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Is a guy that we irritate each and every week, and he loves us.

The Ohio fish rescue is literally a fish rescue made out of big, rich, and josh's home. They have over 88,000 gallons, and their entire idea is to give big fish the home they once deserved instead of being purchased at your local walmart that got closed. Now, those pacos really don't fit in that 20 gallon anymore, so don't buy a paku. And if you do have a fish, certainly give them a call. But they need your love, Ohiofishrescue.com. Buy a t shirt, give them a couple of bucks or his numbers on there. Call him and tell him you love him.

Tell him you love him and call late. He loves that.

He does.

We tell him that every week.

And people call him late and send him prime.

Send them lots of prime.

Send them lots of prime. Yeah, he loves that.

All right, let's kick the episode. Welcome to the aquarium guys podcast with.

Your hosts, Jim colby and Rob golden.

All right, guys, welcome to the aquarium guys podcast. So this week, with one of our listeners, I got to mess with Jimmy, and I love messing with Jimmy to my core. So we got an email from I don't normally give people's names out and information.

Go ahead, Rob. Go ahead and just glow to here.

A little bit, I guess. So we got an email from Ryan Reynolds.

Ryan Reynolds.

Ryan Reynolds.

I was excited. I still am.

He is excited. So I call up Jimmy like, dude, we got an email from Ryan Reynolds. You won't believe this. He apparently listens to the podcast as a fan. It's got some questions I got to send this over to you and Jimmy. hookline and sinker. Bought this, just cast out, locked it in, reeled it in.

And I said, this is Ryan Reynolds. Who was like, the superhero guy, right?

Deadpool deadpool guy.

Yeah, right.

I'm like, oh, my God. That was my second favorite actor.

It was awesome because that's who we got the email from, was Ryan Reynolds.

Absolutely. So I sent over the email and let me read it to you all. Hey, guys, just found your podcast. Have consumed all episodes at work and enjoyed them all. I am a bus mechanic out of school and noticed they pulled an aquarium out of the library high school during the summer. Up until two weeks ago, it's been sitting in the maintenance shop in the way of everything. So I finally asked the boss lady what her plans were for it. Before I got the question fully out, she told me to take it home before I throw it in the dumpster. It's a big tank. 60 long, 18 wide, 20 high from the outside measurements. Do you know how many gallons this is? I'm guessing between 80 to 100. I've been reading up and wondering if you could give me some good fish to put in this to make a beautiful, stock, peaceful aquarium tank. It's been many years since I've actually had an aquarium. I've never had one this large. Any help would be amazing. Thanks so much, Ryan Reynolds. So immediately, I got cussed out by Jimmy, because I got his hopes up. Thought it was the real Ryan Reynolds. And I'm just saying, it really could be the real Ryan Reynolds. All right. We don't know what he does in the side. hustle. He could be a bus mechanic.

It could be a bus mechanic.

Yes.

I'm just saying. So, Ryan Reynolds, if you're listening, we really think your wife is hot.

Yeah. And also I checked out the aquarium dimension at about 93 and a half gallons is what it was at. But yeah, rob was trying to tell me that maybe you film deadpool in the back of a bus. I don't believe him at all. But you never know.

It could have happened. Or at least a couple of scenes.

Couple of scenes.

Maybe that's why he had to be a mechanic, set up the scenes correctly.

Yeah, but we're excited. That's the closest we've ever come to having a celebrity call us.

Right.

So we're pretty excited. So thanks again to Ryan Reynolds for that question and email.

And immediately you're like, why couldn't have been betty White? Well, she's not going to call us. Get that get out of out of your head. So if you're looking for some good fish ideas, 90 gallons really provides you a blank slate to build whatever you want. Me, I have 125, and I decided to make it planted. I wanted an ecosystem to help support itself in case my power goes out so they have a little bit of extra time, some with some oxygen without having water movement. So certainly do your homework. If you're looking for fish, I mean, we can we can hook you up, but there are great people out there. Find some good lots on Aquabid. But above all else, go to your local fish store. If you have a decent local fish store, they'll give you options, and they'll answer questions direct. And if you don't have one, you can always join us on discord at the bottom of the website aquariumgeistpodcast.com, and we'll be happy to answer your questions. And if you really need fish, we'll certainly hook you up from there, buddy. So, again, thanks for the question, and we forgot introductions. I'm your host, Robbie olsen.

And I'm Jim colby. Where is that?

I'm Adam elm.

Star.

There he is.

Tada. So today we're super excited. We've been working a long time since we had started the podcast to get we have this lineup of people that we want in the show eventually.

Superstars.

We finally nailed a big superstar, right?

That big one.

So today we have Matt from the Amazon Us magazine. How are you doing, buddy?

I'm doing good. Pleasure to be here.

So, again, we're big fans of Amazon's magazine. For those that haven't read it or heard of it, shame on you. It is.

You need to have it.

You need to have it.

I have everyone.

I do, too.

You guys collect it. They have a bookcase where they keep all their issues, and if they loan me an issue, they'll write it down, and they'll let me know, hey, you're done with it yet? Hey, you're done with it yet?

You still have my shrimp one.

I do.

You do?

I really do.

I'm glad we did this podcast. I had that back.

I had to get it because I've been trying to get a hold of these guys for a while, and I had to have contact information. But that might just disappear from your collection. You don't know.

Yeah.

No. If it does, I can go back on Amazonas.com and order a back copy.

I feel like we're ruining all this information that Matt could be giving us in a better way.

I know.

So just a quick summary. Amazon's magazine is the foremost, best freshwater magazine I'd say in the world. I'm just going to call it maybe there's some others out there that do a good job, but this is the best one. So we're happy to have you, buddy. Yeah, we can't wait to start bombarding you with questions.

That's fine.

So I don't have any much other news. Did you finally bring that letter?

No, I did not. It doesn't bring my letter. I'll bring my letter next week.

We even talked about the letter in the last podcast we did, and that was a prerecorded podcast. So how many weeks is it better? It's been about six weeks. We're going to send this particular listener a gift and apologies that we didn't get to rid of them there.

Yeah. And then again, too, if people want to sign up, we are handing out some free bulbs for aquarium bulbs and we're going to send that out here after the first of the year.

So, if I remember correctly, you said you're going to be sending ten bulbs to five different people.

That's right. And the bulbs arrived here this week and we're going to get everybody signed up and whoever wants them, we'll send them to you. We'll pick five out of whoever sends it in.

So let me guess when you got them right, did you just get it local to the door or did you have to to pick them up from smelter?

I did not go to smelter Airlines. I had them brought in from Florida and brought into one of my local retailers.

Well, thank goodness, because what would be better than you getting checked at Customs just for five baggies of bulbs? That would look real great.

We're not going to talk about that.

No. So, guys, sign up. Aquariumguyspodcast.com bottom the website. We have it'll. Say jim's bulb. giveaway give it a click. We just need your name, number and address and we will draw. Now, if you're in Canada, we apologize. Customs is terrible, but we probably can actually send it to Australia. We did get a person from Australia that signed up.

Really? They're that board in Australia. They're listing this?

Absolutely. Apparently, we're entertainment and tell it like it is.

Sounds great.

So sorry to Canadians, but we do love you. Australians, apparently.

Yeah.

So what is that? Ireland? Canada. Australia. There's so many countries popping up, but we're really prominent in Ireland and we will even make an exception for you guys. So no matter where you're at, try to sign up doesn't necessarily mean you're out of the drawing.

Yeah, we'll have to do our research before we start sending stuff out.

Indeed. We have to do our homework, otherwise they'll really have to put Jim on a list.

Yeah, I've already been on a list.

You still are on the list.

Everything in time. All right, guys, so, just a quick reminder. Go to our Facebook, ask us questions, discord. We have our email address on the website and our telephone number, and we'll happily play your question over the air. We'd love that. If we fixed it, I swear. Certainly find that at the bottom of our website. And if you're so inclined, you want to support the channel number one, support our sponsors first. But you can also donate to us either one time or monthly, right on the bottom of our website as well. We have a tip jar, and thank you for those that have it's fantastic to have such people that care about our podcasts and really are supporting us to thrive.

And we've been taking that money and we've been reinvesting and buying in new equipment. So we have a better quality podcast for you guys.

We did a test, like a YouTube stream, have a green screen, and I'm bound and determined to finally get Jimmy in a green screen suit.

You're not going to get me in a green screen suit.

I come on. I can try.

I look like a large dill pickle, is what I look like.

But no one will see it. Hope you just see through.

No.

Baby steps, guys. We'll get there. At least we're going to do live stream soon. But thanks again for your support, and let's dive right in, man, I just I've been looking forward to this this interview. Matt, how are you doing tonight, buddy?

It's been a long day. It's we just came off of getting coral magazines sent to the printer, and we turn around and we focus on the next issue of Amazonus.

So, Matt, what is your responsibilities for Amazon, Us and your other projects?

Well, okay, so up until last year, Amazonus was published by Reef Terrain Forest Media, which is based out of vermont, and it's headed up by James Lawrence and judy ballard. They started they took over Coral magazine. I want to say back in 2009. Before that, they had been publishing a lot of books. So you'll also see microcosm as one of their imprints. So a lot of aquarium books that have come through, if you look there, Reef rainforest Media or microcosm Publishing, that's the company behind Coral. Coral originates out of Germany and ntv. So it actually starts as a German publication. And I want to say it was 2010. Marine Aquarium Conference of North America. I want to say it was down to Florida. When James Lawrence approached me, I was already writing for Coral and was a senior editor for Coral, I think, at that time, or became one thereafter. And he showed me this German freshwater aquarium magazine, and I could read it, but said amazonis. And I just looked at it and said, this is amazing. This is beautiful. And he says, what do you think? I said, I think if you're going to do this, this is the freshwater version of coral. Yes, you should do this. Towards the end of 2011, I was continuing to work with James a little bit on Coral, but it was not my full time or even part time job. It was just wrote an article once in a while, maybe read proof an article once in a while. Just a casual relationship. I wound up getting laid off. I was a flash developer, and this is about the time when Flash and Steve Jobs we were talking about it before the show. This is about the time that adobe kind of took a hit and said, okay, we can see the days of Flash are kind of coming to an end. James heard I was freshly unemployed and said, hey, you got to come work for me, help me launch amazonas. And of course, I did so back. The first issue was the January February 2012 issue, which landed December of 2011. I've been with two magazines as my primary source of income since that time. I am kind of a jack of all trades for the publications, done most parts of the business at one point or another. I would say the only thing I really haven't done is, like, ad sales. I have the capabilities of doing layout, although it's not what I do these days. I'm one of the three publishing partners of Amazon Us. So, as I mentioned, we took over just a little over a year ago. And so myself, stefan tanner, who people may know from Swiss tropicals, and Mike Tuchnardi, we are the three publishing partners behind Amazon Us. Now, a lot of the staff is exactly the same staff that still also produces coral, and I'm one of the unique people in that. I still also work on coral with James and judy and reef terrain forest. So basically we took over the freshwater publication freed James and judy up to pursue some other things they wanted to pursue in terms of book projects and things like that. I give you a huge history there. But to get to the meat of what I currently do right now, I have a to do list a mile long. It's just a constant state of triage. So I need to look at all the new incoming freshly translated English English edition for the next issue for the March April. That's what we're looking at right now. So I'll proof that getting images together to fill gaps we haven't filled. Also working on trying to get another newsletter out this week. I was just tweaking our AdWords advertising. Given that we're in the holiday season and we're trying to obviously want to get gift subscription purchases in front of people, really easy gifts no one's going to return amazon's magazine. It's not like I'm going to give you, oh, I found this little red bellied fish at the store for I thought it would be good for your tank. None of that kind of stuff. So no one's going to complain about or have a problem with a magazine subscription for the holidays. So that's pretty much I also run all the social media for the publications. I have too many hats, but that's the way I like it.

That's a lot to take in.

Totally cow your official title. So when do you sleep? That's my first question.

So your official title, sleep three to Nine.

That's when I sleep.

See, that sounds like a jimmy schedule.

Yeah, no kidding. My Lord. Matt, you're located up in duluth, correct?

Yeah, we're up here in duluth, Minnesota, and then stefan's just down in rochester, and then Mike and his wife Susan are over in boulder, Colorado right now. And then the rest of the team is pretty much in vermont okay.

I just did some business with stefan and ordered some matin filters for my shrimp tanks through Swiss Tropical.

He's also one of the publishing partners of Amazon Us.

Fantastic. So your title here is a bit of everything that you said. Jack Ball trade. So senior editor, associate publisher and part owner.

Well, associate publisher is my title with Reef to rainforest and Coral magazine. But I am a publishing partner for Amazon Us.

Got you. So part owner would be correct then, for Amazon Us.

Yeah, that's the same thing. Publishing partner, part owner.

Fantastic.

I can drop the hammer if I need to.

No, can't put that out. That fish isn't beautiful enough. Do it again.

How big is your business cards? I'm just kind of wondering with all those hats that you want.

I actually don't need to have a business card, so I don't have one.

All he has left is the flash developer business cards. If you want one, I just hand.

You a copy of the magazine and say here you go.

Are you going to sign it for me?

Sure.

Then I'll go to sell it aqua bid later, make some money.

You will?

I think that would degrade it. I think you want an unsigned copy.

Okay, I just wondered.

So the magazine again you said, started officially, like beginning of 2012.

The English edition.

The English edition as we know it.

Starts actually because it's published in Germany by ntv in German. It's been going for years before the English edition started. So we still have people who will write in and say, hey, are you ever going to publish this article that was printed in German in like 2006 or something? The answer is probably no, but it's possible. There's this huge archive of German content that will probably never see the light of day in English. And we pretty much try to mirror the German issue to some extent. But then we also have our own homegrown content that goes in whether it's Coral or Amazonus. But they're not carbon copies of the German edition. They're standalone their own thing. And sometimes something that we produce here in the United States will actually go into a future version of a German one. So then we'll get a German issue back a couple of issues later and say, well that's our articles. We already ran that. That's out. They're not carbon copies.

So then when did the German version start?

I don't know the answer to that.

I'm on your website and it shows here that 2005 is when they have some history stamp. But again, that just shows how long you guys have been turning through. So you guys still you said you're not a carbon copy, but you still start with the content in German and then put in your homegrown content.

Yes.

That's fantastic. All good things come from Germany, like Volkswagen beetles and great food. Great. Beer.

Beer. How about beer?

Beer.

We'll pick beer, pick beer.

There's some good German wine, too.

Really? How do I not know about that?

Rieslings give virtues to minor. They're good for white wines.

I feel like you've traveled to Germany quite enough. So besides October fest just to give an array. Again, the focus of the magazine is completely freshwater. So each issue, it doesn't necessarily have a theme, but you certainly have your chosen like front page articles. And on every copy of Amazon's magazine, if you look at it, you'll see the hot topic or front page article and you'll see everything. I'm just reading a couple here. Sweet corys. New rainbows. And it really goes into expert depth dives of either the species, whatever the topic was from harvesting, it covers everything freshwater. So I got to say what's some of your favorite articles that you've done since you worked there or at least helped work with?

Well, sure, not to toot my own horn, we did the Angel Angels Rising issue. I looked at the content that we had. I got two that I'll pull out and they're personal to me, so they come to mind right away. But the Angels Rising issue, I looked at the content and at the time I was actively breeding freshwater angel fish and wholesaling them and was really getting into the genetics quite deeply and said, we need to cover this. I was a member of the Angel Fish Society. Was, well, Philippine blue. The genes were just really being nailed down. The bulgarian green gene had just come out and I said, we need to put this in the magazine. And so at the time I'm just a senior editor and an associate publisher, so I can make a suggestion. And James gave me the green light and I went head over heels into the genetics of angel fish. That was a really good contrast with I think we have an article by heico Blair in that issue about the wild diversity of terrafilm. An article on breeding altums in that issue. That's still an extremely popular back issue.

I was going to say that's what blew me away with the altums on that particular issue because I used to breed a lot of angels myself and I really enjoyed the heck out of that particular issue.

Yeah, going to the whole way Amazon kind of works is we do have that feature topic and that's going to be a good chunk of the issue is going to be at least three articles dedicated to that title topic. So the January, February 1. This time our feature is spectacular south America. That's very open ended, but Angels Rising was very specific. It was angel fish. Another one that I think will really be of interest to all the folks here in Minnesota is the two beta issues that kind of appeared back to back. Because the second I want to say was the first one has the top down shot of a white dumbo delta cover. And that issue talks about the Beta triangle down in the Twin Cities, the mung run beta shops, the specialty shops that were only doing betas down in St. Paul, and just in this little triangle of a couple of square miles of these three specialty shops that were there at the time. And it was really a unique place and a unique time. And to be able to put that out to an international audience was really exciting and a lot of fun. So that's another issue that to me is really near and dear to my heart. But that's partially because there's a lot of me and what was important to me in those particular issues.

In fact, right now, if you go down to Minneapolis St. Paul, there's still an array of fish shops that you can go search. And we've been to tame Waters, there's a bunch of them, and they still have a mass selection of betas. And people come in with pens, trying to see how they flare, they count the scales and the body, and it's still a huge community there. So it's not something that completely went away by any means.

No, it's hard to make those small businesses work. I mean, they were doing quite well. And I think Beta World is still there and kuyang is still trans shipping. And then tame Dequatics took over the Minnesota Bay Shop, which was a really fantastic shop. I'm not sure what's happened with bj right now, but yeah, that community is still there. Shops change hands, focuses change, but betas, that's not going to go away. Part of it is the cultural aspect of keeping betas within the mung community. So that's not going anywhere.

Very fortunate to have all these different shops down in that Minneapolis area. Like we talked about earlier, we've spent quite a bit of time down there. I got turned on by several of the different beta species, which I have never carried for myself. We came back and we brought in some hellboy Placotts and some different koi bettas, which I've never carried before, and they're more of a high end beta, and I didn't think that my customers would pay that extra money for it. But by gosh, we have been surprised and very happy with the sales that we've seen with these different betas that people haven't seen up here in northern Minnesota.

I think when people see a quality fish, they understand, especially if they're only used to seeing just a general run of the mill fish. I mean, I used to wholesale guppies to some of the local shops up here. World of Fish right here in duluth. I would bring in guppies that they would retail for, I want to say, five or $6, and they would put them in the tank right above the regular run of the mill Asian import or Florida farmbred guppies that were $3 each. And they would sell the premium, locally raised variety they would outsell those three to one, and their survivability was higher, much higher. I think especially in the independent pet store environment, if people are only used to seeing what's in a box store or a chain store and they come in contact with a higher end fish and they're familiar with the run of the mill stuff, they get it. If you just showed it to them and no one had ever shown them anything else, they wouldn't understand. I think it takes a little time to appreciate that, but once you do, it makes good sense for everyone.

Yeah. I remember when the pastel colored guppies first came out, the soft yellows and the soft pinks, almost Easter egglike colors, I would bring those in and put them right next to the Sri Lanka guppies, the Florida guppies, and I could sell them ten to one any day of the week. And those were locally bred by somebody here up in northern Minnesota, and they were the most beautiful guppies, and the guy just lost interest and sold all his stock. And to this day, I've never found anything to really replace it. But it's fun to see these different varieties that people come up with and spend years on working.

So what I like to go for is you have a very unique place in Amazon's magazine. And what we'd like to do in the future is we want some future podcasts and we'd love to talk to the people that are really getting these stories and some of the other people in your office, because each person in the office has done different stories, done different pieces, and has a different perspective. And a magazine that strictly does freshwater fish for this many years, there's clearly a bunch of different stories, but I think that you come from a different perspective of you've been here from essentially the English versions beginning. And I'd love to know and tell our listeners, how does the magazine get made from start to finish? If we could follow that bouncing ball, really talk about that. So you guys release your magazine every other month, correct?

Yes, six times a year. So it comes as German text, it comes as a German dump of German digital files. The text is pulled out, it's translated, and then that gets handed over to our executive editor, Anne whitman, who goes through all that text initially and starts to make her calls on which stories are good, which ones we don't like, and of course, flagging anyone that's already one that we did. I think that happens more on the coral side of things. But from there, that text gets sent out for review. And that's where we are right now in the March April issue. So I kind of alluded to that. So we have a new deputy executive editor, courtney tobler and myself. We will usually look through and edit and proof the English texts, give our own opinions and comments. And feedback. From there, we kind of make the final map of this is what the issue is going to be, goes into production, basically, which is bringing on the art department. There's three people who do that. They will create the layout for the magazine and where the article is going to appear, lay out the text, lay out the images, and then we have an entire round of review where we're looking at pdf files of the layouts and once again, catching mistakes, making comments on the layout, proofing the entire thing again. And then each article will sit in its review phase for as long as it needs. So if we might go back and forth on an article five times to get it perfect the way we want it, other times, one and done from there. While that's happening, all the advertising is being placed in the magazine. Mike has a lot to do with that, and Susan does as well. We will start some of our marketing efforts. As far as, like, hey, we know when we're going to generate our mailing list that's going to be delivered for mailing out the issue. So we've gotten in a good habit of saying, if you want to get the issue that's coming, here's what's going to be in it. This is the last day you can subscribe, and that will be the issue you get after that. So, for example, anyone buying a gift subscription right now, you're not going to get January February. That ship sailed. Those issues landed early December here in the Us. You'll get it in the digital version, but the print subscriptions are going to start with March april's issue at some point when the deadline hits, hopefully we're all comfortable and happy. It gets uploaded to the printer. They look it over, it gets printed, it gets packaged, it gets mailed out. They also produce the digital version of the magazine, and that gets loaded into the digital reader and goes live a little bit. We changed our scheduling. We felt that if you're a print subscriber, you should get your magazine before the digital version comes. So we just changed our scheduling. And so I want to say the digital edition of the spectacular South America went live maybe last week. I want to say about a week ago, international subscribers, because it's all postal service mailing, people in Australia probably still haven't gotten their copies yet. I think it takes almost a month for them to get there. Canadians should have their copies now, but we have subscribers all over the world. And then, of course, if you're a digital subscriber, you're going to get a digital edition every two months. It's basically you have both looking at the magazine as if it was just laid out in front of you. But there's also a mobile, friendly, flowing layout where it's just inline images and texts. So you have many different ways to consume the content that's in the magazine.

So a couple more. I apologize.

Just say we turn around and we do it all again.

Rinse and repeat.

Yeah. Pretty much every two months it's a two month cycle and then coral is positioned opposite that. So for someone who works on both magazines, it's a monthly cycle. Like I said, I just finished putting the last coral with the team. It got sent to the printer on Thursday and it will arrive early January for everyone. We're working on amazonas and they kind of jump back and forth. The design teams have their cycles. They're on a twelve month cycle or a monthly cycle.

I was just real curious. Where do you mail them out of? I mean, do they come out of Minnesota? Are they mailed out of somewhere centralized?

And the reason they come from the printer, which I believe is based on the East Coast.

Okay. Because Adam is in southern Minnesota, I'm in northern Minnesota. Adam usually gets his magazine about two weeks before I get mine.

Are you bitter?

Well, Adam calls.

He is.

Adam calls and goes, he's got to do Amazon Us. And I go, no.

And then he spoils it for you. Like a bad movie fan.

He is. He's a terrible movie fan.

Shame on you.

If that's the postal service, I mean, it's crazy here in duluth. All our mail, even if it's just local, if I'm sending a postcard to my neighbor, it goes down to St. Paul and then comes back up here. So it's the vagaries of the postal.

System that's the government at work for you.

That's why dad taxes around.

Exactly.

You're so bitter. Now I know that when you get amazon's magazine, there's a smile on your face. It's relief that you ignored Adam for like four or five days.

Exactly.

And one thing I have noticed is like the digital copy, there seems to be more information in the digital copy that's not in the paper copy. Is that true or am I just drunk all the time?

I don't know. Is the beer good there?

It has a beer is excellent here. And it's cold because it's right now at 15 below zero.

Yeah.

Which is probably a nice day.

In duluth, they're carbon copies of each other. The digital edition is literally pulled straight from the print files. So it's the same thing I was.

About to say is like is digital really better? Is that what you're finally saying?

I'll find videos and stuff on there, links to videos and different things and of course, yeah.

So we'll have links in in the magazine. But you have to like you can't just touch the printed page and there goes your website.

That does not stop him from trying, trust me.

I sit here and touch the magazine and nothing happens. And I'm like a monkey with a typewriter. Just not real good.

All the advertising of the digital edition is linked to the advertiser websites and we'll put supplemental content, like references. A lot of our articles we get may have references.

Supplemental. You said supplemental.

I wasn't supplemental stuff. Yeah, but that currently lives usually either on Amazonasmagazine.com. I have a lot of big projects since we took over the magazine. And the one that's still waiting is eventually Coral magazine and amazon's magazine. Online content will be in each brand's website instead of Reef Terrain Forest. So we're all friends. We still have all the amazon's digital content that's separate from the magazine, the email newsletters, all that stuff still points to Reef Terrain Forest at this point. There's sister publications. We're always going to have some connection, right?

How many subscribers do you have to Amazon Us?

Several thousand. I would have to pull up the exact number, but I know it's in the thousand. Several thousand.

See, it's so confidential. He hopes to kill you.

You have to kill me, dad. Yeah, right. So how many countries are you sending to?

I don't know the answer to that one either.

So I have this mine.

Maybe one of my other friends can one of my other associates is your wife there?

Can I talk to her? Maybe she knows. You might talk in your sleep, but I might be able to find out.

I did a touch of homework and on your again, you go to Amazonasmagazine.com. They have an entire About Us section, and I believe I'm just pulling it up here again. I think you said over 100 countries.

I believe that.

So a couple of questions. Number one, because listeners are going to be listening to this. December 26. That's when it's going to be starting. How can they sign up for these end of the year specials or Christmas specials? When does that promo end?

We don't have any promos.

We did our it's full price all day long.

Well, it's still a gift, is what you're saying. You can buy it for a friend.

Okay, I can't get into the well, I can't go ahead. Pretty much. Pretty much. You have your cover prices. Oh, it's up. It's 999 now. That means I have to update some numbers.

You know what? You just got a raise. Congratulations.

No, I'm sorry. That's. That's the Canadian price. My bad. It's still 799. I'm sorry to freak one out.

Cancel the swimming pool, kids.

So, yeah, so it's you know, if you're buying six issues a year at $8, it's $48. Well, a subscription is $29. That's your discount. Because knowing what the magazine actually costs to produce, especially with the quality of the print that we're using glossy stock, it's all elemental chloride free. It's a sustainable forestry initiative. Certified stock. The sleeves that they're mailed in are recyclable with any other plastic bag. Recycling. It's as low of a footprint as we can have to produce, as high of a quality product as we possibly can put out there, short of making it a hardbound book.

So that's fantastic. I mean, I think you guys should hang your hat on that. That is good advertising right there. You've heard of people that they are trying to do a low carbon footprint.

You can go to Amazonosmagazine.com and subscribe and you can purchase if you're looking for that after the fat Christmas gift for someone, you can purchase them an entire year. And what will that set you back?

Single year subscription is $29. That includes print and digital access. It's interesting internationally. We still send a lot of print internationally, but someone who's looking the shipping costs on an international subscription are very substantial. It's a lot higher than if you're here in the Us. But you can get a digital subscription currently for $15 a year. And I think if it's a three year, it's like $36 or something.

I do the three years.

Yeah, I mean, the three years you can get, we used to do several years ago, amazon used to have an annual back issue sale. We just had ours basically the month of November leading into the holiday season, and the back issues were $8 instead of $10. But we used to, several years ago, do a $5 back issue sale. Well, the price of print has gone up. Price of postage has gone up. $5 just doesn't work anymore. But if you still want to get a copy of Amazon for less than $5, subscribing is the way to do it. There's no shipping costs, and it's delivered to your door for your subscription. I don't have it in front of me, but it's very affordable compared to a lot of the other things we purchased these days. And you can always just go digital only, and it's even less.

And getting a subscription is fantastic. So you don't have to steal your friend's magazine.

Rob, stop looking at me, all right? I have the digital version. I just wanted the print. Come on, now I hear you. Another perspective. You walked us through how the magazine gets made, but the couple of pieces that are left out was the amount of photography you guys have to go through. Who in the chain does that or does it just come from the exposes that are trying to research the information? Or do you have set photographers that you send around the world?

No, generally, the way both magazines work, let's just say one of you guys wanted to write something for us. You would have to furnish your photography. It's very rare at this point that anyone can get into any of the aquarium magazines to publish anything if you don't have photography supporting your own work. So a lot of times now I'll get someone who will say, hey, I'm interested in writing for amazonas. And I had one person who wrote in recently and said, here's my blog. Here's some stuff. And I just looked through everything and said, number one thing you need to do is become a better photographer. And it's harsh but honest criticism, especially since, as you guys have heard, AmazonA starts out as a full magazine. We don't have to put in anything homegrown in theory. So the barrier, the level, the bar, if you will, to get into either Coral or Amazon Us is incredibly high because you're competing against content that we already paid for that came from Germany. You got to beat the germans.

Yeah.

Professionally, you got to beat the germans. I like that. Although I don't know Shafan Swiss. He might not like that.

He might. Challenge accepted.

Yeah. The photography tends to come along with the article hunt, whether it's whether it's from Germany, whether it's homegrown. If you're writing a story on breeding a fish and you can't even show me photos of you doing it, how are you the expert that should be writing this article? You might not have the best photos, but we have really long contributor guidelines that are put out there on the website for people who are interested to know what they need. And really, your photography has to be high resolution. Our minimum pixel width is 3000, and it has to be text sharp, can't be blurry, and photography makes or breaks an article. There are some good content that's come across my desk since 2011 that I've had to say, this is great, but if you don't have photos, there's nothing I can do with this. We do have access, obviously, to stock photography photographers that we work with who just have large libraries of fish that they've shot. If we're looking for a better picture than the one we got, we might ask around. That's kind of how photography works. Usually it comes with the article.

You're talking about photography for the average person listening. I mean, you might have to take 75 photos of that fish before you get one that's usable. That's not good. I'm not saying great, I'm saying usable. It's just amazing how much time you'll spend on photographing this. I want to say a quick story, too, Matt. Sure. We buy some stock from cigarettes, farms, and they say to me, every time that goddamn Amazonus, every time they put a picture of a cool fish, I get 100 phone calls on frickin Monday going, hey, I want that fish. It's an amazonas. She says, I just want to strangle those guys. Because they always find the best looking fish, they take the best pictures, and then people expect me to pull out of my hat, which is hilarious.

It's interesting, though, because that kind of just speaks to the relevancy of something like a print publication.

Absolutely.

I look at it. I remember when we talked about taking over the magazines the first time that subject was broached with my wife, and she looked at me and she said, but isn't print and dying? And it's like, not really. It's evolving. We're in this world where you guys mentioned the type of content that's in Amazon Us and how deep it goes. And part of that is because I should never have to publish excuse me. I should never have to publish a how to set up your First Aquarium article in Amazon. Us. That information is ubiquitous. It's everywhere. That's not what we're about. No one needs to pay for that anymore. We want to give you something of value that you're not going to find that was curated by experts that was giving you something that's new and different. I don't want to rehash the same ten reader emails over and over again. So it's a little bit different. And I think, Kevin, the feature focus back when I was a reader of Coral, I would get an issue of Coral, and I remember one in particular I got was the Gorgonian issue. And I looked at the gorgonian issue and I said, I don't keep gorgonians. What do I need this for? And I probably flipped through it and I put it on the shelf, and that was the end of it. I want to say maybe five, six years later, I had it in my head that I was just going to set up a Gorgonian tank, a Caribbean biotope tank. I pulled that Gorgonian issue off the shelf and read it cover to cover. So having that library, over time, it builds up that reference library right at your fingertips.

I tell you, I'm abused jimmy's library quite a few times. I'll get some whiptail I've never seen in that someone donated or someone was looking for, and I'm trying to find more information on it. They're trying to figure out what PH. They're like, hey, Jimmy, you got an episode on this? And he's like, yes, but I need it back in a week. I'm watching you. And then he hands it over. I read it cover to cover.

He has to sign a contract to bring it back.

We're we have a back issue shop, and it would be mailed from Minnesota, so it would get there in, like, a couple of days.

So what you're saying is, robbie, don't be a cheap ass and get yourself.

$10 and buy the copy already.

Exactly.

Or check the digital archive. I mean, we don't have all the issues in there currently, but we just restored 2017. It was a gigantic expense when we upgraded the digital platform. The decision was made a few years back that we would not pull up all the back issues, but we have 20 17, 20, 18, 20 19, and the first issue of 2020 in the digital archive that come with your digital access, so maybe you don't have to rate his shelf.

Yeah, see, I like robin.

I like the print. I like the print. I like having that tangible magazine in my hand. Of course, now I've read the magazine at least three times, cover to cover, before I ever get my copy. So I don't actually ever look at it.

So he's old school like me, Rob. I like having the magazines I can refer to. I like buying old records so you can look at the front of the album and the back of the album and you can see and you're more of a young punk who gives me crap about reading the Sunday newspaper because I'm killing trees.

Yeah, but you were also trying to message a family member tapping this button downstairs that made a click noise. It was real weird.

Shut up.

All you're talking about was it Telegraph. I don't remember what Telegraph at home is. You could definitely click that out.

But these guys are I'm the old guy in the podcast. I'm in my fifty S, and these guys don't even know what a phone booth is.

No, superman gets naked in them.

No, he doesn't get naked in them.

Maybe not on TV, but we all know what happens.

But things go in droves and stuff. And now look at albums are gone for a long time, and now albums are coming back, and I think people really want to have that hard copy in their hand. I personally just love it because what happens when the lights go out and you can't giggle it on your Internet.

By the way, I want to pause you there. The last podcast we were editing, you literally said, giggle it on your inner tube. We're making a T shirt out of that, by the way.

So that whole thing, that's a standing joke amongst all of our friends. One of our friends had way too much to drink, and she said something just so oblivious, and we're all kind of looking at her and she goes, well, giggle that on your inner tube. And we all look, what the heck was she just saying? So that's been a standing thing that we've been talking about for years, actually.

All right, so to get, say, like, say I'm a new user and I love amazon's Magazine as much as I do, and I want to dedicate a small bookshelf and get all the copies I can, do you guys have a purchase every edition special?

No, but I bet I could put one together.

See, just contact them. Contact Matt at amazon us and he'll hook you up.

$1 million. Yes, I recommend having that.

Yeah, it's not a bad idea. If nothing else, just click once and get every issue. We just have to update it every time we had a new issue.

There we go. So go to amazon's Magazine, promo code Aquarium, guys, and you can buy every issue.

There you go.

At once.

I got to run. I got to run that by a couple of other people first.

All right, so give it two weeks after the podcast.

No guts, no glory.

We'll fast track this, guys. We'll keep you up to date. Just listen to the podcasts.

So one of my very favorite issues was the zebra pleco, the L 44 issue.

Who. L 46.

L 46.

Yeah, that's a true zebra pleco.

And for those that are listening, that maybe a little bit more beginner. In the podcast, platos are identified by an L series. There are so many variations, colors, shapes and sizes of Platos that they just got like, well, we're not going to come up with creative names, so they're just an L and a number system. And that number system has gone crazy. It is four digits deep, and there are so many Platos still being identified today.

Thanks, guys.

Do continue. We get questions after this. And I'm the one that has to deal with the repercussions. Thank you.

Repercussions. Yeah. I hope he punches you in a throat so they can't giggle.

That one on their inner tube, that.

One has the name. That's hypancistrous zebra.

Who came up with that? Was that something that you stole from the germans?

Dots, I believe. But that's a better question for stefan.

He's a catfish expert, because that was.

A fantastic he's a catfish expert. My expertise is, as I mentioned, jack of all trades. So actually I'm probably better known in the aquarium world for breeding marine fish than anything I've done on the freshwater side of things.

I actually went to one of your when you were at the Minnesota down in the cities here, I showed up to one of your you had some friends from Chicago. This is like your first this is a few years ago.

Was it the Aquarium Society or where was this?

No, it was a reef, saltwater reef thing.

Tc. Mass. Twin Cities Marine Aquarium Society.

I think so, yeah. And I was very impressed. I like breeding everything, but that is.

This is from a father of four who says he likes breeding everything.

It's interesting because I think I don't know if all of you guys have spent time in the aquarium club circuit, but I grew up in the fish clubs, suburban Aquarium Society in Chicago and the gcca and Chicago and Marine Aquarium Society. And I remember how important and motivating the breeders Award programs were and how so much a staple of the freshwater hobby is breeding. And as I evolved as a saltwater hobbyist, it was like, this really isn't there. This is still the final frontier, if you will. Man, that was just so alluring to go do things that no one had ever done or try to do things that no one had ever done. So it's very seductive side of fish keeping. But at the end of the day, I don't care if it has salt in the water or not, it's a fish. I'm interested.

So what is the most notorious thing or thing that really marks you? You said saltwater, but there's got to be like, that one niche. Every guy's got that favorite thing that they keep on their mantle at home. Like, you were the one person that bred this species or accomplished this. What is your pride and joy?

What's your claim to fame?

Well, okay, so I'm still the only person in the world who has spawned and successfully reared the Orange Spot filefish oxamonicampus longorosteris. That's an obligate corolla. And it kind of had by the 2000s, people had said, it's a fish we should leave in the ocean. I love Bob fenner, calls it a cut flower. It's a fish that's harvested. It looks pretty. You look at it for a couple of weeks, it withers away and dies. It's the perfect metaphor. And I had gotten to the point where I was already keeping mandarin dragonuts and spawning those and getting some success. And then iris bunik in Germany bred the Bristlesail file fish, the aptasia eating file fish. And that just was, like, eye opening to me. And I went out looking for that fish, couldn't find it here in the Us. But stumbled across some Orange Potter files at a store, talked to my wife a bit, and long story short, ended up pursuing that. And I think it took maybe a year and a half, two years to actually accomplish that. And I definitely got lucky. See, kind of with that literally on my mantle, sitting right above me on my desk, is my mastina Award from 2009, which is at the time, it was the Marine Chorus of the Year, and now it's the Master Award. They just renamed it, but it's this big glass fish trophy. I still feel that I am one of the least qualified among the recipients who have received that award. I actually tried to turn it down when they gave it to me and said, there's this other guy who deserves it more. And that was Dr. Whittenrich. And they said, matt's, time will come. Maybe this is your year. And, okay, and the next year, I got to introduce wittenrich, who also has received that award. That was actually more of an honor to me than having that myself. But that's kind of what I consider that's a boyhood dream realized was breeding something that no one had ever done, and it just happened to be that particular fish. It could have been anything that no one had done. I think that's when you are in a chorus long enough, you're looking for a challenge. We are all amateur scientists. We give so much back with the basement experiments we do to crack the husbandry code of a species, and it happens. We just published Breeding the Blue eyed placo, the first photographically documented case of actually producing that fish. There is still many freshwater fish that have never been spawned in reardon captivity. There are still many that maybe they're only done on large scale farms with the use of hormone AIDS. But it still could still be an incredible accomplishment if someone figures out how to do it in a home aquarium.

Setting in a natural way.

Yeah. So for me being primarily a fish guy. Those are the stories I like to tell. Those are the stories I like to anytime anyone's breeding a marine fish and they're doing something no one's ever done, I'm always just plugging, like, hey, I want that for coral. As soon as it's ready, I want to put it in coral because people love to hear about those triumphs and those breakthroughs. It doesn't matter what side of the halo client it's on. So the other thing I'm known for is the lightning maroon clownfish. That's the other thing that has come out of my marine fish breeding. And that's a whole other topic all in and of itself. Basically a wild fish that was discovered in papua New Guinea. I'm really shortening the story here. It's a clownfish. It's not going to be hard to breed in theory, but we don't know if it's genetic and all these other things. Well, it is genetic, and now lightning clowns are all over the place, and they all literally are descended from the wild fish that's still living here in duluth, Minnesota.

That's fantastic.

It is fantastic.

Before we go on, we just have to congratulate you. That is a wonderful accomplishment. And we love weird flexes like that on this podcast. You definitely deserve some credit there. So don't turn down the trophy, man. That's all we're saying. Yeah, take it when you get it, because you're in that one to get on some of the hard questions, right? Anytime you talk to a news outlet or something that has a publication like, we even gave we had the Minnesota dnr on the podcast and had one of the managers, and we gave her grief. That's the easy question.

We hammered on her, well, go easier on you.

But she would not tell me, you.

Don'T need to go easy on me.

What's your most controversial article that's ever been published while you've been there?

I think it's not really an article. It's the entire issue. The man made fishes issue.

I knew it was that earlier.

Yeah, we just kind of looked at it and said, it's time. It's time to have this discussion. It's time to put it back to people. And even for me, it goes back to being a marine fish breeder. picasso Percola. I think most people who have a passing awareness of the clownfish world I mean, the clownfish are the are the guppies of the marine aquarium world. picasso percola is basically just a fish with aberrant unusual stripes that swirl and connect and and do all these different things. And I remember in about 2006, I was so infuriated. I know I went on record saying that the picasso Percola was going to be the death of the three striped clownfish. And then I got to know a whole lot more about clownfish genetics, diversity, biogeography, the origins of where these fish came from. And that knowledge just fundamentally changed my viewpoint on all of. This. My work as an orchid breeder really gave me this totally different perspective on hybridization because the entire industry thrives off of hybrids, but it also conserves all the species because they are the building blocks of the hybrids. There were all these tangential things that for me, again, I'm only speaking for myself, but I felt, hey, we are so vehemently opposed to some of these things, but we're hardwired. It's just an ingrained ethic, but it causes all this division and hatred between aquarius who may not share our particular aesthetic appreciations, and so the guy who's keeping flower horns and the guy who is worried about Victorian cyclists shouldn't necessarily have to be butting heads against each other. There's room for both. And I think that viewpoint only comes from being in a chorus for a long time and having that depth of knowledge that just can't you don't have the first time you get a fish tank. That issue, we knew it was going to be controversial. Each one of the senior editors, including Anne, published their own viewpoints. None of us had read each other's before seeing them in print or actually, I think I got to read everyone's because I proved it cheater. It's my job. This is a job. He's a copy. They had all been written, so it was just making sure that everyone used the right punctuation. So that was intentionally meant to be I don't want to say a divisive issue. We knew it was going to get a certain amount of feedback. And I know we had a couple of people say, we are canceling our subscriptions. We're never subscribed to your magazine. Okay, all right.

Exactly. You're not going to be able to please everybody.

I really think that this topic is everybody's. As a content creator in the aquarium world, you don't touch it, and if you do, shame on you. We get so many people that come from different youtubers and even other podcasts, and they continue to ask us, how do you feel about this? And they're trying to angle the question in some way. So instead of this, I'm going to answer this question first and foremost. When we're talking with our listeners, and we just do it head on. We talk about each type of man made fish. There's the genetically done glow fish, there's the injected, there's the dyed and tattooed. We go through them all, and there's no shame in talking about it. People need to know that they're out there so they can make an educated decision and know what it does to the creature.

And the other thing that as much as people, most people are either hot or cold on this stuff, and at least with the glowfish, let's lose that real quick. It brings people into the hobby who probably weren't interested in the hobby in the first place, like young kids, because of the bright colors and whatnot. So they do glow fish for a little while and all of a sudden they find a pair of black convicts and then pretty soon they're breeding fish and pretty soon they've got 30 tanks. And that's what we want. We want people to get in the hobby. I'm old school. I want people to have 30 tanks in their basement as a start and then grow from there. So how many tanks are you running at your house? Do you have a facility?

My fish room is in my basement, so I have just a couple tanks upstairs. If everything is up and running, which isn't right now, there's about 2000 gallons of capacity.

That's a nice start.

You'll get there someday with you.

We're only running right now about 25, 30 tanks in our basement. I have 600 tanks at one time and it all depends on your level of insanity and responsibilities.

I have two magazines and Energy and kids. I have two kids that are one's six and one's nine.

Oh, Lord.

Yeah, I don't have I think there's maybe a dozen freshwater tanks running right now. A couple of saltwater systems, couple of standalones. I have a lot of vivarium plants as well now. And dart frogs. All these hobbies are kind of interconnected I look at. Keeping a poison dart frog is just the terrestrial reef tank or the terrestrial version of a planet tank. It's just there's no water. That's all. All these interests that I have had over the years, they all are related, basically. I'm always redoing things and reworking things, but I don't have the time I had ten years ago. So projects don't happen as quickly as they used to. And I think everyone who's been a parent can probably appreciate that.

Does anyone in your family have as much interest in it as you? No, I'm very lucky. My wife has a great interest in it and she has her own tank upstairs with discus, and I have shrimp tanks downstairs and angel fish and whatnot. And it's nice to have that camaraderie when we're doing water changes and smacking each other with a hose.

Stuff like that be nice. All right.

It's funny because my wife, who wasn't my wife at the time, I was in between professional jobs as a software developer. I was kind of looking for the right one and wasn't getting the interviews I wanted. And she found a job posting at a local fish store and said, hey, why don't you apply for that? Okay, sure. Yeah. I had done that in my teens and early twenty s. And I think that was pretty much the one year in my life. I know I say I've been in a chorus for 37 years, but I think I had like two years years where I didn't have an aquarium at home. I had one in the office I had been working at. But when we parted ways, the aquarium stayed there. So there was this brief period of about six months where I was not taking care of an aquarium. Then I got this job and my wife said it would be nice to maybe have a pair of clownfish. Oh, yeah, I could do that. And brought home the tank, set it up for her, and that was great. And then another tank and another tank. And she claims now that she never asked for that pair of clownfish.

Yeah, women are liars.

I'm not saying that smooth.

I'm just trying to get him in trouble.

She's going to listen into this.

No, she's not. She's got nothing to do with her time to listen to us, I tell you that one.

Renee is an incredible partner who's very supportive and good cover.

Now you're making him cover his track.

Wow.

Oh, boy.

Tolerance, tolerance. She tolerates it. She'd prefer that there was less, but she understands it's my job. Who would buy or want to buy an aquarium magazine that's not put together and publish exactly by experienced aquarium. It's just that simple. So I better be keeping fish and I better be invested and evolved. Otherwise, anything I do, I have nothing to contribute.

And like I've said many times on this podcast, sometimes it's easier to apologize than to get permission.

That's how I go around.

My dad used to say that all the time. When you come home with a new.

Boat or something, I'll use that next time.

There you go.

Get a boat now. So another big question is, you told us the most controversial issue. So what's the most popular issue number one best seller you've ever sold?

I don't have those numbers in front of me.

No, not on the top of your head?

How about feedback?

What was the best?

I can tell you that Angels Rising is probably one of the ones that's most in demand. Our first issue is one that's popular. You guys all think you might have complete libraries, but there's also the prototype edition, which none of you have. I'll just leave that out there.

Now you're going to have people calling you.

Great.

Call Matt at 1800.

I have one copy. I don't have another one to offer. So I think there were 100 of them produced. So if someone is into collecting, go.

To aqua swap.com, where he's going to start the bidding at $10,000, $1 million.

No, I think the angels are rising. The beta issues. Again, I don't mean to pull those up because they're near and dear to my heart and the things that I had in them. I also know that they're just popular fish. So of course those topics are going to grab someone, whereas putting African soda lake cichlids on the COVID that's a more arcane type of fish to talk about. And that's not going to grab the interest of people. That's the equivalent of the gorgonian issue, where you look at it and say, I'll just put that on the shelf. And then five years later, you're like, I got these at an auction. What are they? Oh, Amazon is boom. And now it's relevant. I'd hope that people start to appreciate when they get a feature. Like, I also hope there's something in every issue for everyone. Not everyone's going to be into African Soda Lake Cichlids. I don't expect them to be even.

Issues that I haven't necessarily immediately found the need in. There's been a wealth of knowledge of just the sources that you guys have in each issue. Showing where you get this content from is enough where I can spend days on an issue just looking into their content. So it definitely leads you into new areas, even like the sub articles or even the featured fish in the back of the episode. There's always something in every issue.

I totally agree. There are so many good things in these things that have you guys ever thought about doing, like local breeders in the Us that do particular items? We've had so many great people on this podcast. We've been very blessed with different people. Steve rubiki was on from Angels. Plus we've had Jim Kitchen, the placo king on. Have you guys ever thought about doing an issue on just local us?

Well, it kind of goes back to what I mentioned from the start, which is we start out with the German issue that we've paid for.

You got to write it, Jimmy.

Germany. Well, you got to write it and send it to Germany first. No, I'm kidding.

I will. I'll put a picture on my cave wall and I'll take a picture of it and send it to you.

We have had in the past and we've done at least a couple Us based fishermen. One of my really old friends, Mike helford, I've been pestering him, especially since he built that new fisherme that I want to get down there. I want to see it. I have a feeling it's something that I would personally pursue to put in the magazine. There's so many great aquarists out there that I don't think we could ever feature all of them. So I would hate to pick and choose, but it's not a bad idea. There's really no bad ideas. I mean, to come right down to it, because it's such a vast hobby.

The bigger one to ask you is out of all the articles that you can remember at the top of your head, there's a ton that's been going through. But every news magazine, any news warehouse company, they want to be able to make an impact, really bring a story to attention to change the thoughts of their their listeners or readers. And out of those, can you pick one of your favorites that the article either changed the perception or did something for conservation or really impacted the hobby bar none compared to some of the rest.

I would say our past coverage of belo monte and the Rio jingu has been really important to keeping that in front of people. So the article, Chaos in Black and White is still that's one where we took and I believe we excerpted it from the magazine and put it onto the website so it was free to access. Because in addition to the two month cycle of content, we also have all the online content, which is basically blog based content. And it might be news items right now. There's a huge problem with the aquarium fishery in Hawaii. It's been shuttered for two years, so that's a coral related issue. But yeah, the Chaos in Black and White stands out thinking about it for 30 seconds and the issues around belamonte and I don't want to go back to an article we've already talked about, but that whole man made fishes issue was put out there. It's a really provoked thought and provoked discussion, and I feel really strongly in my own perspective, and so I wanted to put that on the table and say, hey, maybe there's room for both here. And it's been a problem in the marine fish breeding world and that's just starting to be a thing. And if we can't get breeders there to see the bigger picture, where are we going to end up? So it's important to put out ideas that maybe people haven't thought of or might initially be averse to. But even our coverage of Project piaba over the years, those issues are always in the back of our mind. I was really excited when I found out that Seagrest was distributing piaba officials like, I want to get those efforts like that go a long way to helping a community that's another continent away. preserving rainforest, those are important things that we try to bring back to our readers. But even just putting the biodiversity of having a killy fish feature and reminding people the killies that are out there, or talking about rainbow fish, some of these fishes could easily just be gone in the blink of an eye. And some of that content doesn't make it into the magazine because it's online. We can only put so much in 100 pages and sometimes it's newsworthy. So it's more important to get it out quickly, which is where we'll use social media and our blogs, our email newsletter, which has not been as routine as I'd like it to be, and that falls on me, cover those issues all the time. We've just had a lot of coverage about the ala Convention, the recent donations that were made by the goodyear Work Group and some of their fundraising efforts. I'm trying to think what else we got going. Well, I'll have to ask another question. If something else jumps up, I'll bring it up.

But sounds great. I know one of the big things that always kept me to the magazine and that brought a little wonder that I really didn't get elsewhere is online. There's a bunch of misinformation and generally aquarius try to at least a select bunch of them try to keep their insider secrets, and it really does harm the hobby. I know we did a big podcast about the shrimp hobby that's only been started since the mid ninety s, and there's still a lot of misinformation. You can't even go to a wikipedia page to get basic facts of care just because it's so still locked down and shadow and secrecy. You guys don't cover up anything. everything's really there from the perspective of the interviewee. And above all else, you're bringing new fish to light. Most people they'll hear about, oh, this fish was discovered four years ago. There's no other place that I can think of to really publicate on a broad scale. You guys won't believe this. This cool species was found, here's how it was found, here's what we know about them, and here what researchers are trying to find out. And it just brought more wonder to a hobby that, in my perspective, because I'm only 30 years old, really was already discovered within the last few decades. There's still new species, there's still new things to learn just from you saying that you bred, you're one of the few people or the only person in the world to breed a certain species of fish just shows the untapped potential, and amazonis really does a great job of covering that.

If you get bored keeping aquariums over the long haul, you're not doing something right. There is so much to do that no aquarius could ever do at all. My weakest link as an aquarius right now is freshwater planted keeping. I have not figured that out yet. And the whole aquascaping genre, to me, I know what it represents and I know what it is. But in my personal aquarium keeping, the few attempts I've made, I've just gone down in flames. Takes time to master things. But more to your point, I was reminded of the volcano bitterling story that we just ran. And I want to say that was in the November December issue. That's a brand new species.

Spoiler alert.

No, that one's already out.

Okay, that was a good article.

Yeah, I don't think he talks. He doesn't say that here's how you breed them, because I don't think we know yet. So we have ideas on how we could approach this species, but then again, how many people have even heard of a bitterling before? It's just such a vast hobby that you should never run out of things that are new or interesting to you. And that's kind of where the club scene still has, I think merit is with the bap programs that encourages people to try new fish and encourages, through friendly competition, to specialize in something or to go to the next level or try something else. It keeps people engaged in the hobby. There are those fish that you'll love the moment you find them, and you'll never let go of that love. And there are fish that you'll keep and enjoy, and I'm kind of tired of these and pass them on to the next hobbyist to try something new. I think that the hobby, by and large, accepts that. Especially because we have things like fish auctions, where diehard hobbyists can exchange their animals to other people who are presumably, if you're at a fish auction, you're at least somewhat aware of what's going on and interested, and you're not just walking off the street. You have to have been doing it a few years to know that there's such a thing in the first place. That's kind of my take. And the magazine is just an outlet to encourage that and to keep you engaged and excited and to expose you to new things, new ideas.

So I can't let anybody leave the podcast that has some sort of business, company or product without trying to melt some insider secrets from you. So in the future, you've been through the company since the first English publications. So what changes are coming and is there any spoilers you can give us? Not necessarily content or upcoming issues, but maybe how the magazine is changing?

No, there is nothing I can do.

No leaks.

Come on, man.

The magazine is perfect. Get off his back.

I was hopeful there is something coming. I was hopeful I could talk about it. I can't. I just know it's coming. I just know it was a good investment. Our readers will be happy. No one's going to complain.

Free Amazon is for everybody.

Yeah, so how about this, right?

Go habs with right. You can't talk about what it is, but can you talk about when we're going to know?

I'm sorry, what was that?

You can't tell us what it is, but can you talk about when we're going to find out?

No.

Dad, I love Syria.

It's probably not going to happen until 2020, portions of which is like three days away.

Right? We're not that far.

Yeah, so I'm pretty wide open there. 2020 is a full year.

Yes, it is.

Now, I could say that portions of what we've been working on have been completed, but other portions that we're working on are still being nailed down. And my part of this project is largely done. I know that it's coming. I just don't know when.

All right, so we have to rule out that it's not something in flash. So that's all.

You can rule that out.

So you're talking about all the freshwater tanks and stuff? We had the opportunity last week, robbie and Adam and I went and got to see a saltwater tank and we did a whole podcast on that, which is coming up here in a few weeks.

That was a mixed reef tank.

Mixed reef tank? Over 700 species of coral in a 2000 gallon tank. And we went over there, and it's actually not that far from you.

Don't get too as many spoilers. He didn't give us a spoiler.

You know what?

Come on, man. It's only fair.

This guy was so gracious to invite us into his home, beautiful home, and we go over there and he takes his water test and sends them to Germany. What is it with Germany? Yes, that's what I want to do.

That's what you got to ask. Everything with aquarium is Germany.

He sends water tests every two weeks to Germany for this 2000 gallon tank.

Well, yeah, when you're at that scale and that economy, it makes sense. And that's a subscription service. And there are icp tests now in the Us. Which should cost a little less, but they offer different things. But I think as a reef keeper, my most successful reefs have been low tech, low maintenance, and generally on the smaller side because it stems from the freshwater world where, generally speaking, water changes are your reset and they're easy and cheap to do. And as long as you can deal with that, you can be a very successful aquarist with little other technology involved. My best reef tank right now is a 1.25 gallon pawthecarry vase that sits in my front entryway. It's stunning. Everything is growing fantastically. All I do is 100% water change and it's circulated by nothing more than a rigid airline and has a the most technologically advanced part of that setup is the par 38 Led light and the cobalt slimline heater, and then the fenix heater controller, which controls the heater because it's a 1.25 gallon volume of water. And we live in duluth, Minnesota. When I open the front door at zero degrees or negative five right now, and all that air hits this 1.25 gallon of water, the heater better keep up and also better shut off when I want it to. So the heating is the most expensive part of this whole set up. And the corals have been growing. I have postalopora that spawned all over the tank multiple times. So we have coral babies growing in the tank in 1.25 gallons of water. It's literally a goldfish bowl of coral reef. And it's probably the most successful, easiest tank I've ever kept. But it is never going to be the same impression that a well established, grown out 2000 gallon reef tank with hundreds of fish is going to be it's just different extremes of the spectrum.

I got a feeling that's going to.

Be a blog reef tank.

So yeah, you know how some people make it look really easy? This looked really hard. And it was. I mean, we sat there and questioned this gentleman and we'll have more about it in a future podcast. And he was so sweet and so nice and gave us all the information we wanted. We were just doing the math in our head about what he spends just on maintenance in a month. And it just blew my mind.

I believe it got to love the hobby.

Yeah.

So no, we need to see that article on reef tanks for a ball or on a budget for a one gallon reef tank on the next magazine.

We have a whole Coral magazine issue devoted to that.

It's already done, Robbie.

We got to go by the issue then.

Yeah, let me see here. I'm just looking at my shelf.

See the shelf?

If you borrow it to him, you might want to make him sign a contract. You get it back.

It's volume 15, number one micro reefs there you go. Of Coral magazine. My vase reef goes back to maritza. Who is the original vase? Reef? Her reef tank has been running for like seven years or six years now in a very similar size setting. And I basically just followed the recipe she gave, and it's the recipe we outlined in the, in the magazine. And I think my setup, excluding animals, probably cost me maybe $100. Wow. It's not that is super simple. You know, you can mix up I remember back when I was in my teens, I was limited. My parents did not let me take over the whole house with aquariums, or I would have, but I was working in the pet trade, working for full line pet stores, and then later aquarium specialty stores. Back then, my most successful reef tank was, again, it was a twelve gallon tank that held six gallons of water when it was all said and done. And I just literally kept the water changes sitting and mixed up the saltwater in gallon milk jugs and just threw them in the front entryway hall closet. And once a week I did a one gallon water change on six gallons of water, so a little less than 20%, and I just did it every week. That tank was fantastic. So sometimes we used to tell you you need a big tank because it's more stable, changes happen slower. And that's true. But I think we're to the point where we understand what corals need now that maybe in our equipment is better, maybe we can get away. A ten gallon reef tank is a very reasonable prospect. And water changes when you're sending off your saltwater to a lab in Germany to be tested, part of it is because when you're doing a 20% water change or even a 10% water change, a 10% water change on a 2000 gallon aquarium, so that's 200 gallons, that's $100 of salt. If you're using a high end salt, that's $100 to do a water change. If I told you to do a 10% water change every week on a 2000 gallon reef tank, you're spending 400 a month just on salt. So it becomes the economies of scale change, and it's cheaper to test and dose what's needed and to conserve your water on a small tank. It makes no sense, at least to me. It's easier to just stick with something you're familiar with match the salinity max, match the temperature, do the water change. You're good. So it works very well.

And for a lot of freshwater people, that's just the natural progression of the hobby is to try to go and do something a little bit different with saltwater. And so if you've not tried saltwater, that would be a perfect time to do it. What matt just said is just get yourself a smaller aquarium and just start small and don't spend a bunch of money. Don't go out and buy a 150 gallon tank and spend $1,500 and then fail.

So I have something to branch off of this. Right, matt, here my pitch. So you have this great saltwater magazine. You have a fantastic freshwater magazine. We need to make, like, a hobo newspaper on brackish tanks. That's what we need to do. You and me, bro. We'll do it together. We'll make a publication every once every two months.

We will run out of content very quickly.

What.

Black molly?

We had some coverage on archers recently. I'm actually a big fan of archer fish. That's been another one that I've been kind of eyeing to try to breed. I know they've been done, but rather sporadically, and there's not a lot of information out there. And so I've actually been working for a while to just keep some archer fish around and see if I can get them spawning. Because being where they live, like mono Seabay and mono argentius, those fish, we think of them as brackish fish, and we know they can kind of tolerate freshwater, but they actually have a saltwater component to their adult life cycle. They are actually saltwater fish. They've spawn and breed, like, a lot of pelagic spawning saltwater fish because they are so looking at archer fish, I'm like, they're going to maybe be a little more like those fish. I have the marine fish breeding background. I've successfully reared, like, ten species, I think, at this point, and I've spawned 30 or so. I've kind of been looking at some of these fish that maybe I can apply saltwater knowledge to what we do with them and see if we can crack it or do better. So archer fish is kind of a quiet, silent obsession of mine.

Don't feel bad at a lot. We actually did an upcoming episode about brackish, and if you haven't tried them, put some mangrove wood above and watch.

Them shoot a cricket.

Best fish you can ever get.

Yeah, they're fantastic. And they're very personable, too. I find my archers know who I am. They're pets. They're more than just fish that just kind of school around. They're certainly engaged.

Well, matt, we appreciate you having on. Is there anything you felt we missed that you want to tell us about?

No. I'll share with everyone that I'm trying to pester both my partners and anne to find time to come on and share their experiences and viewpoints with you guys. And I really appreciate you guys taking the time to ask me to come on and ramble about myself.

We love it, and we'd love to make this a series to really get perspective from your team editors or interviewers or there's a lot of experience that comes out of your magazine that I think really just would love to go in the background of, give a better perspective of the people that write the magazine. So, Jimmy, do you have any other questions?

Did I have any other questions? Do you ever get to travel much for work, Matt? I mean, did they send you to exotic lands like Hawaii? Like South Dakota?

South Dakota.

I will be in Green Bay, Wisconsin next summer. In July. Wear your viking shirt. I believe I will probably will be at macdon, Arizona, next fall. Most of my travel is self funded or if I'm invited out to speak somewhere, someone like Mike Tucinardi has done a lot of travel for the aquarium industry on his own time and written about it, generally speaking, pretty much stuck here. My wife is a school teacher. Travel opportunities are limited. She doesn't know exactly what I was contemplating, but I was looking at a South America trip to surprise her with next year until I saw the expense. Yeah. Publishing magazines is not a get rich quick scheme. We will not be traveling to South America.

So how about South Dakota? That's pretty close and probably cheaper.

I'm happy to come to South Dakota.

I said, we're going to have to drag you to aqua shella. That's what we're going to have to do. Be our bucket list.

What party there to go? When aquatic experience was in Chicago, my family's originally from Chicago, and I'm from Chicago, so I'm always looking at the Chicago events because I can go crash with my parents or at least hang out at their house, whether they're there or not. It's an eight hour drive to get to Chicago. I still know my way around, so I always keep an eye on the Chicago events to see which ones I can make. Generally speaking, I'm happy to drive to speak at clubs that are in the upper midwest here because I know how hard it is to get speakers, especially clubs that want to have a speaker every month that getting a speaker to the loose. Minnesota, maybe once a year is a challenge. So to have a club where you're bringing in someone every month, the financial aspects of that pretty demanding on a club. So I will generally happily show up Brisbane, amazonis, represent my other business, and represent Coral, share my passion for what I do with Aquarison the rum. Beyond that, trying to think what else is going on the tip of my tongue, but I forgot about it. I got to quit about it.

Well, no, you didn't forget about it. It's a secret, and it's going to start 2020. You heard it here first. Something big is happening.

Oh, there is, I cannot say.

Little tease. Come on, man, whisper it.

I could ask you guys in all seriousness, since you will be editing this. I will be I will tell you in confidence and say that you cannot put this out.

All they're going to hear is a bunch of ducks.

Right now. That's going to happen until I've cleared it. But there will be I believe I believe the contracts are signed. The Marine breeders workshop will be held in the Twin Cities in 2020. We've been holding that for ten years. Detroit, Michigan area. It was founded by Talsuite and the team at the Marine Life. According Mason, Talhead has been running it for ten years, and he said, I still want to be involved, but maybe I need to step back a little bit from being the head guy. I will gladly come back on and say more about that if you would like me to, once it's public, but I believe it's signed. It's a done deal. It's happening. That will be in July. Don't have the date in front of me, but that is I can't say where it's going to be held yet either, but it's going to be Mall.

Of America, if that's okay.

No, I could say it's not mall of America.

There we go.

Minnesota.

It's going to be held in the Twin Cities at a very fantastic facility. Not in the Mall of America.

Petco.

No, not on a petco. You can whittle down as much as you want.

Well, we appreciate the info.

This event tends to drop people from the scientific community, the public aquarium community, and private aquarists like myself who breed marine fish. It draws 50 to 100 people depending on the year. But a lot of times, the discussion of the first captive bred yellow tangs or someone breeding a butterfly fish, for the first time, those people are sitting in that room. The people who've done that are there. Martin moe, he's been to a few of them. Anyone who's been around the saltwater aquarium hobby long enough knows who Martin moe is. You don't get to sit in a room with 50 people or 100 people next to Martin moe with ten minutes to bend his ear between the talk. In any other setting. We we talked about it at great length, and I had always told tal, since I had helped promote it and obviously have a vested interest in it, that if he ever wanted to step back from it, I would be willing to help, possibly bring it to duluth. Through some people talking and discussions, we decided we actually had a really good opportunity to hold this event in the Twin Cities. I will talk to tal, make sure I can have you guys put that out on the 26th. You might not be able to, but it will be coming, and at some point I'll be able to talk very freely and openly about it. I would say that this is an event that if you are anywhere in the region and have any interest in fish breeding in general, I still remember being told breeding clownfish was impossible. That's why freshwater and saltwater, that spillover of interest in breeding, is just a natural fit. To be able to come to the Twin Cities, to an event like this in our region is fantastic. I hope that Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, the dakotas, Illinois, I hope we put on a really good showing, really represented this event, because it's going to be a really exciting event this year.

Well, I'm going for those of you that just listen to that, it's either you heard him and his super secret thing that he just holds about, or you heard some terrible sound effect that Mr. pickles clipped of me in discord. So if you heard the thing, Mr. pickles, the clip of me in discord, you know, it's confidential. And whatever it is, is going to be in 2020. And we appreciate having you on, Matt. We really, really do. And go to Amazonasmagazine.com. Be sure to subscribe to this magazine. You can purchase a year up front. Three years is a better deal. You can buy it for a friend and even purchase their intense library of back issues all the way to the beginning for the English edition at $10 a pop. Certainly give them a looksee. They have a free issue. You can go right on their website and try to see how you like the format wealth of knowledge. Even if, like you said before, even if it's not necessarily your article, you're going to use it. There's going to be pieces in there that you're going to love. It's a fantastic magazine, certainly subscribe.

And what a great Christmas gift. What a great birthday gift. What a great anniversary gift.

You just bought that from me, Jimmy.

No, we don't have anniversary, robs, because we're not doing it. But dad no, we're not.

I really want amazon's magazine that isn't just digital.

Yeah, you can read my digital copy.

Fine. All right, well, thanks again, guys, and make sure to subscribe. And on the podcast app, if you're using spotify stitcher, tune in Apple podcast. Make sure it automatically downloads. It saves directly to your phone so you don't have to worry about being in an auto signal area. And it helps our numbers and supports our podcast. So thanks again for all your support and we shall see you on the next podcast.

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

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

Can I listen to it in my treehouse?

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

What about my man cave?

Especially your man cave.

Yeah.

Ah, only if adam's, there no with feeder. guppy. No, no.

They're endless.

You imagine loving, fax sucking mother fax.

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