Hey, all you fish heads out there. My name is Smoke and Joe and I have some questions. Do you have fish? Do you love your fish?

Yeah.

Do you love your fish enough to buy them their own song?

Oh, yeah.

Who needs another castle for the tank when you can have a custom tune made for your favorite binned friend? It's easy. You tell me about your fish.

I have the best fish.

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Hi, Scrapchaw here. I've been up way too late working on this ad. Be note it's not too late for going to joe's Shrimpshack.com and placing an order using the Aquarium Guys at checkout for a 15% discount on my entire order. With a wide variety of available shrimp and crawfish species to suit my fancy, joe is there to help. Joe also keeps a ready supply of shrimp king foods, tissue cultured, plants and off filtration equipment, and plenty of other odds and ends. But let's not forget his most famous products, the chola wood by the inch and the most prized item in very limited quantities aquarium guides. Certified shrimp bathwater. Yes, that's right. Just use our promo code, Aquarium Guys at checkout to get your 15% discount and help support the podcast Joe Shrimp shack Working tirelessly that you don't have to. Also, I'd like to mention that this podcast was fairly long. It was over 2 hours that we spent with Matt peterson of amazon's Magazine senior editor. So, that being said, this is part one that will be an hour long, and part two shall also be an hour long that you could pick up next week. So now it's bedtime for me, but you guys can enjoy the show.

Welcome to the Aquarium, guys. Podcast with your hosts, Jim colby and Rob golson.

Hi, Jimmy, Robbie.

What's going on?

What you got for news this week?

News? I've got no news. We got through the big deep freeze, and now we're a few weeks away from spring.

So on the way in here, you were telling me that you're now broke because of all the plants and fish you got by mistake.

Yeah, last week I ordered from our friends from Aquinotics, and they sent me tons and tons and tons of plants in a cardboard box when it was 35 below. So that was rather expensive.

Damn.

Anyway, but the fish all came in good and the shrimp came in good, so I'll make money back on that.

Oh, yeah. Well, I'm Rob dulson.

I'm Jim colby.

And I'm Adam on the shire.

So this week we have the special guest as a return guest for the third time now, Matt patterson. How are you doing?

I'm doing great. Thanks for having me back again.

You are King pow wow of the Amazon Us magazine. And might we say that finally, you peer pressured my ass into begging Jimmy to get it for me for Christmas.

And I did.

And I did.

Awesome. Good job. Thank you.

Yes.

Are you able to eat it's finally?

Yeah, I wanted you guys to be able to have a little snack, so I bought rob's. rob's little subscription.

Rob steals it.

Yeah, I was trying to rob stealing it for my health, actually. It was just kind of for myself.

It was all about and then Adam got us another fantastic magazine.

Huh?

You got Jimmy two copies and I got one.

No, jim's wife got him a copy and I got him a copy.

What two copies did you get twice there, Jimmy?

Yeah, and I will for the next year.

Apparently, Jimmy has been collecting all of the fishkeeping magazines.

I've had tropical fish magazines since I was 1617 years old, so probably since 1970, 919, 80. And I've got all the amazonas, and I kind of forgot about tropical fish hobbyists. Discovered it's, like Barnes and Noble or something. And my wife saw it, and so she ordered it for me. And in the same day, I got two copies. And I knew Adam had ordered one for me for Christmas. And she goes, oh, I can't believe it's already here. I said what? She goes, the magazine I ordered for you. I said, oh, that explains why I have two copies.

See, now I have to expect it. Like, Jimmy buys amazonis for everyone. Adam buys tropical fish magazine for everyone. I just need to get pkf. And now we have the full trifecta.

There we go.

What's pkf?

I don't know.

What practical fishkeeping.

See, that's what the people exist over across the pond. That's huge over there for them. brits. Okay, well, Matt, super excited to have you on. And today's topic, we're going to talk to you because I don't think anybody's better than you to talk about clownfish. And might we put rest in peace about your poor lightning?

Yes. Moment of silence.

There we go. Thank you. Thank you, scrap. We will talk soon. Go to a deep dive and ask you why that's relevant to the clownfish hobby. But we got a few things to go over. Number one, I like getting random gifts. And I feel like we should talk about more written material, especially since we have the peer pressure of a gentleman from magazine coming on. So I was given a gift, and I love these weird gifts I get from my friends. They're like, oh, you like fish. And then I get random shit thrown at me. So normally it's like an old Walmart accessory, like a retarded spongebob, the square pants figurine that's chipped and nasty. But on this occasion, I was given a pretty cool little gift. fishes and introduction to Ichtheology by Peter, moyle and Joseph I'd say that.

Chet.

C-E-C-H.

So I've been starting to go in, and I'm not going to lie, Jimmy, this is actually interesting because the last time I pretended to like anatomy, it was to get after that cute redhead in high school.

So now he didn't get the cute redhead he wanted. I'm impressed. That's a nice book, but I'm even more impressed that you can read, actually.

I know there's not as many pictures as I was hoping, or colors.

A lot of them black and white. Maybe you could color them in with a pencil or something.

But it is pretty great. There was a bunch of squished leaf clovers in here when I opened it up. So I feel like that's what they're.

Using the book for. Print.

The print on the front looks like it's out of the 70s. What's what's the published date on it?

Oh, boy.

Hold on. It's got a funky I feel like.

A real funky looking you find those.

Like, in the first couple of pages, don't you? 82.

Okay. I was bored.

Yeah. Shit, this is old. Oh, my God.

That's the year I graduated. You freaking holy shit.

This is going to go caveman arrow, right there no other news, Jimmy.

I've got nothing, man.

As an aquarium status update for you listeners, we're getting 150 more pieces of Cholo wood sent to us by maverick. I need something otherwise known in our community as the Jim tang poontang because there's a lot of different tanks out there. poontang is by far one of the most exclusive and rare saltwater varieties. So thank you for that, Mr. poontang. We are now going to use them as Lincoln logs to assemble some sort.

Of I have been busy taking the toll of wood and some volcanic rock, and I've been putting anubus on them, and I'm selling the crap out of them. And I'll be able to pick up anubis for next to nothing. And I put the anubis on the Cholawood and been selling it at my store. And people are going crazy. And so now I bought Volcanic Rack this weekend when I was out in bismarck, North Dakota. I ordered some Fluval superglue to super glue them onto the rock. And everything I've read says you super glued on or leave it on there for five to six weeks. And they'll actually hold onto it by themselves. So I've been putting the cholerawood to good use, unlike Rob, who's playing Lincoln logs.

Honestly, if you had so much sticks in shallow wood, wouldn't you build a house with it?

No.

To be a shrimpy sized house.

Yeah. I'm putting it to good use.

All right. I'll take the L on this one. All right. So we have some listener questions here submitted to us. Laura wants to ask some questions. Love your podcast. And guys, I'm not just saying that so you'll answer my question right? She wanted to establish that, but that's.

A good way to start that is it.

I have two tens and a five gallon and super happy, including the stupid trumpet snail that hitchhike from some plants. The parameters of the tanks are perfect.

Bought a used tank on fire, set.

My tank on fire. Bought a used 37 gallon tank, set it up. I used plant care of C. Floromax. I'm not familiar with that brand. Is that part of the fluval ones?

It could be, yeah.

And fluval stratum. So it's not. Apparently she makes two different types. I'm not a big fan of the fluval stratum stuff. It's really messy compared to the other stuff, especially for the huge price. But, I mean, it does the job. I can't say I've ever had bad plants growing it hoping to have in a planted aquarium, which I will take a lot longer since now I have snails on everything anyway. Never used the substrate before, so this is new to me. I'm using the same water for all the tanks. Well, water, so no chlorine or anything. I put some filter medium to the new tank filters. I bought three guppies and put them in there. First one died on day two, the second one died at day three. I moved the remaining to the tens. PH was six in the new tank. Is this because of substrate? Is there something else I need to do? I was planning on moving my fish, my granddaughter this weekend. Obviously this cat happened. Is there anything test I should be doing? So it sounds like it was rushed. I hear nothing about a cycle being established or looking for that, so this may be a rather new person. So if you're listening to this, make sure to establish the cycle and we need to do a podcast in the cycle. Jimmy, we've been ignoring it for far too long. There are way too many beginners that need to know more about the cycle, so future stuff to come, but certainly you can look them up. We'll have resources in the podcast notes for how to establish your cycle, but that's going to take a process of normally two weeks. Establish your cycle in your tank, and then if you're using substrate like that, let it settle. Give it some time for the filters to do their work so you can get all the particles picked out of it, especially with fluval stratum, which is just a cloud of muck.

Well, but she has a Malaysian trumpet snail in it, so she might hold tank on fire and start over.

Well, the Malaysian trumpet snail is basically a sniper in the trees, killing feeder, guppies.

Is that what it is? They're gorilla.

Gorilla sniper. If you've got one trumpet snail, you've got 10,000. Okay, yeah, now, man's, just smiling.

That information is not at all factual. However, you probably do have a ton of trumpet snails for those that don't know if you're jimmy continually for many episodes made fun of trumpet snails. But if you feel like, oh, I don't have that many, you have a ton. And they come out at night. So turn the light off your tank, put a plate out, put a chunk of food in the middle of a white plate and let it sit for a few hours and complete another blackness, and then see how many millions of baby trumpet snails you have. So I know I have a million in one of my tanks that is quarantined from the rest of my tank forever. I pulled out the Fluval F four unit out of my 75 tank.

Is that a gun?

I have not seen a trumpet snail in that tank because I have loaches and all kinds of shit for probably a year. I take out the canister filter, and the entire sponge on the top of the Fluval F four is completely caked. It's like hard, chunky peanut butter because it just fills so much with the snails.

Yeah, because they get eaten in the main tank, so they hide in the canister filter.

Exactly.

They are they are devil incarnate.

See, I feel like Matt has some input on this.

Not really, no.

He's just giggling at the gorilla Sniper comment.

Are you pro or con, trumpet snail? Pro. Con. Come on, Matt.

I don't have any, so I guess I'm con. There you go.

Who needs politics when we can have real controversies such as pro or against trumpet snails?

I'll just tell you a quick story about I had a 125 gallon tank full of baby angel fish, and I knew I had a few trumpet snails in there. Didn't really pay any attention, and I did just that. I put down a ten inch ginger plate with a big piece of zucchini or something that I had, and I'm not kidding you, I took out about £7 of trumpet snails over the course of two weeks, thinking I had gotten them all, you know, and then meanwhile going, why aren't my god dang angel fish growing? I'm feeding them brine shrimp twice a day, and they're getting flaked twice a day and they're not growing. Well, the trumpet snails soak up all the calcium in the goddamn tank because they're making their shells. And after doing many, many water changes and getting the trumpet's nails under control, I mean, never got rid of them. But then my fish took off and people told me I was crazy. But I really believe that's true because of the calcium deficiencies that are in the water, because all the snails are sucking it all up. What do you think? Does that sound right, Matt?

I need a calcium test to tell you if that's true or not, but it's an interesting idea.

Yeah, actually, I can add some anecdotal info to that because I had noticed some bent spines and some of my guppies, and I just have rams horns. So the fix for me was throwing a cuddle bone or like one of those things you buy for your bird to peck at. I just threw that in a 20 gallon and no more problems with the bent spine.

I don't have issues with bent spines in my tank, but I have thousands of placos, as you know, Jimmy, and they were starting to not grow so fast.

So that's because you didn't need to. Water changes.

I do water changes. I do them quite often in that tank just for the sake of thousands of fish stuck in the 90 cube in there. I looked at my mass amounts of ramshorn snails and found that some of the snails were getting quite whited, brittle, broken. So I did the same thing and I suddenly had no more growth issues as much. It certainly expedited growth. I didn't have any bent spines or anything, but I feel like that if there's not a lot of resources in the water, what can the fish do? Next question. We have Michael He messages in to put a note. So in one of our prior podcasts not too long ago, we talked a little bit about different I think it was in the set up to fail episode where we talked about certain fish. And why certain fish are set up to fail is most of the time because people haven't done their homework or they're being spun in some other direction. And one of them that we put up is puffers. There's a huge puffer craze, and most puffers have a rigid feeding schedule type of food. I mean, there's a lot more to it than just keeping, like, a normal fish because of beet grinding, special food, snails, stuff like that. clams and lumped in there was mentioned about pea puffers. Now, I want to clarify on here. He says they are not brackish at all, and they do not wear down their beaks on snails or like other puffers. Please fix this so you're not all wrong there. I don't know how that was insinuated. I think puffers got batched into that, pea puffers got batched into that. And pea puffers definitely like more salt. They're not a full on brackish fish. I use them with salt with a lot better success. And as far as wearing down their beak, I've never seen any need for that. But I do still feed them snails. They go better, they grow better, they feed better. If I have a large amount of small snails in the tank for them to hunt, they're a happier fish overall. But I don't have beak issues like you have on the other puffers.

I do something really interesting with my pee buffer. I have a 20 long up top, and I have my pea puffer in my five gallon. And speaking of having a constant supply, I have the rams horns in my 20 gallon, and when they're on the chola wood, I just swap the cholo wood out from tank to tank and then he's always got food.

As long as you're okay with both tanks being quarantined. That's a fantastic process.

I do have one thing that I forgot about. I was going to talk about real quick. Do it last week. Some people were asking or two weeks ago about discus and where to get good quality discus and I had originally said ken's fish which was wrong. I meant kenny's discus is what I meant. Now kenny's discus is now permanently closed. What did you do Jimmy? No, unfortunately Kenny got diagnosed with something terminal and he's spending his last few months with his family and so they're asking people do not call, just send him well wishes but he's not going to be able to respond to anything and stuff. So if you were going on to contact kenny's discus and stuff I'm just here to tell you that I got an email from them the other day saying that he doesn't have much longer to live and he wants to spend the time with his family and stuff. So unfortunately he's got great discus but unfortunately he's closing permanently. That's horrible.

I reached out like a year ago to have on the podcast and he was a bit busy then.

Yes, so very unfortunate.

Well I think we need to pick up another mood with another question when they have a couple more grady message in asking permission to ask a question. So I said of course, ask a question here. Thank you. I appreciate that. I'd love to know if you guys have any experience with silver dollars and wondering if you have any tips for them and what would go well with them. Make a biotype maybe for them. So Jimmy, what's your experience in silver dollars?

I sell a lot of silver dollars. I don't like them. They get really big. I'm not a fan of them. They become pretty evil when they get large and stuff. So as long as you're prepared to have a very large fish I mean it's a very flashy fish when it's four or five inches big but I'm just not a fan.

Any experience I've had with them has been really hardy fish interactive with you not with other fish in the tank. And if you're going to have them with anything, if you're going to have them with anything I would certainly recommend making it bigger or just keeping them alone. A nice school of silver dollars with nice tall plants where they could swim through, hide behind and have some shade. Do a lot better for their aggression. And they school very well, they live quite a hefty long time and you can also get fun patterns on them. So good fish definitely do your homework that they're not going to stay nice and hatchet fish sized forever. They grow very fast. Any other additions to that Matt?

I love them but I like putting them in with cichlids and they're good tank mates for bigger fish.

It's like trying to throw the NFL linebackers in with the rest of the team.

See, Jimmy hates cichlids. So this would be I don't hate.

Cyclists, I don't know, considered a cichlid.

Every time they go in.

A lot of cyclists, they're et cetera. But if you're going to have some South American larger cichlids, a possible candidate with the right fish, and there's some really beautiful silver dollars. I'm really a real big fan of things. They're calling it the blackberry. That's one to go look up. It's very expensive because it's a strain that's bred. But the Tiger silver dollars have come down in price since they're being produced in Florida. Those are really fantastic.

Last question, and I think this will be jimmy's favorite. Again, we might do these out of Order. So forgive us if you're listening to this out of order. We had a gentleman named Matt that decided to compare us to Howard stern and care enough about our podcast to let us know that one of our particular episodes sucks shit.

Just one episode? There's a lot more than that.

I don't know if he's new, but we certainly appreciated his feedback and gave him correct information. So he has now come back after that and said thank you because we wrote him a rebuttal and talked about on the podcast and said, thank you for your response. Now I have a question. So he went from telling us off and saying our podcast sucks, especially this particular episode, and that we're like Howard stern. He doesn't like that bs to immediately transitioning to a full question.

Oh, good, so we got the wrong answer.

No, I feel like we just gave him such a good answer back. He now trusts us, so we won't break that trust. Now, Jimmy, he says, I have a question. I want to set up a small shrimp tank for breeding tanks in a row in a tank I build above my desk. I understand the idea of greater volume, the more stable the water is, and that is also a big consideration. It will be in a bedroom with sponge air filtration and shrimp substrate. And I'm assuming he's meeting volcanic ash clay like they do in the little balls. It's premade media. You can certainly find it different places. Even Joe Shrimp shack has it. I was thinking either 410 gallons or five gallons with the short side facing out. Any reason I should not do either besides water stability?

And he's going to put this in his bedroom?

Yes, he's making a bedroom tank because clearly his bed doesn't rock near as much as yours, Jimmy.

That's true. I love aquariums as much as the next person. I've got 40 downstairs in my basement, and I just got done insulating my entire fish room so I don't have to listen to the bubbling. So my first question is, do you want to listen to the bubbling all night long? In your bed.

Sues me.

I sleep to that when I go to sleep. Yeah.

Really? It's a fan or bubbles.

See, I have to have a fan running. I like the white noise and stuff.

I just feel like as often as you have the tequila virus, it might make you want to pee.

I do get tequila virus now and then. So I would start out with fives just for the size. He said fives or tens, right?

Fives or tens.

And I would start out with fives. And that way you can keep a nice assortment because you want to keep your shrimp separate. You want to keep your red separate from your blues, from your greens and stuff and start out there. Even though the price of a ten gallon tank is cheaper than a five gallon tank. But I would personally start out with five gallon tank just to see how it goes for you. And you can always add on from that and stuff, but it's going to take quite a bit of room on a shelf to do ten gallon tanks across. You're talking even at the short way, you're still talking about 5ft.

Apparently he did the math. So it fits.

All right.

I think that's where the four tens versus the five, five and a half, same to me. It's a no brainer. Just do the four tens. It'll cost us. You double up your volume. That's really where I would besides the.

Water stability is presentation. Looking at a tank from the short end in sucks, especially for shrimp, because they're all going to be buried. You're only going to see a couple if this is a bedroom tank, you're going to be sitting there at night, you're going to want to look at your shrimp, and it's going to be a lot of fun. So I do what's is a better presentation. Now, that being said, I have a rack filled with two and a half gallon tanks, but there's a long way, so I have better presentation. So as long as the presentation fits, it fits on your shelf, it really doesn't matter. You can put them on tiny tanks.

I didn't realize you guys had a problem with presentation in the bedroom.

I mean, something's got to distract. Otherwise he's going to stare at my shrimp, if you know what I mean.

Yeah. For money wise, ten gallon tanks are the way to go. Size wise. Bigger is better. That's what you guys are saying.

Maybe.

All right.

Also going, he's gonna have comments again.

I love how the Howard stern or the guy that compared us to Howard stern got nothing but a bunch of bedroom jokes. So yeah, I hope that burns.

Yeah, I hope it burns.

No, we're just kidding. We love you. You appreciate us and you give us feedback. That's all we can ask for.

Let's get into it.

So, Matt, we normally would always start asking people, how did you get into the podcast, but I want to stop people here. We have a couple of different podcasts with you in there, so certainly go back in our catalog. You can see you're talking about amazon's magazine. What was the other one you came on to talk about?

Probably clownfish.

No, that's this episode.

There was one put down the drink, Matt.

There was one in between. I can't remember.

My brain hurts.

Jimmy, he's probably trying to talk us off to you guys should really quit the podcast because you suck. And that's probably what that one was about. But yeah, this is our third date with Matt.

As in third date. We clearly swipe, right?

I think I know what it was.

We talked about the jars. jars. God. Thanks for showing up, Matt. Out of four of us, we couldn't remember what the heck it was.

So certainly go back to those podcasts. You'll find them array through our podcasts. And in there, we do learn more about Matt, his roles and responsibilities at amazon's magazine, and all the fun stuff he's done. Hey, he's even holding Coral magazine, which, again, he's part of as well. What was that? spawning night? You pulled that one out just for us.

This one I pulled out for every single reader. The January February issue. Look at those polyps. Okay, if I want to see those.

Pop ups live, you can join us. Go to corngrasspodcast.com. On the bottom of the page you'll find our discord link. We do these Monday nights at seven Central. So come join the debauchery. And then you get to see matt's polyps. And who wouldn't want to see matt's polyps?

Wow.

I'm just saying we got to get them in somehow, right? The podcast is not for the kids. They should know that by now.

That's right.

All right, so, Matt, before we get into the deep dive topic of clowns and why you are such a prominent figure in the clown world, what will it take? brass Tax here, Jimmy, to you on us doing an article in either Coral magazine or Amazon us about the elusive puntang.

You'd have to buy the magazine.

Darn.

Then you can publish whatever you want. All right, well wait, is this an option?

Yeah. Adam goes. adam's got a lot of goals.

Adam, what's our budget on this?

Enough money.

Do you take crypto and other assorted metals and possibly other things that have no inherent value but street value?

It's all over. Well, rather than berate you with silly conversation, Matt, tell us your experience with clownfish. How did you get started with specifically clowns?

Oh, man. I was twelve. I had my first saltwater aquarium when I was ten. When I was twelve, my parents agreed to let me have a larger one. So I went from a ten to a 30 long and actually don't. My first fish was a clown fish or a second fish. I had a cinnamon clown in my ten. So I was ten years old, had a ten gallon salt water tank, and it was a damsel, a yellow tail, blue damsel, and then a cinnamon clown or second fish I ever kept on the saltwater side. And then when I was twelve and had the larger tank I was talking about, I got a pair of oscillaris clowns, common clownfish, and email, and I was hoping to get them to respond. I don't really know if they ever did or not. I was a young kid, but even then breeding clownfish was a possibility. So that was my second experience with clownfish. And then obviously, given my industry experience and all that, clownfish is just a staple of the trade. But the next time I personally kept clownfish, I was in my mid twenty s, and I was dating my wife at the time and we were living together and she said I was back in the trade for a bit. And she said, yeah, hey, it kind of would be cool to have a pair of clownfish. And I said I could do that. And I think a week later we had to tank at the house and then a pair of onyx perks that I believe were collected in the solomon Islands, but we don't really know. And those spawned those are the first clownfish that I reared successfully. That was back when Reef Central did a thread of the month. My clownfish breeding log was one of the threat of the month, and then I got banned from the site like a week later.

Why?

Because Reef central and I don't know what their policies are anymore, but they had a policy of you couldn't what was it? You had to be a sponsor if you were a commercial seller. And marine fish breeders were determined to all be commercial because the only reason anyone would ever want to try and breed a marine fish would be to make money, which is ludicrous. And I remember arguing back and forth, I had posted up a whole batch of clownfish for sale for like $50 because they were super young and I needed their tank for quarantine because I had a velvet outbreak. So I think I put them up like $2 a piece. Just come, take however many are here, try to rear them like 17 days old. And I got slapped with the band for being commercial. So when they lifted the temporary band, I didn't take kindly to it. And I proceeded to show my entire hatchery with my hardwood floors, my lost condo in Chicago, because that's the perfect place. Starter marine hatchery, right? yep. You basically told them to go fluke themselves. Something like that.

Yeah, we sell those t shirts, by the way, man.

I might need one. That was kind of the gateway into marine fish breeding. They weren't the first marine fish I bred, but they were the first cow fish that I bred and then kind of goes full circle. Several years later, I bred the harlem File Fish. That was the first thing I ever published in Coral Magazine back then, just as a contributor. And then I think the reason most people know me now in the clownfish world is the lightning clownfish. And the reason that to really be short on that story, the reason I ended up with that fish was because I had just accomplished what I had done with the harlem files, and I was writing a lot, and so I was already kind of in a position of prominence in that regard. And they approached me and said, we'd like you to see if you can breed this. And we know you'll write about it. And I still cannot say how much I paid for it. It was the most expensive fish I ever bought. I want to say it took about two years to get the offspring and to have that project be a success. And as we were talking before we started, every single lightning, maroon clown in the world descends from that one fish nickel tour.

So the reason you don't talk about how much you spent on that fish is because your wife is in the other room, or you just can't tell us because you got to kill us.

She knows, and she had to approve. I said, this is not one you can hide. This is not unravel. So I basically said, they want me to do this, but I have to pay for the fish. They're not giving it to me. And I can say the highest publicly disclosed bid was $7,000, so I can't say whether I paid more than that or less. But I said, we could buy this, and it could be dead in a week, and are you okay with that? This is how this could all go down. And she said, I trust you. You know what you're doing. If you think it's a good thing, you think you can do this successfully, then you should do it. And we did, and it worked wonderful. It was a big gamble. No one knew whether that mutation was going to be a genetic thing that would pass along the offspring, and we just got very lucky. Overall.

This is such a unique story. I don't want to just glaze over it. For those that are listening, how did you come into the know of this fish? You were writing about it.

You said no. 2010 So I was already working with Coral magazine kind of as a contributor and a senior editor, more of an honorary position at that point. I'm still very active in the marine breeding community, although I'm not breeding any marine fish at the moment because my projects aren't working. It really was breeding the harlequin file fish, which I was the first person in the world to do that. For those who don't know, it's also the orange spot of filefish. That real bright teal file fish with the long nose and the orange polka dots all over it that eats coral, so it's supposedly impossible to even keep alive. So I had done that. And when you do something like that, people have a good article, by the way. Thank you. I think when you do something that people take notice, and it gives you some street cred to I had bred clownfish before, and I had bred something that no one else had done. And unfortunately, even though I put everything in that article, it still has never been repeated. It's to the point where I'm sitting thinking, I need to go do this again, because no one else has been able to repeat what I did. So either I missed something about what I did, or I just need to prove that it wasn't just a couple of times of success, but because of all of that and because of the people I was working with. The lightning maroon clownfish was collected in papua New Guinea by an operation called Csmart. Csmart was an organization that was trying to establish a very sustainable fishery with really good practices, basically, for having wild harvest. And so we had a journalist at talbot in papua New Guinea when this fish was collected. So, pretty quickly, I think his pictures were the first pictures that anyone saw of that fish. And they reached out to me and said, we had some conversations behind the scenes. Who do you think should get this fish? Why? What would you do with this fish if it was your choice? And that was really coming from my marine breeding background and also having those connections in the trade. And basically through those connections, it basically ended up being after a while, they said, we think we would like you to be the one to take this fish, because it could go into a collector's tank to just sit there and be cool and collect a whole bunch of money. And that's it. That happens with a lot of the really unusual marine fish that are collected. I just saw it today. I don't know if it's even really out there publicly or not, but there is a kind of a Singapore Angel heated on a plus mesolucas, and it is solid yellow and orange instead of the normal black and gray and tan that was just collected today. And fish like that, a picture gets circulated on the Internet, someone with really deep pockets says, I want that, and it ends up finding its way there, and that's the end of it. So that could have just as easily happened with this. Lightning Maroon just didn't, because the people who could decide who should buy it decided I should be the one to buy it. So it wasn't just about who had the most money. It was about who was going to do the most with the fish, who's going to do the most for the hobby, for csmart in terms of the exposure it would bring. And we talked about this fish as being an ambassador from papua New Guinea. Still don't really get fish out of papua New Guinea. It was a fledgling attempt at creating a sustainable aquarium fishery there, to create something sustainable and economically beneficial. And ultimately, it didn't work. And then another company followed, and that fell through. And I think there was even a third effort that got started with some university research, was trying to kick start an aquarium fishery in papua New Guinea. And again, so there's problems, and they're actually more about logistics. It's the getting the fish from papua New Guinea to the rest of the world that is the problem. But a tub of lightning maroon ended up in my hands and in my tanks. We talked about writing about it. I basically documented the entire experience in a blog. Lightningclownfish.com, lightning, maroonclownfish.com. We also call it the lightning project. I think that domain would work well, too. Lightning maroonclownfish.com will get you there, and that is the Lightning Project. And that documents the entire progress from the fish showing up to almost losing it more than once. All the problems with pairing it and trying to find the right mate. And what would be the right mate for that fish. That was really when we talk about writing, that was one of the things that people knew I would do. And it was kind of planted, like, we're going to give you this fish. It would be nice if you maybe started a blog about it. And I said, yeah, sure. So it was a great opportunity to track a progress, track the progress of the project transparently, so the whole world could watch it in real time. And obviously, the end of the story is known now, but it wasn't known then. I had friends who were really high up in the industry. One of them pulled me aside one time and just kind of said, it's pretty impressive. We all just assumed you were going to kill that fish. It wasn't even a dig on me. It's just that wild clownfish are really hard to deal with. A lot of times. They have a lot of disease problems. It wasn't they were really trying to smack me down, but it was like I managed to be ahead of the curve on this one.

There's probably a lot of side bets on from all your buddies.

I have no idea. I wouldn't be aware.

Again, before the podcast, you're actually showing and telling us more of the lifespan. So you did this blog for so long, and now we're fast forwarding, and maroon clowns essentially are kind of all over. So how did you disperse? What do you mean? Your spawn, your lightning clowns.

Okay, I think we should probably step back just a moment to talk about what it is. Thank you.

That would also help listeners for people.

Who don't so regular maroon clownfish technically, three variants, three geographic variants. There's a gold striped maroon that comes from the Indian ocean, which some people consider to be a different species. It's a little more peaceful. Maroons are generally considered pretty aggressive clownfish and pretty murderous. Then there's kind of an intermediary form. It's kind of in the Indonesia Philippines area. That's a white stripe that sometimes gets a gold crest on its head. And then the more eastern edge of the range is a white stripe form where the stripes are pretty narrow. And that's where this one comes from. So ordinarily the maroon clouds that come from this region have three thin white bars, one at the head, one in the middle of the body, and one at the caudal put uncle and the lightning clownfish. The barring is all broken up, and it arcs and forms rings and circles and branches and looks like a web of lightning coming down on the fish. So that's the difference. It's a different patterning. It's very striking. And ultimately it proved to be genetic. Getting it out there was simply a matter of breeding the fish. Didn't know what kind of genetics were involved. A lot of people thought it's a one off, it's a disease, or it was a recessive trait. So, like albinism, where you'd have to breed a couple of generations to get it, it's not it's either partially dominant or actually a full on dominant genetic. We had f, one offspring. 25% of them had the gene present. Actually, no, 50. I'm sorry, it was 50. I have to go back and look up. Yeah, it was pretty impressive. I think what we've kind of settled on from a genetic standpoint is that this one seems to work like a snowflake, which is a different genetic. That's an oscillaris. And so it looks like from all the data I have, it looks like two copies of this gene might kill the babies, it might not develop. So when we were breeding lightning to lightning, we were still getting some white striped fish, but the ratio wasn't right. It was like a third white stripe and two thirds had lightning. So you're missing a part of the population that should be there anyways. As far as those first fish, the retailer who ended up selling the fish to me was blue zoo aquatics. And they're based out in California. And part of the agreement with them was that I would sell all the first batch offspring. We would sell it through them. And when we finally got there, we decided that the best way to do it was an ebay auction. So the fish were released. Every single one is what you see is what you get in ebay auctions. And that was how the first wave of those fish went out. And they went to collectors, they went to breeders. They were selling for anywhere from 1000 up to I think the highest was over 10,000. Blue zoo got there, got their cash, they had a good payday, and the fish got out there and now they're everywhere. And anyone who can breed clownfish can just needs to get a lightning and they'll make more. So it's still just a clownfish? It's just a clownfish with a pretty gene.

It is. Now your little corner of genetic pool all help produce by yourself.

Yeah.

That is fantastic. So how long did this clownfish live?

So the lightning maroon passed away in November of 2020, so we had it for about ten years. And where was an adult? Right, that was part of the problem going back to the beginning, was she was at a size where she could have been either a male or a female, and we weren't sure. So part of the thought process was, do we try to pair this fish up with a really big maroon? And the reason was, what if another lightning comes along? We might need that genetics. We might need both of them. So for like, the first year, we were trying to keep it in this male role. And part of the problem is we couldn't get more fish out of papua New Guinea either, because they started having problems with getting fish out. So I was waiting for more genetics, more brutestock, more options, and nothing was coming. So after about the first year, I flipped it and said, we'll definitely let this fish become a female. So ultimately she was a female, but we have no idea how old that fish was. When I got it, it could have been two years old, it could have been 20 years old. We don't know.

For those who are listening, we got to chitchat a little bit before the podcast. And you have still preserved that first lightning clown? Yes, yes.

And for those who are watching, she's right there in the formula. And ultimately, once things are a little bit better weather wise, she'll be shipped off to the California Academy of Sciences and the steinhardt Aquarium. And what are they going to do with it? So they're going to represerve it, prepare it for long term storage. They're also going to get fin clips from her. We already have them in everclear since. I can't get legitimate, like ethanol, like you would have in a lab. We've got a thing of ever clear here. So fin clips of her, and then I also need to take fin clips of all of her offspring that are still here. I've pretty much gotten rid of most of them, but I have a few calls that I held back because we didn't know what was going to happen. Maybe I'd want to breed more. They're everywhere now. I'm over it, but I still have some calls. So what we're going to do is take fin clips so that someone in the future, if they wanted to, could run genetic sequences on both her offspring that have the lightning gene, which we are presuming. It's just one gene, and then the regular white striped offspring as well. So all of those sampling samples are going to be taken and go off and be deposited in the museum system and then they'll be accessible to any scientist whoever wants access, basically.

Now, if every strain could start this way, we would have an incredible library of how fish adaptations have happened in our hobby. You wrote the book on this, I hope. You know, take example for those who are listening, if you get access for your Advanced hobbyist podcast, take example, do it ethically to try to preserve the unique thing you have. Don't just trophy fish it. This is clearly a passion project for Matt, and we're lucky enough to have him document every iota of this.

It's interesting because people would consider this a designer clownfish. Okay, so it's not a wild type. Coming from my various backgrounds of like, keeping cyclists, for example, where you got to know exactly what it is. Stewart Grants I for one roof is different at the next reef over in malawi. My interest in clownfish was kind of trending towards the biogeographic diversity of clownfish. And we covered that in coral to a fair extent. But what I also saw, I think what changed things for me is I used to hate this fish. We call it picasso percola. And picasso Percola is a clownfish that has kind of wavy barring and sometimes they merge and connect. And I used to say, it's going to be the death of the regular three striped clownfish. Everyone's going to want to buy this really fancy picasso and a regular old clownfish with normal stripes no one's going to want, and we're going to lose it. That was my stance for at least a few years as a marine fish breeder, is that these were bad, we shouldn't do this. But then I came to learn how the picasso clownfish came into existence. The picasso was found in the wild in the solomon Islands, and I don't know if it's still alive, but five years ago, ten years ago, I know it was still alive at ora it was just part of the natural biodiversity of clownfish in the solomon Islands. Just like the lightning, maroon is an aberration that has now been seen. There was one collected in 2008. We didn't even talk about that. This was not the first one. This was the second one that was found. The first one didn't didn't make it. So this is natural. Whether a mutation shows up in a tank or in the wild, it's part of nature. So it caused me to rethink my stance in thinking, oh, this is just outright bad. I was still very outspoken. I didn't want people hybridizing the lightning, which is a white stripe form from papua New Guinea with gold stripes because obviously the light bulb goes off. Oh, well, if I have white little lightning bolts going down the side of my fish, maybe I can get little yellow lightning bolts going down the side of my fish. You could see people's wheels turning without thinking about the consequences of doing that. And basically what followed was, for a few years, this kind of warpath of people who are starting to get these fish and me being like, this is a bad idea. You shouldn't do it. I can't tell you not to do it, but here's why I don't think you should. And it's been done. And of course, it didn't turn out the way anyone wants it to, which is not a surprise. And my understanding of how the color patterning works in these fish, I could kind of see it wasn't going to happen the way people wanted it to. It still could happen if they do enough refinement. But I consider those two fish different species. You can't undo that hybridization that's happened. So, unfortunately, I think where we fall short is that even with all that foreshadowing and all that understanding of, hey, let's try to do it differently this time, let's keep these pure to the biogeography from where they come from. Let's create that little bit of an arc, if you will, with the captive population. Ultimately, it's just a domesticated clownfish. I think if you're going out and buying a lightning room now, I wouldn't be surprised if most of them have kind of mixed up backgrounds and you're just buying a fish that looks nice.

So, Matt, how many times did this particular female spawn for you? Approximately how many babies do you think you got out of her?

I didn't rear most of them for a while. I was just tracking spawns. I think I stopped when I was at, like, the 50 mark. I was like, just not worth it. So, unfortunately, what ended up happening is shortly after this happened, I don't know if I've mentioned it on this podcast before, but we had a really bad winter storm damage here in duluth on our house, and we spent basically an entire year fighting with State Farm to get the house repaired. And State Farm was like, you got to get tanks out of your house. That was why I stopped breeding freshwater angel fish, stop breeding anything, really, for that year while dealing with that headache. So I didn't rear many. I should have reared more. But me, as a marine fish breeder, breeding clownfish is kind of not really what I want to do with my time. So it was an interesting project, and that's why I took it, because it really opened up my mind to different ways of thinking about designer clownfish and about the future of the hobby on the marine side as it pertains to breeding marine fish and understanding the importance of biogeography. So I was excited about those aspects of it, but I really wanted to be breeding angel fish and other things like that. And so I got my clownfish out there. Other people started producing them pretty quickly. I was like, I just don't need to see the need for a while. I did think about sending her to one of the commercial operations and it was actually as recently as COVID. When COVID hit, I was like, maybe I should just send her somewhere else. And then unfortunately, time caught up with her and so she's no more. But there's plenty of lightning maroons out there.

Heck yeah. We've talked about this in great detail and trust me, I'm going to have a ton of people thanking me for this because I already know that they've been asking for this specific story and getting more in detail. So thank you again for that. Thanks, guys, for listening to the podcast. Please go to your favorite place where podcasts are found, whether it be spotify, itunes and 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 melting.

Don't even get me started on this.