. But I mean, everybody can make it their own. I'm so sick of people talk to me about politics or talk to me about the coronavirus shot. You know what? Make your own decision and do whatever you want, but don't try to convince me one way or the other, because I don't have time and I really don't care. And I think a lot of people are like that. When I was growing up as a kid, we used to watch the news and they would give you the facts, and now you turn on CNN, Fox News, and they give you their ideas or what their opinion or their opinions or what they're promoting that day. CNN promotes this and Fox News promotes that and stuff, and everybody can make it their own and stuff. I'm just saying, growth set and become your own person and make those own decisions, but just don't hurt things in the process.

Speaker A:

All right, so I just made a list. I'm going to do this in politics because just to show how we may not agree, but at least you can understand our point and understand that no matter what we chose, right or wrong, we've definitely put some thought process into this. So, number one, the thing for modified fish, the category, we have things that have been bred to create certain species, such as the bubble eye goldfish, the flower horns of the world that are the modified freaks of nature. How do you feel on that, Jimmy?

Speaker B:

I feel bad for bubblefish. I really do. Do. I think they're cool. Well, they're cool as hell. The people that are modifying these fish just to create. I mean, God's only putting so many different things on this earth. And when people can't sell any more of product A, let's take product A and make it into product B and C. I'm totally guilty of it. glowfish. I sell glowfish. I'll be the first to admit it. And anyway, I had people that come in and go, I want one of every color. And that makes total sense because I had one gal that bought eight glowfish because she wanted two of every color, and I had four colors, and she bought eight Zebra Daniels. So $64 retail in Zebra Daniels and $72 in sales in glowfish. And she was just tickled to death. And this was an adult who said, yeah, I'm just buying these. I think they're cool. I've done my research. I know how they do this and stuff. She was I find that fascinating because I'm a science teacher and we've been talking about cloning sheep in my class. She goes, I'm buying these for my class, and then come summer, they're going into my aquarium at home. And so here's an educational type process. And they've invented something out of a cheap fish. And I keep saying cheap, but I mean, a white skirt tetra is relatively inexpensive, and now they're getting mugo bucks for it. They spent millions of dollars doing this, but yet she kind of made lemonade out of lemons.

Speaker A:

All right, how do you feel about not the goldfish. Adam but how do you feel about species that are bred on purpose, like dogs, that are modified, such as the flower horns and the bubble eye goldfish in the world?

Speaker D:

I personally hate bubble eye goldfish and flower horns, but that's just me. I'm more of a purist. I like natural looking stuff. That's just me, though. The bubble eye goldfish, though, you got to be careful, I suppose, if you're going to take care of put the special accommodation so the bubble eye goldfish doesn't get its eyes. The bubbles popped on its eyes, so it goes blind. I guess that's fine.

Speaker B:

The air sack. Yeah.

Speaker D:

The aerosak. And then I guess from talking to the flowerhorn guy, you have to be really careful not to get those flower horn. The cock. Laugh all you want. robs you have to make sure that doesn't get infected. Right?

Speaker A:

I mean, we've all been there, right? Adam.

Speaker B:

Wow.

Speaker D:

Some people more than others.

Speaker B:

Hey, wow.

Speaker A:

All right, I'm going to take the opinion, wow, that's going to piss some people off.

Speaker B:

Give them your home address.

Speaker A:

Like dogs. When you breed these, you as a breeder, have a responsibility to try to make the best fish you can. And that may be a modified fish, not modified with, say injecting the fish, but modified by breeding association. So how do you think we have the pug? The pug is a fun creature, but it has a lot of breathing issues because its nose is crushed in along with a lot of reproductive issues because it's such a weird, shapen creature. This happens all over. If you get a pure bred mastiff, they have bone diseases that are common just because of how they're bred. So as a breeder, yes, you have an obligation to make your unique color, variety, size and shape. But you also have to take the responsibility as a breeder coming up with these fish and saying, is it correct to have a fish like the bubble eye have a nice modification, but is there a safe way that it will have a healthy and happy life? And then if you're seeing that that it's not, you need to find a way to use breeding as your skill set to try to repress that gene, to try to make a better fish. And we've seen that with a lot of different species. Goldfish are the easiest ones to pick on. We've seen ARANDAS that come out with massive tumors and a lot of not necessarily inbreeding issues, but just cross breeding issues that have been bred out to make pure, better strains. So that I leave in the responsibility of the professional breeders to take and say bubble eye goldfish not probably the greatest thing to do, but I bet there will be a bubble eye goldfish that maybe has a solid sack, maybe doesn't have the swim bladder issues it has. And eventually we'll get there. Until then, like the flowerhorn, I know that flower horns are happy and healthy. They're a weird creature. That type of fish is not in nature. I love it to death. I think, go for it. Just do it with the ethics of the fish's, happiness that can live a happy lifespan all intact when you're doing.

Speaker B:

This and a good quality life, I mean, some people talk to you about modifying. And my personal thing is, I don't think you call this modifying. The other day I was looking at fancy guppies online. I love guppies. I counted 172 different varieties when I was looking at these different colors of that. And I think they're all the same fish as different colors. And to me, that's not really modifying, that's just like having a litter of puppies that are different colors and whatnot. But when you start modifying, such as goldfish, when you get into Ryukas, and one of the little ones that you love so much, those little footballs, the.

Speaker A:

Little cows, oh, there, there's a special, special rancho, rancho that's black and white. And I just love them. They literally look like when you have a big group of them in a pond, they're like your pasture. With cows, it's the coolest thing, you know?

Speaker B:

And there, and there's a fish that they've developed, you know, that, that has no top dorsal fin and has got a short little butt and tiny little, little tail. But they're the cutest god dang things ever. So it's each of your own, I guess. Make your own decisions, but educate yourself. Don't believe everything you read on YouTube.

Speaker A:

Question from one of the listeners. Rob, how about teacup or other short body fish? I'm going to dress teacup on the head. Teacup is a shitty marketing attempt. Most times when you hear the word teacup, if you're getting it from a dog breeder, well, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. Maybe you have created a strain of dogs that is half the size that could actually be teacup in fish. That is not how this stuff works. If you're getting a teacup stingray that's someone selling, you reticulated stingray. That's an asshole.

Speaker B:

And it is a small baby.

Speaker A:

Yeah, you're getting it at a small size, but trust me, it's not going to stay there. And if you're putting it in a small tank that fish, its organs will outgrow it, killing it and shortening its lifespan. That's how fish will work. Ray people that's on the list. It's on the list. Or does it go to short body? I don't have a problem with short body as long as it keeps to the same process. When you're breeding, is it going to live a happy and long life? Can you use that weird gene modification and still have a fish that lives a maximum lifespan or longer? Balloon mollies? I used to hate them, hate them all the time because they would have problems with pregnancy. They continually miscarriage or die during birth. They would have half a lifespan, mass amounts of blood, bladder issues, and sometimes they would be tumorous. That I have bred a bunch. I have yet to have that happen in the last four years. The strains that I have last longer than my normal mollies. They eat well, they breed well. I actually have more babies out of a couple of my balloon females, so I feel like that is a short body example. A balloon molly can have good strains and I have no problem with it.

Speaker B:

I mean, just let's talk about human beings. And when you have small people, dwarfs, and I mean, unfortunately, most of them have a shorter lifespan.

Speaker A:

Okay, can somebody help me? If you're listening to the podcast, and we use the term little people in dwarf because we all watch tlc and someone told us the appropriate term, every time I hear dwarf, I think that you're a bearded person holding an axe and Lord of the Rings, right? When I hear midget, I think you're that sweet ass comedian. Was that Brian? I can't remember his name. You're telling jokes, you're the coolest human being on the planet, and you're also three foot tall. So help me out with this. Is that really the thing we can't say midget?

Speaker B:

I've been told a lot of things that you can't say anymore, and that is one word that I've been said that people say. You cannot say that word anymore.

Speaker A:

Like how I said it and you're not right.

Speaker B:

It's just ridiculous. The things that offend people. I mean, not ridiculous. I get it.

Speaker A:

Brian Williams. Brian Williams is hilarious. Brian Williams is an extremely talented little person that crushes normal comedics. He's just literally probably top three comics of all time in my book.

Speaker B:

But back to their health, I mean, they don't live long, unfortunately.

Speaker A:

I know nothing about little people.

Speaker B:

I mean, they have a lot of health issues and stuff. I was up at Adam store 20 years ago, 15 years ago. And Adam lived in a small town, or not a small town, it was town of Grand rapids, Minnesota, which is famous for judy garland was born there. And if you don't know who Judy garland is, the girl from The wizard of oz. And I was sitting, I delivered to Adam and what do they have up there, Adam? Is it Judy garland days or something?

Speaker D:

They have yeah, we have Judy garland days. And I think her daughter comes in and some of the actors that played in the munchkins. The munchkins.

Speaker B:

Yeah. Yes. And I went to hardy's, which was just down the street from Adam, and I had a two hour and 15 minutes drive home. So rather than try to eat a burger and drive with my knee, as most of us do, I decided I was just going to go take a break. And I sat in there and in walked one, two, three little people. Here's the weird thing. I kind of recognized a one, and here they sat in right now.

Speaker A:

Is it Brad Williams?

Speaker B:

No, it was the mayor of munchkin City and his wife. So they were all yes, and all three of them lived to be a very long time because I got to visit with them for a little bit and they lived a very, very long life. But for the majority of all that cast from The wizard of oz, they all kind of died in early life, which is unfortunate, but it was really cool talking to them. They were there for the parade and stuff and just shared a lot of great stories and stuff. And I'll always smile when I think about that. But unfortunately, he said, I think at that time there's three out of the nine that were still alive from that movie.

Speaker A:

So what you're saying is think of what the weird unique genes can do.

Speaker B:

Correct.

Speaker A:

So now you gave the example of how humans with different sizes have different lifespans. In Fish World, we can compare like an albino species, right, that they have the whole pink eye, the whole pigment loss or eyesight. Right. Like a corridor. You take a bronze corridora and an albino. Which one's going to live when you unbag them, Jimmy?

Speaker B:

The bronze or the green?

Speaker A:

Always if something's in a crap first, it's always the albino species because they're just not as hearty. Can they be kept correctly? Can they have a happy and healthy lifespan? Yes, but do your research on top of it to know what you've got in this whole modification conversation.

Speaker B:

Yeah, we used to call it indicator, and the same as in mixed fantastic goldfish. If you have red fans, calico fans, and black moors, if you're going to have issues with those fish, the black moors are the first one to die. And as soon as you start losing black moors, you better do water changes, do water tests, because they're just genetically the weakest, just like the albinos.

Speaker A:

All right, so now we've crossed that, we can go. And we've talked a lot about the genetically modified, such as the glow fish, where I've done a laboratory from birth. There's no modification of the fish. We've proven that genetic modification of those fish, they don't have a shorter lifespan because they're glowfish. It just doesn't that's been pretty much the case across the gamut, more or less, with the goldfish that we've seen, and I'm not against it. I don't think that those fish should be let out into the wild. I don't think any fish that's been kept in captivity really should be let out in the wild, honestly, unless it's a program reintroducing an extinct species, I think that's definitely a need. But I have zero issues with genetic modification of fish as long as they keep to that same gamut.

Speaker B:

And the reason they've done this, once again, is just to bring in a younger crowd, which we need to do, because our whole world of aquarius are just getting older by the day, and we need to bring in fresh blood to continue this wonderful hobby of ours.

Speaker A:

If it's basically legal in most of the states to genetically modify your kid in the womb to make sure that he has a certain eye color or to make sure that he has genes that recess that may cause cancer or diabetes. There's no reason that we can't make a fish red and have a completely long and happy life as well as in my opinion.

Speaker D:

But I didn't think that was legal. robs it is.

Speaker A:

There's now, like, three states that have found small loopholes in doing this. You can't just go in and say, I want a six foot tall kid, but you can try to use gene repression to stop cancer and other things that might be hereditary. That's a big thing happening now. And in other countries where they don't have the complete laws of the United States, they move that out to other countries. But it's happening more and more is the issue in gamut.

Speaker B:

What is it? Is it China or is it Japan, where they only allow you to have two children or only to have I don't remember.

Speaker D:

China only allowed you to have one. And now they're saying that you can have more than one because they're realizing that they're in for a demographic destruction.

Speaker B:

Yeah, I mean, weird. And it's just sad that you've got governments making. Decisions for people like that when when you could have a family of four beautiful children and just have a large, wonderful, happy family.

Speaker A:

That's why you got to go to the United States, where they won't tell you that you can't, but they just make it unaffordable.

Speaker B:

That's right, make it unaffordable. And if you don't listen, we're going to give you a COVID test and a COVID shot and a labradoodle.

Speaker A:

All right? Adam died and injected fish.

Speaker D:

Oh, I hated him. I never even carried him in my shop.

Speaker B:

Asked Jim.

Speaker D:

He tried to film to me all the time.

Speaker A:

I hate him as well. We see different species and even, like, some of these new pet store owners. I had a buddy of mine message me. Hey, I got this sweet strawberry arijuana. Come in. I'm like strawberry marijuana. You know what that is, right? They have two processes. They either take a baby arijuana and they use a bleach compound, and they dye color into it so it has this, like, pastel reddish color. Or they take the eggs and inject them at a young age, which they don't have a success rate doing that. So dipping is the most appropriate process for a dyed fish. Oh, I didn't know that. I had no clue. Well, certainly it's up to you. It's your pet store. Educate your customers about that. If they ever ask, it's your call. But now you know, and you can make the choice given the responsibility.

Speaker B:

Bowing to peer pressure. One of my stores said, we're never going to have glowfish. We're never going to have the painted glassfish, we're not going to have the fruit tetras. But in order for them to compete against the big box stores, after about seven or eight years, they finally said, we're going to have to carry them, because they'll come in, ask for them, and then turn around and go over to the big box store and pick them up. And she goes, so I lose all the extra sales because she goes, I want to sell you fish, but I want to sell you fish food. I want to sell you a net. I want to stay solvent so I can keep my store open. So unfortunately, a lot of these stores are just kind of you have to bow to peer pressure. Myself, I love the fruit tetras that are blue and orange and all the different colors, but they're like I compare it to being colored like an Easter egg. I have stained my hands blue several times, methane blue, and they'll stay blue for three or four days. And people call me smurf. But to me, that's not half as bad as the people that inject stuff into the fish and that I can stand.

Speaker A:

So there's a couple of different methods. Like the Arowana, they have pretty rigid scale combinations. These are bleach compound. What Jimmy is referring to is how a lot of wholesalers used to argue a lot of these dying fish now, they just don't care. They're not even trying to make an argument. But they used to say that some of the processes were literally the same as putting food coloring in. And some of the fish happen to absorb it. It was essentially the same lines of dye. And some fish species, it can work that way, but it's mainly due to juicing with food. They put certain additives in the food and it's mainly using like a red krill. And that gives a lot of color boost to the fish and sometimes even can have fish modified in color. But all of these dyed fish, juiced fish and all of that, all generally fade in color as they age.

Speaker B:

Look at all the peacocks you get from overseas that are hormoned, which Rob called juiced.

Speaker A:

They're all juiced.

Speaker B:

And they come in and they are the most beautiful colors. And they give them these hormones which kind of get them in breeding colors. And it lasts three, four weeks, and they kind of go right back to their normal color.

Speaker A:

Just enough time to sell them.

Speaker B:

Right?

Speaker A:

Gone. Last one that Adam had physically modified, this one is the one that angers me the most. And if you haven't heard of this, the faint of heart, don't Google this. That you can find, like Adam said, the batfish you can find multifinned, even arowana you can find. Stingray are, I guess, are really common that they're done. So what they do is they take a normal, healthy stingray and they cut patterns into its edges of its fin, whether it be circles or points or what they do to modify some of the reticulated stingrays is they cut massive gouges out and it makes them look like what they call a batfish, which I don't understand. It's like what a Batman pattern? They're cutting into a stingray. Absolute animal cruelty at the worst regards. I've seen other fish being modified where they cut their fins into three pieces and they grow with scar tissue to try to have this unique swimming pattern. Horrible, horrible shit.

Speaker B:

Yeah, it's basically mutilation.

Speaker A:

That 100% mutilating fish for designer purpose.

Speaker B:

Now, I've had people that have come up to me in my store and go, these Crowntail bettas, why are they taking these crown tail bedds and shredding their fins? That is natural. That's just the way that they're bred. So Crowntail bedas are definitely not mutilated. That's just the way they grow. So don't freak out about them.

Speaker A:

There's a bunch of them, and thank goodness we kind of keep at modification or they like to put as. Modification, we put as. mutilation of fish isn't nearly as common as you would assume. But still, like especially with stingray, the designer stingrays, with all their different edges, oh, no. They grow like that. nope. You took either a branding iron or cut them and then branded them after the fact. So it cauterized the wound to maintain a scar on a stingray.

Speaker B:

In other words, to describe what they do is if you ever seen some of the aborigine people, like a National Geographic, and they'll take really sharp sticks and they'll sit there and poke and pull on their own personal skin to give it a raised I almost say it looks like braille on their backs and to adorn themselves. And they talk about how painful it is for them to do it on themselves and stuff. But now you're doing it to a poor fish. It's just ridiculous. Why they would do that. And I even watch these Aboriginal people and go, why would you do that to yourself? But they are making themselves more beautiful for their spouses or their wives. That's the way they feel. That's their cultural preference. And I get that too. But I've got friends who've got permanent eyeliner to try to make themselves more beautiful. There's all kinds of crazy things that people will do. What do you call the lip injections that a lot of women do?

Speaker A:

Botox.

Speaker B:

Botox.

Speaker A:

You know, that's another thing on fish, as you said, botox.

Speaker B:

Oh, yeah, kissing fish. They botox them.

Speaker D:

Really?

Speaker B:

No, dumbass.

Speaker A:

But they actually do do an injection at this point. They have done an injection. I've seen it in a long time. But they used to do injections in certain fish to give them bulges in certain areas just so they have a different pattern. What, you wouldn't have the fish for six months? It would pass away. But that's another thing that I've at least seen in the past. I haven't seen that in a long time. Thank goodness I've never gone forever. I think that does it for fish modification, but horrible stuff. I always give it the rule of thumb. Do they live a long and happy life? Is it going to affect them in breeding, swimming, eating and go from there? And did it cause pain to the fish? That's why I'm genetic. That's why special breeding I'm not necessarily against. It just has to be done in responsible ways. The last one, which we've kind of encompassed with all of our topics, is health. Ethics in health is, I think, the most crucial. If you have a fish and you decide that you're going to take that fish, put it into an aquarium that's too small for it, you're going to overfeed it, you're not going to give it proper needs. Like, for instance, you'll see different dub huffer fish that need to have snails, clams, different things to cut its beak, different diets. That's the real key in how to get better and better at the hobby every day. That's why we do this, is because we're trying to essentially take our cube and replicate a healthy, happy environment for that fish, whether it be completely recreating the bottom of their natural habitat or making one that certainly adapts the fish. That might not be so natural in the first place, there's nothing wrong with taking a SpongeBob figurine and putting in there as long as that SpongeBob figurine isn't taking away from the requirements of that fish or creating a negative environment for that fish. In fact, most of those toys really do create wonderful habitats. I'm looking at a pvc pipe sitting in the bottom of my aquarium just because, one, it functions as a trap for me to catch hundreds of play goes, but two, I leave it in there because it really does give a place for tiny babies to hide from all the other activity in the tank. So do your homework on every species. Watch fish. Watch your fish's health not only for its feeding habits, but teach yourself every day to become a better fish keeper so you can own the responsibility and proudly say that you brood a friend in your tank.

Speaker B:

That was sweet.

Speaker A:

I just keep every time I say that, I think of that, like, 1950s, like, weird cartoon where the guy? Mr. Lumpett.

Speaker B:

Mr. limpet.

Speaker A:

Mr. limpet.

Speaker B:

Donna?

Speaker A:

Yeah, it just creeps me out.

Speaker B:

Scrap, what do you got?

Speaker C:

Man, I don't have a whole lot. I mean, as a new fish keeper, relatively started about over a year ago and then now since I became editor of this thing, I've learned so much from you guys that it's more or less I've learned from everyone else's mistakes, though I've made my own over time. So I'd say I've tried to keep fishing bowls and things and they not do well. I've kept fishing bowls that do do well. I said do do.

Speaker B:

You said do do.

Speaker C:

But yeah, you're right. It's a matter of giving them the environment and understanding. If you have your basics down, like understanding your cycle and understanding your basic requirements of the fish and stuff. Like, you guys started out saying, don't go out there and try to get some monster fish right off the rip. I mean, you might get lucky with a catfish and have him live and not be able to not even know he's there. But at the same time, you might not get so lucky and have a funky smell on the corner one day.

Speaker A:

We're not the people saying what you can and can't have. We're the people that try to give you the tools to make an educated decision. So if you want to actually buy paku, you better have a thousand gallon tank or a pond and wear a mullet.

Speaker B:

That's right. Shout out to Big Rich. So, yeah, definitely do your homework and learn from everybody else's mistake. It's just much cheaper, easier and less painful.

Speaker A:

Be ethical because it's a responsibility you owe to the fish, responsibility you owe to new fish keepers and the hobby of itself to stick around and become better as we all grow together.

Speaker B:

Now, I don't know if you saw it up there that one of our listeners went, you can't say the word that you said that we have to call them little people.

Speaker A:

I did.

Speaker B:

Did you see that?

Speaker A:

I feel like that.

Speaker B:

And so you were schooled.

Speaker A:

They also are upset because I didn't mention we man. I don't know. See, I can go Bryant Williams because I know he's a fantastic person of his art. We Man, I guess, is a skilled profession of his art as well. But that art just happens to be shitting in public, chasing obese men down the road in a diaper. Is he not my forte? Is the little person to be a great example? Yes, but I see he could be a great guy.

Speaker B:

I don't know. I think he's dead. Are you serious? I think we met.

Speaker D:

We man's dead.

Speaker B:

We man's dead. minnie Me from Austin Powers films. He's passed away.

Speaker A:

We man can't be dead.

Speaker B:

Got a great story about verne. That was minnie Me. One of my friends was at a club where women take off their clothes and We Man was up on stage on his scooter causing chaos in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Speaker A:

We man is not dead, you jackass.

Speaker B:

We man not dead.

Speaker D:

Really?

Speaker A:

No. You got me, though.

Speaker B:

But josie is gone. Kid kid rocks. josie?

Speaker A:

Who's josie?

Speaker B:

Kid Rock sidekick.

Speaker A:

I need to know little people culture. Clearly. I don't know half these famous people.

Speaker B:

So Kid Rock has josie, right? Am I right? There chris scrap. Was it josie? I think he's passed away.

Speaker C:

I think I remember the name, but I'm not familiar enough with you would.

Speaker B:

Remember the song that he sings with Kid Rock, but yeah, unfortunately, just because.

Speaker C:

I'm younger than you doesn't mean I know everything about being a kid.

Speaker B:

About Kid Rock. Come on. He's from Michigan.

Speaker C:

He is from Detroit.

Speaker A:

Yeah. Shame.

Speaker B:

What else you got?

Speaker A:

Anything else that we need to talk about and cover about ethicalities there Adam?

Speaker D:

No, I mean, I would just go by the golden rule. Whether you have a business or treat other people, how you'd like to be treated and do your best to be an ambassador.

Speaker C:

Give people room to make mistakes. That's what I would say to do. Give people room to make mistakes. The next time you absolutely know that they're going to make the biggest mistake.

Speaker A:

Ever, the next time you go in a form and yell at a child because he put a Beta into a gallon container, just kindly step away from the keyboard, all right? Unless you're going to have to say something constructive to help him in his hobby.

Speaker B:

Yeah, it's okay to be nice to people. You don't have to be a dick wad on freaking Internet.

Speaker A:

We're looking at you. Read it.

Speaker B:

There we go.

Speaker A:

All right, guys, if you like what you listen to on the podcast, go to aquariumgyspodcast.com. Bob, the website. heck in the show notes. Give us a tip, keeps the lights on. If you want to sponsor the show, get some message us. We'll do some fun stuff. Jimmy will take his shirt off and paint. I'll paint on your stomach.

Speaker B:

No.

Speaker A:

Regardless, we're open to ideas and support our current sponsors. I think you helped give us lights on as well. You sure nobody paint Jimmy?

Speaker B:

No. You're not painting me.

Speaker A:

We'll talk about it, all right?

Speaker B:

Probably do some piercings or something.

Speaker A:

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

Speaker D:

You can never trust the ukrainians.

Speaker B:

Oh, yeah. Let's make them mad now. Adam.

Episode Notes

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