#101 – Our Screw Ups

SHOWOUT TO CHEESEWIZ ON DISCORD

1 year ago
Transcript
Speaker A:

Today's sponsor is Dee's Fish Co. In Detroit Lakes, Minnesota. I have been breeding a species of fish that I got from all Things fish on YouTube. I drove all the way to Iowa to get this endangered species fish called cryptohirus nanoluteus. Certainly go to Deesfish Co to check them out. They have them on sale. I've been breeding them out. It's the only place that I vend them to. So if you want a piece of this particular fish, go to Deesfish Co. You'll see their link in the description or see them in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota. You don't want DOE's fish. You want dee's fish. Let's kick that podcast. Welcome to the aquarium, guys. Podcast. Jimmy, we done did it.

Speaker B:

No, we did not.

Speaker A:

We did all the bad things.

Speaker B:

What do we do?

Speaker A:

We have one of our listeners that joined the discord and sent us in what they would like to call either the Aquarium Guys drinking game, but more importantly, the Aquarium Guys bingo card.

Speaker B:

What?

Speaker A:

But before we begin, I'm your host, Rob Zolson.

Speaker B:

I'm Jim Colby.

Speaker C:

And I'm Adam El Nashar.

Speaker B:

Hey, bingo.

Speaker A:

We got a bingo card.

Speaker B:

Bingo card right there.

Speaker A:

All right, so the aquarium, guys. Bingo. If you haven't listened to us before, apparently we're a little something called predictable. I'll read you each square one at a time. We'll have a bit of fun before we start the podcast.

Speaker B:

Sometime I'm going to shoot you in the forehead with a four magnum.

Speaker A:

All right, first, that's predictable. Her square schmelta is dissed. There's three or bleeps in one sentence. That's when we swear a guest is made uncomfortable. That's every time Rob cries about his arowana.

Speaker B:

That's every other time someone jokes about cocaine. For some reason, cocaine is no joke by people.

Speaker A:

A large group of people are offended. Well, that's a given. Adam misses his intro cue, so check that one if you're listening at home.

Speaker B:

There you go.

Speaker A:

HR needs to be called nine inch cholo wood is made sexual. We also sexualize six inch cholo woods for though.

Speaker B:

Hey, for those of us in Minnesota, cold three inch chola wood is good.

Speaker A:

Right? A dildo is referred to that's all you. Yeah, that's an aquarium dildo. For those that are listening, by the way, I'm going to pause there. If you're listening and you're in the Minnesota area, you can go to Dee's Fish Cone, detroit Lakes, Minnesota. And behind the counter, they have brand new glass aquarium dildos from the Aquarium Guys for sale. True story.

Speaker B:

But you have to ask because it's under the counter.

Speaker A:

It's under the counter.

Speaker B:

I hope the police come in and just bust you.

Speaker A:

You got to talk to the guy behind the counter and said, you got one of those aquarium guys dildos.

Speaker B:

You have to say. Hey, I know. Adam Ellishard. He knows a guy. It's you and you've got a dildo. Bingo.

Speaker A:

We got a question. How much are they? $25. What sale?

Speaker B:

Wait, a minute question.

Speaker A:

Yes.

Speaker B:

New or used?

Speaker A:

Brand new.

Speaker B:

Okay, then they're worth $25. Used. I don't want some skanky for yeah.

Speaker A:

But I mean wouldn't it be great if you had pre aquarium cycled? Kind of like you buy a sponge filter that's pre cycled. Wouldn't you want an aquarium dildo cycled?

Speaker B:

No.

Speaker A:

Okay. All right.

Speaker B:

Adam.

Speaker A:

Just saying.

Speaker C:

I'm just in awe that we are selling this.

Speaker A:

This is not the first one we've sold my guy.

Speaker C:

How many have you sold?

Speaker A:

You got to join the patreon to find out.

Speaker B:

I'm not paying to listen to this shit.

Speaker A:

Part of this thing that's true. So we'll talk after air.

Speaker B:

Maybe you get a discount Adam, or something because you're part of the family.

Speaker A:

Let's finish some bingo square, shall we? So Jimmy gets bullied for his weight. That's all you, Adam. Added to a new watch list that's everybody a didgeridoo is played. Now I believe you're ready for this one.

Speaker B:

I brought it.

Speaker A:

It's been a while.

Speaker B:

I brought it.

Speaker A:

Play it.

Speaker B:

Do you want me to play it?

Speaker A:

Give me at least a good hardy toot for the audience. Here we go. All right. There's another bingo square. Taking care.

Speaker B:

There you go.

Speaker A:

New tank is encouraged. I mean that's every week. If we're not encouraging you to start another tank, you're listening to the wrong podcast. Go find someone else to listen to. Shade is thrown on Jimmy's ex wife.

Speaker B:

That's probably me.

Speaker A:

If you could just once more.

Speaker B:

What?

Speaker A:

We're going for squares here.

Speaker B:

Jimmy when she gets naked furnace kicks on.

Speaker A:

Excellent. Rob says something suspiciously gay. That's every podcast that's free episode salt is promoted. A sand versus gravel argument occurs.

Speaker B:

That's about every third one.

Speaker A:

Adam lies about being a fan favorite in the emails. What? Adam knows a guy's another square. That's every episode a new merch idea is thought of but never executed. That's twice a day Adam's fatherhood is mocked. Harassing the Ohio Fish Rescue is encouraged. Okay, if you're listening, that's a fantastic square for go game.

Speaker B:

Do it.

Speaker A:

Harass the OFR on all of their live streams from us.

Speaker B:

And make sure you tell them it's from us.

Speaker A:

Yes, please. Make sure it tell them it's from our community. And then Jim blaming Rob's bad behavior on microwave radiation.

Speaker B:

Well, that's because you run the microwave with the door open all the time.

Speaker A:

That's exactly you have a lot of squares that were just checked off in reading of the bingo card.

Speaker B:

That's correct. So what's the prize? What's the prize? Are we actually going to play this sometime? Are we just talking shit people can.

Speaker A:

Go on at home or you can trade that in for if you hear trade it in, trade it in for a drinking game. Either way.

Speaker B:

I like that. When I'm drinking I'm playing bingo. People have to DOB my thing because I don't pay attention. Because I just got to loose not DOB my thing but DOB my I think we're good. DOB my thing.

Speaker A:

We can move on. All right, a couple of other updates to let you guys know we got the bingo card. Yes. And then if you join our discord, discord is our community's at and where Jimmy dabs things. So go to the website aquariumguyspodcast.com. Bottom of the website, you'll find the link link's. Also in the show notes of this episode, join our discord. It's a lot of fun. We got a bunch of people live. I'm seeing people sending us pictures of their fish and beer cans. Join up. It's a lot of fun. And in here, when you said they.

Speaker B:

Were sending pictures of their junk, I thought, oh, God, here we go.

Speaker A:

Oops.

Speaker B:

But you said beer cans and fish tanks.

Speaker A:

Yes.

Speaker B:

Okay, we're good then. Don't send pictures of your junk unless your junk is mean.

Speaker C:

I don't want to see anybody's junk. Well, any guy's junk.

Speaker B:

What if he's got three things that he know? Maybe he's alien. That'd be kind of cool.

Speaker A:

Well, we also have put in Robbie's. I'm not going to play this in Discord. If you go to the audio channels, we have a soundbar for all users. And in the soundbar, we have some VIP exclusives. We have Adam's sexy bit that you heard a few times. At the end of the podcast, we have Willie the Shrimp advertisement, as in the soundbar, but most importantly, a hidden extra that's only been on patreon is Jimmy being racist. So if you want to listen to Jimmy being racist, join the discord.

Speaker B:

Oh, was that when I went to the 711?

Speaker A:

No, that's when you're making fun of Adam. It was even better.

Speaker C:

That still makes you have anything of me being racist?

Speaker A:

Oh, we'll get there. We'll get there.

Speaker B:

You are the most racist person I know.

Speaker A:

So, gentlemen, any news or updates before you jump into the podcast?

Speaker B:

What you got, Adam? Anything exciting happening in your world? You got a new tank?

Speaker C:

Not yet. I'm working on trying to get a dispensary started.

Speaker A:

Hey, call me. I'm in.

Speaker B:

What? Yeah. For those of you listening, on the.

Speaker C:

Border with Minnesota, or right on the border with Wisconsin, so I get all that Wisconsin traffic. It's going to be awesome. The only thing I have a question of is apparently our governor said that you can walk around with 32oz of marijuana. That seems like an ungodly amount.

Speaker A:

And the total amount you can keep in your home is seven pounds. You know how much seven pounds of weed is in Minnesota? Anywhere.

Speaker B:

I actually do. Yeah.

Speaker A:

That's an insane amount of weed.

Speaker B:

I could tell you how much a pound of cocaine is.

Speaker A:

Oh, hey, there's another bingo square. There's another bingo square.

Speaker C:

Somebody's three pounds over, man.

Speaker A:

I'm three pounds over. Okay, good to know. Thank you, Chat. All right.

Speaker C:

Somebody was bringing me Kilo bars, and I was like, holy shit.

Speaker B:

Kilo bars?

Speaker C:

You know how much cocaine and I'm like, yeah, that's a lot.

Speaker A:

I have been talking to another person on a different discord server.

Speaker B:

You whore.

Speaker A:

I have been it's been a great time. It's shout out to you guys. It's a place called Fish Wiki. Check them out. There is this one gal on there. I don't know if I'm allowed to say her name, but she was telling me a recipe that she mixes rapachi and weed together.

Speaker B:

Really critters.

Speaker A:

So I am hoping that I can convince this dear person to come on the podcast. She is a fish connoisseur and works in the industrial marijuana trade by profession.

Speaker B:

Really? So she knows what she's doing, right?

Speaker A:

So I can't give out the information till I get permission, but I really hope to get her on the podcast.

Speaker B:

So then you can tell her the story about how the time you gave a kitten Benadryl to keep it to sleep meowing all night. Same thing, isn't it?

Speaker A:

Hey, I'm glad that one's stuck in your brain.

Speaker B:

There's a lot of things.

Speaker C:

You know what I found out that your wife between my first and my last kid no.

Speaker B:

Where babies are made.

Speaker C:

Well, besides that, I figured that one out. They have warning labels on the Benadryl now saying, this is not a sleep aid for children.

Speaker A:

And I'm like, doesn't say anything. Actually does that that's a big thing, actually, in the parent classes or whatever from the hospital, they said that you're not allowed do not give your baby Benadryl to put her to sleep. Like, that was part of the same instructions on, like, don't shake the baby. It was right next to it.

Speaker B:

Really?

Speaker A:

Apparently that's a big thing now. Do I use it to drug my cats? Absolutely.

Speaker B:

So nothing about kitties?

Speaker A:

Nothing about Kitties.

Speaker B:

So you guys are from a different generation where my children were born and they go, Here you go. That was my training.

Speaker A:

Yeah, I thought I was, but then I made a joke. I literally told the doctor, I'm like, how should I shake the baby? Is it a vigorous thing or I just want to don't want to shake it like a pepper shake? Is it like one of those shake wakes? Yeah.

Speaker B:

Where you see that girl doing this here?

Speaker A:

She had no sense of humor. She told me immediately that, no, sorry. Now I had to go do training. I was punished. I had to go through an hour and a half training course because I lipped off to her like that. It was hilarious.

Speaker B:

I just sent you through there twice, right?

Speaker C:

You know what they did for me was they gave me a huge thing on at the mail. They were really pushing the postpartum depression thing, which I'm like, Jeez, you know what they did for my first one? Because the nurse was like, oh, you guys have to watch this video on postpartum depression. And she's like, you guys are new parents and we're like, no, this is our fourth. And she was like, okay, well, we legally have to have you watch this. But they were, like, really pushing that video for postpartum. I didn't realize that that was such a big thing now.

Speaker B:

Well, they're in the business of selling drugs, Adam, and so they got to convince you that you've got depression so they can sell you drugs.

Speaker A:

Who knows?

Speaker C:

I wonder. I want a survey from the dozen people that are here. Who are 13 people? Who are the biggest drug pushers?

Speaker A:

Anheuser bush pushers or doctors who? Doctors and who?

Speaker C:

Or actual drug people, like drug dealers.

Speaker B:

Like pharmaceutical people.

Speaker C:

Who's the biggest pusher? Any doctors or dealers.

Speaker A:

Anyways, let's get into the we got.

Speaker C:

Three in a row. I think I've alienated a whole group.

Speaker A:

Get into the content. All right, we're derailing here, so we.

Speaker B:

Haven'T even got on the subject yet.

Speaker A:

Now, I'd like to start the podcast by sharing a bit of a mistake that I have made on the podcast. I'm going to share it with you right now if you're listening to this, back in the past, we did an episode called Fan Questions Number Four. It is the 96th episode of the Aquarium Guys podcast.

Speaker C:

We attempted to special for episode 100.

Speaker A:

Before I forget, this is, I think, 99. So we're getting there.

Speaker B:

Are we going to do something spectacular.

Speaker A:

For the whole we'll talk about it.

Speaker B:

After, but let's do it naked.

Speaker A:

Done. So that was too easy. Too easy.

Speaker B:

Let's do it naked. And I'll wear a dominatrix outfit for.

Speaker A:

Those that are listening. That's the bingo square of Rob's being gay. So I'll check that one off anyways. Oh, no. Next. So in episode 96, 1 hour and 29 minutes in, we answered a question for Cheese Whiz, and I'm going to replay the bit so you can tell us, where did I screw up?

Speaker B:

Now, what episode is this?

Speaker A:

This is 90. Episode 96 Fan Questions Four So it's.

Speaker B:

Like 69 in three backwards.

Speaker A:

Two, one. All right, next one. Bacteria bloom. Cheese Whiz wants to know I've done two water changes over the last two weeks. The tank's still cloudy, and suggestions stop doing water changes. That's number one voted my dick sure.

Speaker B:

Does hurt when I hit it with a hammer.

Speaker A:

You're just the worst. All right, what should I do? If you have cloudy water, your water is not most likely not cycled. Finish cycling the tank.

Speaker B:

Hey, Robbie.

Speaker A:

So that little clip right there was read aloud. So we had the question of what should I do about my cloudy water? Immediately we had the joke of, wow, my dick shirt is hurt when I hit with a hammer. None of that was the problem. The problem was me saying, wow, you're the worst. And that was not directed towards Cheesewiz. That was directed towards Dan and the audience for making that horrible joke. The question was answered saying that you haven't finished your cycle. Please finish the cycle. So Cheesewiz message in letting us know that that wasn't at all what it was. So give me one moment while I pull up in Mr. Cheesewage's conversation so I can go off of here.

Speaker B:

I hope he slams you so hard.

Speaker C:

Hey, Rob. There was no audio in that clip.

Speaker A:

There is on our side. So I'll have to share.

Speaker C:

Okay, you'll have to share.

Speaker B:

You didn't play.

Speaker C:

How can I participate?

Speaker B:

Pay the extra money again.

Speaker A:

We'll talk about it in a moment. So, again, his response in here is that that's not at all what he was doing. He was looking for a second opinion. He's upgraded tanks and moved on since then, but hold on.

Speaker B:

And went to a different podcast. Hold on.

Speaker C:

More than likely, I would have he.

Speaker A:

Found that it was the substrate causing it. He did more research, found that it was the substrate causing it, and he said that there probably was also too many other fish kicking it up as the problem, but it did go away afterwards, and the tank was cycled. So I did do a formal apology to this guy, but we get a ton of questions in all the time of, hey, my tank's cloudy. What's going on? And they won't give us extra information. And to find out, they just set up the tank. They're still doing a bunch of water changes. Maybe they just finished the cycle, but then they do another 80% water change and then don't do anything about the chlorine, so then it kills their cycle. So most of our questions that we get very much lined up to that. So I wanted to put a public apology, and in honor of Cheese Whiz, we're going to do an entire episode on our screw ups.

Speaker B:

Wow.

Speaker A:

Right? That was your screw your I'm owning it clarifying.

Speaker B:

You do a whole episode on your screw ups because I'm damn near perfect. You're damn near well, I think I.

Speaker A:

Could fill an episode of just my screw ups easy, but I think we can all share around Robin. Who wants to go first?

Speaker B:

I think Adam should.

Speaker A:

Adam, you want to go first?

Speaker C:

All right. So this wasn't my personal screw up, but it is something that I learned before I bought my pet store. Jim knows how my pet store was set up. So you know how you walk in the right in the door, and there's just a solid wall of fish tanks, like, what, 30, 40ft down?

Speaker B:

Correct.

Speaker C:

So I don't know if you remember this, Jim, but do you remember how they originally had that set up?

Speaker B:

Yes, I was delivering there for many a year.

Speaker C:

Yeah. So originally how they had it set up was they had the hoods, and then they had back filters, and then they had undergrouvel units, and then they had them all hooked into power strips and then every power strip. Was daisy chained into the next power strip because there was only three outlets on the wall, and there was, like, 65 tanks on that wall.

Speaker B:

At least.

Speaker C:

At least. Well, when I was there, and this was in the summer before I had bought in the place, one of the employees had accidentally spilled water because they weren't paying attention. That person I made sure was fired.

Speaker B:

That's a cute one.

Speaker C:

And they spilled water on the back of the out. On the back of the tanks. In the back of the tanks. And then what they did was it landed on one of those power strips. It set that power strip on fire, which triggered the other power strips. So I had four fires I had to put out really quick. And that's when I learned don't daisy chain power strips. And I cut back on the electricity use. Like, the minute I took over, I unplugged a bunch of the back filters and saved me, like, $1,000 a month in power, too, but still.

Speaker A:

So how was using your first fire hydrant, or what do you call those little fire Audi things? That the cans fire extinguisher there. That's the one.

Speaker C:

We didn't have one. We didn't have one.

Speaker B:

We couldn't afford one.

Speaker C:

You know what I ended up doing?

Speaker B:

Splashing water on electricity.

Speaker C:

No, I just unplugged all of the power strips that were on fire as fast as I could.

Speaker B:

As he's standing in water.

Speaker C:

Standing in water in the back. Yeah. I'm like, I made the people leave. Yeah, it's an extinguisher. I know it's an extinguisher, but still, we didn't have one.

Speaker A:

You do with what you got, right? You do with what you got. That's pretty substantial.

Speaker B:

That's a good learning experience.

Speaker A:

Even in Walmart, back in the days when I used to be a manager at Walmart, manager had certain electricity codes. You had to put a tag on every power extender, like a power strip, and they had to have a tag on it displaying it only for 90 days. So if you wanted to put up, like, a display of a TV or a Christmas tree and you wanted to use one of those cords or power strips 90 days, and then they had to re up and retag it every 90 days if they wanted to keep it up. Just so you're in knowing of that being there and being a fire hazard, that's cool, actually. Yeah, that actually makes sense, because a.

Speaker B:

Lot of fires start from those cheap ass $3 power strip thingies.

Speaker A:

I mean, I'm a younger guy, but how many times have you sat there and been like, I only have a two prong outlet, and then you grab the pliers and then break off the ground to plug it in?

Speaker B:

Been there, been there, done that.

Speaker A:

Not a good time.

Speaker B:

So I lived in an old house, and they had the really old fashioned plugins, and you know how the new plugins now where one is just a little bit wider than the other the polarized side and stuff. I took a grinder and ground down the other one so would fit in. It fit. It worked.

Speaker A:

I got a feeling it's going to be a lot of electrical mayhem, this podcast episode. Well, actually, why don't I just do my next one? I'll take a turn. Adam so I set up a recirculation system with 910 gallon tanks. I still have it, but this was when I first set it up. Put in a new glass heater and it worked great. But the glass heater was under watt, so it was continually running to try to keep up any type of heat. And running 24 hours a day, it being the bottom of the sump, never turning off, and being close to a couple of other objects that moved into it caused a lot of issues. So what I didn't know is that the seals on the glass heater were opening and allowing water in the heater. Because the rack was up above and put on blocks, it really didn't cause an issue of grounding out to the ground. So it was retaining its own electricity. Well, my fish were kind of acting funny. I wasn't understanding why. I was checking PH. Then I decided I had a hole in one of my socks standing on the concrete floor in my basement. And I'd reach in and grab and I feel the current go from my thumb all the way through my body to my feet. That's where I'm like, what's going on? So I'm checking pumps. I'm going through everything.

Speaker B:

Did you do it a second time? See if it did it?

Speaker A:

I couldn't find it. So I'm trying to like, which tank was doing it, because it's nine tanks. And sure enough, thumb ow. Thumb ow, thumb ow. And I just kept going, like not realizing it's all recirculating and it has a continual water flow. And it doesn't matter which one I'm touching because again, my brain wasn't working. So I'm just sitting there repeating myself.

Speaker B:

Because of the microwave?

Speaker A:

Myself? Yeah, because of the microwaves. So I go through, I check each pump. I check everything, not realizing I even had a heater in the unit. I reach down, grab the heater and just sit there and hard cock. Electrocute myself. Like the lights in my house flicker style. Electrocute myself and then burn my hand on top of it.

Speaker C:

This explains a lot.

Speaker B:

I know. I'm just thinking of the same thing.

Speaker A:

Adam I hit the ground.

Speaker C:

I don't know what this explains at all.

Speaker A:

I hit the ground. I don't know what to do. My hand smelled like burning fish. It was disgusting. So be careful with your heaters. Check placement and it doesn't hurt. Check it every 90 days like we do the strip cord. I have electrocuted myself so many times with different fish. Aquarium heaters. Get yourself a titanium grounding probe if you don't know where to find one. You can go on Aquatop.com. They have one message them that the aquarium guy sent. You have those on hand. Someone says, well, when should I and how long should I use my titanium grounding probe before ever? The correct answer, the real answer, should be every tank should have one that has a heater because it's not a matter of if your heater is going to fail, it's when they only have a certain life expectancy, titanium glass, whatever, they don't last forever. It's a coil inside of an object that's conducting electricity for your heat. It will burn out.

Speaker B:

It's a filament, almost like it's set up for failure so we can sell you another.

Speaker A:

So, you know, if it's doing that to you, imagine what it's doing to your fish. My fish, there was just enough water, got lucky. Maybe it was in the sump and it was far enough away, but man, did I take the brunt force hit.

Speaker B:

And that's why Rob is a great criminal right now because he has no fingerprints, because they all burnt off from that heater. So he can go out and do all kinds of naughty things and not get busted. Listen to your DNA somewhere like a bad boy.

Speaker C:

And actually so somebody's asking how would the fish be acting different?

Speaker B:

Skittish?

Speaker C:

Yeah, they're very skittish. Discus, it really with discus, the discus were just they were bouncing off the bottom when my heater gave way and broke an electrocuted dinner plate size and oh, I'm still pissed about that.

Speaker A:

There are fish that are sensitive to electromagnetic currents in the water. You can do something as obvious as, of course, an electric eel, which is more of a knife fish than it is an eel. Those create their own electricity. But there's also more blindfish that use sensors. Sharks have them, for crying out loud. So there are species of fish that are more electrosensitive than others. Some fish did not were not bothered. In my tank. Do I remember which fish it was? No. Am I going to plug that heater back in to figure it out? As a science experiment? Maybe when I have lead gloves. But again, all I remember was some fish were acting squirrely in the tank. Don't remember which ones because, I don't know, maybe the electricity fried my brain a little bit and I was more worried about my hand and shitting my pants.

Speaker B:

The smell of burning flesh and poop.

Speaker A:

If you electrocute yourself to a nice degree and you already had to poop, you might just push out a little bit. Just saying. We're talking about screw ups here. This is my confession hour. I'm having fun. That's what the rest of us are.

Speaker B:

Kind of gagging a little bit in our mouth.

Speaker A:

Maybe we should start selling aquarium diapers if you don't want a titanium grinding probe. Just saying.

Speaker B:

That's another idea.

Speaker C:

We might as well sell aquarium guys. Adult diapers, titanium probes. We're already selling dildos there you go.

Speaker B:

I could use that adult diaper when I go to rock concerts because I drink a lot of beer and I don't like missing anything.

Speaker A:

There are so many things that we could go over and have gone over in the past on what not to do with aquarium heaters. If you want to listen, we did an aquarium heater episode in the past, but we'll happily rehash if you want to ask more questions to us. But definitely grounding probes people.

Speaker C:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

It's still to my amazement how very few ceramic type heaters are out there and nobody's pushing them. And they're kind of a hard plastic outer shell, ceramic on the inside. They also will still leak through the top eventually. Nothing's perfect but the glass ones. Right now, I have two breeding pairs of discus. We have a third pair coming here next week, and they will freaking if you turn on the light and spook them. They'll run right into that damn heater sometimes. And for the first two weeks that I had those first two pairs and stuff, every time I walked in the room, they darted. And now they're used to me or my wife walking in the room and stuff. They just kind of come to the front of the tank to be fed.

Speaker A:

Yeah. Now he's doing Strobe relight training. He's got the disco ball in there.

Speaker B:

Well, that's from our bedroom.

Speaker A:

Oh, never mind.

Speaker B:

Exactly.

Speaker A:

Jimmy, Jimmy, you got a screw up to share.

Speaker B:

I do have a screw up. I do have a screw. And I know you'll know about this, Rob's, because this has happened to you, too.

Speaker A:

Oh, good.

Speaker B:

So for those of you who have done fish rooms and you run the PVC pipe throughout your room, and a lot of times, like, Rob's has got a small half inch, I'm running it inch and a half. And anyway, it's not about the size. It is about the size. Mine's bigger. But anyway, depending on your pump, if you don't glue them together, they'll blow out if you have too much back pressure, and especially if you're running like I used to run a five horse gas blower, and that thing would blow off the end if they weren't glued together. And so then you walk into a fish room that's dead because it's blowing air, because it cut the PVC, it popped it open. But anyway, my screw up is learning to not use PVC cement in an unventilated room. And I'm looking at Rob.

Speaker A:

Because you're.

Speaker B:

Down there running this rubber cement and this PVC glue, and you're gluing stuff together.

Speaker A:

You're such a dick.

Speaker B:

And all of a sudden, you're singing Kumbaya and We Are the World and all kinds of shit you wouldn't listen to. We are the world exactly.

Speaker A:

We are the people.

Speaker B:

And you go upstairs, and my wife looks at me and she goes, look at me. I go, what? She goes, Your eyes can't even focus. On me, can they? I go, you're beautiful. And then I laid out in the yard for about a half an hour to try to get my and that's.

Speaker A:

When you had the windows open, the ventilation?

Speaker B:

Yes. And if you do it in the dead of winter when things are sealed up tight I know you did. It was hilarious. And you called me. I've been puking.

Speaker A:

Literally, I did it in the dead of winter. It wasn't a big project. I just had to do like I don't know what I would like to call an eight. Where literally it was designed like an eight pattern. So I did it. It was about 5ft tall, 3ft wide. And I got so high from that small amount of time with that toxins in the air. My wife found me on the floor giggling. Just giggling on the floor. I physically couldn't get up without her assistance. She sat me in the bed.

Speaker C:

Was that any different than any other time she's found you on the floor giggling?

Speaker B:

No.

Speaker A:

Normally she finds he had his clothes on, this electricity or something else eyes were bloodshot. She sat me in the bed. It took me a while to come fully back. When I did, I started vomiting and I shat blood.

Speaker B:

Yeah, it's good stuff. So highly if you're in the drugs, do that stuff.

Speaker A:

That was not fun.

Speaker B:

And so that's my screw up is not gluing my PVC together. And then when I did finding do it to do it in an unventilated.

Speaker A:

Area, you know what did it? I cheated. Because PVC glues two parts you get the two colored cans, the purple and the purple and the pink or whatever it is. I forget what the other one purple and the clear. And then you're supposed to put them together and then those chemicals bond. Right. I got the stuff that was pre mixed. That stuff is worse. Apparently. I was told by the stoner at Home Depot.

Speaker B:

The stoner? Well, there you go. That's probably don't talk to the stoner at Home Depot. What should I use? They go, oh man, this is oh yeah, this shit right here is what I'd use.

Speaker A:

This will knock you on your ass.

Speaker C:

Is that right up there with like huffing gold paint?

Speaker B:

Yeah. That is quite a thing. I remember the first time that I.

Speaker A:

Swear to God I'm putting a warning right here if you're listening to this, we are not telling you to do this. This is what we're telling you not.

Speaker C:

Please don't do this. This should not be episode that you let kids listen to.

Speaker A:

This is not but gold paint is.

Speaker B:

What people like because it's a better high.

Speaker A:

But then it gives you that cool ring around your mouth.

Speaker B:

I know the first time I saw that I was working at a grocery store and this guy comes in at 06:00 in the morning dressed as a clown. I swear to God, and I'm looking at him, and he's just goofy as hell, and he's got this big old metallic ring. I mean, like glitter. And I'm going, has he been huffing a clown's ass or what? And anyway, he comes in and he steals just a ton of shit. And we're all watching him, and he looks at us dead eye, and he's.

Speaker A:

Like, Sweet, call the cops.

Speaker B:

The cops come and stuff, and they start emptying out his bicycle. He had a bicycle with a basket, and it had, like, three or four bags and three or four cans of aerosol paint and stuff. Anyway, he came back in the next day when he wasn't hiding. I'm sorry I stole from your stuff. I said, I'm still prosecuting your ass.

Speaker A:

Yeah, you have to. The grocery store as well.

Speaker B:

The cops just took them away.

Speaker A:

Yeah, mine was they did the Ready Whip cans.

Speaker B:

Yes.

Speaker A:

I had a cart with a couple of few cases. It was Thanksgiving, and they had the Ready Whip cans on sale for punk and pie. Well, I turn around, I help a gal with her groceries out to their car. I come back, and the entire, I think two or three cases of Ready Whip. The tops were ripped off. It was just filled with whipped cream, but no air. They huffed all the air. So we look at the cameras, and literally, you could just see the kind of the pepper white spray just flow across their face as they're hitting multiple cans at once.

Speaker B:

Same thing with vanilla extract. It's like 65% alcohol. So people come in and steal that and drink that.

Speaker A:

I'm putting a top on this one. There's way too much bad advice here. This is not advice. People do not do any of this. All right, Adam. Exactly. What's your next screw up?

Speaker C:

Well, I was going to talk about heaters, but since you were a dick and decided to use that one, I'm not going to. So I will actually talk about the very first time that I used Quickure. I was, like twelve or 13 Quick, and I thought that Quick Cure was the best thing ever. I was working at the pet shop before I was managing it. I was just a young, stupid kid.

Speaker A:

Is that back in the day when it was blue?

Speaker C:

That was back in the day when oh, Quick here is not blue anymore.

Speaker A:

No.

Speaker C:

When in the did they change the color? I still have the blue. Shit.

Speaker B:

I still do, too.

Speaker A:

I have the clear shit.

Speaker C:

Okay. So apparently they've changed the color on it.

Speaker B:

They have.

Speaker C:

And I'd like to use it because it's good to just if you see ick, you put it in there and it kills the shit. Real mother quick. I'm trying to get three in a.

Speaker A:

Row, but I don't know if I you got it.

Speaker C:

I think I did it.

Speaker B:

I can't believe you did that.

Speaker A:

You got it, bud.

Speaker C:

But anyways, so I was putting it in all these tanks, and I started losing neon tetras. Like, I'd put the dose in there for the tanks, and the neons were just zipping around and acting all goofy. And then the corys were, like, making loops around the tank. And I'm like, what the hell? And Jim was coming in that day, and I'm like, Jim, what did I do wrong for all these fish? I'm treating them for ick and everything. And he looks at me and he goes, dumbass, you can't give it to scale as fish. And then he goes, did you look at the back? And I go, no. And he goes, look. And then he makes me look at it and read it. Because that's how Jim makes you learn. Yeah.

Speaker A:

He doesn't like, here's how you should do it. He just throws papers from the your face.

Speaker B:

And Rob goes, can you email me something?

Speaker A:

Can you email me something?

Speaker B:

Can you email me something?

Speaker A:

Could you text it?

Speaker B:

Can you text it? I don't text people either.

Speaker C:

Yeah, I just thought that I lost a few neons and Corey's and I'm like and Jim goes, no, don't do it again. Go do a water change. So he made me do a water change, and he goes, you can use it, but only at half.

Speaker A:

Know, on the same note, my first time using Quick here, I broke the container and it spilled across my face, and I look like I raped I just raped a smurf for a week. Literally, it looked like I was doing some sort of Braveheart rendition. It was so bad at school, kid, you not blew across my face. I would literally just sit there and just scream. That scene, Freedom, where they're, like, ripping off his testicles. You remember the end of that movie?

Speaker B:

No, I don't remember that.

Speaker A:

It's William Wallace. For those that know, done anything in history, it's the whole battle on Europe. And at the Know, he tries to fight for his people, for freedom, but they rip his nutsack off or his torture.

Speaker B:

You should probably sue that guy that just took your idea there, where you got blue shit all over your face and ink and stuff. And sue jelly roll. Just sue his ass.

Speaker A:

Jelly roll. Jelly roll have blue in his face?

Speaker B:

No, but he's got a lot of tattoos. Pretty close. I love me some jelly roll.

Speaker A:

All right. So, yeah, be careful with that. Methylm blue is the there it is.

Speaker B:

Freedom.

Speaker A:

You see there, Jimmy? That's me. That's a picture of me with Quick.

Speaker B:

Cure on my face with muscles.

Speaker A:

Yes. All right. Thank you, Adam, for that. For those who don't know, methylm blue is an ingredient in some of the Quick cure brands. Mardell, I think, is the one that still has methylm blue in it for the name Quick.

Speaker C:

By the way, I know a guy, so I got a bunch of the illegal chemicals that you can't get.

Speaker A:

Same same. I found a bunch of the old cordell bottles, so if you want to.

Speaker C:

I found all kinds of the old shit. I'm like, but then the guy was like he messaged me and he was like, that I know. And he was like, hey, do you want these antibiotics? And they're like 20 years old. I don't think they're still good or they're going to be really effective.

Speaker B:

Just start out when you start out and going, they're old. Just quadruple the dose. Start from there, work your way up. What could happen? You end up sitting on the floor with eating Oreos with your dogs.

Speaker A:

There you go. All right, so my turn. Back in the day, which was like.

Speaker B:

What, a week ago?

Speaker A:

No, back in the day, I was really excited to watch my first assassin snail. When I was a younger kid, I went to the old Benjamin Franklin and they had some assassin snails for sale. I'm like, what's that? And this old guy comes out because again, I was a kid and everyone's old. Kevin the store manager and says, hey, those are snails that eat snails. Or so I was told. So I bought a couple, brought them home, and it was the coolest thing in the world, watching a tiny snail eat another snail alive. I don't know if you've ever done it. Specifically, if you have an assassin snail, watch it hunt down tackle and eat a ramshorn snail because ramshorns have hemoglobin in their blood. So literally, you could watch the red blood squirt out of it as it's eating it alive. It's the coolest thing you've ever seen.

Speaker B:

So almost as cool as giving a kitten. Benadryl, fast forward.

Speaker A:

We fast forward. And I'm an adult. I have my own home. And I'm like, I have these really nice big baseball size mystery snails. There's no way a tiny assassin snail is going to bother. And I really like these. So I picked them up, I bought them, I brought them home, and I put one of those mystery snails in the tank. And the mystery snails I'm not exaggerating, it was on the line, baseball softball size, huge old Gary. So I put it in there. I'm like, yeah, there's no way it's going to have a problem. So a few days go by and the thing's acting weird. It's on the top of the tank. I figured it's going to be dropping eggs and it's kind of jerking in the tank. And then I notice it has sores all over it. And I sit there and watch and turn off the light. And these assassin snails pack hunt like wolves. Never knew this about assassin snails, but if the snail is big enough, the assassin snails will group together, take it down, and I shit you not, collectively kill a baseball size mystery snail. That was a hard lesson learned. That was a big L on my part. It died horribly, like little chunks getting bit out of it until it finally.

Speaker C:

Why didn't you just take it out of the tank?

Speaker A:

It was too late at that point. It was basically dead. I'm like, well, enjoy your kill. Like, I watched the Lion Pack take it down and it was already going to be dead. There was no saving it. I had other ones. I didn't feel that bad. But that is the moment where I figured that assassin snails, they're a crazy bunch. They will pack, hunt a big animal.

Speaker B:

Oh, look at my snails got sores. Maybe it's got syphilis.

Speaker C:

So here's what I want to know. If we get a tank full of Malaysian trumpet snails, are you saying, like.

Speaker B:

Buy a new tank?

Speaker C:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

Okay.

Speaker C:

And we just get a brand new tank, throw Malaysian trumpet snails in there because they'll colonize the whole thing and be indestructible in about, what, a week, week and a half, tops. Do you think they can out reproduce assassin snails?

Speaker A:

That is a fact, yes. I have done this experiment. They do, and they do out reproduce the assassin snails if the environment is perfect for it, if they have an infinite supply of food, the trumpet snails will outlive the assassin snails. If you have a one to 1.5.

Speaker B:

Ratio, because assassin snails, I mean, how many eggs do they release at a crack?

Speaker A:

They're slow breeding. Are they comparative? They're slow breeding. Comparative to a trumpet snail, for sure, but anything slow breeding comparative to a.

Speaker B:

Trumpet snail, trumpet snails just blow shit out of their butt.

Speaker A:

They're asexual. They can reproduce at a very small size, and they give live birth. It's insane what they can do.

Speaker B:

Kind of like you, but in a.

Speaker A:

Normal scenario, as long as you're cutting off the food supply, eventually the assassin snails won't win. But given that they have a nice size food supply, infinite food supply, they will definitely out multiply the assassin snails.

Speaker B:

So when I've had trumpet snails, I always found the best thing to feed them was a bottle of Hilux or Clorox. They love Clorox bleach works. Clorox or hilux. I just can't believe one of my scripts. I had 125 gallon tank with probably 75 adult breeder angels in there. Anyway, had probably about two inches of gravel, which is a lot better than sand. And anyway, I threw a piece of a bunch of pleco tabs in there because I had a few plecos and I turned off the light, and that was the first time I ever saw when I turned the light back on the next morning, I had hundreds of these snails on top of the gravel, eating. And for the next, after doing some research on the Internet and stuff, not even knowing what I was talking about when it came to trumpet snails, I sat there with a dinner plate and put stuff on the dinner plate every dang night. And then in the morning, I'd get up and it'd be covered with them, and I'd pick them out and throw them away. And I thought I was getting ahead of them. Never did. But anyway, my total script on that 125, which was my favorite tank to this day that I've ever had, we got a new ro unit in and we decided to do a about a 50, 60% on ro water, change into this aquarium tank to get them to breed. And we did that. And about 3 hours later, I'm looking at them going, what is that? And here we'd put in too much ro and the body slime came off every angel fish, and we lost every one of them over the course of about three or four days. And so I killed 75 adult breeding angel fish from too much ro water.

Speaker C:

I've done that too. I've killed fish that way. In fact, I actually called you about it because and you said, yep, I've done that before.

Speaker A:

That's how Jimmy and I met. Jimmy and I met because I was at the grocery store getting jugs and jugs and jugs of ro water, and that's how I met. It's like, don't you're going to strip the slime coat right off of no, no, I mix I haven't had that before. I went home and I mixed extra well, after meeting Jimmy in the grocery store.

Speaker B:

At the grocery store. And I wish I'd have kept walking that day. I wouldn't be doing this podcast, whatever the hell this is.

Speaker A:

I'm so sorry.

Speaker B:

That's okay. It's been kind of fun.

Speaker A:

I mean, I'm not sorry.

Speaker B:

Yeah, this has been fun. We got a good friendship going.

Speaker A:

We've touched belly buttons.

Speaker B:

No, we don't touch belly buttons ever. That's you being gay.

Speaker A:

Hey, there's your bingo square.

Speaker B:

DOB that. DOB it.

Speaker A:

All right, Adam, your turn.

Speaker C:

Okay. So you remember when fish tank keeping was fun and you could order whatever the hell you wanted and nobody really was fun?

Speaker A:

I do remember, yes.

Speaker C:

Well, okay, so it's changed because there's shit that I want to buy now, and I can't find it. It's the same with lizards. I've been out of the game for like ten or twelve years, and I can't find half the shit that I thought I used to be able to get on a daily basis.

Speaker A:

And you're the guy that knows a.

Speaker B:

Guy, and I agree.

Speaker C:

And that's the skip thing.

Speaker B:

You remember the good old days, you'd be able to buy the dwarf seahorses from Coral Gables, Florida, and they'd send it to you in the mail.

Speaker C:

I've looked for that guy.

Speaker B:

I cannot find that dude. If you find it, let me know because I'd like to have a little tank of dwarf seahorses.

Speaker A:

We had Alyssa's Seahorses on, and she said she sends you little wait, what? We had Alyssa's Seahorses on as one of the guests. You were there, Adam. You were there. Yeah, we had a seahorse episode. You can still get them.

Speaker C:

Jimmy yeah, you can still get them.

Speaker B:

Anyways, adam but I don't get Ranger Rick magazine anymore.

Speaker A:

Your thing, adam. Let's go.

Speaker C:

I'm talking about, like, the really cool stuff, like the venomous conch snails that will kill you faster than you can feel the reaction of the dart. Why, like, that type of fun shit?

Speaker A:

You like your wife.

Speaker B:

Why do you buy the sports and mean?

Speaker C:

Yeah, I do. I mean, I like my wife better than yours, so you know what, Jim? Even my grandma didn't like your wife.

Speaker B:

My first one. Come on, my first one.

Speaker A:

Let's get to the story.

Speaker B:

Bingo.

Speaker C:

I would go and whenever I'd see something new on the list, I would go, that looks cool. Let me order it. But then there was this one time, after doing no research, I did no research. I just would get the fish in, look in the book, see what could come close to it. And then I just put, okay, this should be sold for this. But anyways, one time I ordered stonefish, and I think did you bring I did.

Speaker B:

I sold them to you. They're venomous.

Speaker C:

They're venomous. They're so bad. I put them in a tank because Jim was like I'm like, Jim, what do you know about these things? And he goes, Well, I think they're.

Speaker B:

Venomous, and they look like a stone.

Speaker C:

They literally look like a rock. And he goes, Well, I think they'll survive in brackish. So basically, I just threw a tank together in about ten minutes, I just grabbed a couple of scoops of saltwater salt and threw it in a freshwater salt tank and just made it kind of brackish over the period of a couple of hours. And then I'm like, well, what do they eat? I don't know. Throwing some goldfish or something. Okay, well, I couldn't get all the fish out, so then I left them in there. And so I put the stonefish in there, and the stonefish is just there. It doesn't do a damn thing. Lays on there all day.

Speaker B:

Like a turd.

Speaker C:

Yeah, it just looks like a turd. And you're kind of like, what the hell is this? This is kind of worthless. And then I started throwing fish in there to feed it. And then I found out that they actually released the venom in the water, which is probably not in a good ten gallon tank. Not a wise idea to go sticking your hand in it. Also, for future reference, stonefish. When you have stonefish in the tank and they have the venom in the water, your hand gets tingly.

Speaker B:

I'm so glad you didn't put something else in the tank. No, it made my thing tingly. Do it again.

Speaker A:

Wait, what do you call those dick wipe strips? Roman strips. Those wipes that make your dick numb. There you go.

Speaker B:

Back up the truck. What are you talking about?

Speaker A:

You've heard those little, like, you watch some content creator. And they say, hey, use my promo code for, like, Roman dick wipes or whatever they are.

Speaker B:

No, I have not seen that.

Speaker A:

Hold on, I'm looking it up. Am I saying it correct?

Speaker B:

And I've got two friends here.

Speaker A:

There it is. Roman. They call them endurance wipes. Any skin it touches, it's benzocaine. It makes the skin numb. So it's literally supposed to make you last longer. For those that are premature, just a couple of wipes and you're good. I'm just saying, have a ten gallon tank of stonefish, dip your junk, and you'll be ready to go.

Speaker B:

And here I've been using Oragel for.

Speaker A:

Years, Oragel what did you say, Adam?

Speaker C:

Apparently Robbie has that problem where he needs to use at least two dude.

Speaker A:

No, my budy, he's like, I literally see, like, a little pack of Roman lights. I'm like, are those the dick wipes from the podcast ads? He's like, yeah, I tried it. I couldn't do anything for 4 hours.

Speaker B:

Why don't you just put on a.

Speaker A:

Freaking condom lidocaine pretty much for your wiener? No, I think it is literally the active ingredient is benzocaine. So anyway, this has got nothing to do with aquariums anyway. Stonefish and tingling, that's where we're at.

Speaker B:

So you had your drunk in the stonefish tank.

Speaker C:

Continue after like, a month and a half.

Speaker A:

It lived that long?

Speaker C:

Yeah, it lived forever. I actually ended up selling it. So I had a guy drive down from Duluth and he looks at it and he goes, that's a stonefish? And I go, yes. He goes, Isn't it like super venomous? I'm like yes. I go, if you put your hand in there, it's kind of tingly. He paid me 75 fucking dollars for that thing because I didn't even have a price on it. I'm like, I don't know. $75. And he just goes, okay. And he paid, like $12.

Speaker B:

I was going to say I said $12 was the price.

Speaker A:

Wow. I don't know if that's a pretty bad one to top. All right.

Speaker C:

It's called not preparing the people for that. By the way, I'm pretty sure it was also the same guy that he bought that he was the guy that they called me from Duluth, where they gave me a call in Duluth one time, fish and Wildlife or the Minnesota DNR, because there was a guy that got bit by his cobra and it killed him. And he had this house full of venomous shit in there. And they were like, can you come get everything? I'm like, well, is everything caged up? And they're like, no, we're pretty sure cobra is loose. And I'm like, I don't have a snake hook. And they go, oh. I'm like, can you turn down the heat? And then I can go get it. Well, we have another guy coming from the cities that knows how to handle these. Okay, what did you want me to do? What did you want me to do? Well, we thought you could catch it. Well, where am I supposed to keep it?

Speaker B:

Put it in your pants.

Speaker A:

Not a lot of thought.

Speaker C:

I already have one in there.

Speaker A:

Also, we did get a message from Chat here. I thought this was a good one to go over. He said, numb your hand in the stonefish tank so you can use it as the stranger.

Speaker B:

Oh, I love that. I've been using my left hand.

Speaker A:

There you go. Oh, God.

Speaker B:

Eat a couple of gummies, use your left hand. And stranger danger.

Speaker A:

This episode is through the toilet. All right?

Speaker B:

That's where most of our episodes end up.

Speaker A:

I'll make you feel better, Adam. I'm going to do a good one on my list. So for those that don't know, I've done this before and after and I don't learn my lesson. When you import fish from another country, a lot of those places put chemicals in their water. Fish treatments that are very illegal, federally illegal to use as anything for fish. I know that, jimmy knows that. I know that. The first time I did it, I didn't know Jimmy. I imported fish in and I got sores burn marks across my hands from getting the water onto them. Didn't learn my lesson there. So Jimmy and I order some fish internationally. Jimmy, of course, knows this, warns me. I'm like, ah, I'll be fine. And I get such a horrible skin infection from a small tiny cut on my hand from getting from some of those import things. It goes up my hand, up my arm, and I'm getting freaked out. I go to the doctor, they immediately put it in wrapping all kinds of goodies. They put me on broad spectrum antibiotics and they're threatening to put me in the hospital because they think I have some sort of bacterial infection, sepsis going through my system.

Speaker B:

I could have put you on antibiotics.

Speaker A:

From imported put me on antibiotics, rub.

Speaker B:

An old fish bag on your forehead.

Speaker A:

Fish bag, antibiotics. So for those that don't know, there's a lot of crazy stuff that can happen, whether it's chemicals, whether it's some sort of international infection or something you can get from bacteria in the water, do not risk it. If you get any fish from any international place, treat it like a quarantine. Get kitchen rubber gloves, don't let that water go anywhere. Net your fish through, clean your nets after the fact. You don't know what you're going to get. And it in some cases, could be life threatening.

Speaker B:

You're a pussy.

Speaker A:

You and I have gotten some weird shit happen to our hands and arms before.

Speaker B:

The worst thing that happens to me is if I have cuticles or those little hangnails on my yes.

Speaker A:

And that's where it came from.

Speaker B:

That's where mine always started, too. I used to get burnt from those chemicals quite a bit and stuff, and I got the point where I was wearing long sleeve shirts, but I put on gloves. Never did that.

Speaker A:

Yeah, I mean, you'll get like one time my thumb, a little hangnail got from that me dipping my hand in one of those international bags. My thumb blew up like a balloon and then literally dripped pus for a week.

Speaker B:

Yeah, there's some crazy stuff that they use overseas that is not regulated by anybody and is kind of dangerous. You're talking about importing stuff, and this is something that I learned, and I don't think it's really going to affect anybody, but I'm share the story anyway. So I get a phone call from my elementary school and they go, Is this Jim? I go, yes, it is and stuff. And he said, can you come down.

Speaker A:

To the school today?

Speaker B:

We'd like to talk to you about something. And I'm thinking to myself, this can't be good. Anyway, I get down there and stuff and they said, does any of this look familiar? I go, yeah, that's all the packing papers that I get with my tropical fish when they come in. Well, my son had asked he asked he asked me, he goes, Can I take some of this for show and tell? And it's newspapers from Thailand and it's got like a big story, a picture of some stuff and all this language that you can't read. And I go, yeah. I said I told him he could take it and stuff because they were talking about different foreign languages. And I said, this is pretty cool and stuff. And then the principal yeah, he goes, I thought it was really cool too, until I saw this. And he turned it over and there's a freaking naked girl from the waist up. And I went, Shoot. I said, I didn't see that part. He goes, yeah, I kind of figured. So he said, next time. He goes, maybe we'll do a better job of looking at this before you send it to school. And I said, yeah, I definitely will. And I see this principal from time to time, and he says to me, still important fish, importing fish. I go, yeah. He goes, Good for you.

Speaker A:

Good for you. Ken confirmed. Was it the second to last order? I got internationally had nude women on it, right in the loose paper in.

Speaker B:

The package, just on page five or whatever they do.

Speaker A:

Yeah, it's normal. Well, I was talking to a guy, he was the head It person for a national gas station chain. And he said that he got a call from human resources in their Chinese location because they have a lot of their products manufactured in China to bring over to the gas stations. The Chinese location contacts them saying, hey, the firewall is blocking content for our employees. I need you to unblock it. Oh, what content? Can they not get to their work applications? Can they not get to an important site for the local news? No, they want. To unblock porn because apparently in the area that they were in, it's common when they take their 15 minutes breaks that they're just going to go consume porn in the break room.

Speaker B:

Wow.

Speaker A:

Yeah. So it's a very different culture, more nudity on public items like papers and different culture.

Speaker B:

Yeah. Our friends just got back from Spain. We just had dinner with them the other night. And their middle child, who's 20 years old, is over there for schooling for Spain. And so they flew from Minneapolis to Amsterdam, amsterdam to Madrid. While they were at Amsterdam, they thought, you know what? We want to go see the part of the city. It's 11:00 in the morning. Let's go check out part of the city. And so they have their younger son, who's a senior in high school, and their middle child, who is 20 years old, and they go walking, and they end up in the red light district of Amsterdam at 11:00 in the morning. And the two boys were so embarrassed to be with their mom and dad because all these females were sitting and doing the old little naked dance in the window thing at 11:00 in the morning. And Heidi said, I don't know what was funnier, me and Ty going, this is pretty cool. To my kids going, oh my God, I can't believe they're doing that. And I'm here with my parents. They said it was just very interesting, the culture being so much different over there. And they were only in Amsterdam for like four or 5 hours. And so they were talking to some of the locals and they said, is it safe to be down here at night? And they said, you know, until about midnight. And after midnight it goes crazy. And you don't want to be anywhere near here if you're a tourist.

Speaker A:

Here we go.

Speaker C:

I want to go, Jim.

Speaker A:

Here we go. We got one of our listeners that just popped in a comment in, says it's all over Europe. I was in a Romania. I saw topless girls on TV at 10:00 a.m. On public television.

Speaker B:

Yeah. And these boys, one's a senior in high school, and he's going, yeah. And then the middle child is like, so embarrassed. Ty goes, well, I know who which one of my perverts is?

Speaker A:

Hey, so, Adam, it's your, um well.

Speaker C:

Okay, so I did the quick here. I did the daisy chain. Remember when you could get the good stuff?

Speaker A:

I feel like that's the podcast. You remember the good days?

Speaker B:

We can get the good stuff.

Speaker A:

Well, I shoved it up my butthole.

Speaker B:

I butt.

Speaker C:

Okay, you in airline tubing, Robbie.

Speaker A:

So what good stuff this time out?

Speaker C:

You remember when you would order live rock? It was actual live rock. Like they took dynamite and they dynamite.

Speaker A:

They harvested it from natural locations.

Speaker B:

Not with the hammer. They used c four.

Speaker C:

Yeah. And I'd order buckets of live rock.

Speaker B:

Yes.

Speaker C:

And then I told you guys the story of how I got the blue ring right in the live rock.

Speaker A:

That sure did. Yeah.

Speaker C:

And I'm going to get another one. But anyways, the other stuff that you'd find I liked opening the buckets of live rock besides the smell, because you never knew what was in the live rock.

Speaker B:

And you wouldn't know for four days afterwards, either. Yeah.

Speaker C:

The one time did I tell you, Jim, that I think I called you up because I found a pistol shrimp in yeah. Yeah.

Speaker B:

The amount of stuff that comes in that live rock at that time, they'd come for those of you who've never shipped in live rock. It comes in a five gallon pail, basically wrapped in wet paper, tall or wet or wet newspaper. I mean, there's not really any water in there, but it's been harvested over in Indonesia or wherever it came from. And we used to get when Ty and I would bring it, we bring in four or 500 pounds at a time, and we'd go up and get all these five gallon buckets from the airlines, and they're like, what the hell are you guys doing? And the amount of stuff that would come out of there was incredible.

Speaker C:

Oh, it was awesome. I'm pretty sure there was an illegal species in there all the time. There was always something awesome. One time I got live clams. The only thing that what I'm going with this story is how it was a screw up is before I realized this, that you're supposed to rinse it off with some salt water. I would just put it in the tank, and I poisoned an entire tank because of all the dead silt and everything, all that bio dead waste. Just the tank couldn't handle it. Even though it was an established tank, it just couldn't handle it.

Speaker A:

You just crashed your cycle from the shit on the rock.

Speaker B:

Yeah. You open up a five gallon pail and the smell was incredible. God, it stunk.

Speaker C:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

And you swear to God, everything was in there is dead.

Speaker A:

Sounds delicious.

Speaker B:

We opened up one time when we had about an eight inch moray eel come slithering out of the rock that had been dry forever.

Speaker C:

Yeah. And it was still alive.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker A:

We had him forever.

Speaker B:

We kept him. His name was Kevin.

Speaker A:

Kevin the more wow. That just put in live rock and just watch your shit die.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker A:

All right.

Speaker B:

Ty and I had a 300 gallon big rubber what do you call those big you have one several back here.

Speaker A:

Yeah, the cattle troughs.

Speaker B:

Cattle troughs. The big rubber ones, the rubber made ones. And he would get in all this rock, and we would put it in there, and we had lights above it and stuff. And Kevin lived in there. And we'd throw in flipping goldfish every couple of days and stuff, and the goldfish would be gone. I mean, it hit the top and Kevin would come out of nowhere.

Speaker A:

Poor Kevin.

Speaker C:

Did you ever figure out what kind of mooring eel Kevin was?

Speaker B:

No. It was it had spots on it. That's all I remember. Had some kind of like little white spots on it and stuff. Because I remember we were, you know, because we're such good saltwater guys, maybe the things got ick, but it was just this metallic stuff it had on it. So it's kind of incredible.

Speaker A:

Sweet. Well, yeah. My turn. So I decided, with Jimmy's help, that I was going to put up a shrimp rack. And the shrimp rack had multiple shelves so I could fit on there. Twelve two and a half gallon tanks. And I had a nice shrimp colony going there for a while. That rack is still actually behind Jimmy in our studio right over here. And for those that have seen our live streams, some people have seen that wooden rack next to my stairs on the camera. But what it was again, it had those shrimp racks. And then on it, I got these I think I bought them off from Ty because Ty was emptying one of his warehouses. I got these long, I call them river tanks, but essentially they were frag tanks. You would put different coral frags in them. They were what, Jimmy, eight inches wide.

Speaker B:

By what, four foot long?

Speaker A:

Three foot long, yeah.

Speaker B:

Acrylic.

Speaker A:

Acrylic units. And they had dividers that were pre built in them. So you put your corals in them and it could flow down. And you were supposed to make a recirculating system for salt water out of them.

Speaker C:

It was the idea.

Speaker A:

So he's used a bunch of them. But these are extras that he had that he never used. So I bought them, and I wanted to take a dremel, cut out the dividers and turn them into one long river tank. So I had three of them. I decided one was the sump, two were the tanks, and I used PVC pipe and made a recirculation system out of them. Now, what I didn't realize is that these had the recirculation systems I did before, had the water return valve above the water line. Meaning that when you turn it on, it literally you would trickle the water into the surface of the tank. These had the return in the center column of the tank, something I haven't done before because they were already pre drilled. They already had bulkheads because they were supposed to be pushing salt water through and having these fittings and valves to put pressure to have flow across the corals to grow coral. So I used the same fittings, I left it in the tank and I got the whole thing going. Now, what I didn't realize, because I haven't used that particular light switch, is that the homeowner decided that he was going to put a lamp on that light switch. So he had it wired that when you shut the lights off and you go upstairs, it also shuts that light switch off, which controlled the entire recirculating system. And I couldn't figure out for the life of me, because every time I come downstairs, the lights would be on, the pumps would be working. Well, I flipped the light on at the top of the stairs, so I flipped the light on. It's enough time for it to spin up the stuff. So here's what would happen. I'd fill up the recirculating system. Everything would look good. I go upstairs, I go all the way up to the kitchen at the top of the stairs, flip off the light where I'm not hearing it because I closed the door behind me. And then I come downstairs and my basement had water all over the floor, and the recirculating system just shit everywhere. I'm like, well, what am I doing wrong? Is the pump kicking out? Is something happening? And it took maybe twelve times of flooding my floor to get the idea that when the power goes off, when the return heads are in the tank, it's essentially siphoning out the water to the sump below, literally, like you would have a siphon hose to that level and taking all that water and putting the sump. Now, when I have two tanks and then one tank below the same size as the two tanks, that water flows down overfills it and dumps essentially one of the three tanks to my floor.

Speaker B:

It spews.

Speaker A:

It spews and dumps all over my carpet. So if you're making a recirculating system I love recirculating systems with UV filters so they don't have to share disease. I love them if you're making them, make sure that your return spigot is above the water line. Otherwise you're just creating yourself a or the sump is big enough that when the water siphons back down, it doesn't go to your carpet. So I have not restarted that system. I had it working for a while. I even paid an electrician to make sure that circuit was off of the light switch, so it quit shutting off. But I got sick of that. Anytime you had a small little electric brownout or the power goes out in the middle of the night, it kicks off, and my floor is covered in water. I just got so sick of it. So now I have these tanks. I haven't done anything with them since they're dry, and I'm coming up with something else to do with them.

Speaker B:

Plant some cactus in there.

Speaker A:

Plant some cactus. Plant some cactus. So, yeah, don't put your return tips in the water.

Speaker B:

Don't put all your bunnies in a basket.

Speaker A:

Don't pour all your eggs in one basket.

Speaker B:

There we go. Bunnies, eggs, whatever.

Speaker A:

Jimmy, what you got?

Speaker B:

Learning experience. So we were so excited, my budy Ty and I found somebody who was breeding piranhas. Now. Somebody in the United States. Breeding piranhas is very tough to find.

Speaker C:

There's two left, I think, in the country, right?

Speaker A:

Those are actual farmers that farm out piranha. Yes.

Speaker B:

And they usually won't take on new customers. They normally don't advertise because they don't have to. It's like these blackworm guys where there's only two or three of them in the US. People somehow find them. And anyway, we were so excited to find this guy and got a hold of him and he said, yeah. I said, how many do you want? And I think we bought 300 pranas that were the size of our little fingernail.

Speaker A:

Yeah, they're small when they come, they're.

Speaker B:

Small and you have to send them when they're very, very small because they go through the damn bag. Now, these are red breasted pranas which are kind of the pussies of all the piranhas because we've had the other ones, we've had god, the black ones, we've had the gold flake metal one, whatever. And they are aggressive as hell. Whereas like this tank, if I dropped a net in there with 300 piranhas I would just reach in and grab because they're small piranhas and they're pretty skittish.

Speaker A:

And if you want a quick recap, we have a whole episode that we talked to Frank Maggie Nalis. I'm butchering his last name. We were very cool to get him on the podcast to talk in depth and sadly he passed away. Since we've talked to very, very knowledgeable guy, no one else was better to talk to about piranha. But do continue.

Speaker B:

Yes. So anyway, we got these piranhas and we find out the guy's breeding them in cement vats. And when I say cement vats, I mean what are those things they call where they bury people vaults, right?

Speaker A:

Oh, the cement coffins.

Speaker B:

Yeah, the cement that the coffins go into a vault.

Speaker A:

Right, the vaults.

Speaker B:

So anyway, if you go down to Florida and you are able to go on to like five D and some of these different places that breed fish and keep fish, they have a lot of these cement vaults lined up, hundreds of them and that's where they keep the fish. And they put a bulkhead in there, they put in aeriators in there and they can put on thousands of fish per vault. They don't have to worry about them blowing away in a hurricane because they're freaking cement. They're low maintenance and the cost isn't that bad on them from my understanding. But anyway, so we talked to the guy and he's breeding them in cement vaults because he says they're very skittish and if they see you, they'd rather just stare at you and try to defend their territory than breed and stuff. So I said I finally had success breeding them in these cement vaults. He's doing it out of his garage and so we get 300 of them and the guy says all you need to do is keep them really well fed. And so what we did, thinking that we're so smart, we lined up, probably. We had 110 gallon horse trough, rubber one. And he told us, he said, take a bunch of plastic bags, like garbage bags and shred them and hang them from the top. So it's kind of like seaweed hanging in an ocean so they have places to hide. And so the first one we do, we do just that. And we kill 300. And we're like, they're all dead in a day and a half. And we find out that these garbage bags have some sort of film on them to keep them from sticking together.

Speaker A:

And the toxins killed them all.

Speaker B:

The toxins killed them all. Okay? But it took us a while to figure it out.

Speaker A:

So sniff your bags. And if it smells like potpourrite, it's probably poopy for your fish.

Speaker B:

Yeah. How about you just use, like, plastic plants rather than using garbage bags? Sure.

Speaker A:

Or Walmart bags. I bet there's no chemicals on there.

Speaker B:

Yeah, I'm sure not. So anyway, back to square one. Okay. Call him up. Yeah, I got more. God, because we love spending money. Send us some more. He felt bad for us, so he sent 350. Because he felt bad for us. He said, I'll give you an extra 50. So you guys try to make us in your money because I gave you bad advice. Okay? So now we have this thing full of plastic plants that we've had in other tanks that every fish keeper has got that box of goddamn plastic plants that are brightly colored. And every fish keeper.

Speaker A:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

And so we loaded this thing up with plastic plants and we went, you know what? Now we've got a board that goes across the whole thing. We've got six feeders on this thing. Six feeders. And we're feeding pellets. We're feeding flake. We're feeding whatever we got. And we put on six feeders on top of this thing. And then we put a light on it so they could eat all night long. Well, apparently, if you leave a light on it 24/7 they'll eat all the eyes out of each other. So in about two weeks time now, they've gone from the size of your little fingernails to almost a nickel size. The majority of them don't have eyes. They look like blind cavefish because some asshole fish in there starts eating eyes as a delicacy. And the guy told us that, too, after we called and said he goes, yeah. He said, if you don't keep them well fed we said, well, we had them well fed. Six times a day, they're getting fed.

Speaker A:

You had to keep a auto feeder on them?

Speaker B:

Yeah, we had six auto feeders. And he said, yeah, you just got to keep them in the dark, bitch.

Speaker A:

Frank told us that, too. That you got to keep them dim lit.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker A:

Curb the aggression when they're young.

Speaker B:

Right. Because we like throwing money at a problem.

Speaker A:

You bought more?

Speaker B:

We bought more. We bought our third batch did the same thing with low light. We actually kept them covered, and we only probably lost about 20 fish out of the 350 and made some money finally. But by the time we get done selling them, you're certainly not in the black. No, by the time we get done selling them, a lot of them are size of a quarter. And now you got to use six bags to freaking bag them up so you could take them to a store to sell. Because what little money you made, you spend in freaking bags. So that was my little Piranha how to lose money story.

Speaker A:

So I can confirm I got some people that still ship piranha and whatnot and what they'll do also, not just piranha, but like pictus, cats, stuff like that, will poke a bag. They're now putting them they're getting cheap plastic containers, making sure there's holes drilled through the plastic containers. They're putting the plastic containers in a fish bag. I mean, that's the only way you can take care of it. Yes, it costs more, but not much more. A plastic container is not going to be that bad, right?

Speaker B:

I mean, and they're already putting oxygen in the bag and whatnot and stuff, right? And of the when I get fish from Seegers, farms, especially like Pictus, or if I get discus or something that's.

Speaker A:

Really skittish some of the big quarries, they all got spines. They'll take Dantes cats, they'll take those bags.

Speaker B:

And you've seen those bags where they come in, and they're half black. Yeah. And some of those things they'll take, and they'll put another black one on top, so it's 100% black when they're shipping it.

Speaker A:

Keep it all dark.

Speaker B:

Keep it all dark and try to keep them calm.

Speaker C:

When I got my gold piranha shipped up, the Peruvian gold ones, the super aggressive ones, they shipped it in its own styrofoam container full of water. And then they had shipped it in a five gallon bucket, and it was taking chunks out of the bucket.

Speaker A:

Wow, he was pissed.

Speaker C:

The guy that bought it, he drove down because he was like because nobody would bring them in because they're just such a pain in the ass. And I'm like, when they come in.

Speaker B:

The mortality rate is about 90% on those damn things because you can't get them here alive.

Speaker C:

Yeah, well, I did. I got one, and I got one alive. And then I'm like, okay, here you go. He was just astonished to see that it was alive and everything. And he goes, well, how much is it? I'm like, $200. I even warned him. And he goes, oh, okay. Well, I only got 175. You better find the other $25 because otherwise I'll throw it in the tank. You never see these things anywhere. He paid the $200, but yeah, bye bye. It only cost me $35 to bring the damn thing.

Speaker B:

Yeah, they're very hard to find. And usually when you find a rare one, like a black or the gold flicked one, it's somebody's pet that they are just tired of feeding. Right? And the thing is, they never have an idea how the hell to ship them either when they're that big.

Speaker A:

What do you got, Adam? Yeah, what's your turn?

Speaker C:

I'm pretty much done with all the stupid stories.

Speaker B:

All right.

Speaker C:

You guys know my lionfish one and everything else.

Speaker A:

I'll keep them coming. People have listened in and heard about my Arowana story. For those that haven't heard it, you can listen to prior episodes past, but I'm going to rehash it today. Y'all been bitching making memes hold on about Rob's Arrow.

Speaker B:

Hold on. I'm going to go get a box of Kleenex for you.

Speaker A:

All right? You all can just all over me. All right. I feel like we have a nice, diverse selection. Adam used to run a store for many years. Very successful store. Jimmy's been wholesaling for many years. What did I say? 30 plus years, Jimmy. Correct. Been doing a lot of good out there. I am the out there guy. I like to sample a bit of everything. I will drive four states away to get a fish I've never had before. I've sampled a lot of weird, weird things. So with our powers combined, we make a mediocre podcast. So in our endeavors, Rob's sees that a particular wholesaler that Jimmy and I work with has acquired two things, a particular blonde stingray and a Arowana. So I don't know if you heard the story. I got the stingray in. It was feeding well, we're doing a good time, but it actually choked on food and died. It was a horrible mishap that I blame on nobody other than bad luck. When I was there, my roommate looked at it because he was watching it happen. As I watch it happen, he's like, what's going on? I'm like he's choking. And there's nothing I can do. If I get in there and I pinch him, he has a stinger. And that stinger may be venomous, especially at this age, I have no idea, and I'm not going to risk it. So I'm not going to get my hand in there to try to free the stingray. I'm not Adam.

Speaker B:

I should have gave it malt to mouth, right?

Speaker A:

And as it's dying, my roommate goes, I bet that's how you're going to die someday. And then he just walks the fuck upstairs. So that was horrible. But I still got this wonderful black Arowana. For those that are listening, arowana, the actual Asian arowana, the ones you see in pictures and whatnot are illegal, federally illegal in the United States. So if we want arowana, we have to have South American and Australian arowana. So, again, federally illegal for Asian arowana. So you can get South American and Australian. Those are completely legal. But those particular species, however they do look nice, are not near as colorful. So you're generally stuck with silversque species now on a list from a particular wholesaler. They were proud because they said that contact us about a new species, it wasn't even on the list. So I contact them and they say that they have acquired in six individual black arowana. They have got these black arowana first time they've had them in the trade, and this was a ways ago that should date me. First time this particular wholesaler has got them in, and all they have is six that they're going to select more of their VIP people to get the first six. And I beg, plead, and cash in some favors with Jimmy and myself. And I get it in.

Speaker B:

I get the they gave you the retarded.

Speaker A:

I already told you, the stingray died. The arowana is doing great. Hand fed. I have it fully. Like, I could follow my finger, do a loop de loop in the tank. Fun arowana. I got a big tank for it. Great. Let's have some fun. Well, there just so happens to be someone that said, hey, I have a Shovel Nose Tiger catfish, a small one that needs a new home. And they're just going to literally their plan was to throw it in a Minnesota lake and stream.

Speaker B:

They should have threw it in the dumpster.

Speaker A:

Jimmy and I are nice people that try to take in fish rather than watch them get flushed on a toilet, or worse, thrown back into nature that they don't belong and cause an invasive species or disease. So I take it in. I don't have any place to put it at the moment. So I'm like, hey, I have this tank. All it has is a youthful black arowana in it that is twice the size of this Shovel Nose cat. Let's put them together and see what happens. So I don't know if you've heard the story in one of the storytime episodes, but Rob's did not know that the Shovel Nose Tiger Catfish has some of the same abilities as a gulper catfish. And it swallowed that entire arowana hole. I literally came down and saw just the tiny bit of the tail sticking out of its mouth and the center of this fish so round it looked like it was some sort of soccer ball. Just crushed my hopes and dreams. A throwaway, illiteral reject fish ate my prized arowana, and I've been bitter ever since. And you guys have been up my ass on this for a while. I was here. I saw it. You literally saw.

Speaker C:

That that would happen.

Speaker B:

I didn't care.

Speaker C:

You ignored his warning.

Speaker B:

I got tears rolled away. The look at Rob's face, he goes, I'd have bet you $100 that he couldn't have swallowed it. And I said to him, I see you spent more money than that on.

Speaker C:

The.

Speaker B:

Yeah, he was distraught, to say the least. Actually, I had him on suicide watch for a couple of weeks because I thought he was going to kill himself.

Speaker A:

Now, for those that are going off, that was a pretty big purchase. I purchased a blonde, very rare stingray. And you guys can look up stingray prices. They are just the same that they used to be. They are terrible. Now everybody's asking, what in the world did I pay for that arowana? And for those that are listening, I'm going to censor this out for the normal listeners, but this will be in Patreon, the unfiltered version. So go to Patreon.com Aquarium, guys, spend the dollar to figure this out. But I spent on just the arowana wholesale. Now, if you don't understand wholesale, if you see a fish for $6 wholesale, we paid fifty cents to seventy five cents for that fish a lot of times. So wholesale, I paid for that mother before shipping, before shipping, before shipping, shipping.

Speaker B:

And ship.

Speaker A:

For that fish.

Speaker B:

At the time, his car was worth about 800.

Speaker A:

My car was worth less. Yes, significantly less. I get that in. And now all I have is this fish that ate it whole. So awful.

Speaker B:

Yeah, that's still a great story.

Speaker A:

Awful.

Speaker C:

You know what, Robbie? You could have almost thrown my endlers in there and they probably would have survived.

Speaker A:

Just, you know, I could have. I really could have. So, yeah, that was fun. Now, black arowana are nice and cheap.

Speaker B:

They're dirt cheap.

Speaker A:

Yeah, they're dirt cheap. And that was expected. We know how farmers do it. I paid the price premium to be one of the first people to get them. I certainly was. I enjoyed it and I got shit on because of it. But yeah, now you can get a black arowana for just a few points more than a normal silver arowana. And they're quite prevalent in the hobby thing, thanks to what they did in farming.

Speaker C:

So, Rob, I do actually feel sorry for you. If I can get one of those baby ones of the special kind, do you want one?

Speaker A:

You mean of the illegal kind?

Speaker B:

He'll take two.

Speaker C:

I'm not saying anything illegal.

Speaker B:

He'll take two.

Speaker C:

I'm just saying if I can find some babies, do you want one?

Speaker A:

If they're not illegal, I'm in. If they're illegal, I'm very so what.

Speaker B:

Robie didn't tell you at the end of the story is that a few weeks later, I'm still feeling really giddy about him killing this fish. And so what did they have on sale from Secrets Farms is they had blueberry baby arowana, which is horrible, by the way. They dyed these little arowanas blue or red, and I bought them a blue one and gave it to them.

Speaker A:

Literally, what they do is they take a silver arowana, it's not a process I put it proud of in the hobby, and they dip them in an acid material with color, and it's literally a silver arowana with a burnt tattoo hue.

Speaker B:

They put it in a tidy bowl.

Speaker A:

Yeah. When you get them, they still have a touch of the yolk. Sometimes they're that small and they look real blue. And then when they get old, they just have like this shitty tiny tinge of a faded blue. Yeah, it's not fun.

Speaker B:

Look like an old smurf.

Speaker A:

Actually, I don't even think you paid for that. I think that the story was that the wholesaler threw that in because she liked the story.

Speaker B:

I think you're right.

Speaker A:

That's how it happened. You did not buy that intentionally. They wanted to give a consolation prize to what happened because I still had the picture of it. I sent the picture to them and they thought it was so damn funny.

Speaker B:

We all did.

Speaker C:

Yeah, well, so that was Julie, right?

Speaker A:

Yeah.

Speaker C:

At least Julie felt sorry for you when I called her and told her that I was stung by that goddamn dwarf lion fish and my arm was going numb. Well, if it gets any closer to your heart, you'ren't you like she gave.

Speaker A:

The difference is I paid her much more than you did.

Speaker B:

You're looking for free information. Robbie gave her a bunch of money.

Speaker A:

She's looking for another sale. You know what I'm saying?

Speaker C:

Well, she probably figured I wasn't going to be much of a sale after that. Robbie, you should post the picture on Patreon.

Speaker A:

I'll do it. I'll post a picture on Patreon. And then you'll see it wasn't how I originally found it. I originally found it where it was just a tiny tip of the tail. The picture I have is sort of regurgitating it so you'll still see most of it consumed.

Speaker C:

He didn't even swallow it and shit it out. He just literally killed it and puked.

Speaker B:

Oh, no. He pooped like a Clydesdale.

Speaker A:

No, here's what happened, all right, so he swallowed it whole. The tiny it was like one inch out of its mouth was all just a tiny tip of its tail. So I knew it was an arowana. Was basically all it was. And it was literally perfectly round. The thing was so stretched out, it was insane.

Speaker B:

Looked like it had a softball.

Speaker A:

It looked like I put an air compressor and just blew it the up. So then what I did is I thought it was going to die and choke. So I quickly ran to get a stick. And by that time, like, you know what? This fish panic set in. And then I'm like, this fish. I'm just going to let it be.

Speaker B:

That'S after he called me, then I.

Speaker A:

Get my phone to take a picture. And by that time he sees me, he's panicking and he's starting to regurgitate it. So by the time I got the picture, there's a little bit more than just the tip of his tail out. But eventually he just puked the whole thing up and I just got to see my dead floating Arowana.

Speaker B:

He still pooped a lot?

Speaker A:

Oh, yeah, he digested a good chunk of it. But yeah, if this feels better, especially after that question and answer episode and you feel like we're hoity toity and above thee, we make mistakes too. We learn every day in our hobby. And this whole episode is out to Cheese Whiz. Glad you got your cloudy water fixed. And my mistake there brought us an entire episode talking about our screw ups. I got one more. You got another one, Jimmy?

Speaker B:

Nope. I am perfect.

Speaker A:

All right, last one for you people. So I decide, because again, I'm the guy that tastes a little bit of still there's fish I haven't had I'm not an absolute expert, but let me tell you, I've had a lot of fish in my days. One of them that I started getting into was freshwater clams. I've had freshwater clams in the past. They do a great job. If you've ever had a bacteria bloom in the tank where the water turns green, generally what you have to do is a bunch of water changes. You can chemically treat it, but the best way is using a UV sterilizer. UV sterilizer literally kill the green water right out of it and clean it up to crystal clear. But the second best thing you can do is have freshwater clams. They will filter out the water. And if you put, say, four clams, six clams in a big tank of green water in four or five days, they'll have it pretty well cleaned out. They filter that well in the tank. They feed off of the nutrients in the water column, all the crushed up flake, anything that they can get. They are a filter feeder in the tank. Wonderful if you have the correct snail. Snail clam. I again offered something to rescue. Hey, I'm getting rid of my tank. You want some of these snails? I've never seen the snail before. Snail. I keep saying snail. Ever seen the clam before? I've had clams. Clams work out, why wouldn't you have a clam? So I take in the clams.

Speaker B:

I like clams.

Speaker A:

I put it in my tank. And the clams do their thing. When you put a freshwater clam, you drop it in the tank and they'll flop to the bottom any which way. I'm a sand guy, and clams do very well in sand. So what will happen is they'll stick their tongue out, they'll write themselves, and then they'll almost like 75% bury themselves just to leave a little tip outside the sand. And they will do this in gravel, too. It just sand is a little easier for them.

Speaker B:

Just the tip.

Speaker A:

Just a little tip out there. Just the tip so they can filter water in and out and feed properly. They're a lot of fun. So I got these clams, put them in the tank, and everything was doing fine. Well and dandy well, fast forward to a couple of months later and I had fish die and all this shit in my water column. Well, little did I know that the incorrect clam species I'm going to read this verbatim some clams reproduce by tiny microscopic larvae which attach to the fish's gills, potentially causing Whirling disease that may kill your fish. So my fish were acting sporadic, spinning, like they were having seizures and then reduced flat dye.

Speaker B:

No kidding.

Speaker A:

So that was what was happening, is I got a bad clam species. They were doing so well and healthy that they bred and released larvae into the tank, attaching themselves to my fish's gills and completely eviscerated the tank. So if you're listening to this, clams are fantastic, but get the correct clam, live bearing clams. Otherwise the common ones I like Asian clams, the are commonly called gold clams, prosperity clams, or good luck clams. This, I can never say this name. Jimmy can you give a crack at it?

Speaker B:

Krabucula I don't know.

Speaker A:

Philuminia again, golden clam, prosperity clam, or good luck clam. I will attach this inside of discord. This is my particular favorite clam, and there it's attached in discord. There's also another one that's a little lighter. The gold clam is more of a yellow species. This is a lighter white species. These are all fine to do. They will not have larvae that attach to your fish's gills. Learn the hard way there.

Speaker C:

So I do have a legitimate question here. Are these legal to bring into the US. As for the pet trade now, because I thought that you couldn't bring in clams anymore or anything like that.

Speaker B:

I couldn't get golden clams?

Speaker A:

Yeah, that's this actually the golden clam is the prosperity clam. So that is the one without the problem.

Speaker B:

Okay. Yeah, because some of the wholesalers sell the golden clams and they're available. They're not that expensive.

Speaker A:

Most clam species actually are on lists, especially such as zebra, mussels, stuff like that, because clams do very well in cold water. These Asian clams, I've had them die in colder water. I don't actually know what their temperature range is because I just use them in any of my aquariums and they've done fine as long as I'm not doing a full on cold water koi tank and putting them in my pond outside for them to freeze over the winter, I haven't had too much of a problem. But again, I know they didn't. I had a clam in my pond, definitely died in the fall before even begin freezing.

Speaker B:

Now, I got a quick question on clams, because on snails, if a snail goes bad in your tank and you have a small enough tank, it will take out your tank. Because snails are just hideously when they die. They just reek and they just do havoc in your tank. Our clams are the same.

Speaker A:

You're getting to my second screw up. So as I have that tank, have to completely bleach that tank out, start over. I get the correct clams and the correct clams do very well. They breed decently, slowly. They're a lot of fun. They do move around the tank and they filter your tank very well and keep the water column clear for you. However, if they die, you have to inspect your clams. If you see a clam in there and you haven't seen them move, you don't see any current around the clam. That clam probably is dead. And you should grab a stick and do a check because when they do crap out, they are like twelve snails that died in your tank. They will toxify the water column and have a smell worse than any dead snail.

Speaker B:

So what you're saying is you should take your stick. Take your stick, poke your clam, poke your clam.

Speaker A:

Here's the test. If you're having the clems, at least the Asian clems that I recommend, you can just move them and they'll immediately stick their tongue out to rebury themselves. It's pretty easy to see that clam close. Anytime you touch them, they'll collapse and close their shell in defense. So very easy to check to make sure that they're dead or not. But sniff that clam, poke the clam with your stick.

Speaker C:

Do you have to feed them anything special if they filtered all the food out of your water columns or no. Do you have to put like that liquid filter feeder food or anything like that?

Speaker A:

Some people do the liquefied stuff. I've never done it, and I've had great success with clams. But here's what I do. If I'm using pellet, I'm taking a little bit of the pellet every feeding and I'm purposely crushing up a pellet. If I'm using flake, it's easy. Just take your finger and crush up that flake and they will grab pieces of flake out of the water column.

Speaker C:

I would like to have a clam person on here. This is kind of an interesting part of the I've never thought of them as a fish keeping. You know what I mean?

Speaker A:

I bred clams, I've kept clams. I don't want to consider myself as a high end expert, but I've had a lot of experience with clams. Clams can be.

Speaker B:

Dan.

Speaker C:

Now, here's a question. Will assassin snails attack them?

Speaker B:

Good question.

Speaker A:

No, they will not, because the clams close up, they have their own defensive system and assassin snails will not bury through the clams. Now, I have not tried that with the horde of assassin snails. I've tried that with a normal amount of assassin snails. So for those that are listening that heard the first story of the podcast, they hunt in packs. Maybe they'll take down your clam. But I haven't had any problems with that at all.

Speaker B:

I have several different things to say and none of them are appropriate. Politically correct.

Speaker A:

Did somebody get clams on the hashell?

Speaker C:

Did somebody get a bingo, by the way?

Speaker A:

Did somebody what?

Speaker C:

I'm just wondering if somebody got a bingo.

Speaker A:

Oh, you never know. Hop on discord. Find the bingo card. Listen, every episode uses a drinking game if you want. If that's something you partake in legally.

Speaker B:

Legally?

Speaker A:

Legally, yeah.

Speaker B:

Because drinking is illegal everywhere.

Speaker A:

Yep. Clearly. But yeah. Anything else, Adam?

Speaker C:

No, I think that's it until I get on a new watch list for something or other.

Speaker A:

All right, I'm going to do a quick wrap up before we end. We had a few listeners put in some of their stories here. So my biggest screw up, I was doing a water change on my Axolotl tank, which was upstairs. My neighbor came over to tell me there's water flowing out the front of his house. My GD, Victoria Falls, because my dumb ass completely forgot I was filling a tank. Note to self, no more drunk water changes. Definitely almost got a divorce after creating Victoria Falls out my house. Thank you, D. Fisher. That was definitely a screw up to share.

Speaker B:

That has happened to all of us.

Speaker A:

Next one by Snalm. Biggest screw up. I had a two and a half gallon tank using guppy fry to remove paper towels that I was using as a filter media because I thought it was gross. Then I watched all those fried die in front of me.

Speaker C:

Why did that I never understood that.

Speaker A:

Must have got sucked in. Oh, he was using the it must have been a pre filter. And he watched them all get vacuumed up. All right, that's pretty bad. Next one, altered llama. One of my few mess ups is when my husband was doing a water change in some of his L 260 plecos. I walked into the fish room and noticed the tank looked weird, only to realize there wasn't any water at all. He thought the siphon would break when the water would go lower than the python, but luckily we were able to save the flopping fish. I've definitely done that same shit.

Speaker B:

We probably could do. Two podcasts on things with pythons have gone wrong.

Speaker A:

Just water changes in general where you forgot what hey, do they sell pythons still?

Speaker B:

Yeah. I just got a brand new one.

Speaker A:

For those that are listening.

Speaker C:

Oh, nice.

Speaker A:

If you're wanting to do this python auto change system, you can go on Amazon. I think for like six to $10, you can get just the replacement python adapter tip so you can use your own garden hose instead of spending the $80 or whatever it is for the full kit.

Speaker B:

I tell you, I was really impressed with my store that I was supplying. Went out of business, and I bought their python from them. And the hose now is not a very rigid hose. It's very flexible and very soft, and I was really happy with that. And you can step on it and it still flows, but it slows it down.

Speaker A:

But I'm going to clip this out just for out of context right there. Yeah, it's really nice when it's soft. You can step on it. It feels real nice in your hand.

Speaker B:

So if you're wondering where to get information on clams, just type in pornhub.com.

Speaker A:

Call me. Call me, maybe. All right. Another fail is not having lids in your tanks and fish room. Our red tiger cichlid not reading that scientific name, by the way. Named Jaws. Well, they named it that's. Nonpromber. Problem number one is our designated trash disposal unit for guppy culls. One day she hopped over the tank where we had a new pair of our electric blue Akara that they just spawned. And man, it was a bummer coming home to find that the male Akara was dead, protecting the female. Luckily she survived and we put Jaws back with a very secure lid. Never again going lidless. We call that topless topless around the aquarium.

Speaker B:

Guys, how many times has your $2 fish killed your $100 fish? Or your yeah, or adam, how many times has a rat, a $4 rat killed a one $200 snake?

Speaker C:

All the time.

Speaker A:

All the time. That's why you give your rats Benadryl.

Speaker B:

That would be fun.

Speaker A:

That would be fun. That would be fun. Oh, man. Just looking through, you know, when they always die too.

Speaker C:

That right there is my favorite blank.

Speaker B:

Right?

Speaker C:

Next day or within a week, dead.

Speaker B:

Right?

Speaker A:

This one by another one by D. Fisher. I lost $500 worth of discus recently. Still have no idea what happened. My vet did a necropsy and didn't find anything. Discus plague is all we concluded to oh, didn't know you could do autopsies on.

Speaker B:

All right, if I was a vet and somebody came in with a dead fish, I'd be going, hell, yeah, I'll do that.

Speaker A:

Yeah, I'll take your money.

Speaker B:

Yeah, I couldn't figure it out.

Speaker A:

$200, please.

Speaker C:

So I'm trying to figure out what would wipe out all the discus. Was there any symptoms? Is that guy still on here? I'd like to ask him if there was any symptoms.

Speaker A:

Let's take this offline. If you guys want to join the conversation discords in the show notes, come join. I believe that's the last one that we got. Thank you all for coming, and if you like the podcast, please share it with a friend. Join on slash aquarium, guys. It's in the show notes. Love your support, and please share it with a friend. Jimmy, you know, do you want to play us out with your didgeridoo?

Speaker B:

No, I'm actually going to go pro with my didgeridoo.

Speaker A:

One more toot toot, please.

Speaker B:

One more toot.

Speaker A:

One more toot.

Speaker B:

Hold on. Here we go. Not very good.

Speaker A:

Not very good. Until next time. 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.

Speaker B:

Don't send pictures of your junk unless your junk is amazing.

Speaker A:

You whore hard cock. I electrocute myself and I shat blood.

Speaker B:

Let's do it naked.

Speaker A:

Done.

Speaker B:

La.

Speaker A:

I just raped a Smurf for a week. We are the world.

Speaker B:

Exactly.

Speaker A:

We are the people.

Speaker B:

Has he been huffing a clown's ass or what?

Speaker A:

Y'all can just all over me.

Speaker B:

Stranger danger. Because I'm damn near perfect.

Speaker A:

Punk and pie.

Episode Notes

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