Hey, guys, just want to take a minute for our sponsor j four flower horns. If you are sitting in front of your aquarium wondering why you're no longer enjoying it, well, number one, you may not see them so clean the glass. But two, you know, bring a piece of the extreme deer tank. Have some fun. Go to J. Four Flowerhornsnut.com. He not only has amazing awardwinning flower horns you can get anywhere else, but also extreme fish like Bashirs, platinum, Bashirs albino, arowana, even as blue eye bristle knows placos, King Kong parrot, cyclists. What do you guys want? Go there. Go now. Find yourself some extreme for your tank and get 10% off while doing it. Go to J fourflowerhorns.com and use promo code aquarium Guys at checkout for 10% off your entire order. Also, to celebrate J four and flowerhorns sponsoring the show, we've put out a little love. Go to our merch store. You'll see it in the show notes. It's the aquarium. Guys. 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 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 the According 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 Guide podcast. Welcome, guys. Adam. We lost Jimmy. What did you do? Did you shit on him? No.

That's your job.

I mean, I feel like it's everyone's job because he's not here. And that's part of being it's an obligation that we have to do is is shit on the men. But unfortunately, our normal host Jimmy is out with a according to the text message. I have to take a peek here. A 99.6 fever and he says he doesn't want to give me the covids.

No, he doesn't care about you. He cares more about your wife.

Okay, thank you. I mean, we do have to paint that out. He would normally cough in my face. So ladies and gentlemen, I want to introduce tonight's temporary replacement for Jimmy Michael Hayes. Say hello to the audience.

Good evening.

So Mike is a dear friend of mine. And just so happens that today is the first day he's going to come in and live with me and move in as a roommate. But you are achille a ficcinato.

Absolutely.

Are you nervous? A little bit. A little bit.

I'm trial bag fire tonight.

I mean, with the large of that beard, you shouldn't be nervous.

Shouldn't be. I started off with live bears, guppies platties, swordtails, et cetera. And I used to be intimidated by kill these and then eventually gave them a try, started breeding them and loved what I had. They're my favorite little fish.

And now you order $200 pairs from french dudes.

Oh, no, thai dudes.

Thai dudes. Well, what happened to the French dudes?

The French dudes don't have them anymore.

They're gone. They're all from thai dudes?

Yeah, they're all thai dudes.

All right, well, I have questions for you, but they'll have to wait. So I am your host, Rob olsen.

I'm Adam El Nashire.

See, it took him a minute because normally we have this gentleman in the middle. So suck it. Jimmy, seriously, I hope that you're okay, jimmy, if you're listening to this, three weeks from now that you still don't have COVID because that would suck. Tonight we are going to be doing a doctor fish and we have the doctors in the house. James, how are you doing tonight?

I'm doing all right. howdy fishy folks?

So we have an absolute fish load of questions at aquatic affinity. So it is a discord server that we actually did last time in episode four. If you haven't heard it, go back and check out the episode. We had so many questions from before and this time they did not hold up back on us either. So I don't know how many we're going to get through tonight, but let me tell you, you I sat up for about an hour last night proofing the questions and we got some humdingers for you, doc.

Sweet.

So what have you been doing just as an update since we last talked because we've had quite a few episodes.

Since we have episode four, trying to keep up with demand of fish. It's still a bit crazy. Flights are still a little bit wonky, but pressing through as we can and getting as many shipments as we can and getting them out the door.

So have you say like, demand has been absolute peaking now or it's still going up.

I mean, people are loving fish right now. Even with the states opening up and stuff like that, fish sales are still really strong.

Nice. I see all the hobbies. I know mike and I play magic of the gathering and it seems like even collectible cards. The market is still pretty darn solid. All these indoor hobbies. I work as an it professional and I talked with these people that have an RV sailing place and they said they're out of RVs for the first time since they've been open.

Oh, wow.

It's blown out. So people are finding ways to stay inside and be COVID friendly. That's a burn to you, jimmy, I know you're listening. Well, for those that don't know Dr. Fish is from seagris Farms, the largest wholesaler distributor of live fish in the North America or the United States.

The Us. Possibly the world.

Possibly the world. We haven't measured it yet, but we have. James is the head of Fish Health, which is why we call you Dr.

Fish.

And it's so much fun to beat up you with different questions because you have to sometimes bring back homework or throw you for a loop. My favorite one was the sweetwater, which we still get feedback from, by the way. Just let you know there doc.

That's great.

Did you ever find a product that matches that nowadays? Or is that still, like, some classic product no one can find?

It can be found overseas, but you're not going to find it over here.

Got you.

The next time they have an aqua rama, I'm sure somebody will have a tank with it.

I miss going out into conferences and whatnot, but are they still doing aqua shella this year? I think it's still scheduled, isn't it?

As far as I know, it is. I'm not sure in what capacity it will be.

The fingers crossed. Well, again, we are at aquatic affinity's discord. Aquatic affinity is a wonderful fish community to help out. No membership fee. Come join the fun. We already have a completely full discord. Or I'd say come join us here, but you can watch us on twitch Tvaquariumguys for those that have now filled this entire discord to listen this live. So come join the debauchery, at least in that manner, and check out Aquatic affinity. Well, thanks for having us hosted, and let's dive into some of the questions before we do. Mike, you had a wonderful question.

So I've bought from Seaggress Farms before. First of all, I just want to say every product I've gotten from Seaggress has been great, wonderful. Never had issues. Lately, within the killy community, I've heard questions or talked to people who have been interested in buying, like the Rocket killies, the bounded pound checks and correct. Every seller in the Us is sold out.

This is where James would be like, no, I got some in the back room. Don't worry about it.

No, actually, we don't have any right now. We really usually only bring those in maybe monthly, once every other month. We have a really good check vendor that we get them from, but why other people are out, I couldn't speak to that. Unfortunately.

Clearly, everything's under demand, so good luck figuring out one specific fish. Mike.

Well, thank you for the answer.

Why do the checks have such amazing quality of fish?

I think mostly because profit margin is mostly taken out of the picture over there, doing it for the love.

Oh, okay.

Good to know. All right, so let's dive in to some questions. We have curated a bunch, and if you want to ask, normally we go to the aquarium guys discord, which is the bottom of our website, aquariumgyspodcast.com. But this is all in aquatic affinity, so you have to join the discord to submit some of these questions. And honestly, if you guys keep pumping out amazing questions, maybe we can ask permission to come for a third time. We'll find out. But so far it's been working out great. So first question to kick off the evening, how do I make sure dwarf puffers have no illness on them when I purchase them?

You want to definitely quarantine any fish. Just assume that fish have bugs on them just like people do. We have parasites and bacteria and all over us every day. So do the fish. Some are good, some are commensal, and some can be parasitic or pathogenic. So you want to quarantine all your fish? The little pea puffers, they'll do fine. A lot of times I like to assume that they have IC and treat them for IC with a good two week to 21 day quarantine.

So is there anything that you want to look for specifically with puffers? Because most people aren't really used to the behavior of a dwarf puffer, especially because dwarf puffers are a real target for beginner. Fish keepers is their behavior. You're looking for coloration or something specific? You have to look for weak individuals.

They're a tricky fish. I really don't honestly suggest them for beginners, especially if you're keeping multiples in a tank because they're going to nip at each other and chew their fence off. It's very common. You almost never see a dwarf puffer that has perfect fence. It's in their nature to nip at each other and nip at other fish as well. So you just need to watch out for secondary bacterial infections. With most fish you want to look for a brightly colored fish and something that looks like it's breathing without struggling or trying to breathe, correct alignment in the water.

Next question. I'm actually going to trade these. Mike, go ahead and read the next one.

What is your favorite tropical community fish?

Favorite tropical community fish? Honestly, I Really Like The Dwarf. grammys. They're probably, I think, in a planted tank with a school of tetras and some dwarf goramis I think is a really beautiful tank.

All right, Adam, you get the next question.

Have you ever had Mike sybolisis cerebellis affect tropical fish? What the hell disease is that?

Mixobolus cerebellis?

That's the one.

I actually have seen that only once in the 20 plus years I've been in the industry, but it does happen occasionally.

What is the disease?

It shows here that it's a parasite of salmon. Salmon?

It can be in salmon? Yeah.

A whirling disease in farmed salmon is how it's most commonly found.

Yeah. It can also travel to the brain of the fish as well.

I wondered that because it said cerebralis, like your cerebellum brain.

I'm going to have to play some of that, but we can't anymore because YouTube is going to take us down. All right. What crime did convict cichlids actually commit?

I like that one. Just because of their stripes, not going.

To tell us what crime they commit. Fair enough. I'll answer this one. Breeding too fast. All right, moving on. What, in your opinion, is the definition of a perfect tank?

I like personally heavily planted tanks with a few schooling fish.

That and above all else, I mean, you are dr fish. You like a healthy tank, number one, obviously. I mean, that is low hanging fruit there. All right. Your turn, Mike.

I like this question because I've had this question in the past. It's how to get rid of string algae in a shrimp tank. All the medication I see recommended using said medication in a shrimp tank is not recommended.

Yeah, I would definitely agree with that. Typically, what you're going to be using to do that is copper. It's some type of copper based medication, regardless of what they call it. And it does a number on the algae, but it's going to do a number on your shrimp, too, pretty quick. And this is the one scenario that I will sometimes suggest using an antibiotic for something that's not bacterially related. And some hair algae you can kill with a really heavy dose of erythromycin antibiotics, but it's not something that I would suggest to do often or anything.

But if you do have a z pack laying around, sure, but for the rest of us, I mean, use a toothbrush, roll it like you're eating spaghetti and try to control it like the rest of us.

Rob I'm sorry.

What?

No, go ahead first.

Rob knows this because I gave him some stuff, and it gave his tank string algae.

You had, like, super herpes when it came to this rare string algae, it was kind of blue, and for some reason, the only thing I had left to do was bleach the tank.

I didn't think I needed to get.

It looked at to get your shit looked at, michael holy crap.

Are there any community fish or other things that would eat some of that stuff?

Not enough to make a difference, I don't believe, honestly.

So I have two recommendations for that. The only two fish that I've had that I actually could mow it down past how fast it grows is a siamese algae eater. I have one where the tank was completely covered in it, put, say, eight siamese algae eaters in there, true ones, not the fake ones, and just blew it apart. I mean, I don't have a shred left. The other one that did a decent job, not quite as good, was an American flag fish. Other than that, I haven't had much besides eating some of it. They won't really attack it. Besides, those two fish people a lot of times, like molly's well, sure, molly's will, but they're not going to, say, bring down the population. They're just going to trim it.

You also forgot something, rob's.

Oh, no.

Adam'S special plant can now compete hair algae, that is.

Speaking to which did we finally identify that special plant?

No, I want some of it.

I did get permission from the dnr that we can inspect it without them having to have recourse on us.

Oh, okay, right.

So we'll have to have them take a peeksy. Okay.

So they aren't going to confiscate it?

No, but they will put you in jail. So it's different.

But only if you give them your little black book of people.

You know, a little note to people listening live. This is going to come out a lot later, so it'll probably be old news by the time you get this. The whole thing we talked about a couple of weeks ago about someone having moss balls and finding zebra mussels inside public service announcement. That has certainly blown way out of proportion. A lot of people have been finding it, a lot of different pet stores and now dnr, certain states have been going and essentially broad spectrum blanketing hitting every pet store and having essentially like a cease and desist letter where they walk in saying, you must bleach your moss balls. Florida has been very aggressive. I have friends that have had people walk in, forced them to destroy it.

In North Dakota, we bleached all of our moss balls.

Yeah, in Florida, they're that aggressive. But also, like, even in North Dakota here, we had them come to local pet shops, the pet smart, stuff like that, and hit them hard as well. So check your own supply. If you bought moss balls within the last two months, I mean, go through them, pull them apart, pick them. You do not want zebra mussels in your tanks. Mike is writing down notes. Bleach my shit. Wait, what is that? Bleach your balls. Public service announcement from the aquarium guys, is bleach your balls. Ladies and gentlemen, don't forget to bleach your balls.

And one thing I would suggest, if you do have moss balls in your tank, bleach your siphon water until this is all over. Is there a good practice? If you can smell it, it's probably going to kill the moss ball. So that's a good standard to go by.

It's like a buck and a half at the dollar store for a gallon. I'm pouring that ship here. I mean, that's just me.

Yes.

I'm not going to ask questions like how much do I put in? I'm like enough to drown it. Enough to drown?

Well, no, he said bleach your waste water, your siphon water. So I just was wondering if there was a certain amount of bleach you should put in your bucket to make it safe, or just pour it in.

There and it'll kill whatever enough like a bubbling cauldron.

I agree.

Okay. Spend the dollar safety. All right, Adam, it's your question here from dre.

What is Popeye and how do you treat it? And same with dropsy, please. What is dropsy, and how do you treat it?

Dropsy is caused by a systemic bacterial infection. It can be different kinds of bacteria, so you really need to know what you're dealing with there. Also popeye is typically also caused by a bacterial infection.

So how do you best treat dropsy and specifically popeyes? It with spinach.

Honestly. Salt will help with both of those and more tanks.

Right, okay.

Yes.

For those that have done Dr. Fish the first time, we're going to be putting a shirt just for Dr. Fish, saying just with the salt shaker of him pouring into a tank. We got to work on that. Talk to our art people over the discord and see what we can find. We'll have them, like, do your face up. So you have to send us a nice picture.

Doctor that would be great, yes.

All right. How do I do a dry start method using aquarium seeds? What are the downsides of using them? Can I use other plants with them and can suggest a good type of seed?

Doctor I'm not familiar with that, so.

I think what they're meaning, and again, I'm unfamiliar as well you take a dry tank with different types of natural substrate, and you take, like, loose dwarf hair grass type seeds. You spread them across the bottom, and instead of filling the tank, which it's hard to get those seeds correct, you instead just moisten the dirt, and they'll spring up and shoot up like normal grass. Once you have a start, then you fill your tank and move on with it. And for loose, light seed plants, it's a very good way of doing it, especially for starters like dwarf hair grass. But I don't know if I've had a lot of luck doing it.

I mean, when I think of that, I think of plants like anubis or cryptocorne, which can grow terrestrial and aquatic, and a lot of people dry seed with those. But then those tend to melt. They do after a while.

I mean, anything that you move around in your tank or replant, buy a plant from the store melts. But I haven't had too much of a problem with it melting from especially dwarf hair grass. I haven't done this a ton. Right. There's going to be a little peak of an episode that we're trying to put together of checking out wish items, and I bought a bunch of seedsfrom, wish, and I had a lot of good luck doing that dry method.

But don't buy seeds from wish.

Don't tell them that's a future episode. Right. We'll get to that later. Mike, your question from Steve B.

What would be the best way to medicate large species of fish individually without having to remove them from their enclosure by feet?

I find it's going to depend on what's going on with your fish, obviously. Is it external issues or internal issues? But another way to go about it, if it's external issues, is to remove the other fish from the tank, if that works out better. And I always like to feed fish with medication through feed.

Next question is for you, Adam. We got by King Crimson. Crimson, I got to say that correct.

The crimson chin do you think emblers.

Are less prone to disease compared to guppies because they're less inbred than guppies?

I think he met Cooper feed very well. That could be a good possibility. A lot of the lines of specific varieties of guppies have been bred back for many, many years now.

I think they meant feeder fish. I think that was a typo at them. You didn't read that correctly.

You're an ass.

But that would be tricky because if I remember it with endlers, endlers are very interbred into guppies, too, now. They interbreed freely.

Yes.

So that would be hard to determine, then, if the guppies, your rights, are.

Any different, we're just going to have to kill them for science.

Science.

For those that don't, you have Adams Pure shit, right? Adams pure shit. I have a 60 gallon tank of adam's pure shit. I mean, I could start another website like I did for Jimmy and Do Adamspiershit.com, but I feel like that's very misleading and we should definitely save that website for adults only.

Say you're selling something else there if you're doing that.

Well, did you go fish?

I do have a question about genetics.

Yes.

Fish.

How many times can you inbreed fish before you start noticing problems? Like, I had some friends that may or may not have lizards that are illegal and they basically descended from one or two pairs, and they said that within eight generations, they were starting to see genetic problems like tweaked spines and tails. How often can you do that with fish?

Oh, honestly, it's going to probably depend on the breed of fish, really. So I don't really have any insight on that. But along the reptile lines and cracking down, florida just recently had a big loss for reptile keepers. So sad for that end.

I imagine it's like ants. Ants you can have the ants make a colony that's out there and different ants that could be related or have enough genetic diversity that they won't inbreeding, won't affect them as much. That's my take from that.

I just want to see the Southern comments after the episode now. All right, next questions. I'm going to do two at once here. Doctor, how did you get convinced to be on the podcast and how much are they paying you?

Not a penny. And it's my pleasure. And rob's reached out to me and I said yes. It was pretty easy, actually.

It was basically a bribe. I'll buy you a microphone, you come on forever.

There we go.

He signed his contract in blood and with Sandy moore's permission, the head of Seacres Farms, cyrus Farms, is nice enough to sponsor this fine gentleman onto the podcast. So. Thank you. cyrus Farms. If you guys are listening to this, you have a pet store and you don't buy from cigarettes. Farms, stop it. And immediately go to the website and get hooked up. They are fantastically. Wholesale only, but definitely worth a while.

Absolutely.

All right. You want to read that one, Mike?

Can do.

From papa goobs.

I like that name. Can you blink rapidly into the microphone if they're holding you hostage?

Moving on. Never mind. You get this one. Now.

How common is neon tetra disease?

I would say it's as common as any other fish disease, honestly. plastov can be there or sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. Sometimes it's in what we would call a subclinical state, which means the fish has it but it's not showing any symptoms and they live their whole life out pretty normally. Sometimes they have a stress event or a repeated stress ores and then develop disease.

How do you feel salt interacts with scaleless fish? Is it just a rumor? Are they actually more susceptible, thus need.

Half a dose that's going to be species, very species dependent? There's a lot of fish that people, for one scaleless fish is kind of a misnomer because there's a lot of fish that people consider scaleless fish that have scales so scats and monos. I see a lot of people put those in the scaleless fish category. You can keep those in full salt. So I would say it can be just a rumor, but with some fish, say ghost knives or elephant nose fish, some of those fish aren't going to tolerate a lot of salt. So you need to know your fish's parameter.

All right, Adam, I think I took your question. So you get aliens.

Do you feel the blanket ban on Chennai in the USA is justified?

I think that's supposed to be named Canada. Yeah, I'm not sure it's not a good idea to have fish that could decimate populations be available. But that's a slippery slope. I mean, you could say we shouldn't import any fish if you're going to say that, so I don't know. I'm not in the regulatory side of the things, so that's a hard one.

There for those that are listening. That family that we spoke of is actually the family most commonly known for snakeheads. And the arguments I get about snakeheads, especially being in the bitter white north, is that, oh, if we ever drop one in the lake or something accident happened, they would just freeze out. Well, yes, but no. The problem is there's such an invasive risk that sure, Minnesota, they wouldn't live. But let's say that someone in Minnesota decided to illegally hand it to someone down south. It's just too easy of a fish that can completely destroy an entire ecosystem and spread it's like carp, the river carp. It's like the Asian carp that you're talking about on the Mississippi too big of a risk.

Yeah, walking catfish here in Florida, it's horrible. You have big rains and they're everywhere.

Watched a fantastic documentary, by the way, on walking catfish and the problem in Florida, and it is terrifying.

Did you hear about you're nice and close there in Florida, doc, the arapaima that are now propagating themselves in Florida.

I heard something about that but don't have any specifics on it.

Got you. All right. How do you do vacation with fish tanks, fish sitters, vacation schedules, feeding, etc.

That would be ideal. Honestly, when I'm on vacation, I only get to go on vacation from seacrest if I have somebody capable of making sure everything is taken care of.

He called us once and they're like, no, no, someone capable like, fine, alternatively.

You just don't go on vacation.

I guess so.

Really? We couldn't afford the travel pay.

Yeah, I mean we tried, but on the other hand, that's how you take care of vacations for seacrest farms. For those who are listening, a couple of ideas for your tanks are how long is the vacation? Is it going to be a week, two weeks, a couple of days? If it's a couple of days, it's okay to, I don't want to use the word starve your fish, but fast your fish, people should be doing that on a regular basis anyway. If I'm feeding six days a week, seven should be fasting. In my opinion. For most tropical species, a few days, it's not bad at all. For your fish, it can do a lot of good. Give the tank a break, give your filters a break to catch up. And you wouldn't believe that actually somehow you'll get like a big plant burst for no apparent reason.

I would agree with that.

And there's enough microorganisms and tanks too that the fish can feed off of those for a few days if they have to.

And if you don't want to use the automatic fish feeders, they're set for different amounts that you can test. They're on little watch motors, they're a fantastic use. But don't get lazy and just be like, oh, I'll just keep topping off the automatic feeder when I get home after the vacation. Don't use automatic feeders as excuse to feed your fish. That's your time to inspect things, to make sure things are going okay and interact with the fish because it is their only human interaction. Otherwise I have a lot of problems where people put on a manic feeders, they walk by and their fish disappear. Well, there's no interaction. What positivity do you bring to the circle besides scaring their asses? So feed your fish, take it as your time for your moment to inspect the tank. And for the love of God, don't buy those multi day. What are those, like biscuits that you throw in your tank? Oh, here's a vacation feed.

Horrible. Most of those are just calcium carbonate, better known. As chalk.

Yeah, they're literally just chalk that they pack food into that's supposed to slowly dissolve over time, and then they get like, tiny bits of stuff. It's just gross in your water.

Another thing about auto feeders, if you do use them, and I know some people love them, make sure you clean them because the mold can start growing in there, and that's not too great for your fish.

I cannot confirm or deny I've had auto feeders that I have known they're empty and then just forgot to put away. And just because they're over, the tank without food, have grown gross and then.

Fall into the tank, it'll happen.

Oh, that's right. I had a feeder there who knew. All right, Mike, do you want to talk about dre's? Question are you mad about dre? Oh, this one's already done. Yeah, we did. I didn't mark it off. That's my fault.

You threw me off.

All right, you get the pog Lord, then.

All right, first of all, great name. Does adding salt water to a freshwater tank and making it brackish help get rid of internal parasites?

Not so much internal parasites. External parasites it can be good for. I would prefer dips or long term baths rather than switching your whole tank over.

New question. How is the best way to do a dip? For instance, I had a ball of shark that I had to do dips on. I took a hefty salt mixture, put it in there, and he about died from shock. Like, I had to revive him. It was an aggressive trip. How much salt do you put for.

A dip in a bucket that's really going to be species dependent? And your bala sharks, they're a shocky fish anyway. But the big thing to make sure, just try to get your PH as close as possible and your temperature is as close as possible. But other than that, I find anywhere from six ppt, which is parts per thousand to ten parts per thousand is a good dip for a long term bath, which would be until the fish starts to show signs of stress. And then for a short term bath, you can use full strength seawater.

So how long do you dip them?

Once again, that's going to be species dependent. I like to dip them until they actually start to show stress, which when you first dip them, they might act agitated. That's not what I'm talking about stress. I'm talking about loss of buoyancy in the water, or if they lay down at the bottom or start floating up to the top. Most fish can go 30 seconds to two minutes. But always fish dips are an eyes on thing, always. And know your species and know what they can tolerate.

I was talking to a coworker about their puffer to bring, not to call back to puffers at the beginning, but I was telling her about possibly doing a dip on them and then I realized, wait, puffers do something a little different when they're stressed or agitated and actually puff up. And my concern was at some point in either dipping or pouring through a net to get back into a tank, if that puffer was to puff while in a net or in air, there might be problems with that. Is there any suggestions on how to maybe do that with a puffer?

Could be a bit tricky. In that case, I would put them in a small container and transfer that whole container into the dip.

So basically there's water to water out and go from there.

Yeah. Cool.

Interesting. Adam, you got Kyva's caveas question.

Kiva. kiava.

Kiava. I like that better.

I like that.

My brand new tank produced results the second week into a fishless cycle. It's now been over two months and still in the nitrates. Should I start again or just leave it? Ammonia has been stuck around three for months. I decided to stop feeding it for over two weeks. Now it's finally at one in a hope to maybe restart the tank somehow.

Check your PH, check your alkalinity.

I didn't know that.

I mean, that and plants. I've seen some plants try to break down other things in the tank, but that's really not going to help as much as trying to introduce maybe a different fish. But yeah, from the weight, sound has been sitting there for so long, it's definitely got to be something else.

Yes. The reason I say that is we just helped the store with that problem. They restarted their systems and they couldn't figure out why they couldn't get their ammonia to go away. Well, they had had a PH crash and at low PH, you're not going to get that cycle started.

I wonder if this person has been doing water changes during the cycle as well.

Could be.

That could be another problem. It's hard to diagnose without more info.

Correct.

An issue that I've been helping my brother work out with his tank where he has well water and a home filtration system. So his water not only comes out neutral seven out of the ground, but he filters it. And so what we did was grab some cuttle fish bones and stuck those pieces of that in the back of his hang on back to slowly add some hardness back to the water and that like that. In about a week or two, we started to see the PH levels come up and then everything started to level out because there was nothing in the water for the cycle to hold on to.

So going on to nick's question. Do women find men with fish tanks as a turn on or turn off? That's a doctor question.

Doctor'S married. How do you think he picked up a diet?

The doctor is married, so I really have no idea. I didn't have fish tanks when we met, but she did.

I'm just saying out of the people that's podcast right now. I'm married a scrap. You're married, right? Yes, Adam is married. Doctor is married. Mike, you need more fish tanks in your life.

I was going to say I haven't had a fish tank in five years, right?

And you need to pick up some women, get some hot tanks and some fresh tattoos. You know what I mean?

Fish related pickup lines like, hey, you want to check out my shrimp tank? My shrimp tank.

Hey, you want to see my shrimp?

My Amazon swords.

Don't use that line, ladies and gentlemen. Don't do it.

No, you'll get it.

I guess if you're after the elusive poontang, the gem tang. The gem tang poontang, what is your.

Opinion on the difference between materials and live bacteria? Difference between a product like flomax and Eco complete. Now, the doctor has said before that he's not going to recommend one product over the other. Instead, he'll give you differences. So it is up to you. How you'd like to answer this question on live bacteria?

Yeah, I always like to use a liquid live bacteria, and some people say there are some dry products out there to work, but I know for a fact there are dry products out there that feed your bacteria and really get a system going really quickly. But as for specific products on that.

One, I've used both the dry and liquid products. I'm not sure about the fluoromax and Eco Complete that they're just describing here, but for instance, let's just pick on the easy one. Like I think was it tetra? Still has a product they use. It's stress. zyme, I think. Is there a bacteria in the bottle they try to use? I can't remember the actual name of it, but I used to get gallons of that and it seems like I couldn't really overdose the product. It was a little bit easier for me to use. I just could essentially splash into a tank, whether it be a 75 gallon or a ten gallon, and I wouldn't essentially crash the system by giving it so much nutrients that it would cause a bacteria bloom. However, powder is not that at all. Just because you said that powder a lot of times is just food for bacteria. I unacciidentally dumped half a container of powder in and I created the sweetest petri dish I have ever seen in my life. I swear to God. I had the thing crawling out of that and I just let it go for a little while because I needed to know, I needed to do this for science.

It was a microbiologist wet dream is what it was.

Sure. See, that's why adam's got to stop picking on me for those jars. That it is a kid.

Now, I may be wrong and I haven't kept a tank in what, four or five years?

How dare you?

How dare I?

You're moving in and you're seeing a shrimp rack that's now yours.

I have a 60 gallon that was just given to me tonight. I'm in a pack full of rainbows and rice fish, but awesome. When I was in the hobby last, we were always told through the head honchos that had been in it for a while to stay away from things like live bacteria. Has that changed in the last five years?

There's always trends in the industry that are going back and forth. Like I said, I like to use a live bacterial product with a fishless cycle with just adding pneumonia.

Okay, awesome. Learning new things every day.

All right, Mike, you want to get this one right here.

What are some plants that you guys have had success in immerse growing?

Well, doc gets answered first.

Where is that one?

I show here, Mr. Gromby. He is. A second question. Some plants that you have success in immersed. Growing.

Immersed, growing. I'm not sure I follow that in.

Growing underwater is what I'm assuming.

Maybe like house plants he's trying to grow underwater.

It could be like I'm actually looking up the definition of immersed relating to the characteristic of aqua plants reaching above the water's surface.

Like lily pads.

Well, I mean, or like even beyond that. Anubis fun story of this. I got this, like, red led wig and for some reason I don't know if I got some sort of hybrid mine. Literally, I have a rack of ten gallon tanks and it grows out the top and it hangs over the side of the tank like some sort of weird vine and then actually grows into other tanks next to it. So I have like rogue red lewdwig spreading all over the place.

I have heard. And I've had the greatest success immersed with plants that are made for that. Usually bog plants. A lot of stuff in the hobby from the amazon, like I was saying, like sword, stuff like that. Sometimes they can grow immersed. Abuses from south Asia, they can grow immersed.

Or mainly your herpes hair grass that you gave me. How dare you?

That's pet smart's fault. That's not why, is it? But usually plants that are made for that, and I've even heard that some people will use philodendrons. They'll grow the roots into the water and keep the leaves above it. But I've never done that myself.

Adam, you got that third question.

Another plant that you could add to that list is creeping jenny, or pennywort. We call it pennywort in the aquarium hobby. It's mostly inside, but if you find creeping jenny, it's usually smaller and spindler and you can route that and gravel, but it will go up and then through multiple tanks and things.

I now have a new house plant to buy. jim's wife.

I was going to say, if you look up dripping jenny, it's going to look like that woman that's the crazy girlfriend meme.

And they do flower. They do flower, actually too you got that?

Next question. Yes.

Did having a high PH in the soil make a difference for immerse growing? If you did?

My shit drug grows in sand. How about you, Mike?

Well, so going off what Rob explained, I used to keep fish tanks with well water as well, and it was so acidic, it was eating the seal on my fish tanks. So maybe that's got something to do with it, I don't know.

How about you with your creepy jennies?

I don't know.

They do well in the gravel tanks that I have. They didn't do so well in the sand, but they do really well when you just take that pot from Home depot and you set it where it's got a little bit of water, and then the water goes up in, and then when you try to pull it out of wherever you put it, where there's water, there's just nothing but root everywhere. They like the loose, I believe they're usually in nature, they're found on the edge of a body of water. Not usually streams or anything, maybe a pond or somewhere where there's lots of moistness going on. Loose soil, loose gravel.

Next question is what is your biggest blunder in the aqua trades since you.

Got started treating a shrimp system with an organophosphate?

And why was that bad for the.

Listeners, for the lay people here?

All the shrimp died and it was all of our feeder shrimp. It was a lot of shrimp and I was quite disturbed by it, but I did learn from it and then it has never happened again.

So you know how you need to kill so many people to be a serial killer? How many shrimp did you have to kill before you got the mass murderer badge at seacrest?

Well, I don't know how many shrimp that was. It was well over the number required, but we used to always say 1000 fish. All right, but that was 1000 shrimp per tank.

How many tanks?

Oh, it was a bunch too many.

Enough to cry over.

What trends have you seen completely change the hobby, for better or worse.

More education now is definitely a better, and I think we still have a lot of work to do on that. And places like this are great settings to do that in. So that's a really positive thing, negative trends. I think the most negative trend that I can think of that I'm glad has gone out is the tattooed fish that were popular about ten years ago.

That's exactly what I was thinking about too, when I read it. I remember the tattooed guppies people were bringing them overseas and I'm glad they.

Got rid of that.

That was awful.

Terrible, terrible.

I'm trying to pick something that is more recent. So if I'm picking a negative trend that I dislike, probably a lot of the hype youtubers, they give fishkeeper keeping hobby a bad name. You have a lot of great people out there that do a lot of good. Alexander Williamson with secret history found in your aquarium. You have bentley pascal, there's a bunch of great youtubers out there, even the Ohio fish rescue that show what you can do to save large fish and don't purchase the incorrect size. But you see I'm not going to put out names, but you'll see these people that are not necessarily in the fish trade that are trying to scrape some of the hype that I think the worst one that I've ever seen is doing a goldfish roller coaster. They take goldfish that they buy out of a box and just siphon them across their entire home doing loop de loops and all kinds of torture into a bathtub. It's just a lot of misinformation and a lot of bad taste that comes to our fun hobby. Great trends would be, I think, the collection of unique groups like this aqua affinity. They not only are there to help you live, you can't go to a pet smart twelve midnight and ask a question of what's going on with my fish, much less even when they're there, giving you a straight answer. So it's nice having really the community base itself off the back. This whole discord transition for fishkeeping has helped a lot of people get immediate gratification and help when an accident happens.

If I may, I would also add one of the best things I've seen in the hobby is the amount of growing. It is done not so much with just the people coming into the hobby, but talking to Rob earlier on the way here. I remember a few years ago where we thought it was impossible for them to ever be green shrimp like the jade shrimp, and now they're there, and so it's growing in terms of diversity faster.

He always has been growing, but just at twice the speed, right.

We never thought we'd ever see him in ten years. And here we are now and we've got them.

Tada. All right, you got the next question, Adam.

What were some of the early fishes that were popular in the trade?

Early fish is popular in the trade. Sore tails, platties, guppies, that's going to be tetras. neons have been in the trade forever, but yeah, that's going to be sore tails platties. Mostly the libraries.

I'm going to pick on a few others. Goldfish or crests are the staple because they could be transported cold. They used to have rail cars with ice blocks to drip fresh water so they could transport them long distances. But even after that they had white cloud mountain minnows. They're essentially a tiny carp that kind of look with the same structure as a tetras as far as size and schooling and could be transported just like essentially goldfish at the time.

Things that were hard to kill, pretty much.

What are happy accidents that you found out completely by messing something up and found out that that still worked or achieved a better function. Happy accidents.

Maybe leaving the water off too long on a tank that I had treated with salt and finding out that it was actually more beneficial than harmful.

That's a tough one. Happy accidents. I'm going to say that random objects can be great breeding habitats.

Good one.

I also hear, like, the dog slamming adam's room. He's being attacked.

Just a second.

He's going to kill himself a dog. Now, I've dropped in nets and found out that there are some older nets that are fraying or great breeding habitats. I have dropped in actually, I pulled out a heater, turned it off, put it in, and then Angel Fish actually laid eggs on an unplugged heater. They also, like, plugged in heaters, which is a very sad thing because that just immediately kills them.

Yeah, that's a bummer.

If you don't know angels are horny for heaters, you have been warned.

That needs to be a T shirt, by the way.

Yes. All right. Write that down, Michael. We got a T shirt, Angel Horny for heaters. And we also need a Dr fish salt spreading T shirt.

And bleach your balls.

Oh, and bleach your balls. There. There's three T shirts for the night. Shit. We are on a roll. All right. Have you done something for a long time, found out later that you've been doing it completely wrong? And how did you learn from that? The unhappy accidents.

Yeah, no doubt. No doubt. That's a hard one. Don't use organophosphates on shrimp.

Yeah, that's gold. That's gold. What fish trend would you thanos Snap and Delete from the hobby, if you could? We hear a lot about fish trends tonight.

I'll give you another one, the dyed fish. I'm not a big fan of that either.

I'll pay still do that.

Yes. With very few fish arowanas, you can get pink and blue still. And there are some imported the skirt.

Tetris, fruity tetris, as they're listed. For most vendors, I would pick modified fish, such as cutting your stingrays and turn them into what they call batrays, which aren't even close to bat rays.

That's horrible.

Yeah, you haven't seen those. They cut, like, star patterns into stingrays and all kinds of horrible shit.

Oh, yeah. That's disgusting.

Yeah, it's pretty much the worst thing I've ever seen. All right.

Thanos snap the people that do it, because that would just solve the problem.

There you go. There.

That'D be nice.

Tada. You want to get the next one?

Adam, what has been a couple of nifty tricks you picked up throughout the years that has been substantially easier?

Well, number one, you take your fish filet and you roll it in the egg before you put it in the batter. Shore lunch. Best for white fish. If you want to do a salmon smoke it, don't be a bitch.

But on our level, I'd say recirculating systems have made things easier even though old school dripping go systems where the water comes in, goes through the tank and then goes straight back out to waste. You have the most control of your water parameters there, but number one, it's very wasteful on water and it's harder to filter that water prior. So I'd say recirculating systems.

What are your thoughts on predatory fishes of Florida learning how to hunt lionfish? I didn't know this either know that's an issue, but I never didn't know.

I need to Google this shit. If there's actually predatory fish hunting lionfish now they got small stuff.

I don't know. They've had 30 years and the lion fish are doing nothing but getting more and more. So I don't think it's going to be very effective.

Sounds like the anaconda problem.

Anaconda don't wait.

So wait, do sharks eat them in the wild? I don't think anything really eats a lionfish.

Does. It just you, Adam. Just you.

I don't eat it. I just brushed against one by accident.

Ouch.

You should do it. I have my cousin in the audience right now and he just gave me like the oh, shit, look.

It wasn't really brushed against. It was more grabbed because I forgot I put it in the tank.

Yeah. Refer back to story time one if you want to hear how he got bit by wyoming fish. I'm sorry. Would you like to buy a fisher? All right. The pog Lord wants to know what's the best way to deal with zebra muscles once they're already in your tank. I feel bad for you. homie. Yes.

Burning.

Yeah. bleak.

Yeah. He's not wrong. Zebra muscles attach to everything. They have a very vivacious breeding habit. They can survive in almost anything, including urine. I mean not going to say how I know that other than we have zebra mussels in Minnesota.

I was going to say we could do the Minnesota method where you park a guy from the dnr outside your house and he puts up a sign and says, I got to check your water.

Oh, that's that's rich. We got this one.

Mike, do you have any feeder fish or inverts you grow out to feed to other pets? Do you raise them and culture them?

We do not raise any feeder fish ourselves. Comets are commonly raised in Arkansas. Millions and millions of feeder comets raised out of Arkansas. The common guppy is raised down here, but we don't do any of those ourselves. No.

Arkansas seems to be like a central hub of fish farming in the agricultural world. I was searching for other podcasts that was talking about fish farming and so that makes a lot of sense to me when I hear that that's where they come from.

Yeah. Comets, fan tails. Not a whole lot of ARANDAS or fancy goldfish. We've only had a few places try that here on a commercial scale, large scale. I haven't been successful, but looking forward to somebody that's able to make it stick.

We did get a clarification on the emerged comment. Emerge growing is growing like anubis or Amazon sort of out of the water like farms do. Then I think my answer stands true, that my red lewd wig outside of water. Like, that worked out pretty well for me. Adam, you got this question from odin. Hey.

So I have three ranches and one of them appears to have a cloudy eye on one side. The other ranches are completely fine and so is that rancho with the cloudy eye. I'm worried that it could be a health concern.

It could be it could be age, it could be fish actually do get glaucoma, like people can't. Or it could be a cornea even. They can all also get cornea, so really hard to say without more information on that. But if the fish is eating fine and swimming fine and shows no sign of stress, I really wouldn't change anything you're doing. Honestly.

I don't advise bringing your fish to your nearest dealer either. For their glaucoma.

Are you sure?

They need a card for all right.

Excuse me. I would love to see that. Be like California. Be like, bro. What? My fish is glaucoma. Can I get some weed? Can I make that happen? He's like, yeah, dude, and he just slide you a card, like that's the shadiest deal of all time.

Think you'd need some rso for that something.

So what fish are most likely to be albino by mistake in either just breeding by accident or in their natural habitat?

I have no idea on that one, unfortunately.

I don't know either. I know. I'm assuming, like some native fish, you see catfish a lot more often become albino. Otherwise you don't hear about albino, sunfish, northern bass, but you do hear about it on catfish.

It's probably like fish who have been bred so often, like guppies. Maybe they have a gene in there for albinism and it'll just pop up at one point.

I don't know.

I haven't seen any albino. And the guppies I've bred so far, it doesn't mean I won't, but I see more common leucistic.

Yeah.

Why don't you see more albino live bears? Because you'd think that you'd have them by now in the thousands, but I never really see them on a list. Is that they're just not hearty.

It could very well be that.

I know the ones I've ordered are shit. I mean, honestly, I've ordered guppies in the past that are albino. It's been quite a few years. But they were horrible.

To be fair, those were for feeders. He doesn't like to keep guppies.

You're right. They were endless. And it's not their fault they're shit. Go yourself.

Robs.

What aquarium fish tastes the best?

All of them.

All of them. If you were to pick one. I got to say, I've been thinking about farming out some convict secrets. There are some recipes, if you google it. They actually have some recipes on how to cook your convict secrets.

I would say, honestly, lionfish are supposed to be sublimely great. I haven't eaten them myself. I know a lot of people at cigarettes that have and said it's really wonderful and also trigger fish. Lots of people eat those down here in Florida.

So if your chef comes out with half of his body limp and he's like, did you act your fish? You know that Adam made your dinner.

Well, considering that cipherneds, if I'm saying that right, daniels and stuff are just little bitty like walleye or whatever, I would assume they'd taste good.

Hit it up, Mike.

Should we be preventively medicating wild caught fish? How does the risk of creating immunities for the pathogens they carry hold up versus using wide range meds on captive bred fish?

Well, you've got both sides of that. You've got your tankers fish that haven't been exposed to all the microorganisms that wild fish have been. Of course, typically that wildfish isn't in the water that that wild fish came from, so you can throw that part out. But then also your wild fish haven't been exposed to anything that your counterbred fish been exposed to. Typically, possibly. So you have to look at both sides. I do suggest quarantine. I do suggest salt baths. formalin is good for especially wild caught fish. Some type of warm medication and a feed is always good, especially for wild caught fish.

All right, Adam, you got dragoon Master 77. Question.

What is the best way to breed clown kili fish and cpds? Not together, obviously. And how should I set up and what should I put in my summer tub? I live in Minnesota, by the way.

I'm going to let somebody else feel that one. I've never bred either of those.

You got a mike, you bred these things?

I've bred them. So the best way I've found with Clown kelly's is if you're asking us what you would want to do to get them to start breeding. I've found frozen daphne and if you cut up some blood worms, that'll usually do it, I keep them in a separate two to five gallon tank, completely bare with rob's wife has been nice enough to get me breeding.

Oh, breeding mops.

Breeding mops.

So she makes them using like, little balls of styrofoam and then covering them in yarn.

And I've used those. I did that when I bred, I guess I can't remember the name of it, but it was like the clown Kelly was achille.

It was the red chin kelly.

The red chin killy.

There you go. Same breeding habits.

Exactly. And I had them breeding like rabbits for the cpds. If you can see the eggs.

Wait, we have beginner listeners wondering what cpds are. And it's not an std.

No, sadly it's not.

Although it does itch.

Some people like it, though. They buy it. It's celestial pearl danios. They're also. Like a separate head. They're a type of minnow. Their eggs are very small, but I would have to say, having not bred them myself, they shouldn't be any different from kelly's.

I've bred them, but never intentionally, so they've scattered in my plants. I've never done much with them. They just go like, oh, they're breeding. How cool.

I highly recommend taking the eggs out if you see them doing that, if you want them to be successive generations.

They were wonderful caviar for my breeding. platos.

Platos. Love them. And it's not $60.

But otherwise how should you set up your summer tub? Throw it outside, no repercussions. Get some water flowing in. That abuse. Water changes. heck, just put a sponge filter in and leave it go. I love me some patio ponds. There's now patio pond season in Minnesota. Get your shit out. Get some rice fish, get some white clouds, get some goldfish. Make it happen, boys.

From seagulls water will still freeze.

Oh, no. You got to keep that stuff moving and then you're good to go. You can put right now I just.

Got four inches of snow down here.

I got a bunch, but right now it's bouncing like tonight. Now it's 30 degrees. During the day, it's like 45 to 50. So you're sitting at that bare bottom. Just not perfect. Just barely doable for goldfish. So if your patio pond is nice and close, it'll have a warmer temperature if you put it in direct sun. As long as you keep the water moving, they'll still be in their hibernation state. And you're not going to freeze the tank over. They're not going to eat, that's for sure. But start prepping, boys. All right, girl.

Do we have white clouds in this talk right now.

Doc? Yes.

Thoughts on safety top qt dip. It claims it could be a rapid qt. I think it's thoughts on safety. Stop quarantine dip.

I'm a big not familiar with that product.

We're going to go to the next one and let's Scrap Joe read his own question.

I do believe that question was answered at a point because you started out talking about puffers and then we talked about puffers a little bit in the middle.

We totally did. All right, big fella. Cole says puffers are starting to become very common and they're nowhere near as much info on them as tetras, rainbow fish, betas, or anything else extra amazing. I don't know about that. I feel like puffers have been getting a ton of attention by a lot of different people. Puffers are very popular, but maybe not so much as the dwarf puffers as the mobile puffers you see on youtubers channels and whatnot. But there's definitely information out there. Dive in, my friend. Does secrets have saltwater fish or corals? If not, will they?

Oh, yes, many.

So as a person that has access to this secret list that you get from segreg Farms only intended for wholesalers, I can state that. I'd say a good 25% to maybe a little less than that is just dedicated to like a coral and saltwater section. Actually, coral and saltwater is probably a third or bigger, but just coral. You had sponges, corals, anemones, all kinds of goodies and throughout that list.

Absolutely, yeah.

Full service, if I may. I got a quick question.

All you.

Okay, so I don't mean to cut in here.

How dare you.

But thinking about this, and we've been talking about parasites and stuff, and I remember back in the day when we were talking about how to cure internal parasites, people were saying to give shell peas where you squeeze them and let the inside out and that would get rid of them. Is that true at all?

I'd like to see some science behind it. I'll leave it at that.

Doctor has been asked this quite a few different episodes, and it's not been asked specifically about parasites, but they've asked every other ailment under the sun that peas can fix, because I remember peas.

Where they be all fix. All.

Doctor is not a pee fan. I feel like he was stuck trying to eat those as a kid and I got punished for it.

Well, now you know how often I listen to the podcast.

Tada. How many pogs does it take pogfish to say pog? Oh, boy. Do you guys have any tips on what's the best way to encourage delivering in rams to spawn? Any secrets there, doc? marvin Gay? Maybe.

No secrets. Two things that are always the best thing to try, the easiest thing to try are changes in temperature, changes in PH. You can also change the lighting.

I've also found that whitney Houston I.

Mean, whitney houston's, great.

Bolivian rams are more of a power ballad type thing.

No? celine dion.

Celine, is that it? Well, that could get any fish to spawn. That's just cheating. That's like a skeleton key for cichlids.

Oh, absolutely, it is.

Do you guys have any saltwater tanks or just freshwater? Why don't you say you guys, I'm going to go with everybody here at this time. Don't have saltwater tanks. I do want to start getting the saltwater jars. I find that to be crazy fun. Now, doc, you don't have any tanks at home, do you?

I have no tanks at home right now. I have a planned tank, but I will have a tank.

All right, so, ladies and gentlemen, we are taking donations to help poor Dr. Fish get his thing started. His own house. You can send that to po. Box. According to us, Podcast.com say, mark your donation for Dr. Fish and we will make sure to get his stuff started. Adam, you got the question from Nick.

What is the best thing to keep with yellow aquarium shrimp?

Something that won't eat them.

Nano fish ketchup.

Shrimp.

Jokes already, rob that's kind of early.

I honestly don't like mixing colors of shrimp. But when you see something that's just so easy to go after, I mean, why wouldn't you make a weenie hut junior tank and then just put yellow and red shrimp all over it?

Because then you get brown shrimp. But I would say if they're asking about a fish threadfin rainbows, their mouths are too small to actually eat the larva.

Really? I never thought of those.

Great suggestion.

Good idea.

Great suggestion.

I didn't think of that.

I keep nano fish. I've kept small killies, like the clown killy, small guppies, swamp guppies, picked up some, like, threadfin rainbow, stuff like that.

Years ago, I was one of the first people to get the panda loaches when they first started coming into the hobby. So I think I'm pretty sure I was the first person in Minnesota to get them because they came to fluoridation in the hobby. Finally in 2007, 2008, they finally hit areas in the United States in 2011. I got them right away and found that they were great shrimp partners. So I posted that online and then suddenly I started seeing like all people started message me questions and then a little burst bubble of panda loaches covering the hobby. Everybody demanding panda loaches because they were great with shrimp. We have now started a new thing with threadfin rainbows and have to be done with shrimp now.

Oh, they're fantastic with shrimp.

Wonderful. I got this one, Mike. Oh, here you go. Bleach your balls.

I do have a question, though, for dogfish.

Do it.

Which do you think is more destructive, malaysian trumpet snails or zebra mussels?

Oh, hard to say. I can say from experience, not with the zebra muscles, but the Asian green muscle has really done a number on our desal plant here locally. Actually seagrist. It's right between where I live and seagrit is. And they actually have to hire divers to go down there and scrape all the Asian green mussels off the intakes for the desal plant for our potable water. So definitely say the muscles are an issue.

So somebody asked talking about the moss ball, should us non us fish keepers be looking out for the little pests? I would say absolutely. They've decimated our lakes here in Minnesota.

Well, they tried to actually go back and figure out where these came from.

They came from the Ukraine.

I was going to say, wasn't it either like the crane or Russia? No.

It's the Ukraine. We don't deal with the russians.

Okay, good to know. Somebody else besides the United States must have ordered from these people. So who knows? I would just say be safe. Bleach your pulse.

So where we are at right now, if I'm allowed to say this is the one county in the state of Minnesota or the one county in the country with the most lakes, per, I must say per capita, yes.

From my house to 30 miles stretch to another town, mile per square mile has nowhere, no more lakes anywhere else in the world for density.

And I would say probably half of those lakes, according to the statistics I last heard within the last five years. So you figure that's probably 400 lakes. Of those 400, all of them, or maybe even half, have gotten zebra muscles.

So 50% of all the lakes as an average blanket across our area in Minnesota has a risk of zebra muscles or has them. We're seeing signs post on rivers. They have full policies on how to drain your boats. You have to keep if you're going from lake to lake, they want you to drain and dry your boat for five days minimum before going on to the next one. And that's I mean, really, if there's a pocket of water in there with some muscles and it's not going to do it.

They'll decimate an ecosystem in a lake.

And they are at least Minnesota is first in something. Thanks.

What is it about the zebra muscles that actually destroys it's?

The larvae?

It's not necessarily even like, destroys. Lakes hate them because, again, there's no predators to overtake the mass populations. They sometimes decimate certain plant life and tanks because they overtake sections of the lake and stream and they're horrible for a lot of recreational purposes. They cover docks and ruin things and boats, much less just what the larvae can do.

I've heard the larvae can get into fish gills and suffocate the fish, but I hear a lot of things.

All right.

There are parasitic crustaceans of fish. I don't know that the zebra muscle is one of those, though.

What would happen if zenia was released in Florida?

It'D probably go crazy here.

I feel like that's a commercial like astrazenia could help. What is zenia for those who are listening?

That's that little pulser, little pulsing coral that you see in a lot of marine tanks. It grows like a ground cover on the rocks and it pulses. It's a gorgeous little coral.

You mean you don't have it in Florida?

I mean, we grow it.

No, I mean is it growing wild in Florida?

I'm not sure if it is native in Florida.

Is that the stuff that our buddy kills with laser beam robs?

No, that would be an A. It's a normal pestia. There you go. Normal pests and all saltwater tanksia. Yeah. He uses a laser to remove it from his tank. It's a blue burning laser and he actually burns it in the tanks. From the outside.

It was really cool.

It's pretty great.

It sounds like with zenia there's multiple different varieties, so it could come probably wherever there's a coral reef at anywhere in the world.

I'm going to try to pick and choose all the remainder of questions. We are. Oh, man. There's some spicy ones in here. Has the good doctor seen anyone with this? So apparently one of the listeners back on the aquarium guys, Discord, has posted a picture of what they're trying to cross discus and angel fish together and I'm going to post this in aquatic affinities doctor Fish question chat so give me just one moment here. There it is. Have you seen these doctor?

The shark fin discus? Yeah we actually have started carrying some highfin discus what they call highfin discus. They don't have the points on the fin like that but I do believe that is just a morph of fish that we actually are carrying. Now the rumor was going around for.

A while that this was a cross between angel fish and discus. That's how they got this shark fin discus look.

Yeah I do not believe that.

Hey I'm just reading the post. We're starting shitty rumors over here. Oh boy.

That was the same look that he gave me when I told him that garlic worked as a fish medication.

Yeah but then we told him it was only for vampire swordtails and then he understood. Eat your garlic.

That's actually one of my favorite sword tales.

Let's see here a person puts here I'd like to give a special thanks out to the doctor here's a text message post says I don't think my water was hot enough I'm adding salt, raising the temp, going to order some medicine and do a full cleanse my little fish doctor. So clearly you've inspired people and they wanted to thank you doctor.

Awesome.

Go ahead and read this one Mike.

Do fish especially guppies often come in with the nematode chamalinus a few months back every farm raised guppy in the UK seem to be infested with them but there aren't many people educated on them.

Camel, anus, worms yet you can typically get rid of them with a roundworm dewormer that you can pick up at the feed store.

Learning something over here.

Every time I bring a group of cpds home two or three of them won't eat. belly sink in and then they die within a couple of weeks. From there I tend to lose one every few weeks with no visible symptoms. cpd highly susceptible to certain diseases like parasites or are they especially susceptible to existential stress of being a tiny tiny stupid fish?

They can be a very touchy fish. They don't deal with stress very well whatsoever.

I found that my cpds pretty much exclusively have to have a ton of shade so much so that you almost dim the light or turn it off. You have to have a ton of places for them to hide otherwise I just have them shit out period. If I don't have that they don't thrive. It's hand in hand with celestial pearl danos as far as won't get them to eat yeah if they're stressed out they won't eat. They don't have the shade, they're not going to do normal hunting behaviors. It's very odd. And you have to have them school if you don't have enough in there, or they did their well with other fish. If you only have one or two, if someone decided they're just going to be done after their cpds died, yeah, those are the best cases for luck that I've had in those scenarios. I would definitely mark stress, at least for the ones after the initial deaths.

They say to keep them in schools of six. I would even go so far schools of twelve. I've always done better with twelve.

Hey I'm looking at a 90 with a pile of rummy nose and all different types of nanofish they did there with all kinds of stuff but I got another dozen in there and apple snails. No apple snails, just ram. Source.

Hey that discus we were looking at earlier, I found a website that claims to have some for sale but they're out of stock. They're called a long fin boomerang Discus and it says in their description looks like a cross between Angel Fish and Discus but they're not. So there's a little update there on that.

I thought they were Jimscrotemdiscus.com I was.

Going to say as far as trends go jim scrotum Discus have been booming ever since the introductory on the website. Doctor you can go ahead and check this out. It is Jimscrotemdiscus.com and you guys can find your own Scrotum Discus.

Wonderful, wonderful.

Maybe we can work on Seagris getting some Scrotum discus in just for the equipment. Guys, I would eat a shoe if I got a cigarette list and there was a line item for Scrotum Discus. In fact I might pay you to make that happen just as a farce copy. Julie, Sandy, if you're listening to this, make this happen for me please. What products actually work for lowering PH in a fresh water tank?

Acid.

You get a little lst every lower. You want to get low or tripping.

Some balls boys, it would really depend on how much you're trying to lower your PH.

Honestly, is it true that driftwood helps with that at all?

It can. Pete can also help with that.

Otherwise do it right. If you guys want to know if you have this horrible high PH and you want to have that soft PH fish, and you don't want to go through the process of acclimating them and going through the work, get yourself an ro. Unit, strip your water and have just complete ro. And then make sure to remineralize the water. If you don't you're going to strip the slime coat right off your fish. But that is the best way is ro system, remineer your water and then you're clean, ready to go. Okay. I don't know who said it on the last dr fish but my how.

Do you say that mike microdavarrio Kubati.

Have a cigarette mouth as well. We talked about this I think in the first or second episode of Dr. Fish if you want to go back and check this out but I don't think it was rehashed after the episodes. I'm going to put it in the doctor fish questions. And that's the picture they're talking about that they swear the fish is definitely smoking a cigarette. So after doing further investigation, after doing further investigation, we did a zoom in with some forensics and found this picture doctor and have confirmed that he has a two pack a day habit. So be very careful of those type of fish.

They're bad guys.

So a little follow through there.

I think it identifies as a puffer.

Question. Why do I sometimes see fish spaz out before their death in a spastic death spiral and then shoot all over the aquarium?

Not sure of the actual medical definition for that or anything, but I have seen it happen quite often. I think it's just their nerves and everything as their organs are shutting down. Things aren't working correctly.

So I've seen this quite a few times. It happened from one of the vendors that Jimmy and I used to get from for a certain type of fish, and it kept happening and they just give us credits and send us more fish. What was happening was they kept the fish too long in a bag and took too long to ship it to us. When we cracked the bag open, immediately the water PH crashed. We put them in and immediately they had the spin of death. They literally just spun in a circle and then right before they died, they shot all over the tank, seized and died. The only time I see this happen, I can't say on the regular, but the only time I can see this, where there's actually a description to describe it, is one where something's toxic or they have a chemical crash or extreme change and they seize out and crap. Or I have seen actually older tetras be scared with, like a flash of light and then suddenly spin out. I was at a friend's place for, like a party and someone took a picture and I saw, sure enough, a fish spaz out, spin and die.

It's almost like the Hollywood deaths where the actor grabs his heart and says, it's the big one, and dies. So whenever I see it, I always think of it. That's what it is to me. It's the dramatic Hollywood death. When the fish spin, they shoot all over the tank. They spiral and die.

Rabbits will do that, too.

So what you're saying is it's a Nicholas Cage version of someone trying to.

I'm thinking, rational their way out. sanford and Son come in.

Elizabeth is that like how epileptics have their triggers kind of thing?

Maybe it was just an epileptic fish and just wanted to go stay away.

From laser light shows.

All right, fish, you got this one.

Mike, love the doctor fish episodes. Can you ask Dr. Fish about lymphocystis? I think I said it right.

Yes, lymphocystis. Unfortunately, once fish have it, they pretty much have it, but it doesn't actually hurt the fish as much as it is unsightly. But if it's a marine fish, sometimes pork fish are helpful at eating it off of the larger marine fish. With freshwater fish just really premium up water quality and very little stress, and it should subside.

So is it in the water or on the fish, or does it spread.

To no, it's actually in the fish. It's actually viral, but it typically doesn't spread to the other fish.

Do salt baths help?

No, unfortunately not for freshwater fish. And freshwater baths don't help for saltwater fish.

Sounds like herpes. That's what she wanted to know.

Done. Okay, that's a video. I will send that to Dr. Fish privately. A lot of people will post on the doctor fish questions in the discord with pictures and videos, and we will certainly go over them. It's just not quite as good. When we have a ton of questions to go over, they take a bit longer. One of my suppliers used to offer potassium permagnate.

Permagnate.

There you go. In the past, but no longer due to safety concerns, one of the employees have been trying to convince me that potassium monopur sulfate did I say that correctly?

You did.

Will achieve the same results. I don't trust this guy, so I'm calling bullshit. Are these two compounds interchangeable, or is he just talking straight out of his ass?

No, they're not interchangeable. The first potassium permanganate is actually still available. Just do a Google search for it. You can get it many places. Chemical supply it is a great oxidizer. It's got a large therapeutic index, so if you use a little too much, it's not necessarily going to really hurt your fish. Do read up on its use and calculate how much you need to use to actually get the two to five parts per million, which is the recommended dosage for it. But you'll have to do a potassium demand test for that first. It's really simple, but definitely read up on using it. Best used for bacterial infections, not great at produce these are external infections. Not going to help anything internal. And the other chemical is also an oxidizer, but it's more of a disinfectant, so I have to be careful with those.

So I'm going to change someone's question next. We had a lot of people like, what's the best way to quarantine x? I think the better question is, is there different ways to quarantine certain species of fish when it just comes to generic freshwater fish?

Yeah, definitely. Some fish. You're going to want to go ahead and give some treatments to other fish. You're not necessarily going to want to treat. You're just going to want to observe and watch.

All right. Last one would be encountering an odd upper intestinal tract parasite of some sort. It seems to be common in the species in the last decade. Doesn't seem to ever have free swimming or a contagious phase but if a dano dies and adeno is eaten by another dano, it spreads. Question is, will parapherazepro or wtv work as a preventative measure in a quarantine tank or is this species just a leopard?

No, prozipro is a commercially available prosy quantile treatment which has very little prosy quantil in it. So the dosages are pretty hefty, but that is a flat worm treatment. So unless your Daniel has some trematodes or a tapeworm, it's not going to be real effective for anything else.

I'm just checking for any last minute questions. Again, for those that have questions for Dr. Fish or any other type, we normally answer questions during other episodes of the week, but we save our specific favorites for Dr. Fish. So go ahead and go to aquariumgyspodcast.com, the website. If you got something for Dr. Fish, put it as an email. Leave us a voicemail. Definitely voicemail. If you can leave an audiogram for Dr. Fish, bonus points. But send those questions our way and also check out Aquaticafinity.org. Thanks again for having us tonight. doc, do you have anything else to add that we missed tonight?

No, just any news coming out the Seaggress Farms. Thanks for having me again. We continue to work to be able to get as many fish out as possible and try to make everybody happy.

Well, perfect. Again. Thanks to Seacrest Farms to let dr. Fish come on. And doctor, please contact me about Jim Scrotrum discus. We really like to have very interesting shift across the nation.

Say seacrest see the best.

All right, Mike, thank you for filling in for Jim. I hope Jim is not dead by now, but if not, I mean you're a great beard candidate and we will certainly take your applications for future episodes.

I'll go give Jim cpr. We'll keep him going.

All right. Adam, you got any other notes?

No, we're good.

No ideas of cooking lionfish for the family tonight?

No, but I was going to look at getting some puffer fish. I want to try puffer fish. The fugu one. The one that if it's not prepared properly, will kill you or paralyze you.

Hey, he just wants to limit.

I am not eating lunch at your place anytime soon.

You guys like to fit?

I like the Faith and faith. All right. And before we leave, we did have someone wanting to know the tally of t shirts. So if you could read the list for us, please.

So far we have my personal favorite, bleach your Balls.

Bleach your balls. In fact, hashtag that shit. It came from us first, started here. Hashtag bleach your balls. Your mom will know what's up.

And angels are horny for heaters.

Angels are horny for heaters.

I feel like there's a third one and I forgot to write that down.

Oh, that would be we got to make one for the doctor. sprinkling some salt so it'll happen like.

The meme spread the salt and then.

All donations, please mark them for in care of Dr. Fish so he can actually have a fish tank of his own for once in his life. Please do. Dr. Fish is going to kill us. All right, guys, until next time. We will have dr. Fish back on again. And let's give one last hurrah. Scrap jaw has joined the podcast and been around since about episode 20 and has been our editor since we'll just call it the beginning. Scrap has been editing every podcast. We've been doing these once a week. He has been a fearless editor in chief and he has to step down due to personal reasons and obligations. And he has been a champion of the podcast. Scrap, here's one out to you, buddy.

Thanks, guys.

You'll still be around. It's not like we're going to miss you.

Yeah, I'll pop in once in a while and stuff, and you guys need stuff and just hit me up. And if I have time in between things. And the things would happen to be like last year, COVID made life kind of easy when the government was giving you money and you were told to stay home and everything. And then this year all the hours at work are back and I'm going to be free of all my debt and things. And I'm looking at buying a house and stuff. And so moving into those realms of life needs my attention because I've never had the opportunity to do that stuff before. So you'll see me around.

Congratulations.

Thanks for having me. It's been fun. I've learned a lot from you guys.

So on that note, we are taking applications for editors. Send your arrest made of the Aquarium Guys podcast. Not a lot of experience is required. If you like the idea of editing a podcast or want to be a part of the debauchery and making cool ideas like hashtag lead your balls, certainly.

Contact us and anybody that is amateur in the editing department or whatever and you need the assets from the podcast. I am a resource still, so don't think that all of the things that I've created for the podcast are going to die with my exit. There are here.

We may have to downgrade to foghorns instead of the bleeps, but we'll figure it away.

Until next time, guys, we'll bleep ourselves.

Go yourself.

Thanks guys for listening to the podcast. Please go to your favorite place where podcasts are found, whether it be spotify, itunes, stitcher, wherever they can be found, like subscribe. And make sure you get push notifications directly to your phone so you don't miss great content like this. bolivian Rams are more of a power ballad type thing. Public service announcement from the aquarium guys is bleacher ball. Ladies and gentlemen, if you don't know angels are horny for heaters, you have been warned.