In this week's ad for Joe Shrimpshack.com. We tried to have Kyle, jim's son, do the advertisement for us. Unfortunately, he doesn't like to do improm two advertising, so this is all we got. bro, help me. I'm stuck.

I just bought a new tank.

I can't figure out what to put in it. bro. I'll put something in it. I'm going to go to Joe Shrimp shrek and order all this cat just stabbed me. Hundreds of shrimp and you're saving 50% with promo code Aquarium Guys when we're at checkout. Thank you. That's all I need. You can't use it. So, yeah, big shout out to Kyle. Thank you for attempting and then leaving. But go to Joe Shrimp shack.com promo code Aquarium Guys at checkout for 15% off of everything in the store, joe Shrimshack.com, because even family gives up on you. Just a few last notes before we start the podcast. We still have giveaways. We have J four flowerhorns giving away a prize winning flowerhorn and some food. Certainly check in the show notes. And also coalbalt. aquatics and reflowers are doing an amazing aquascaping contest. Certainly submit your aquascapes, whether they be fresh or saltwater. Please submit them in the link below. All right, we're ready to get down to funky town.

Do it.

Welcome to the Aquarium Guys podcast with your host Jim colby and Rob dolson. Welcome, guys, to the podcast. I'm your host, Rob dolson.

I'm Jim colby.

Where'S that?

That was perfect.

Oh, man.

Adam leaves into the microphone and smacks his head. I love it.

It was like he was head banging. So Adam actually has a towel just so he has to use his area mic because he refuses to buy himself a condenser mic. So to make his voice sound as luscious as his face, he puts a towel over him in the computer. So he just did that and yeeted himself off the computer.

That was hilarious.

My editing skills can't help you if you break your face, buddy. I'm just saying. Adam, are you okay? Do we need to call 911?

No, I'm fine.

Do you feel safe at home? Just wondering.

You got a trick question?

No, it's not a trick question. That's what they ask at the doctor.

Sorry. This week we have a couple of guests on. We have returning fan favorites to ask a couple of questions from. We have Les and Kyle from Cold bald aquatics this evening. How are you doing, guys?

Doing good.

Doing great.

So this evening's topic that we're talking about is specifically plant fertilizers. So we've had a lot of different questions in the past. Trying to get some real specifics on what I should use, when and why is it so complicated, and who better than our mixologists from Cobalt?

We're here for our mix.

Make your life easy.

Make our life easy.

I was supposed to have a cocktail.

Absolutely. It's 05:00 everywhere at aquarium. Guys. podcasts. So before we get into the topic at hand. Let's go over some reviews and fan mail. So, Jimmy, I'd like to start with just the fan mail first because I just got so happy. So last week, again, we record these in the future.

We recorded these in the future.

We record these in the future. So when you're hearing it, it's in the future. We're right now in the past because we're time travelers here at the Aquarium Guys podcast. So we just released we're creating alternate timelines. Absolutely.

We're driving a delorean.

Last week, we just released the flowerhorn episode that was naughty with J four flower horns. And it was a lot of fun for us. But I think we had like a ticker. Like we tempted. I lost count and just threw it away about the words we used. Now, for those that are listening, a flowerhorn is a very beautiful creature, big sized cichlid, and it has, like, a round ball stuck to its forehead. That round ball is called a cock, A-K-O-K. It's spelled. So of course, we're going to ask him about the unique feature on this crazy fish. And we said cock 30 million times.

Way too many times.

Way too many times. It's like a bunch of nine year olds and mom went uptown and we're.

Just talking about it was a good time. Like, what's the right size cock? What happens to a cock when it's sick? What's the best color? All kinds of craziness. So immediately, because I released that at midnight in my time in central United States, so immediately, the next morning, I get an email from one of our favorite viewers in the UK, which is now a regular on the show. Shout out to Peter the sunfish guy. So he says, so today I got home from work due to an abscess on my gum that was growing throughout the day. This is his email that he sends his email. While I was waiting for my prescription, listening to the Flowerhorn episode on full blast, the pharmacy assistant was giving me some odd looks. I just thought it was because my podcast was too loud. So then she went and had a chat with the lead pharmacy person, who called me into a separate room. And I thought this was to discuss the medication that I was being given. Oh, how I was wrong. Bear in mind that this person knows that I'm married, have four kids with a fifth on the way. By the way, Adam, my cock is beggar. He proceeded to talk to me about gay relationships and me giving me leaflets and pamphlets about having safe sex and the advice of my first time with a man. I asked, why are you giving me this stuff? He said that everyone in the pharmacy could hear the gay podcast you're listening to talking about girth cock size and what the perfect cock means to you. I just thought these may help you with your decisions I had to explain and show Google proof of what a cock was and what the hell I was listening to. So thanks, guys, because this really made my day and my wife has yet to stop laughing. Peter the sunfish guy. This is exactly the best review. This is why we do the podcast right here. It's for these snippets. So if you have anything similar, please send it to us. Thank you, Peter. I couldn't stop laughing when I first got this.

Yeah, I don't know why you're listening to it on your phone and pharmacy and stuff, but thank you for doing that.

Well, you got to imagine the dude sitting there with an abscess on his gum. He doesn't want to wear headphones because his full face hurts. And then he's just like out of it. Kind of just doesn't want to be there. Trying to get a giggle with the aquarium guys on his phone and just making everybody feel uncomfortable. Even though we warned you there's going to be cock mentioned a million times before we start the podcast, this one's.

Going to be having explicit on it. Also because HR got really pissed at you, too.

Well, not us, too. This evening we have a wonderful lady named barb with us. She is monitoring our conversations and will slap us if we continue our antics. So if you guys want to see barb, she is actually live on our new twitch channel, which we're doing every time we do these podcasts. We try to do the mondays at seven central. P. M. Join us, twitch. Tvaquariumguys So next thing we have is the reviews. Now, most places don't even let you put a review in for podcasts, which makes me sad, honestly, but Apple does. So Apple is one of the two big names in the podcast game. So we go on there and we do monitor these things. So every review you leave, we see. Trust me. So we haven't done a review board in a while. We got a couple more. I'm just going to grab the most. Two recent, right? So one says some good info. Four stars. Jimmy out of five.

Four stars out of five your mom gave us, right?

You can tolerate the attempts at humor to get the information, but I like these guys, but they're not as funny as they think they are. But very informative. See, that is exactly how I thought all of our reviews should go. So thank you for giving our own review of ourselves. jimmy's looking at me like, what?

Well, we're pretty damn funny some days.

Are you?

Yeah.

Well, not according to cmc 250.

Well, I'm glad I gave some wrong information on that podcast and I hope he just totally blows it now.

Jimmy so spiteful. Next one is five stars. Just as rob's, informative, fun, hilarious, must listen show, there's nothing like it at all. I highly recommend to enthusiasts a must subscribe. So thank you for the wonderful reviews. Please review us. It helps our analytics and even the four star ones we love to death. We get a good giggle and agree with you, frankly. So you got anything for us, Jimmy, this week?

Nothing. I drained my pond today. The water temperature was 35 degrees and my hands are still cold, but I got all my coyote out. We're supposed to get three to five inches of snow tomorrow, so pretty excited. Yeah, pretty excited here in Minnesota.

I haven't even had a hard freeze yet.

You're like, 6 hours south, you pansy.

It's been sitting bad thing.

24 degrees fahrenheit because I have to tell our UK audience. 24 degrees fahrenheit, and it's what? Not even like, that was the first half of October. We got that low.

Yeah, so it's been pretty miserable.

Hey, Kyle, what's the forecast there tomorrow? We're 70.

I don't think it's ever gotten down to 24 here. It's mid 70s, right? Sunshine?

I hate mental breeze. I hate you individually. Go fluke yourself.

Got the windows open. Just let that breeze come in. It's nice.

It's always a good time at cobalt aquatics. All right. I got nothing major other than new development on my 125. I told everybody that it leaks now. I found out that because it leaked onto these cheap stands that I had that came with it, now the stands ruined, and I'm going to cry and see if I can find myself some great steals on Facebook Marketplace.

I'm excited for you. When you do find a stand and you need somebody to help you carry it down, don't call me.

No, because I think we both lost a testicle taking that downstairs. Oh, I'm sorry, barb. The HR lady does not like us to talk about testicles. So sorry, barb.

Blue and nut.

I got, like, the whole hand motion, like, cut your throat.

Okay, well, she might cut you.

You never know.

I wish she would cut you.

I don't think we're paying.

Did any of your flower corns cocks get messed up in the leaking tank?

I didn't have flower horns in that tank. Thank goodness. So all my cocks are very safe. Yes, indeed.

Did your wife forgive you for making her clean it up?

No, she did it all. And don't let Rob tell you that he helped.

I was up until 05:00. A.m. Cleaning, sir. That is unfair. Yeah, transferring fish.

The only thing that you're cleaning was probably your browser website browser history after.

Doing that J Four episode.

Yeah, exactly. That's all you were cleaning up.

Well, guys, before we start diving in, we've had you both on the podcast before.

That's sounded dirty right there.

We've got you both. We've had you both. Now we get you together, and that's what really matters.

More the merrier.

So we'll have links below in the chat, but you can find Les and Kyle both on our prior episodes if you want to learn more of how they got into the hobby, but it's a great deal. I want to make my official announcement on my own podcast that I'm now part of the Cobalt team with Less and Kyle. So now I get to irritate them, not just by sending text messages, but company emails.

I blocked your number. It's fine.

Yeah.

It's nice that you guys adopted a puppy, and I wish you guys well.

Right?

There's multiple layers that you got to go through before you get to me too. So good luck with that.

Multiple layers.

He's like an onion. Kind of like shrek layer.

Yeah, like a parfait.

If someone needs reflowers, pro bugs or cobalt, goodies. I now help stores get connected with Cobalt, and it's a privilege and honor being on the team. So thank you guys.

We're excited to have you.

One of us is good.

Wow. They don't know you that well yet.

I'll give it time. Give it time. I'm already annoying after a week.

It doesn't take that long.

All right, so, guys, we called you in to talk about plant fertilization. So we've talked about your past and how you got into the hobby. That's really how we start and go from there. So in this instance, we'll start with Kyle. when's the first time that you started realizing that you're totally a plant guy and want to use plant fertilization more often?

I said, I'm a water guy. The first time was a good friend of mine named Phil. He was a big planted tank guy, and he actually ended up having to stay in the hospital for an extended stay and asked me if I would take care of his tank. And I knew nothing at all about dosing a planted tank. So he basically wrote everything out on a piece of notebook paper and taped it to the front of the tank. And I went over there and learned how to dose a freshwater planted tank.

Now, how long ago was this, Kyle?

About four years ago.

Now that's definitely diving in. I was going to say before. I always got a bunch of misinformation. I still have my grandmother's books on how to do plant fertilizer, and there's literally some that tell you how to create your own liquid fertilizer. scares me.

Does it involve chasing a cow with a bucket?

There was one old one that suggested you should put, like, liquid manure in your tank and small drips.

Wait, really?

Yes.

It was totally wrong, but maybe it was right.

I don't know.

I've never put poop in my tank intentionally. Please.

Some of those old books, they're crazy. I have one that tells you to put diesel fuel on top of your pond to keep mosquitoes out of it in the summer. Hey, is it working?

Back to your tank.

I walked in on the tail end.

Of this because I heard someone put.

Poop in their tank.

Hi, Joe. This is Joe from Joe. Shroomshack.

All I'm going to say about this is I am really glad that I was not on your flowerhorn episode because everything you guys are saying I'm trying to spin into a cock joke.

No.

Let'S just cock on the brain again.

Yes, we do. So we've talked in the past as a helpful advice to people for how to take and start different plants. We just say start easy and then work your way up. So start with your hornworth. Start with the dwarf sage grass, start with guppy grass, maybe even java moss and work your way up from there. But I'm not going to lie. I've been a big person myself to never use fertilization. I've tried some stuff in the past and not that I got bad results, but it's always been a pain or I got even worse. Some of the other products on the market that are essentially just phosphorus in the bottle, it's not really a full spectrum fertilization. So let's talk a little bit about we didn't get les's opinion. I want to hear first from Les when you started doing fertilization for the first time and then we'll get right into talking about the process.

Yeah, I want to hear about your first time. Like Kyle was the first time with Phil, right?

First time I fertilized.

Yes, please.

I don't know if there's a flower horn involved or not.

There isn't.

It could be. it'd be a small flower horn, we hope.

I didn't keep freshwater plants as an early hobbyist. I started with plants when I got into retail, so in college when I started working at a fish store is when I started getting into plants. So all my childhood years, I didn't really do them, but when I got into the retail section, really got the bug for it and started figuring that out. So that's 1990, maybe around that time frame when I started working in fish stores and then really took off when I was working in the lab at marineland was really in the rainbows and into plants. At that point, we had a big 325 gallon planted tank out in the front lobby of the marineland headquarters that was fun to take care of.

There's something about having rainbows specifically in a planted tank that's really nice just because of the egg scattering. And they really motion between plants a lot. So that's like, everybody rainbows get plants and it's just the seemingly needed combo. But let's talk a little bit about the aquarium cycle and how plants fit into that. Just an overview, Kyle, or less dealer's choice.

Sorry, you kind of broke up. I didn't catch that question.

Oh, my apologies. I say let's talk about the aquarium cycle and how plants fit into that and why we need fertilization overall for some of the beginners listening.

You want to tackle that, Kyle, or you want me to?

Why not let the saltwater guy tackle it?

See how I do. Okay.

Plants are great because they're, in my opinion, and a lot of people who have kept plants opinions infinitely better than any filter you can buy and put on your tank. Plants have the great ability of taking up excess nutrients, waste, phosphate, as you mentioned earlier, nitrates, things like that. Not to mention just what they add to a tank from a natural perspective where you get extra cover for shy fish. A lot of planted tanks, you see these small schooling fish that like to have a little bit of COVID to make them feel safe. And safer the fish feels, the more active it is and out and about in the tank and just the overall aesthetic. And every planted tank is done a little bit differently. There are several different types of aquascaping and everything, and you can really kind of make that tank personal and make it your own with plants.

I like to go like a modern aquarium history, and we had Alexander Williamson to talk about that with us before and when these tanks started. It's all about little before World War Two, after World War I, when it was harder to get fish, because, again, we didn't have modern air travel really accessible as a commercial feature. We had limited access to fish. We didn't have a lot of ways to do it besides some air piston pumps, which were really being perfected at the time. So most tanks, even when you look at like a 1940s, 1950s aquarium guide for kids, they recommend starting with thick substrate, have layers into it. And then plants are not like, optional, they're an absolute must. And then you would do weekly water changes and no heat. In a lot of situations, you'd have stuff like white clouds, and if you did have heat, it was buns and burners.

Yeah, those plants really helped with early filtration 100%.

That was the real way of doing filtration between water changes and really backing water changes for how crowded the tank was.

Absolutely.

I think what you're trying to lead us into is nitrogen uptake by plants. And how does that affect the ammonia or the new tank syndrome or cycling and aquarium? Is that where you're trying to lead us?

Absolutely. Questioning paint a picture because we're trying to cater not just our experts, which we have a lot of, but also our new listeners that don't understand the benefits of why we should use plants. And then we'll get into how to make plants better with fertilization.

So from like, I think you're trying to do lead us into this topic of ammonia uptake or nitrogen conversion. So fish excrete ammonia right in the beginning or all the time that's their nitrogenous waste ammonia. They expel it through the gills through passive diffusion. So whatever level ammonia is in your tank is going to be what it is in the fish. They don't have an active pump, with an exception of some goldfish and some betas might be able to pump them out. But general fish, whatever level ammonia is in the tank, is in their system. So that's why we care about the nitrogen cycle. Or the new tank syndrome is as the tank starts, there's no biological process to remove that ammonia, and so the ammonia level rises up. In the aquarium, plants can absorb nitrogen, specifically, in this case, ammonia or nitrate. And most freshwater plants and most algae's are really geared towards using nitrate because in the wild, most of the nitrogen available to them, forgetting nitrogen, is in the form of nitrate because it's already being converted down. But they can use ammonia in photosynthesis. And so plants in the old days, before we had any filter or understanding of biological filter beds, poop, and a bottle, I think is what you like to call it, right?

I wish there was a product that said that we've been trying for so long.

Poop juice. Poop juice. Poop poop juice in a bottle. The poop juice. Before we understood what microbes were doing, plants kind of filled that gap because they would absorb the nitrogen out of the system and keep the ammonia down and keep the nitrate down to a minimum and ultimately help balance that thing, like Kyle said. So through the process of photosynthesis, you need a nitrogen source, a carbon source, and a phosphate source. It's called a famous thing. Kyle and I were chatting about it earlier today called the redfield ratio. So that's the ratio of carbon to nitrogen to phosphorus that photosynthesis requires in global scale, 106 to 16 to one, where you have 106 carbon with 16 nitrogen, and one phosphorus will do one reaction of photosynthesis. So you would need a lot of carbon, you need a pretty good amount of nitrate, and you need very little phosphate. So when you're talking about new tank setups and all that, that ratio will help, will absorb at any time a plant is photosynthesizing, it's going to be sucking up that nitrogen source.

Fantastic. I'm just going over a list again, because we first have to tell people why they need plants for some of the beginners, and then we get into the topic. So, number one, we talk about filter, how it does the cycle. Next thing that I think on the list would be beneficial to explain. When you set up a new tank, immediately you put the decor in, you put the gravel in, all the accessories, and then you try to cycle your tank, maybe add one fish, put biological bacteria in the bottle, cycle your tank out, and let's paint a picture. You put no plants in. God bless you. You put no plants in, then COVID not it. Immediately you start seeing algae grow in your tank if there's no plants. So what I always tell people is if you want a nice tank over plant and the same resources that the algae use compete with the other plants. And it really slows down the algae production right up front. Because a lot of people, they have either small algae booms in the glass accessories or what have you, because their tank is still going through that cycle process. So that's always my recommendation, is combat algae, have something nice in your tank. Yeah.

And some of that can definitely help out. But there is an ecological principle called pioneer pcs where some algae blooms you're just not going to be able to get away with. When you start up a new tank, I'll be in the saltwater. I'm sure you're very well aware of the diatoms when you start the new tank, because there's always going to be carbon and nitrogen are part of an open system in your aquarium. Even though your aquarium is closed, carbon can come in through co2, can come in through food or whatever. Nitrogen is the same thing comes in your water change. And phosphorus is gas from nitrogen and air. It can be assimilated to in that. But phosphorus is the only thing that's a closed loop. But there's all sorts of other things that you need. And then saltwater for diatoms silica. When you first start up a brand new tank, you have a ton of silica in there. You get any sort of bloom or boost in the nutrients of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorate with an abundance of silica, even if you have coral and algae or a bunch of other stuff growing, you're going to get a diaton bloom. And it's very similar on the freshwater side of some of the algae, but the salt water on every brand new saltwater tank about three to five weeks in gets a diatom bloom for a little bit. Because of that.

Is there any way to stop the diatom blooms? Because those are always a pain in the ass up north, because I'd get that rusty reddish brown diatom, and then everybody buys algae eaters. When I had my store, they'd buy the placostas and then it just kills the pocostamus. But there's no way to stop it, is there?

Get rid of the silica.

Patience, too. The longer the diatoms grow, the more the silica they remove, and eventually they out compete themselves.

Thank you.

While they're still always there, they just won't be in that massive bloom level where you see it just kind of coding everything.

Okay, Ro, that helps get some of the stuff out of it, but it's.

Always helpful as well.

Well, Ro, why is that helpful? Even in either fresh or solid or tank? It's because you've removed all the minerals out of it. So you're removing in the case of diatoms a is a pioneering species. So it's really going to be able to grab any carbon, nitrogen, phosphate source really easy. They grow really quick. But if they're limiting, they're limited by the silica, they're not going to grow. So if you use ro water or anything that can minimal or minimize the silica, you're going to really combat those diatoms.

I find that if I have tanks that would have snails in them, generally I have less of that. I don't know if it's whether they're eating that or if it's because they're kind of doing the roomba thing where they just constantly eat as they move.

It's usually both. And the crazy thing is, Neerite snails are fantastic in both fresh and salt water. They're awesome at controlling diatoms, and one.

Of the most entertaining snails to watch. I mean, it literally looks like a god's room. Honestly.

The freshwater ones are a lot cooler looking than the saltwater ones, but they're both great snails.

Absolutely. So the last easy piece to pick on is nature's filter, algae reduction, certain ore control, and of course, the fish is home. That is the best way. Most fish require something at least like plants to breed with. I know that I have issues growing out certain species unless there's a lot of plant life. Like most of my platos, the moment I try to grow them out in a decorated tank with no plants versus plants night and day, there's almost like a 50% growth difference because I don't know if there's more growth on the plants themselves or it's just some sort of energetic happiness. Who knows? I'm not a specialist. I just know the results. But let's talk about fertilization. So there's a bunch of different options that people do. And generally when you're new, you're very intimidated by what's out there. So they try to make this as easy as possible. So let's start with what are the fertilization elements that people need? Let's go a little deep in this.

Absolutely. So there's six main things that most people will focus on, and every tank is going to be a little bit different. So not every tank is going to need all six, but phosphate, nitrate, carbon or co2, iron, potassium, and then general trace elements. The real big thing, phosphate and nitrate in a lot of tanks are typically covered by things like fish. I know a lot of planted guys also like to use like a treated tap water, which generally contains some phosphates and nitrates and things like that. But the big one carbon source, you can either inject co2 or dose of liquid carbon. And then iron is very important for root growth as well as color in the leaves. And then potassium as well is also very essential for especially things like stem plants for their growth.

So I get a question people ask because they're trying to understand this whole process that happens out in nature. Where are most of these elements that we use, especially the six elements found in nature, just to replicate this? Not that we're going to go out all and scoop poop to make the process in the tank. We talked about that earlier.

You can get poop delivered in a bottle.

But honestly, where do. These come from.

So to your point, a lot of it does come from waste, but it's more than just like fish poop. It's things like trees that overhang a pond and the leaves drop out and leaves start to break down and rotten the pond. And that releases a lot of different nutrients or any of the algae that bloom and then die off and things like that.

So I'm going to pick on you guys based upon some of the products that are offered by you and your partners. So if you go to reflowers us, you'll find an entire lineup of planted fertilizations and you have, again, the six part series that's pretty notorious for everybody. So just going down the list, for instance, let's start a potash. Where does that come or be found in nature as far as the normal wild cycle?

Each individually, the potash is going to be a potassium source. And typically you find that both in, what is it, soil like soil beds at the bottom of the lake or pond or stream or what have you.

Just naturally released from the earth below.

Especially plantable around banana plantations.

Well, yeah, I mean, honestly.

Or spinach, which has more potassium. It's a naturally occurring mineral.

And soil, more specifically, liquid carbon.

So carbon can be either organic carbon, where you're having a breakdown of proteins, or in the case where we do it in aquariums, most of the time it's through co2. So you have co2 in the atmosphere. It's transferring down into the water through diffusion, and then it's being uptake through photosynthesis through that. So co2 is your main carbon source.

And a lot of the different trace elements, I'm assuming, vary from place to place. there'll be different elements in South America versus North America versus Africa. So I'm assuming that all these bottles are varied for the stuff that needs just for focusing on general plants or is this a specific lineup of trace elements?

You do see some trace element variation geographically, but because we're focused mainly on tropics, even though we have very different just seeing the Rio negro and the Rio blanco, very different. Obviously these water sources you do see in the tropics some really consistent things on what's called the major trace elements, where the ones that are the ones that you're using consistently through the photosynthesis process, the three main ones that we're always worried about, again, are carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus. But there's all sorts of little things that are available that are needed for the accessory pigments. There's like 20 something accessory pigments that can help in light absorption and photosynthetic process. And depending on the color of the plant and all that, you can vary those trace elements. But in the tropics, there's a kind of a chunk of them that are pretty consistent. In those I always forget longitude, latitude, I'm climbing, whatever the vertical one is.

Don'T quote me on that one. I'm not sure either that'd be north.

But when you get up into the northern latitudes, like where you guys are, where it's freezing already and you're going to have five inches of snow tomorrow, then you start seeing some difference in the plant life, obviously. And some of the trace elements are, are required that are needed, are different, but we're not growing those plants typically. So you kind of just focus on the tropical plant.

Got you. So nitrate again is pretty spelled out, but phosphorus.

So, so phosphorus again in, in that, that ratio, the redfield ratio, you have 106 carbons, 16 nitrogens, one phosphorus. And as we mentioned, co2 can come in through the air. Nitrogen can also come into the air, although most plants are geared towards using it and nitrogen in the form of nitrate at the, the end of end of the cycle. But phosphorus really only comes into play in the aquariums and in the wild through input. There isn't like a natural source through the atmosphere. So it's either coming from the ground or it's coming from the food that you're putting into the system. Got you. Phosphate is really the main thing that we worry about. There po four and that's what's used in all photosynthesis, so we want to be careful with it. If you have a very big or a very robust, not big necessarily, but a robust plant tank and you're probably going to be very phosphate limited, phosphorus limited because you're not putting a lot of food into, say, a tank that's heavily planted compared to the amount of plants. But if you have a very light plant load and you're dosing phosphorus, you could end up with a lot of algae issues. Specifically, when you get a very high phosphorus ratio that's out of whack of that main redfield, 106 to 61, you end up with cyanobacteria a lot of times. So if you have cyanos, the immediate thing to do is check your, check your ratio and see where your phosphate levels are wonderful. In a healthy planet tank that's really cranking though, you're more likely going to be phosphate limited. So that's when you want to add a phosphorus supplement into.

So basically what you're saying is, unless you have a problem with cyanobacteria, not.

Necessarily a big deal, you'll gauge it by your plant growth and the health of your healthier leaves and things. You'll be able to tell if you're, if your plants are kind of spindly and although they're growing but they're not really thick and robust, then you might want to, you check your phosphates. If you don't have any phosphates, that means they're eating at all as soon as it's consumed.

So those are the two ends. At the two ends of the spectrum, then you have either your plants aren't doing well or you have cyanobacteria or.

Her algae or whatever. Yes, if you're having algae problems, almost guaranteed in a plant tank, you have high phosphates.

So going into that because I know there are certain recipes for this, and I'm trying to put myself in the eyes of a beginner for a lot of these questions. So when you're going through these fertilizers and trying to figure out what's going on, is there a certain recipe book that you use for different ones? Because, again, there are six pieces generally in all these fertilizer products, whether it's dry, powder, or liquid. So you give an example where you're seeing that and you dose. Is there like a handbook or a guide that you would have where you would try to dose like it needs more trace elements or guess what? It doesn't need any more nitrate or it needs more potash. What are some of the recipes symptoms that we see, and then how do we treat some of those most common?

So a lot of the symptoms, a lot of it can be done visually just by looking at the health of the plants. When plants don't have certain nutrients, things like iron, they tend to pale out, where you kind of see that haley translucent look to the leaves. If the plants have holes in the leaves or if they get pulled up really easily because their root structure is very shallow and very poor, things like that can be indicators that certain trace elements might not be in the right amount. And the easiest way to find out is, honestly, test kits. There are a lot of different freshwater test kits, but in some respects, the eye test is always kind of your first step. If you look in there and that your plant suddenly dropped half its leaves off and it's looking like it's on its way out and, you know, something's out of balance.

Now, I get that a lot. You specifically said holes and leaves and leaves falling off. Holes and leaves. A lot of people think, oh, maybe you have a pest. Maybe something ate it. Do those holes just seem to disintegrate, or do they look like they're kind of cut? I'm trying to pick up, like ludwig, for instance. I had a gentleman that said that he was having issues, and I saw it looked to be almost like perfectly cut holes out of it. It looks to be a sort of a pest. But I also have people said that there's no pests in there, and when they treated with fertilizers, it went away. So it makes me feel like maybe that was the cause.

So you got to remember, just because you don't see a pest doesn't mean there is not a microbial pest involved in there because the leaves are growing or not growing, there's always bacteria in there that are going to be attaching themselves to everything. Nitrofires, for instance, are what's called an obligate epiphyte. They grow in a biosphere that grows on any surface, including leaves of plants. So you get a biosome created on the plant, and if the leaf isn't healthy, it's not going to be able to fend itself from bacteria attacking it and creating those holes. So kind of hard to say if it's jagged or if it's a straight cut, but almost always a ragged or holy leaf, unless it's supposed to have a hole, like a lease plant is a problem with your overall health and fertilizing of your plants. The plant is not getting enough nutrients to be able to keep itself robust enough to fend off degradation or any sort of predation.

Got you. So you mentioned a little bit about the test kits. Most people try to watch the cycle they go through, like PH test kits. What test kits are available out there for people to use, and what do you recommend?

Yeah, nitrate and phosphate test kits are pretty common. Anyone salt water is very familiar with them. They're two of the big things we test all the time. But there's both titration style, which are the little liquid test kits where you add different reagents and they turn colors. And then they also have a lot of digital variants, too. Personally, I like the digital ones. They're a little more accurate. And with me being colorblind, it's kind of hard to see the color changes sometimes. So I always go for the digital ones where basically you add a little bit of water, you add some reagents, press a button on the thing, and it's not a number for you.

So how much of those set you back? I think we talked about this before.

Honestly, they're not bad. They're usually somewhere between like 30, $40.

That ain't bad.

I thought it was going to be like $150.

No, the thing itself is actually pretty cheap, and then you just have to get reagents for it to add to your water whenever you do a test. And usually you can get like a 50 pack of reagents for like $10.

Wonderful. Jimmy, I feel like I'm talking a lot. You got questions I kind of wondered.

About on the plants. How do you tell the difference between the plants just naturally shedding and them being in trouble?

That's one of the things that a lot of people don't realize when they first buy plants is most of these aquatic plants are actually grown in a semi aquatic environment where the roots are submerged, but the leaves are not that way. They look nice and big and beautiful when they get to the fish store. Then when you fully submerge them, it kind of shocks them a little bit to the point where they will start dropping leaves or starting to turn a little colors, things like that. So that's always if the plant is really new, dropping leaves isn't necessarily a sign of it's. Oh my gosh, it's dying right now. That's usually something that happens just from the shock of going from semi aquatic to fully aquatic. But if it's a plant that you've had for a good amount of time where you've had it a few months or a year or what have you, and then all of a sudden it starts dropping leaves. Shedding one here or there is completely natural. Dropping a whole bunch of leaves at once is assigned to start testing and.

On the bunch plants too, specifically, they're going to grow up on the upper parts of it. The older leaves at the bottom are going to start falling off. And you can actually on almost all bunch plants, you can trim them and plant the tops back down in the bottom, and then the bottoms will grow again. And then you'll have a new stem. So you kind of keep cropping and dropping them. And then over time, if the older ones start to wear out, you just chop them all the way off and.

Then you're good to go crop them and drop them.

And I see a couple of things like red ludwig to pick on. A couple of exceptions. If you don't have light going down the plant of red ludwig, a lot of times you'll have bottom shedding only and then mid and top will be fine.

Also, one of the that's almost all bunch plants, right?

One of the more common, the ones that I see is some of the plants especially, like you said, bunch plants give up when you have there's a different type of algae. It's almost like that hard algae that sticks to the glass and sticks to every object. The only way you can handle it is scraping it off with a razor blade. And that type of hard algae covers a leaf. And the kind of leaf gives up on those bunch plants as well. Is there any fertilization recommendations for specifically that type of hard algae? We get a lot of questions on this.

Again, if you're in balance and you have a very robust plant tank and your ratios of your carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus are in check, you shouldn't have a lot of algae issues because the plants are using it all up. Now that's the easy answer. The harder answer is what do you do once you get that problem? From my experience anyway, it's just brute force. You just got to keep dealing with it until you get rid of it. Once it's there, as you know, it doesn't like to come off glass. It doesn't like come off anything. You just got to keep at it and then keep making sure that your plants are in the best health that they can. At least that's my experience. I don't know of any magic recipe once you get that hard green stuff going other than fighting it.

I've asked a lot of people because you can scrape it off the glass. You can even do things to get it off decorations. But there's a lot of plants even like some of the anubis or crips that I have, how do you get it off the leaf? And I haven't had a lot of great recommendations from a ton of people. So if you're listening out there and you have a recommendation on how to get the hard algae off plants after you've dealt with it and treated your tank, I want to know and send it in.

And we'd like the plants to live afterwards, right? Not just bleach damn plants.

Most of the cases, as long as you have a new growth on smaller leaves, if you have an old large leaf that has become infected or clogged or starting to lock, good. If you trim it off, like in the nubia, you can trim off that old leaf and the nubia will be fine. But you got to be careful with that, that you actually have due leaves coming up. Because if there isn't any new leaf growth, then you're going to be in trouble. And this is especially if it's a very well established nubia. I mean, it's been in your tank a couple of months. They're pretty darn hardy. If it's a brand new one and you just put it in there and it's one of the potted one, and you took it out of the pot and just stuck it in your gravel, you got to give it time to get those roots going. It's going to spend a good just like in a garden or a normal plant. When you first put a plant in, it's going to spend a while kind of establishing its root bed before it wants to grow. So when you first put a plant and you see it, you don't think it's doing anything as long as not deteriorating, it's, putting most of its effort into that root system. And then once the root system is established, then you can really start trimming it and playing with it, and they're going to be pretty robust in general. I did see one comment I felt like I had to mention. I saw it pop up. Somebody was mentioning carbonic acid burn. And you should not have carbonic acid due to co2 in your tank unless you're way overdosing co2. And if you do that, you're more likely going to be killing fish. If you're burning your plants, you're almost likely killing fish. If you're not doing it immediately, you're doing it slowly. You really have to be careful with co2 and overdosing. I speak from experience. We had a PH probe go bad a couple of times on that big tank back in my marineland days, and we knew tanks full of fish on a number of occasions from co2 overdosing. Yeah. The biggest thing with that is put it on a bubble counter. Or if you have a solenoid that's only turning on and off during the day when your lights are on, put it on a bubble counter and have it go nice and slow until you know that for sure that you're not overdosing it. And don't just let it go. Free willy and definitely do not run co2 at night. You shouldn't really have unless you're going crazy. You should not be burning anything with carbonic acid. Carbonic acid is when co2 comes in saturation. It turns into carbonic acid. And that carbonic acid will then eat your alkalinity, at least temporarily, very quickly. And then your PH can have a sudden drop. So you might be cruising in your tank at somewhere 7476 with a pretty solid alkalinity base in it. You overdose co2 form carbonic acid. Your PH can go from 76 to 4.8 literally in an hour. If your co2 is cranking and you turn the co2 off, and within an hour, it could be back up to 7476. And that bounce is what's going to kill things.

So we also have another question below about temperature. He says my discus need 82 degrees. How do different temperatures affect plants, specifically fertilizing?

When you turn up the temperature, everything moves faster. So metabolism speeds up. So photosynthesis speeds up, everything speeds up. So you potentially could use more fertilizer, but you have to gauge that off your plant and algae growth. But that's in general, what happens when you increase temperature is metabolism speeds up, everything goes faster.

Yeah.

So your dosing might be a little bit higher than if you had a cooler tank. I say cooler, relatively cooler tank, like in 76 range versus an 82.

I just got a message. Joe said dose a pinch more phosphate to get rid of that green spot algae. Rob I have, but the problem is some of my tanks, I have really old giant anubis. Like, my anubis normally nobus, grows horizontally. I have weird plants, just a handful of them that grew tall, and now they're sticking out of my tank, and I don't want to just trim leaves on them. I love that plant to death, and I just don't want to get rid of it. So I have some of them that I'm still trying to figure out ways of getting rid of it. But balance out your tank and at least the fresh growth is fine. But it just makes me sad seeing these old plants of like, you know, we're talking eight years that are sticking out of your tank that are just covered in it, and you just got to limp along.

I have a quick question on is there a different way to treat plant bulb? Like the same madagascar lace plant, which is a bulb plant versus a rooted plant? Is there is there something you have to do different? I've had great luck with the madagascar lace, and then all of a sudden it will crap out and be gone, and then three months later pop back up and flourish again.

It goes in waves on your tank.

Yes, all those upon the gardens, that whole genus of plants do that. The olvaceous crispus, the madagascar lace. There's a few others.

A whole lot of bald plants do that. I mean, I've had the same thing happen with just, like, common lilies in a tank we have at the office, where they'll be beautiful for, like, five, six months and gone for two months, then all of a sudden come right back.

Okay?

It's part of the lifecycle of those plants. madagascar lace. You can have them go for maybe two or three months if you get an already kind of flowering plant, and then they'll die off. Or sometimes I've had them go for, like, a year and a half, and then they die off. I don't know what the magic number is on there, but all the palm ofattens do that you say that venus. They all do that. Same kind of flush cycle.

Okay. Come to think of it, a couple of the plant freaks and fargo that I have talked to, they've had some big, nice ones that lasted quite a long time. Don't use any heat whatsoever, so that might be a little colder. The cycle is just running slower, and that normal cycle where they drop out just seems to last longer where we use heat.

Yeah, it's one of my favorite plants, and I love it to death. And there's been times within where had cleaned up the tank and found a bulb and went, oh, what the hell is this? Oh, it's a madagast lace bulb. Put it back in a different spot, and it pops up about two weeks later. I don't know what it is if you have to move them around once in a while or what, but it seems like when I do find the bulb is that most of the roots are pretty shot. I mean, it looks like a dead bulb, but when you touch it and you squeeze it, it's still pretty hard. So then I put it back in and takes off again.

Squeeze your bulbs. Squeeze your bulbs. Yeah.

I've had one that we thought was done and gone for well over, say, 910 months in one of our tanks back in the day. And we moved it, and we found it when we were kind of doing a major cleaning and moved it, and it popped right up about two weeks later. So those bulb plants, they're pomegotten. They do that and back to your heart algae question. Those lace plants are really notorious for not getting hard algae, but getting cyanos and hair algae on them. They love that. And that flushing process gets rid of that for them. That helps out with maintenance of that plant.

So if you have an old bulb down in your tank and just maybe move it around, or after you do a major tank cleaning, you might see some resurgence of life.

Absolutely.

I just had a lily recently do that here in my tank downstairs. The Africans aided up.

That's good. I feel a little bit better about things because I love that plant so much. And then it craps out and then pops up and I'm like, what am I doing wrong? Now I know.

So let's go with some hard questions, shall we? Essentially, what I see is three different kinds, and there could be more. This is just the one I'm accustomed to, is the liquid fertilizer. We have the dry, almost powder or granular fertilizers that you can add in as, like, a measurable supplement. And then there's the common root tab. And I've seen this come in many different forms. I've even seen, like, fertilizers going, like, those fizzy alka seltzer tabs back in the day. I haven't seen those in a long time. That was when I was a kid.

Maybe Wish has them.

Wish might have the alkyla tab still. Who knows?

Order some now, get some next spring.

They have some mystery seeds, too.

They do. Okay, this is, like, a little secret for us. We're trying to compile a future product Wish episode. So I've been slowly collecting, like, shitty aquarium products from Wish. They just take forever to get here. So I've gotten the mystery seeds. I've gotten a lot of, like, lotus bulbs from them. I've tried a lot of weird stuff from Wish, so that will be collected, but I won't get my results until then.

You probably got coronavirus from it, too.

A few years ago, one of our suppliers, through whatever, recommended some. That dry tank set up where you put the seeds in, you moist them, and then you grow them up, and we got some samples in to check them. This was before you worked with Kyle, I think, maybe four years ago, maybe. And we actually did some genetics on it to see what they were, to make sure that if we went down this path because they work phenomenal, they grow really well, they grow really easy. But it turns out almost every one of them is an invasive species. And something carolinea is the name of it, and they're outlawed through the entire Southeast and west. So the odds are, if you got that little thing seeds and a metallic pouch like the double solid ketchup bag, sometimes they're just super invasive.

You now have just encouraged our entire listener base to go out and get some of those before they become banned entirely.

Well, just don't let them out. They're pretty nasty. The reason they do good is they're very tolerant. They can be put into a bag and shipped around the world, and then they can just make them wet, and then they grow like crazy. And so that's why they're a problem for being invasive.

I may or gave Rob something like that.

May or may not, yes.

I got to get a couple of cultures from Jimmy yet on that one to do some more research, for sure.

Yeah, I mean, just recently, it made national news. People were getting unsolicited packages from Amazon, and they had seed packets, and those two were mostly invasive products.

Well, that was like people were planning.

Them just to see what the hell they were.

Some, like, what agriculture thing that they were trying to do is they're trying to discover they wanted those plants over here for some reason.

I don't know if one of them.

Turned out to be some species of melon or something like that.

Like some weird melon, just a lot of weird stuff. But they're trying to bring up their Amazon, how people rate Amazon. And so they're sending out they were.

Trying to get ratings.

Yes. And they're sending all this stuff out to people and like, what the hell is this? And they got oh, seeds. Let's plant it. And then pretty soon, you got a big giant coming down the beanstalk, kicking your ass.

My realtor got one of those, actually.

Did he?

Yeah, she got them. It's funny.

Burnham, burn them.

Burn them. Yeah. So the wish episode definitely is going to be a lot of fun. Can't wait. Jimmy and I got to go on a big purchase pre here just to get the last that's right.

Let's spend all the last money we have.

I think if we can keep it under $200, it'll be a great episode.

Four letters for you for that wish tank. gfci. Please define ground fault. Circuit interrupter. Make sure you got one.

Ground fault circuit interrupter. I thought it was like some, like, good fiddler. I thought it was going to go into right.

Everything into a gfci.

So if you could tell the class what you're describing.

Gfci. It's a little thing when you turn on your hairdryer and you drop it in the sink, and it pops in the wall, and so you don't electrocute yourself. And then you got to push the little button on the outlet that's called the gfci.

There you go.

What it will do is if there's any voltage leak, it's going to trip that circuit quicker almost immediately, versus a circuit breaker, which may or may not pop before you're dead.

Just don't get the gfci off wish off wish.

Go down the Home depot or lowe's, get yourself a quality gfci, and then plug everything that wish into that.

I'm okay with rob's trying this and.

Not having a gsci. You don't and there's that, too.

I was at was it like a lowe's? Home depot menards, and I was picking up some other stuff. I'm not real handy with a lot of the products.

You're not handy at all.

Another kid came up, the guy that was by me, helping me, and he's like, hey, I'm looking for some of these outlets. They got the weird push button thing that makes you so you can lick the outlet. Like, what? What did you just say? I want to see this button.

Just recently, we had somebody on the podcast, and they're talking about making money by selling plants at the fish shows and stuff. And they're making more money with the plants. And I don't know if you. Just recently saw this, made national news. I don't know if you guys down south saw it, but a guy here in anoka, Minnesota, just grew a pumpkin, £2350. And he put it on a special trailer and he held it out to California. I can't remember what grocery store out there, they have a national contest, and whoever can bring in the biggest pumpkin then gets $7 per pound for that pumpkin. And so he brought this pumpkin out there and he won 16,800 and some dollars. It was the largest pumpkin. It was almost a world record. But what I didn't realize is what they said is where the real money is is that they'll sell the seeds from that particular pumpkin and they start out at $80 per seed.

Damn, I'm in the wrong business.

I'm just thinking, wow, how come we're not growing giant pumpkins? And screw the water plants?

Do they taste different? I do. Like, roast them like kale.

Yes.

Travis ganger. 35 hours drive from Minnesota to half. Moon Bay 47th annual safeway World Championship.

Safeway?

Yes.

$16,450.

And as they drove this thing across the country, it took like, 30 some hours. Correct. And they stopped and they had this thing covered with a wet blanket, and they doused it in water so it would not dry out on the drive out there. And what was totally incredible and blew my mind, and I read it three or four times, there is a point where this pumpkin was growing three to £4 an hour. And what three to £4?

It's an ugly pumpkin.

Yeah, it's a big, ugly shit.

That's like a movie.

Three to four. Yeah. Feed me, seymour. Have you ever seen that?

No.

That movie. Holy crap. Little Shop of horrors, if you want to watch that.

Well, since we're on full on tangent, there was a gentleman that I saw, right? And he was trying to do plant hybrids. It was like his weird hobby. The dude had, like, a beard down to his junk, and he just stayed at home. He smelt like Adam.

Like kabucha.

What, like kabucha. No, but what he liked to do is he liked to see a different nourishment for melons and pumpkins and stuff. And what he would do is he'd take the vine kind of like the top of the pumpkin, and he would cut it and essentially attach, like, a bowl or put the vine into a bowl of milk and whatnot.

So our milk is what this guy fed is big pumpkins.

Yeah.

And what they would do, he would just go back and he would have it on one of those cat and dog refill stations where he puts, like, a big jug above it, and as it's drinking, it refills the bowl. Yeah.

These guys spend, they said, hours a day tending to stand pumpkin.

That is the craziest shit I've ever heard of.

Yeah, but I mean, can you imagine how many seeds are in this pumpkin that he can sell for eighty dollars to one hundred dollars per seed. I mean, I'd be gutting that pumpkin right now.

There's a discord channel, it's called pumpkin guys.

Oh, we have to go there 100% pumpkin guys. I'm going to get on my mods and see if they can find me the link to put in the show notes.

There we go.

For sure.

Anyways, back to the topic. So we have liquid fertilizers, dry like granular powder fertilizers, and then either the sticker tabs. So why do we have these and which is best?

Honestly, typically your tabs are going to be obviously for root growth. They're going to be things that are usually relatively high in iron content. For root growth, powder versus liquid tends to be more on how intricate you want to dose. With a powder, you can get a much more refined and dialed in dosage versus a liquid. Because typically speaking, your smallest amount you're going to be dose of the liquid is a drop, which is kind of an arbitrary number versus when you have a powder, you can actually weight out to specific 2.4 grams or what have you and get a little more specific with it.

So what are the disadvantages? Because again, roots have their own, the tabs already have their own specific purpose. What's the pros and cons of bold? You said that powders, you can measure it better, but what's some of the downsides?

It's a lot harder to dose with a lot of the powders. You have to mix them up in a water sample, something like that, dose them in at different times. The liquids are kind of a grab and go type system in my opinion. The liquids are way easier.

So why would you have to do it at different times?

I couldn't hear what Rob said.

I said, why would you have to do it at different times?

Oh, because you don't want the whatever you're dosing, whether it be iron, calcium, whatever you're dosing in there, you don't want it to interact with the other powders. Because a lot of those powdered elements are not necessarily 100% pure element. They might have something else in there to keep them stable so they have a longer shelf life or they don't react with moisture or something in the air. And if you mix them together, a lot of times you could just form a really nasty sludge that takes forever to dissolve in your tank. That's where it's basically useless because it takes so long to break down in.

Your tank, whereas since it's already a liquid base, you don't have near that risk. Or none at all.

Exactly. It's already dissolved in solution, so when you add it into the tank, it's already dissolved and ready for the plants to take up immediately.

But part of the reason that there are six parts in this three flowers program and not one part is that exact reason is they will interact even in solution, in high concentration and end up with you end up with some precipitates or something or some chemical reaction that ends up with a product that is not usable by the plants. In general, along with kyle's explanation. Normally, powders are more for, more advanced hobbyists that want to have the bargain of getting a lot of whatever nutrient it is in bulk that they can then dissolve on their own, so they're not paying for the labor and the water to dissolve it, and then they're able to dial in the concentration to whatever they want. So that if they want to only dose one drop versus half a gallon, they can make the concentration of whatever nutrient it's up to them. So in general, normally that's the case. Powders are the concentrated version that you have a lot more control of figuring out exactly what your concentration of your final solution is and it's going to be ultimately cheaper because you're not paying someone like us to mix it for you.

If these solutions freeze. I remember you talking about the saltwater chemical, the saltwater additives. If they froze they didn't do well with these. If they freeze are they going to be okay through shipping and everything or are they not any good after they freeze?

I honestly don't know the answer to that question. To tell you the truth. I don't think we've had any freeze. It would be very difficult for them to freeze. The tds is so high. I can't imagine they would freeze very well. But it does get pretty cold up there like -40 in the winter. I don't know if we had any complaints about any of it freezing.

I'm trying to think.

We had one freeze, a saltwater one. The complaint was that when it froze the bottle ruptured and so by the time it got to their house it had thawed back out and they just had a soggy box and half the bottle.

But they're so concentrated it would be unless you guys live in the cold.

I was going to say the specific gravity on them is going to be such that it's going to take a pretty extreme cold, which I'm not saying is impossible, but it's going to take a much more than like it's not going to freeze at 32 or zero for the European listeners.

I'm going over the six solutions here, right. That people normally use and I'm trying to think because none of these are live. Liquid carbon, phosphorus, trace elements, nitrate, none of them are live. So I wouldn't believe that it would have any issues on them without some sort of extreme yeah, chemically.

I don't think we'll do anything again, I don't think we've got any that I'm aware of except for that one.

We're going to do some homework. Good question, Adam.

I'll put one on the front step tonight and we'll see what happens.

There you go.

It will be frozen in the morning.

Then I'm going to put a cold.

I'd be surprised. It's not that cold yet. I mean, you're going to get snow.

But it's not like 24 degrees tonight.

24. I bet you if you put it out there, I'd give it 50 50 whether it actually freezes or not overnight.

We got to have a 47 below peak in the winter here.

Then we'll do that on February when you guys are really cold. Then maybe we'll have joe makes a.

Good point that really the only thing to worry about with freezing is for everything to separate, for the water to rise up and your odds to kind of come out of solution. But just take up the bottle when it thaws back out and you'll be back in rocking and rolling.

If the bottle explodes and you end up with a bunch of liquid all over the place, odds are the concentration is not going to be what we want it to be anymore. So you should probably throw away.

All right, so we have a couple of people that message, and we're getting repeats here on holes and plants from a couple of different people. I'm even getting directly pmd by a few. So early in the episode, we answered that already about why holes are happening and how to treat them. So we'll certainly get this episode to you faster if we can. But again, we already answered that question, so moving on. But you mentioned before dry versus powdered, and you don't want to dose everything at once because of how they would react. So why in the world do we have all in one fertilizers for liquid? I can't remember if there's any powdered I've ever seen that all in one, but clearly you shouldn't.

Well, it's how to be politically correct here. They're not all in one because you can't put everything you would need in one bottle completely. Kyle and I were discussing we figured this kind of question would come about the all inclusive on there. And it's not everything. Like it doesn't have a major carbon or nitrogen source in there. So at least in the reflowers case, we're talking all in one. We're talking all the minerals, not the majors, not carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, but all the minerals, or not all of them, but the ones that are chemically compatible to go in for the trace metals and things. So basically your iron trace elements and your potassium, most of those are compatible in the way that we can mix them in there. But once you start mixing in the other stuff, then you end up having reactions.

In particular, things like carbon and phosphate are relatively highly reactive. Phosphate in particular, in a form that's usable for plants, reacts with almost everything, which is why you keep it in its own dosing.

So do most companies. And again, I'm picking on you guys as a journalistic because every company is different. I mean, there's bad products that we've had that just look like literally just phosphate in a bottle. And they say it's the complete solution, you don't have to worry about it. There's a lot of false advertising out there. But for these, we'll call them all in one solutions because literally most companies brand them as you just need this one bottle. Here it is, it has all the stuff in it which clearly isn't the truth. And you need these six solutions. So is it because do they attempt to try to put those two together and just say low doses so it's not oxidizing the bottle? Or is it just completely missing because they know it won't work? I see you twiddling your thumbs.

There'S an answer and then there's a political question.

I was thinking, I want the real answer.

They didn't talk about this before.

They.

Poop juice in a bottle, right? There's some good products, there's some bad products out there. So not to say that there aren't good single bottles on a product that will help you grow plants, but it'd be very difficult. It's not very difficult. It's impossible to put everything of fertilizer you would need in a plant in one bottle. It's chemically impossible. Now can you put a lot of what you need in it and say just add this and in most aquariums you're going to be okay? That's basically what the all inclusive is on the reflowers line is that if in a normal tank where you have nitrogen and phosphate source, then you can add this one other product and it's going to give you everything else to kind of help the plants flourish. But you still need a carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus source. co2 you still need to print your tank. If you feed in your tank, you have nitrogen, phosphorus almost for sure.

And it's not that nitrogen, it can't be put in a bottle. It can put you a bottle without repercussions. Yes. So it's not necessarily false advertising.

You can put it all in the bottle, but it's not going to do any good.

I mean, I'll say it, I'll just go over and I'll say it.

Thank you. We have the honesty, Joe, give it to us.

I'll be the honest person. There's multiple companies out there that the planet tanks are getting really popular right now. And everybody, it's a quick way for them to make an easy buck on it by rebranding an all in one fertilizer and just putting in their bottle and saying, oh, this works great right here. But for an average person just getting into the hobby, it's a quick way for them to put fertilizers in there. But once you get more into the hobby, you should really start dosing individual stuff out there. If you look at it, aquarium co op, they have their own uns boost plant. Everybody has their own liquid fertilizer and it's pretty much all the same chemical. But you don't have carbon in there and some of the stuff in there is such low trace amounts in there, it really doesn't do nothing for your.

Tank back to that kind of thing. Like a beginner. If you're a beginner and you're just starting off and you got some crips, you got nubia or some java fern or java moss, and you want to grow that stuff, but they're not doing fantastic. But it's a new tank. You're not doing your water changes very well. You know there's nitrate and you know there's phosphate in the tank. If you add one of the all inclusive or any of the other all in ones that have all the other accessory stuff, parts four, five, and six, and you dose that in there and even if it's not the best way to do it, it's the general. It's going to hit the 80 20 rule. You're going to have some beginning success with that. But as you mature in the hobby and you start using more and more advanced plants and things, then you're going to start noticing that you need to be more specific with your dosing. And that's when you're experienced your eye and understanding what the plants are doing, being able to tell whether they're happy or not, all that stuff starts coming into play. And then you get more refined into six part or more or whatever solutions you have. But in the beginning, a bottle is going to help you grow some of those beginning plants better than without it. But it's not all in one.

Well, you heard it here first. I hate the branding.

I really do the thumbs up.

Yeah, joe's giving us the thumbs up. I really hate the branding. All in one after really knowing this, all in one pants out, oh, I don't need anything else. It should be like the easy solution or some other terminology showing that it's essentially training wheels. Before you can do your homework, do your research, and use the six piece.

Solutions, you have to be able to dial it in and that's got to dial, got to dial it in. And just like saltwater tanks, if you're off here or there on something, unless you dial it in, you're not going to have the success that you want. You're not going to have the results that you want. So without dialing in with all these different items, you're going to have less success.

You have to look at the aspect of the average person when they walk into a store and they're like, I see your planet tank right there. It's really beautiful. I want to get something like that. And I'm like, well you're going to have to fertilize. Instead of them looking at, oh man, there's like four different bottles I need to get and stuff, it's going to be too complicated for me. They ask for the easy way of just, oh, this is all in just one bottle. And everything else they don't want to do the research on that.

It's like in a marine tank using an AV solution versus the four. Exactly. Same kind of thing. And then there's some trickery in vocabulary here. And the reeflowers is not trying to be elusive there, but they play that same game. If you go to the All Inclusive page on the website, all Inclusive contains all the minerals to stimulate growth, increase color, and improve overall health of plants. It doesn't say minerals and nutrients.

That's only fair.

But I just see all of the water promise. They might not know that, but the rest of the copy on that page, this is where transparency and trying to help people understand. And the way that we do things and the reason that we partnered with Free Flowers is because we like the way they do stuff as well. Is formulated to work best in aquariums with high fish load and modest amount of plants already rich in nitrate and phosphates that are low in other nutrients plants required. So it says All Inclusive, but it's All Inclusive minerals when you already have a nutrient rich environment in your tank. And so you try is there a magic bottle? I would say no. Is there a bottle that will help specific beginners with beginner plants with high fish loads or haven't been up with our water changes? Absolutely. Things can help, but it's all in being transparent and honest, in my opinion, on how you actually tell people your product works and what's in the model.

You'Re talking about maintaining or flourishing. Which one do you want? Do you want to maintain something alive or do you want to flourish and watch it grow?

Yes, exactly. And a lot of it too. I know when I first started dosing my salt water tank, I'm the king of lazy dosing. And I was like, man, I want something that I only have to do like one time, maybe once a week type thing. But once you start kind of getting into that habit of, hey, I've started dosing, and you start to see a little bit of results, you're just like, all right, how can I make these results better? And that's when you can kind of step up to the more advanced systems where you have six parts instead of one and everything like that.

And even when we're talking about dosing compared to other pets, people don't consider having a dog. A lot of maintenance. Every morning I got to walk that dog for 15 minutes until he craps. And then I got to take my hand with a little plastic bag and pick it up and then deal with that. That's maintenance.

Every day.

I got to do that normally twice a day I got to watch that dot walk him around and wait for him to take a crap. And that to me, a dosing. Figuring out how to dose an aquarium is way easier than physically picking up dog shit twice a day.

I'm telling you, man, the next time I see a pile of fresh dog shit, I'll think about you. It's going to be about the whole process there.

But when you really break it down, people are always worried, oh, it's so much effort to dose. Not at all. I mean, once you understand what to do, it's maybe five minutes a week on that dosing of planet thing.

People are thinking to themselves, this is complicated, this is expensive. You could buy how much are those, robs? They're all about under $10 each bottle, correct.

For the small bottles, or about six apiece. $6 a piece.

And you go out and get yourself a couple of kits to test your water. I mean, for 35, 40, $50, you can have it all figured out and be well on your way to success. And yeah, $50 sounds like a lot of money to people. How much is the mandeguster lace plant at the goddamn pet store?

No.

1215 bucks. Just for one plant. So why not try to maintain that plant and and let it split and have more?

Hey, let's pick on Joe for a minute since he decided to join us. What's the most expensive plant that you've either purchased, got in your store, or help with?

What's the most expensive plant that I purchased?

Legal plan. Legal, not fried in a bag?

Yeah, legal.

Aquarium plant.

Well, I have that rare planet tank in there and I think the most expensive plant I have inside there is that Agazu because that's newer on the market. I think it's only been three years on the market and stuff and I think I paid $95 for it. But for that planted tank, which I put pictures of it in the messaging thing, that's like $1,500 worth of plants in there because it's all rare plants and hard to find plants. And that's a struggle because a lot of the plants that I have, have never seen water before too. And it's about converting them from being emerged to submerse and stuff. So it was a struggle. But it's all about being patient in your tank. If you start having something go wrong, don't freak out. Do massive big changes and stuff. Do small changes to see if that corrects. It a lot of times people have issues with their algae and they're like, what am I doing wrong? And I'm like, how long do you have your lights on for? 20 hours? Well, it's way too freaking long. Shut down your lights and stuff like this. Or if they're dosing co2 they're not taking a siesta time. If you have your lights on for 5 hours, have it on for 4 hours, take a siesta for half hour and then have it on again. And then just being patient with the tank. But yes, plans are pretty simple. A planet tank is really simple. If you make it more complicated, it's more complicated. But I try and teach people just a simple way of doing it, looking at leads, looking at certain things. And Google works great where you can just Google, why are my plants leaves turning yellow? Why do I have green spot LG? And it tells you corrections on there. And I don't like picking on certain companies, but there's a company out there that has 8 million bottles of fertilizers. All the bottles look identical and it confuses people. That's why people go to like an all in one, because they're so confused of what to use on it versus understanding the facts of it. But yeah, answer your question. I think the Agazu is the most expensive plant I have in that one tank.

Fertilizer is worth it at at $1500 for your plants in your tank. There's, there's no question. So now I did a review. Now again, Reflowers and cobalt are sponsoring the the podcast. We're doing a couple ad efforts and we're also doing the giveaway, which is talked about in the beginning of the podcast. But I got the product in before we took on the sponsorship, because I want to try the product. I want to see why it's different. Is it usable? Because I don't want that. Here's the all in one solution, and all it is, is phosphorate and a bottle. So give it a try. I had wonderful luck. And I think the best thing about the product, because I've used the six solutions before, I'm a guy that does not a lot of fertilizers, but now I'm definitely full on because it's so much easier is the measuring. The measuring. I don't care if it's dry, I don't care if it's wet. If I have to sit there with a kitchen calculator and then measure out six bottles and six different measurements, like, one gets a teaspoon, this gets 2, goes down the line. It is such a pain in my ass. And I'm just ready to go down to the training wheel solution that should never be called all in one. So this allows you to measure out once and all the bottles are same. So good on you guys, honestly. Yeah.

So all the concentrations of everything have been formulated, so it's easy. The same dosing across the board, chemistry behind the scenes, the chemistry is very different. But we're mimicking basically that redfield ratio that I talked about early on in the podcast, that ratio of carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus. So even though you're dosing ten mills per 26 gallons, I think it is across all the bottles, all those concentrations underneath are very different. But you're going to end up dosing the right amount in your aquarium if you follow the guidelines.

The stuff is pretty great. And it's also a good price. You can use promo code aquarium guys for either cobalt stores or reflower stores for 25% off. But even just shelf price, you can get different options. So they have like 85 milliliter to 1000 milliliter for the big tanks. And even the big containers that last forever are only like $24 without discounts. So easy to do. I was pretty impressed. And yes, Jimmy and I do do research before we take on sponsors.

We do. I like it works very well. It does not make a good margarita, I will say that.

Yeah, don't do that. In fact, that's why I'm happy with these bottles. I have had pump bottles in the past and they look like those CBD hemp lotions or soaps you put in the bathroom. And that's what I've had. And they're like, dude, your soap smells like shit, bro. Why is it in the bathroom? My wife just moved it in there or something because she mistaked the label and yeah, don't do that. Don't do that to your guests unless you hate them or Jimmy comes over.

It's right next to your analog bottle, right?

Oh, and fun fact, fun fact, I figured this out because I actually asked about the pictures. I'm like, where did you guys get these crazy pictures? And the pictures on the ref flowers bottle are actual tanks that either users submitted or whose are these again? Exactly? But I know they're used with reflowers.

They're either the tanks that they personally have in the office or the guys that work for reflowers have in their homes. So one of the guys that started reflowers is a really skilled photographer and he basically went around to all their tanks and got all the artwork for the bottles out of their tanks. Everything you see on the bottle has been grown with reflowers.

Wonderful.

There's a lot of crazy colors, but did we miss anything obscure? I know we have a lot of DIY questions of fertilizer alternatives. There's an episode I'm saving in the future. We're having dustin's fish tanks on hopefully in the future. And he agreed that we're going to do a ghetto episode together. So I think using alternatives is going to be hit on that. But other than that, what are we missing?

There was one good question I saw come across where someone asked should you wait for signs of deficiency to start dosing or should you start dosing before to get gorgeous plants? I think that's a really good question because excellent. I worked aquarium maintenance before I came to cobalt and you'd see a lot of people that would wait until there was a problem to try and treat the problem. And with aquariums, consistency is key. So if you start dosing right from the beginning and you've got your ratio and your levels going, then when you add these new plants, they're going to come into that new environment. And once they're settled in and adapted to that environment, you'll see these growth coming out of them and new leaves and everything like that. And really I recommend always start dosing and then adjust the amount you're dosing as you get more plants. As they're getting bigger, as they're taking up more nutrients, you can then increase the amount you're dosing, but always kind of start from the beginning and get them in. Don't wait to have a problem and then correct that. Start a little preemptive, if you will.

And a big part of that, too, is in the new tanks. When you're first planting a tank is, again, a lot of times you're using punch plants and you're using the crop of the top of the plants. That's what are sold. They don't have their root systems yet because they're the top of the plant. They'll grow the roots. But when you first put them in there, a lot of the growth is happening where you don't see it because they're establishing the root bed and they need all that nutrients. Even though you're not seeing a lot of plant growth above the surface, below in your soil or your gravel, they're establishing that root bed, and the nutrients are vital, and minerals are vital during that time. It makes a big difference. And even though you may not see again the plant growth, they're sucking it up, and it'll keep your algae from growing because they're sucking up those nutrients to grow those roots.

Now, a couple of other questions, especially on the root tab subject, right where you're talking about. I've had people come in, and I just want to put on a warning for some people that are beginning some of these fertilization products. Root tabs are fantastic in a mixed gravel bed where it's intended to grow plants. If you have three inches of solid sand like I do and do grow plants in there, it's not that you can't use those tabs, but know that you're literally putting pockets of biological bacteria in your tank to create that gas that we talked about.

It's kind of like planting a turd monkey.

Know that if you put those in there, you're going to have to take a stake and rake and release those pockets before they become real anaerobic.

I really like kyle's answer. Going back to dosing right away and stuff. Some of the best advice I ever got. When I first started wholesaling Tropical Fish, paul and Mike norton from norton Tampa Bay Fisheries in Tampa had told me, he said, you can keep a healthy fish healthy, but it's really hard to get a thick fish healthy. And it's the same thing with plants. If you start out from the get go, keep them healthy, it's just going to be much easier down the road. This year, I had the best successful garden I've ever had. And my wife and I do nothing but a salsa garden. And we did 75 pints of salsa this year, and we had about 20 plants of tomatoes and stuff. And I listened to some of the locals. I used some of the fertilizers that they told me to use, and by God, those things sat there for the first three weeks and didn't grow at all. And I was so disappointed. But all of a sudden, when that root structure got hold, those things shot up to the moon and produced so goddamn meaning tomatoes, we were giving them away. This is the first year that I've actually took the advice from somebody and actually followed it. And we had four times the garden that we did before, and it was so much more satisfying. So to have a satisfying plant tank, I would follow all this advice that you guys are given.

So going on the last couple of questions, we got someone messaging me asking about those elka selzer tabs. So he mentioned are they wonder shells? Now, the wonder shells that people don't know are these essentially dissolvable supplemental calcium. Like, they put cuttle bone into this weird block that they shape like a shell. You throw them in, it adds calcium in your water. I think it's a decent solution. Yeah, I've had luck with it. If I'm doing calcium, I'd rather go with cuddle bone. But no, the tabs I'm talking about literally looked they were something from my childhood. You go to Walmart and you wanted to add something to your tank, and it literally had like some generic brand that said plant fertilizer. And you put it in, it literally looked like grandpa's Elkist elsa Tab. You put it in it fizzed, not like crazy, but consistently until it dissolved away. And then suddenly you magically had fertilizer in your tank.

I know exactly what you're talking about. I had those as a kid when I had like a little goldfish tank with two goldfish in it. I bought those at the pet store because I was like, I'm going to put plants in here and they're going to be real plants. And I put the entire pack in there when I was like eight years old. And just like it was a mess.

I think Joe he's holding something up on camera. It looks like a packet of those.

El casser tabs or condom? Not sure.

They've got Chinese writing all over it, which explains why I haven't found them in Wales.

We're not talking about flowerhorns.

All right, so then the last question is best place to order plants online? Size, color, and quality. Well, there's a lot of places I bought plants and a lot of places I hated getting plants. I'm not going to mention those particular ones. But honestly, rather than recommending some place that may or may not have quality uncertain, like, for instance, any product you order that's live from anywhere has different holders. So, for instance, you may have company A and they have really good X, Y, and Z. Company B has really good E, F, and G. So it's hard to pick a certain company. But what I recommend doing, if you're wanting to get into plants and find a good place to get started, is go on your local fish clubs. Go on Facebook, try to find a plant enthusiasm expert, because I see so many people get discouraged. I'm talking people that have been in the hobby for 20 years won't touch plants because they just seem intimidating to people and they're really not. So go to one of those friends and those plant nuts that you see that had like nine tanks and all they have is like three fish. Go to one of those dudes and say, hey man, if I take you out to dinner, bring a bucket and give you $60, can you fill it with whatever? I don't care what it's called because the names are intimidating. The marketing on them is iffy there's only a few that we have like common names for. So just get a bucket of whatever, start fertilizing and see what works for you. And as these plants grow, it's so much fun calling up that same buddy and saying, hey, this plant is really doing crazy well. What is that fun plant? And then bonding. You learn a lot more because you have it in your hand and you're not just arbitrarily learning. Like you find a fish cool, you see what works for you and works for your water qualities and start fertilizing from day one. Easy peasy.

There's a couple of companies down in Florida that didn't exclusively plants. Unfortunately, as a hobbyist, if you're going to buy from them, you have to buy so much, you'd have to have 30 tanks in your house. I would also suggest if you use one of these companies down in Florida that exclusively does plants, maybe go to your fish club and say, we've got 40 people here and we want enough for 40 tanks, and let them pick out what they know as well and trust that person. When I buy fish, sometimes my salesperson will say, I'd stay away from that this week, or hey, I got something really cool. And you get a relationship, you learn to trust that person, and then you get the best stuff out there. So if you want to get a huge variety of stuff but you have to buy a bunch, you probably use.

Your local fish club, even our local discord. And again, you can find our discord. That's where we do our podcast. According to podcast.com, the links in the bottom of the website, even our discord. We have a place called marketplaces where we allow people to sell their own stuff. And we have an in house plant expert. I'm going to give a shout out to willa. He has a couple of characters at the end of the name as well. But he is definitely an in house plant seller. He's a big hobbyist and he has beautiful luscious tanks. I know he sells on there. Those groups killer. But again, if you're a company, you sell aquarium plants. Just like we found Joe with his amazing shrimp and cobalt with reflowers and tested them out, we'll be happy to test out your plants and accept or deny your sponsorship.

One of the things about your local club, that connection that is really fantastic when it comes to plants is, you know, you're getting fresh, good quality clippings off of something that's growing in your town. And although we've talked in generalities about how nutrients and things and we're worried about the tropics and all that we've talked about, there are some in some places like Oregon, there's very different water in Oregon than there is in Las Vegas. And so if the plant is growing in the water in Las Vegas, and you live in Las Vegas, and you go to that club and you get it from a guy who's growing it, it's used to that water, it's activated already. And you're getting a high quality trimming. And you should have a lot higher level of success than you would if you just went off and bought it from, god knows, from, say, somebody that's growing in Oregon where the water is super soft. There's no alkalinity versus Colorado river water. So especially when you start getting it from somebody local, you're going to have a lot better chance of getting that first step of success than you would just ordering it willy nilly.

I'm sorry. I was giggling the back of that. Somebody from chat decided to do some memes for us, and what they did is they took the six elements from the reflower bottles and put them on power rangers characters.

Nice.

Apparently, just to let you know, trace elements is the green or white ranger because it's both mixed.

Which one is the hot ranger?

Oh, definitely nitrate.

Yeah, nitrate is a hot ranger.

I didn't see that one coming across.

I'll have to send it to you.

I do have a question, please. Is there any flowering aquatic plants that have flowers or not? Really?

There absolutely are.

I have some.

Oh, really?

Oh, yeah.

I have beautiful anubis.

All the swords, lace plant, any of the pop and cottons will flower almost.

Do you need to add some special, like, is there any of the elements that would help them flower more? Because I've never even seen them anything flower in an aquarium. I've never done aquatic plant, so this was pretty interesting. I was taking notes about the whole.

Thing, but this is the perfect thing to segue to rob's, wanting to take on the sponsorship. Actually, they came to us and said, how do we get this word out about this? Rob, why don't you tell them what flowered for you?

I make jokes on my aquarium. Right. I have these beautiful anubis I told you about, and I always look in the aquarium and make jokes that since reducing reflowers, it looks like a funeral because you have what looks like these peace lilies popping up all over the place, that's the anubis has a white bloom and it's beautiful. Yeah, that was always the joke now that I put reflowers in, it's just a funeral carpet on the bottom of my aquarium. But even like my ludwig, I have red lewd wig I put it in and it's just super brilliant. Especially after adding an electrophosphorus to to that tank. That stuff bloomed beautifully. And that's not even a flower plant. But even one of my favorites is tiger lotus. Again, not another blooming plant, but it's that purple. Beautiful texture, a lot of fun. I think anubis is a really easy one to start if you want to try flowering, because if you're anubis flowers, that's like your reward. Besides pearling, I don't even mention pearling. We got to do another plant episode.

Absolutely.

I'm learning a lot I need to do. You need to do another one of these, right?

We got to do stuff that isn't Mill foley. Illegal stuff, adam, come on now.

I don't know. It is technically illegal.

We don't know yet.

Your specific question. A lot of times, if you have a good carbon and nitrogen source and your tank is absorbing all the phosphate, all the phosphorus that it can, you're kind of maintaining a very healthy population. Then if you kick up your phosphorus a little higher, that's normally when you start seeing flowering, along with some sort of water change or something along those any sort of chemical change. So water change and then an increased level of phosphates. But not to the point where you're overdosing, but say you're using X and you're maintaining a very high quality. You bump it X plus 1020 percent. You'll start seeing flowers, typically because they already have a nice big root structure. They have really healthy leaves and they're producing and they're photosynthesizing a very healthy, healthy clip. Then they get that extra little pop of nutrients, then they go into reproduction mode.

So you go right from right from foreplay to a happy ending, right?

Yeah.

Even like the little add a little.

Phosphate and you get like boing.

Even that phosphorus, like I added in that. It was ten days, I believe, because I was just past my second dose, because I did week one, week two. So I was just going to my second week, and there's where my flowers quadruple. But yeah, I think that does it.

All options, go ahead. I'm sorry.

And they did correct me. Resident plant and daddy. You're right. Will is the resident plant daddy in discord? Well, is there any other questions for you, Jimmy?

I have just been fascinated by all of this. I learned something every time on this goddamn podcast, which I so regret ever telling you. I'd start doing this a year ago. But man, every time we do this, we learn something new. We hopefully share this with everybody. And I hope everybody has success out there because we started this podcast for people to have success. We want people to stay in the hobby because unfortunately, all the european countries are kicking our butt, keeping aquariums and keeping fish. So it's time that we step it up.

Yeah, you look at the surveys, right? United States are like, I want a goldfish in a bowl. Then you go to Europe and they're like, I want a doublechamber co2 unit going on my specialty recommended tank from George Farmer. We just need to kick up our game and start with fertilizers.

So being somebody that before COVID we go to Europe quite often and we have European partners, it's a different mentality. When it comes to aquariums over there. It's not that they're better at it, they just invest more if they're going to be involved. So we have a lot of very casual participants here, but over there, the hobbyist ratio is a lot higher. And I wouldn't say they're definitely on the plant side, they're pretty good. But on the reef side, I would say we rival them pretty hard. Europe tends to not like horsepower. They like to do everything very low and slow and more natural per se. And that doesn't necessarily lend itself to the reef side as much. Not saying they don't have fantastic reefers over there, but I think the Asian and Us reef guys are at a higher level than a lot of the European guys, in my opinion. Now, plant side, that's the way they're wired. Low flow, minimal filtration, way more natural. And so on the plant side, definitely Europe is ahead of us. But as a hobby overall, it's different. Different mentality.

I'm just loving it. Just less professionally, respectively, talking shit. You can't get better than that.

Suck at Europe. All right, well, I know Adam has.

A bunch of questions, but we're going to have to continue this in another episode. We're going to do definitely another plant episode here in the future. But I'm glad we kicked this off. So thank you both kyle and Les. It was a pleasure having you both.

Thanks for having us.

Thank you.

And also, Joe, stop by more often. homie. Come on now.

What was that, Rob?

I said stop by more often, homie.

I know you got snow coming up.

You should come up there.

You're darn right. Get up here before the five inches drop tonight. It'll be wide open for you.

Well, guys, talking about flower horns again?

Yeah, there you go.

Definitely not talking about Rob, because we were talking one to two inches.

In that note, guys, if you like what you're here, go to a creamguyspodcast.com and on the bottom of the website you can support the show. You can donate once monthly. It helps keeps the lights on. Buy some merch. We got stickers now by popular demand, and I just got mine in and they're pretty damn decent. I mean, not the cheapest things because they have to be large custom agent cuts. I think they're like two $3 for the big stickers. But stop back next week.

We're going to be giving out free tattoos, right?

And we also got a couple of giveaways that we're working on for J four flower horns. He's still giving out that flower horn away. And of course, Cobalt and Reflowers have the giveaway we mentioned at the beginning of the episodes. Support our sponsors. Support us. Thank you and we'll see you next week. Thanks, guys. For listening to podcast. Please go to your favorite place where podcasts are found, whether it be spotify, itunes, stitcher, wherever they can be found, like subscribe. And make sure you get push notifications directly to your phone so you don't miss great content like this.

I never knew that a Minnesota accent.

Is so sexy until I heard adam's voice.

That's my boy, don't you know?