Shrimp tanks we have stacked on high. Fill up with the almond leaves and the shoulder wood supply never ending at yours, joey with our code your Ocean Jack. Get the discount with our code, go to Joe Shrimpshack.com. Use promo code Aquarium Guys at checkout for a wonderful 15% off. merry Christmas from Joe Shrimpshack. Welcome to the Aquarium, guys. Podcast with your hosts, Jim colby and Rob dolsen. Welcome to the Christmas Special Podcast. We did one last year, and I wrote a story. It was just six minutes to remind you that you shouldn't be listening to podcasts on Christmas. You should be enjoying your family. This year COVID ruined that for everyone. So now we're here to entertain you. For those that are stuck at home under quarantine that can't be at home with your family, consider us, you know, sitting by your fireplace at home, about to do a fun, candid interview during family Christmas time. It just so happens to be about the Aquarium Guys podcast. And we'll finish up with a little story from Jimmy this year, because I did one last year. Jimmy.

Yeah, I did. And I listened to it today, and it was very interesting. And I had to see if I had to come back with anything to smack you with, but you're we were actually pretty well behaved last year.

It was pretty good.

Yeah.

Not going to lie again. I'm rob solson.

I'm Jim colby.

And today we have the wonderful Aaron beck joining us. He's going to be the interview and where the interviewees?

Yeah, I think that's how they is.

That how it works. I'm under a tremendous amount of pressure. I literally have two spotlights staring at me on top of being interviewed, so I'm very nervous.

Jimmy honestly, you get used to it. But the blinding lights never go away.

They really never do. That's why I wear shades.

Apparently. You two have never been in the police station.

Well, I do my best to not.

Yeah, I've had the lights in my face before and had a lot of questions thrown at me.

Is that where you only use liquid.

Soap in the shower? Into the jail?

Okay.

Yeah.

Excellent. Well, I think we just dive into this, other than hopefully you'll be hearing a crackling fireplace in the background, sipping a hot cup of holiday gas station soda. Feel the Christmas spirit with us. And again, merry Christmas to one and all. But, Aaron So, you happen to be an amazingly handsome, a single man that has skills in video production on at least all levels to some degree. You've made a lot of fun indie films over the past, and that is your career choices. Film editing, producing, all that. So, number one, give us a little about yourself. Well, why you love me mostly Jim.

Does he always go and dry? He set me up too much.

I feel like it's more pressure that Jimmy put me in. He's like, I need to be in bed by 10:00, and I'm looking at Mike watch, and we have 30 minutes.

Yeah.

I never let him go in and dry. I usually loop it up pretty good.

With mc rib Sauce.

That's great.

Yeah. I mean, video editing is my job, but really it's all about if I am interested in things and I ask a lot of questions, I'm better at it, which one day I'll get good at it, but we'll see.

So how on the earth did you have this idea for this fish dock?

Geez. jeez, Rob, you're just you're just going in there. I was going to be like, I've got all this fun story about how we met, and you're just you're just.

Killing it for oh, we're we're gonna get there eventually, but I figure we get the business out of the way before we have our pleasure.

Yeah, let's not talk about the gay bath house right away.

Yeah.

Well, again, liquid soap only.

Yeah. No, man, what a way to try to transition.

Put out, would you? Come on.

Put out. Be nice. Be nice to me.

I like that.

Best behavior.

Oh, it's Christmas.

It's Christmas.

We don't want to be on the nominal list.

Excuse me.

We should do it like a normal family Christmas and start nitpicking each other immediately.

Well, I got this friend Rob's, and he's kind of into fish, and he was telling me all about these fish, and I'm like, that's kind of interesting. And then he's telling me that, well, I got this fish podcast going on. I'm like that's also interesting, but more interesting that your wife told me about it first and saying that it was antiquote kind of blowing up.

Wow, I didn't know my wife talked about me.

You know, it's kind of rare for minnesota's. They're terribly Norwegian. Regardless of your background, don't you know, it's just one of those things where I think fish is an interesting topic. It's really deep, and there's a lot to jump into and really get your feet wet.

I feel like we got to start doing a drinking game.

Well, that's that's mostly going to take a toll on Jim here.

He's got two livers. Don't let him kid you. I'm a professional, so I'm to blame for this idea. That is what you're saying. Well, that's hopefully not the blame.

I mean, you know, I think you'd be putting a little bit of importance.

On yourself there, but I don't want that importance.

You definitely introduce me to all these people who they're really passionate about what they do, and that makes me formulate some opinions about this. And I'm sure we'll talk about this more down the line tonight when I feel a little bit more into it. I want to get to know Jim.

I went in and dry. I feel like you've now lived the situation. So where would you like to begin, sir?

Well, I figured I'd talk about the funny story of how I met robs because I don't do the hobby. I don't have a single fish. But I've known robs for how long have we known each other? Something like four or five years now.

It's been a bit a hot minute.

Yeah. And were these dorks who used to play magic together? We still kind of do, but just not as much.

I mean no, you're still dorks.

We're just older now.

Well, thank you for that vote of confidence. Okay, there's this guy, right? Imagine me. I'm in groups online about where people talk about the game. It was all happening in the central Minnesota. There's not a lot of population, not a lot of people who play the game. But somehow there's this beautiful little tight knit community that has come together and keeps getting new people in. And suddenly in this area with, like, low population, there's like a 30 person group meeting every week, which is insane. I've played the game for a long time. And to have a town of population less than 10,000, have 30 people meet every week and play for like 5 hours is crazy as minimum. Minimum. And these guys were so into it. They're fanatics, and they're is this one guy who keeps popping up, and he keeps trying to start shit. I'm thinking to myself here, who is this guy? Right? Because I haven't met him. He's like one town over. During college, when I go back to the hometown, I would be about 30 minutes away from where Rob's lived. There's a tiny bit of rivalry between our towns. It's really petty. It's hilarious. And one is definitely better. But we won't name names.

We won't.

And Rob's is out here, and he's like, oh, let's get these guys together. Let's do all this community involvement and stuff and let's like, fight between the towns. And I'm like, who is this guy? He's really everywhere. And then I hear my town's people, they're talking about this guy, this guy robs. And then he's like, oh, yeah, no, Rob. He's a little out there. He's a little crazy, right? And Jim, you know what I'm talking about.

A little out there.

Well, I like to put things mildly.

His mailing address is jupiter.

I thought uranus was going to be.

The you know, I was going to be the one I'll save an ad for later. I'll save my uranus for you. Come on, dick.

I need more eggnog.

You know, in the world of video, I know that I can just edit all of this out. And with this, I can only pray to God that that's going to happen.

No, it's not. We're going to enjoy everything.

It doesn't matter. Nobody listens to this anyway.

This is Christmas.

This is bonus Christmas content. This is what they came for.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. So I'm going to meet robs. I message him. We're going to hang out and play some magic he was living with one of my good friends at the time.

And so kind of a blind date.

You know, a little bit. I tell you what, it is exactly as much of a horror story as you might expect from a blind date, because the first thing we do, the very first thing is I get to his house. I'm like, hey, robs, what's up? The first time I'm meeting you? And he's like, oh, yeah, great. Aaron, right? Yeah, I'm erin. And he's like, do you want to go to my fish warehouse? Mind you, I know nothing about this man.

Wait, was my limo outside at the time?

You didn't own the limo yet. You didn't own the limo yet. I'm still pissed about that. I am still met. He said I could use it in a film. And he's like, oh, I have a limo. And then I'm like, hey, Rob's, four months later, do you have the limo?

You just sold it.

I had to sell it. And I'm like, I told everyone just sold it.

He had to sell the limo because it was in his driveway. But it also was out in the it was out in the street.

It was a 1980s Lincoln stretch limousine. And I got it off of craigslist. I got it for a steal. I fixed it up. And a guy walked in my yard and gave me an offer I couldn't refuse.

He said, come on in the back of the limo and I'll show you something fun. That kind of offer? Or was it cash?

It was cash.

So he paid you to go to.

The I did tell him that there is coke stains in it, though.

Was that from when you went to the mall the other month?

No, I think that's where they use it as like a car double and scarface movie.

Yeah. So imagine me, I'm like, I'm going to make this throwback to 80s buddy cops. Yeah, a white limo. Fantastic. The bad guys will drive around in that and no, just pull the rug right from undermiches it's. Fantastic. But fish warehouse. And I'm going in there, I'm like, okay, sure. And we go to this secondary location, and I'm thinking to myself, what am I getting myself into? I go back in here and it's just tanks. And somebody just comes in. And then rods is like, hey, as he does.

You make me sound like I got like, tard burgers or something.

Oh, sorry. I could do a little bit of a half rand.

That was so dead on. I want that as my ringtone.

Is this the comedy Central roast of robs? I feel like this is where he's getting at.

You kind of signed on to it. I mean, like jim's turns later, we're stuck here in the middle of a cabin and there's a winter storm and I'm going to run out of hot chocolate at some point and there will be hell to pay.

We'll switch to eggnog and watch your cullen blow.

So lady comes in. She's like, I brought these. And she's just got a bag of fish of I don't know, I thought it was drugs. I'm going to describe this to you, and I kid you not, the vernacular, dead on right there. He's like, oh, yeah, you got them. I got yours right here. And they just do a little exchange and we're done in five minutes. And I'm just kind of sitting there and myself like, this is some nice coy. I hope nothing bad happens to them.

And at this point, you thought to yourself, I wish I had a safe word. blueberry pancake.

I was too innocent at the time. I didn't know I needed one with robs.

Everybody needs a safe word with robs.

And we would meet up all the time because we hit it right off the bat for whatever reason.

Love it. First coke.

And so you start going steady. That's cute.

You got to give a little, you know, so and Rob's really wants to give it night sometimes. Over the years, he would tell me about this fish related stuff that he would do, and it would just be great. I played so much Animal Crossing as a child. And I tell you what, I got addicted to fishing in that game. So I know some species, and one of the really cool ones that I always thought was like, awesome was an arijuana. And robs, he tells me one day, he tells me, he's like, Aaron, you'll never believe what I got. And I'm like, what did you get, Rob's? And he sends me a picture of the most beautiful fish I have ever seen with my own two eyes. Yeah, there's better pictures online, but in person, it's just fantastic.

I'm not a camera.

Was this the first arawan you've ever seen?

It was the first one I saw in person.

Yeah. I remember my first set of boobs, too. They're the most pure boobs I've ever seen.

When I went to Forest Lake Pets for the first time, I was losing it. So I see this, and I'm a film guy. I love doing photography. I take nice photos of it, and I'm thinking like, this is really fun. I'll never use these for anything, but it's really fun. A couple of weeks later, he's like, yeah, check out this hybrid here in the bottom. And I'm like, that's also kind of cool. Not nearly as cool as the arawana. And he's like, oh, God, no. What could go wrong? Over the years, he would get these fun things and he would tell me about it, and I would think nothing of it because we'll just play magic until he starts doing podcasts. Last year, I listen to his podcast and I'm like, wow, it's a podcast. Could be more researched. And I'm thinking to myself, like, I don't really know if this is for him because he doesn't really sound like an expert on this. But then I listened to his fish podcast that he started up slightly afterwards, and I'm like, oh, this is great. You have no idea how long I've waited to tell you how I actually felt about the magic one.

It wasn't good.

It was not good.

It was just reading the news, which.

Was really great that you had the fish one because it worked out.

It really did. You found your niche. Clearly it's now in better hands now that I know that I'm some sort of enigma people need to be concerned about. And apparently we use drug deals out.

Of a fish room. You just love when I use that phrase, don't you, robs?

I've never even heard the word enigma. Rob's is an enigma until you told me.

And then I met him and I was like, oh, he's mostly memes.

He's mostly hippopotamus.

I'm going to have to work on my first impressions, but thank you.

So I was listening to this podcast. I didn't start right out the way. I think it was somewhere between four and six in, but I was listening to it. I was listening to how you were talking, how the guest was talking, and I think you can just appreciate a couple of guys who are talking about something. They really know what they're talking about and they know how to talk about it. It's just enjoyable. I have no idea what's going on. I don't know fish, but I'm tangentially friends with Rob, so I can kind of appreciate that he's doing his thing and he's having a good time with it. And also, I guess he's evan, who seemed to be enjoying it, surprisingly.

It is fun just to see your face every time, Jimmy.

That's what I look forward to seeing my face.

Yes.

I was still waiting for my first check to clear, so that's why I'm still here.

Oh, yeah, that big podcast money. You know what I'm talking about, Jim.

I'm just hoping for enough money for mcrib. That's all I really, really want.

That's our goal for next Christmas.

You need anything else, buddy? I feel like here for you.

I feel like I really need to work on my first impressions and I feel closer to you.

Well, you got to practice to get better at it, but that's all it takes. Just believe in yourself.

So for what the fans demand, right? And now they have real scope on me being accurate as a human being. And now I made everybody go on craigslist and look for a limousine for cheap. But what else you got for us?

How you say, begin the interview?

Wonderful.

First question, robs. What did you have for breakfast today?

I didn't eat breakfast, but I did have ginger ale that was diet because of diabetes. For those that don't know, we ask this every time on the podcast. We do the podcast live. We always ask what we had for breakfast to do audio checks. And Adam always talks about some, like, nasty assembucha. Jim talks about having gummy bears and vodka, and the guests are completely horrified because generally, this is, like, some of the first touches they have with us on the podcast.

We talk to them, we try to.

Warn them, and they get on and talk about gummy bears in vodka and rotten kombucha, and they're just like, Why am I on this podcast?

The most common thing that I get and whenever I do this is people say nothing. And I'm always like, that's not the best for your health to start the day. Right, rob's, I think we need to have a talk later.

Get some post toasties.

So, Jim, how's those gummy bears and vodka?

I don't have gummy bears and vodka every morning. Sometimes I have a bag of doritos, and then I have a snorted cocaine off a dead hooker's ass.

In the limo, right?

No, out in the woods. And I found her out there dead. I didn't put her there. I just found her.

This is literally right there, is literally how we do audio tests every time. So there's your clip. Clip it, share it. I just want to be done.

What's really great is I wanted to show some people different side of you guys. A big thing with me is the fish are interesting, but I'm more interested in the people.

This is a behind the scenes moment and good play, sir.

Honestly, most of this interview is going to be sort of like behind the scenes stuff.

Wonderful.

Let's start out. You've got this podcast, and you've got it going. So going into it, Rob's, going into making this podcast, what were your goals? Did you have any sort of mission statement?

So, again, we did the podcast. The first one I did alone was that magic podcast. So the moment that I did that, I'm like, no, this isn't a fit. I like podcasting, but I got to do something I'm more passionate about. And I've been picking on Jimmy forever. It took about four months, Jimmy, to get you to even come over once to look at a microphone. You don't even know what a podcast was.

I didn't even have a safe word, so it wasn't coming over.

Yeah, no safe word. So it took quite a while to get your butt over here. And we did just our test run. We had no idea that we would ever get into it, so we had no expectations. Starting, like, the first three episodes. After that, it was like some, like, glorified AHA moment. And then immediately, like, this works. We could use this as a tool to have all these insider secrets no one wants to talk about on YouTube or whatever else and share things that people are either afraid to or don't want to because it's somehow covering up their breeding secrets. Or we just see a lot of information disappear. And that was like the light. Like, oh, my gosh, we could do this and have fun and do it in our own way, have something that wasn't dry and told things that we weren't going to apologize for.

Yeah. And I would say that was really noticeable right off the bat, other than the fact that I think the word.

Crass you used, it's kind of crass, guys.

Well, that and we keep getting feedback. I think it was an episode one. I have a clip in there that I keep getting sent by people saying, I just want to nut.

Jimmy I don't know what that means. I do.

You scared me there, son.

I just want to nut. That was how it all began with boys and girls.

Yeah. This jerk badgers me. I think badgering is a good freaking word. And he badgered me and says, Come on, let's do a podcast. And if you know Rob's like we know Rob, sometimes he's got a short attention span and something shiny really? Something shiny is over here. And then so I thought what's? We're going to do three podcasts, and I'll never hear from him again. And then he camped out in front of my doorstep and said, we got to do this some more.

Did you hold a boom box up?

Yes, he did. You've seen the movie.

What were your thoughts as you were sort of tepidly recording this first episode?

I seriously thought, let's get this over. It's going to be an hour of my life that I'm never going to get back. And we did it. It was somewhat enjoyable, and then the second one was a little more enjoyable. And then Rob's pulled a guest out of his back pocket, and he got one of my favorite guys in the world, mr. Steve rubiki from Angels Plus on. And once we had Steve on, for some reason, that gave us a little bit of legitimacy. People said, oh, these guys aren't completely nuts. They actually have got a guest on. And I can say one thing that Rob does, and he does well. He gets all these guests from all over the world on some of the most interesting people we've had, I've never even heard of until they've been on this podcast, and people are just blown away. So kudos to Rob for that, in my defense.

Right. I bribe them with things that we don't deliver on. So we have a long check to.

Give a lot of people. So we need to order about 200 T shirts, is what you're saying?

Something like that, yeah.

You made a lot of promises early on, and I hope nobody really listens to that.

No, we've actually been reminded on some of them. We've done most of them. But I think the first promise we did and we still haven't delivered on, which was finally making a compatibility poster. Jimmy, I had to relisten to that.

Oh, really?

We need to get that done. It's on my list for next year.

Cyrus Farm sells them. Go ahead and buy one.

Have you ever used Google Images?

Yes, it's there. We just got to make our own.

With our own brand, everything in time.

We have to white out whoever copyrighted it, that sort of thing.

So I like that you brought up Steve ricky episode. And for anybody out there who hasn't listened to it, episode six of this podcast is phenomenal. I think it was the first time that you guys really hit your format and really were able to showcase everything that makes the podcast something that I was connecting with. Despite being a total outsider when it comes to fish, it was where I could easily see that your mission was get this good information and put it out there. And why Steve was the perfect guest for that was because he was already doing that. I think when it comes to skills, a lot of people tend to get defensive. You would have obviously seen this in the aquarium hobby because you tell people about it all the time.

Oh, yeah. Don't you know?

Oh, yeah, bud. So Steve is out here. He's giving people good information because he knows that what makes him different is his experience as a breeder. And that's the thing that's most important. And you can't recreate that. You can't cheat your way to it. You can get some helpful advice, but you need to learn these lessons. It was also sharing not only your knowledge of fish, but also rob's your own personal background in web development. It where you were just being a total dork with this guy going on the way back machine to look at his original website.

It was pretty great.

Yeah, I'm sure Steve enjoyed that.

He did. He, like, asked for links after the podcast and archived it.

Honestly, I just feed off other people's energy, and I was like, oh, these guys are going off and I am here for it. He could have just said, I want a nut and we're there. And the last point that I would say between you guys and Steve, it was just that you guys were incredibly genuine and authentic about how you were communicating. Right. I think there's a lot of times in any content creation that people and sometimes very quickly lose that genuine excitement because they really wanted to do it. Maybe they only get a couple in and then they just start phoning at him like jim's worst nightmare. You guys have managed to keep that generosity and authenticity going again. Episode six for anybody who hasn't heard it is absolutely phenomenal for saying everything that you need to know about this podcast.

Steve ricky, I've known for over 30 years, and when I first started purchasing items from Steve ricky and getting information about breeding angel fish, he was just a phone call away, very knowledgeable. He was one of the very first people ever on the Internet selling fish, if not the first. We've had some arguments about that from different people. But what I love about Steve, it's all about quality. It's all about getting the best possible product to the customer, not apologizing for prices. He is getting extremely fantastic prices for his stuff, and good for him. I mean, he's giving you a wonderful, wonderful product. But what I really appreciate about Steve is he is so incredibly busy, so much more busy than he was 30 years ago. And if you're a new customer, you have to make an appointment to talk to him on the phone, and he.

Charges I think the rate was posted. It was like, in a ridiculous, like, three digit rate. He charges per hour, and there's a minimum just for having conversations with him.

Yeah. So if you're not a customer and you're just looking for information stuff, he'll give you his time, but it's going to cost you. And I know for a fact that he kind of did that just to try to avoid some of these conversations.

Because he just doesn't have time.

He just doesn't have time. But Steve has always been so good to me for all the years and stuff. And when Rob called me that day and said, I got Steve or vicki coming on the podcast, it just blew me away, because I know that steve's time is so valuable.

One man doing over 400 tanks by himself, and he has to deal with customer service of people calling him the phone. It was his only way of trying to mediate it when being fair. So he's been trying to find ways to share his information, and he was very willing.

Very willing.

Surprised. That was when Jimmy was like, you know, robs, I can't believe you actually you did this.

Yeah. That was the first nice thing I ever said to you, and probably the last.

I mean, that and my grilled grilling tasted okay, you said?

Yeah.

Oh, you thought it was fine.

His grilling.

He said, it's a little dry, so I take that as a compliment.

He made me a grilled cheese sandwich.

Would you get you really like being dry after.

Keep it moist.

So after I listened to this episode, I actually went to Angels is just Angels Plus. Yeah. So I went to his website just out of curiosity, because it was like, I want to find out about this, because they had an hour about this. It was fantastic. And looks like he's bringing it up right now.

Absolutely jogging about it.

And I think that day as well. I checked his blog and saw that a Mr. Steve Or bickie talked about how he was on the podcast, and he really summed up what I was feeling at the time. Right. Do we want to read this off for the folks at home, or is.

This one where he was standing with a gun in his mouth.

I feel like something go ahead and read it. I had the pleasure of doing an interview with a good group of guys who promoted the hobby. They are new at podcasting, but I've seen some real podcast talent in this group. I think it's worth subscribing to their podcasts and following their work in the topic was Selling Fish Online. I gave my experiences and insights, what worked for me, how to get started, and what to expect. Although I recommended that most keep it as a hobby for those few possessed individuals, you might find this a bit helpful or at least a little interesting. Thanks, Robbie, Jim, and Adam.

That was exactly what was running through my head after I had listened to it. And I thought it was just absolutely fantastic. It might help you on a bad day if you just compile all these things that people have said about you after they've been on your show.

I need tissue soon.

Sometimes you need the touchy fee fees.

Just the tip and blueberry pancakes. I don't feel safe in this room. That's my safe word.

I thought it was Oklahoma. We practiced this.

No, Rob's.

Pronounce. A word that goes P-I-A-B-A. pronounce.

That it's either piaba or piaba. I think it's Piaba.

Is it piyiba?

Right, that's the meme. Thank you for that.

Right?

Yes. I still get people messaging me, especially people, like, new. Like, they go through the podcast. They find ofr they find one obscure video from them and then they have to find me on Facebook and message me.

Paba.

I've literally got like, a handful of people doing that to me.

Who could have done this to you?

It was you. So thank you.

There's no such thing. Also, another episode that really stuck with me that I've listened to was the Project Piaba. Piaba.

It's got to be.

It's got to be.

It's Piaba.

Yeah. Project piaba episode with Scott dowd I remember I got a message at one in the morning from Rob's because Rob's knew that I listened to his podcast. That's dangerous info to give him.

That's actually pretty early for him. I've gotten a lot of 04:00 a.m. Text messages from Rob.

I now have a day job, if that matters.

Thank you, Jesus.

We'll find out if it does. So, you know, he he texts me and he's like, this guy is really dry. I don't know how I feel about this. And then I'm like, Whatever, Rob's.

I'm sorry, Scott. I love you, though.

I'm going to bed because I'm not dealing with this right now. It's one in the morning, so I listened to it the next day because I might as well courtesy. And I'm listening to this and I'm like, what are you talking about? This is one of your best. I couldn't understand why he thought this one.

So give me a little preface right, because I always rate that as the driest podcast and the one that I had to do the most work with. That was quite a long podcast before edits. I took probably 40 minutes out of that podcast because we had such a terrible connection. He had a computer from 2006. He had a terrible microphone, and there was a delay on top of everything. And then how he delivered was like, I don't know, a lutheran preacher on a very long Sunday afternoon. So there was a lot of pauses.

And he was standing up and sitting down a lot.

It was a lot of nerves on scott's part. I don't know if that's the case, because before we talked to him quick during the podcast, he wanted to make sure he was getting the content as accurate as possible. So the amount of gaps between words, 40 to 45 minutes of cuts after it was done, I couldn't listen to it for about three weeks just because I sat on that for days editing that podcast.

One of my favorites.

Welcome to my world days. So Jim Rob's is telling me this, and I'm like, oh, you're learning to be an editor, bud.

I felt like I was growing a small aneurysm as I was editing this after it came out, after about that three weeks, and people started messaging me left and right, saying how fantastic that podcast was and nothing to do with the editing other than the fact that he had such great content. Once I made him sound good, like his content was on point, his Mission spotlight was wonderful and turned into what I believed firmly was the worst podcast to literally top three.

So a lot of what I do is trying to get people comfortable in a situation, because I'm sure, as the two of you are aware, you get the best out of people when they feel like they can be themselves. And sometimes they do need that little bit of extra help.

100%.

And kind of like Bill Cosby. No, not too soon.

I can't have jello now at Christmas.

Is he doing fine? How many are you in?

I'm in three.

Oh, Jim. It's a long night and it's cold out here.

Yeah, we get spoon later.

Yes, please.

Are you okay, Rob?

No. One of the Oklahoma.

Something you consider?

I like the Pudding pops.

Something you consider?

You consider pudding, pops?

Sorry. We're on a bill cosby tangent.

Don't you know, don't make him do impressions. Just answer the question. Ask the question. Oh, my wife, camille.

Jim, tell me about the pudding.

I like the pudding, Pop.

This is so good. He likes the pudding pops. robs.

There went 50 listeners just like that. poof.

I always like to tell people it's my job to make you look good, because it is. It really is. And in your case, to make people sound good. There's just something, again, about somebody who is so passionate about what they're doing and what they're talking about that you can't help but love it. And I don't think we've talked about this since, and I know how worried you were about it, but I think you'll kind of find that whenever you're really worried that something's going to bomb and you don't know how it's going to go over, because you had to put a lot of work into it. Those are always the best.

Clearly, that one was pushing a week editing, and just for it was an hour and 40 minutes of content, and it had nothing to do with all I was doing is clearing dead air prepositions. I did nothing else for edits, and it was just the most beautiful, flowed content from change from A to B. So tickle pink. And I can't wait to contact Scott and have him on again.

Episode 27 Project piaba. Again, it's another seminal episode in your repertoire. Now, talking about one that is a lot more recent, mr. bentley pasco. Is that pasco?

Yes, pasco. He described it as tabasco. That's how I remember it now, because.

You suck at merlin.

Can we just have a Tom Jones?

We could do a 30 minutes episode of you just mispronouncing everybody's name not once, but 17 times.

Mark Smith, anybody?

Yeah, if you could find a Mark Smith, that would be great.

But if there's any fan out there who wants to make a super cut, we really appreciate it.

I mean, even who do we have on on Monday night? We had those nice people from the seahorse people.

Yes. And it was just the best.

It was Capille and alyssa and how many times did you say Capille wrong?

Okay. To be unfair, it spelled pil. It's like capill. Capille. It's a lot for me, right?

Yeah, but you asked him 17 times.

Yeah, and I got it right in the podcast.

No, you didn't.

I did.

You did not.

I did. I will have to relisten to my episode.

So yeah, it's just all about rob's butcher names and stuff.

But when people are listening to this or wondering what that podcast episode is, we did this episode out of order. So know that we have, like, two or three episodes in the Humperd at any given moment.

Upcoming, we have a wonderful, wonderful podcast about seahorses with alyssa and Capille. So make sure you tune in.

And we did not leave out any horse jokes, so know that assist chaps were referred to it. Thanks, Jimmy.

You're welcome.

Yeah. All right.

You should have been here.

I'm used to video interviews where I don't feel the need to constantly be on, and I leave space so that I can cut it properly. But now I feel all kinds of pressure. It's making me hot and bothered. grubs. See those eyes?

Jim has given me Oklahoma moist.

So, Jim.

Yes, sir.

How long have you been in the hobby?

I've been in the hobby since I was 13 years old. So about four years.

And what what poor, unfortunate circumstance got you into this money sucker?

Way back in the day, when I was growing up, my grandmother had a tank full of zebra daniels, and they would have babies, and she sent them home with me in a glass jar, and I kept them in a bowl. As I was growing up in a small town in North Dakota, we were probably 100 miles from any pet store, and my mother and I had a 15 gallon aquarium full of guppies, and we started raising guppies. And at one time, we probably had 75 bowls of guppies. And I'm talking bowls, not aquariums. We raised guppies, and we would go to the neighboring town for where the pet store was. We would trade the guppies then for new tanks or equipment or food or things like that.

Yeah. So you started at 13, but you were around it earlier in your life, I would imagine.

Yeah, from my grandmother, when long as I can remember, she always had a tank. And that's kind of what got us started. But I think I was about 13 years old, and my mom finally got me in my own tank.

Little did he know that he was conceived right in front of a 55.

Gallon I was conceived in the back of a car. Pretty sure, yeah.

Stop filling his head with if only. So what, Jim? Did you have, like, a moment?

Like, oh, good. I thought he was going to ask me what kind of car it was.

If you want to tell everybody.

I don't know what kind of car it was.

It was a gremlin.

They didn't have grandma.

Do you think that they cut it up later for sponge filters?

God. Wow. What did this turn so quick all of a sudden? The interview guy's a dickweed, I tell you.

Is that a plant that you're growing right now, Rob?

Yeah. Tell them about the joke, Jimmy.

So the the standing joke is that I have tanks and tanks and tanks, and I have everything with sponge filters. And for some reason, Rob came up with the idea that I cut all the sponge filters off the back of a buick or something out of an old car seat. And that's been an ongoing thing for the whole podcast for the most part.

Actually, some of our first feedback, like, actual interaction with fans was them coming and telling us their predictions of what they could get out of a cadillac backseat oh, yeah.

The amount of sponge filters they could get.

Yes.

That's good. So learn about fish and also learn about math. How great is that?

We're the full package for those interested.

There are multiple episodes on budgetary options in the aquarium.

We're cheap. I'm just saying.

So, getting back on track here, jimmy, was there was there something that you might describe as, like an AHA, moment where, like, you kind of realized there's something here with aquariums.

You talk about the first time I lost $18,000.

Oh, it's 18, though.

It's always been 18,000.

He said eight at the first episode.

Did I say eight?

He was being humble.

Oh, no, it was 18,000. Yeah, I had three credit cards maxed out.

It took a year and a half to get the truth out of them.

You know, I want to say it.

Was about 18 grand. I really would honestly say it was about 18 grand.

You know, I meant, I meant maybe something before that. Like, maybe you're like looking at your grandma's tank and you you see some stuff going on. But by all means, if losing $18,000 is your idea, this is great.

That'Ll get your attention, I'll tell you that much.

It's it's much less of like, oh, this is for me, the AHA moment. Like, fish are my life. No, it was like the AHA moment of I will be proven right.

So it's kind of like when you're at Las Vegas and you go, I've lost ten grand, I got to win this back, I can't quit now.

Banana. Anyway, put it all on black. Damn it.

Damn it. Yeah. With my grandmother's aquarium, and she had these baby zebra daniels, and she would send them home with me and and we would put them in a bowl and watch them grow and stuff. I found that just so fascinating. What I really found fascinating is when we started producing guppies. And back then, guppies were very healthy, and you'd have 30, 40, 50 babies from every female once a month. And like I said, we had bowl upon bowl upon bowl. My mother had these beautiful glass shelves in front of four picture windows. It was all a house built in 1898 that we lived in five bedrooms. It was five glass shelves, four windows wide, and so it was full of glass bowls and full of plants. So when we needed food for the fish or a new heater and stuff, we would load up 100, 200, 300 guppies, and we would take them to the local pet store, and he'd be more than happy to take them off our hands. And I can't remember, I think even back then, we were getting like a quarter apiece for him, and we would go home with a new heater at no cost and some food and maybe some new breeding stock. And to me, that was going kind of like, well, at least my hobby is now being paid for. And so for that, I was very excited.

You get a little too excited, it sounds like, though.

Well, it's probably when I turn in my twenty s. And I thought I used to raise guppies like a banshee with my mom. How hard can it be? My local Ben Franklin, which is a five and dime store, do they exist anymore? Everywhere.

There's literally one left that I know of, and it's in fergus Falls and he supplies it with fish.

I know that the locations are basically still the same stores, but I think in name Ben franklin's are mostly gone.

Yeah, right. When I first started wholesaling, I had Bomiji baudette warroad. Rosalo theft falls fargo morehead fergus Falls as St. Cloud area.

I think wadina was in there.

Wadina? yep, at wadina. And so there's many, many stores around. And my quest was to start raising guppies. So why start with one tank when you can buy 40? So I bought 40 ten gallon tanks and started raising guppies.

Oh, so these 40 tanks? 40 tanks.

40 tanks. I drive up to Grand forks, North Dakota, about a two and a half hour drive. Went to a fish wholesale operation.

And what year is this?

Probably about 30 years ago. Probably about 90. I went up there, bought the most beautiful blue guppies, and I found all these big pregnant females and went home, had everything set up. And the next day a third of the females were dead. Had this big white saddle across their back. The males were looking kind of droopy. I saturated. Just watch them all die. So what do you do? You clean up the tanks, drive back up, get some more. And that's how I started my losing money quest.

There's a whole lot of just bleaching tanks and finally purifying stock lines.

I actually bought four gallons of formaldehyde at about $60 a gallon. It's not cheap.

Wait.

Plus it's highly carcinogenic, by the way, don't buy any.

Is that why I see like, animal heads in your garage?

Those aren't animal heads, Rob.

Oh, thank you, Oklahoma.

But they said try formaldehyde because that would be enough to kill whatever's in the tank. Fine line between treating a tank and.

Keeping fish alive if it kills anything in the tank. Aren't the guppies in the tank?

Yeah.

How did you sort of bounce back from, as we have found out, 18k in the hole?

It was 18k, yeah. I got involved raising angel fish. I was able to do it quite easily to my chagrin. I didn't really expect it to be that easy. And I was able to dump off two to 700 angel fish a month to two different stores in the area. They would run them. I'd go in there and I'd probably get 40 or $0.50 for them. They would sell them on sale for ninety nine cents. And they'd have two or 355 five gallon tanks sitting there, and they put the different colors in there and they'd run them on sale. And so slowly but surely, I made my money back and then got involved into getting more and more tanks and more and more fish. As I'm delivering angel fish to the stores, they're saying, what else do you got? And I wanted to say guppies, but I didn't. And so what I ended up doing was I found a company called Zfish out of Elcindo, California, and started transhipping.

In early on in your wholesaling career, what were some of the setbacks that you faced right away? Because I don't know how many people really know what a wholesaler does.

We haven't talked to a bunch of middlemen. We've talked to the top people, we've talked to fish stores, online sales reps, but there are plenty of people like Jimmy that require the Trans chippers, and it's certainly on our list. I think that you being the first person talking to that is the perfect person.

I would bring in stuff, and you'd have to buy in huge quantities, but you get them very cheap. And one of my first lessons was trying to work phones and get the airlines to cooperate with you. The hatred for Schmelta Airlines.

It rhymes with schmelta.

It rhymes with schmelta. I'm not saying actually it rhymes with Southwest, but it was somebody else at the time. And I would bring stuff in, but a lot of times the stuff will sit there in Minneapolis and not come into Fargo, have to work the phones, learn whose palms to grease. Honestly, the fish would come into Fargo, and they let them sit outside on a cart. And so you'd be surprised what ten pizzas at Christmas time to the crew there would do. Then all of a sudden, my stuff's underneath the heater. Everybody else's stuff is over in the corner freezing to death. So you kind of learn to treat people with respect, to take care of you, and it's always been respect or.

Bribery, however you want to see it.

So we'll have to have a podcast individually, just covering from that point to 2018, when I had to pretend to be your bodyguard.

Oh, my God.

Yeah, I made her cry, man.

I've lost my mind at the airport so many times because they just don't care. But back in the day when I first started bringing stuff in, the people at Schmelta Airlines, or the thing that rhymes with Southwest, which is Northwest, Northwest Airlines, those people were paid well, and they're making 25, $30 an hour, and they wanted their jobs, and they did a great job. But now, 2020, these people are all getting paid twelve to $14 an hour, and they can't keep help, and they don't give a rat's ass about nothing. If you're going to do this wholesale thing, you have to realize that you're going to be going to the airport at 11:00 at night, even though it was scheduled to come in at two in the afternoon. You're going to have to realize that you're going to flush one $200 worth of fish down the crapper because you pissed off somebody down in Minneapolis, and they put them outside frozen solids and sent them the next day. It's happened.

Do you sort of account for those losses, or did you need to learn to account for those?

Yeah, you have to learn to account for them like everybody else. I always have that money spent before I even earn it. I know a lot of people are going to get a stimulus check here the next few weeks, and I'm sure everybody's already got it spent. And in my mind with these fish, I already had the money I was going to make off those fish spent because I was going to buy these other fish and make even more money. And there's a lot of setbacks, a lot of times you lose money, a lot of times you break even. It's very frustrating. But then when you finally get a heck of a deal and you make some major bank, it's all worthwhile.

Then he started to attend gamblers Anonymous in 2016, and so far this podcast has been therapeutic for him.

No, drinking has been therapeutic for me. No, you know what? I'm not a big gambler. I mean, I got married twice. That was my biggest gamble. So not a fan of going to the casinos unless I'm going to a concert.

I'm just saying, 50% rates better than average.

Yeah, we'll go with that. You'd be a good banker.

Because I have curly hair?

No.

What was your experience like trying to build up your connections? Because as we know, you have a lot of connections to the various farms and suppliers across the country and possibly outside of the country. How did you sort of build your network as a wholesaler?

What you have to do is gain the trust of who you're buying from, and they will tell you what's good, bad, or indifferent, and they'll steer you away from you'll, say, hey, I do some ball of sharks this week. And they go, no, you don't. And I go, Are they bad? Because they realize they're sitting in an office and their boss is sitting right next to them. And they go, yeah. And so you just know not to order them. But you also have to learn to trust them because they'll say, you know what? We've got this particular new item. It's selling like hot cakes. You need to try this. And you know what? It's $120 for a bag of these particular fish. And I would say, you know what? Send them and we'll try it. And they've never steered me wrong.

Are there any of those that you have tried or ones that you wish you tried?

No, I tried a lot of them. The ones I wish I wouldn't have tried is I bought some arijuana one time.

One time.

One time. It's my own mistake. I didn't ask how many they were packed. How much are they, ariana? Oh, they're 1050 apiece. Okay, go ahead and send them to me. They're packed 100.

100 marijuana. And here's the catcher to pack that small. They were freshly hatched. Arijuanas are born with their yolk hanging below their body. So the success rate of 100 packed arijuana, when Jimmy was not prepared, much less open. Yolk was incredibly just devastating. How many did you have left?

I probably sold about 15 when it was all said and done. And if I could have got $100 apiece for him, I'd have made money. But I didn't. Finally found somebody who would take them off my hands. But yeah, I learn to ask questions. Are they packed 100 or are they packed 300?

Also, one other thing that we got that oh, you're going to need to try these amazing success rate kind of recent within the last year and a half 2d fruity frogs.

I sell the crap out of them.

Just that those exist are crazy in our mind, but they were right. One of the fastest selling things ever. They take albino clawed frogs and dip them and die like crazy. Process. Can't believe they did that, but you'll never know what you'll get. But at least you'll get an experience.

Just ask pack rate Jim asking for a friend. Do they taste good when you lick them?

Oh, God. Let's talk about toad licking. There's nothing better. Getting back to tooti fruity frogs, I have certain stores that hate any of these items that are dyed. They're not injected. They're dyed. It's like dying an Easter egg. And after about seriously, they are tissue absorbed. They put them in there. They're taking something that in most people's minds are ugly, like, let's say a white fruit tetra or a white albino clawed frog. And they take them and they die in different colors. And here's the selling point. Seriously. I mean, everybody wants one of each color.

It's the truth. It's the truth you go through and people are like, I want a pink, green, and yellow one. They'll just go through and get a batch.

And the beautiful thing about albino clawed frogs is they eat everything in the tank. And so not only are you going to sell them three albino clawed frogs in two weeks, you're going to sell them twelve neons because that's what they just ate.

And mind you, Jim is selling these at pet stores. Jim lets them know, hey, these are dyed really unethical. And they're like, don't care. We're going to get them either for you or someone else. And they're like, oh, it's just the worst thing. And they're that's that's kind of what's happening everywhere. So they're trying to, like, look at like, what's the cheapest bread and butter fish no one sells? And they dip em frogs they couldn't sell, selling their gray kind of wardy looking. They dip them in other Easter colors. Just a really weird trend.

Sorry.

That was a big taste.

It's just like it's just like Glow Daddyos. I mean, we keep coming up with new colors of Glow daddy's, glow tetras.

And you know, Rob's and I, we are not fans.

Rob's and I, we we were children in the you know, it was really popular at the time, catching them all.

Porky man. Wait, that's copyright.

Yeah, I was gonna say I know that's a review. I review. I was artfully dodging this, but you.

Just I'll just I'll dive in there. I'll take the risk, you know, and exactly.

Right. I mean, I'm not there to judge people. If they if they want the product and it's legal and I can get it for them, I'll sell it to them. I don't have to be a fan. There's some stuff that I'm not a fan of that people love all the time. I'm not a fan of, like, Albino corey's, and people love them.

So why don't you like albinyl cores? Because I see that Rob's has a handful over here.

Genetically, they're so weak, they don't do well. And trans shipping, they do great from Florida. But if you tranship them in, they don't do well. Just like blackmore goldfish don't do well because genetically they're so weak. But people love the blackmore goldfish. They love the albino cory cats.

Jimmy is not into buying product just to have the end customer of the store watch them all crap out. Jimmy wants to live at the base level of care.

Well, if I can't sell them, they can't sell them. And if I can't get them a good quality product, then why waste our time?

Yeah, absolutely. So you're talking about Florida. And how did you build up the relationship with seacrest Farms?

I made a phone call to them. Because when you tranship, you purchase, let's say, for instance, neon tetras. Florida raises beautiful neon tetras. You also can import them at the time they're approximately the same price. But what secrets Farms offers that nobody else does is I can buy in smaller quantities for a great price rather.

Than something getting 500 in a pack.

Right.

You're getting 50.

Right. Because some of those things I need to have, but they don't sell that well. Let's say, like, even 15 years ago, cardinal tetras were real hard to keep alive. We always talked about, hedging our bet. You don't want to buy 300 to find out they all suck. I'll buy 50 to see if they suck and lose that little bit of money versus losing a whole lot of money. And so that's where seagrass Farm fits in so beautifully for me, is they have small quantities. They have a huge selection. So if I want somebody who wants a Blue Diamond discus, I can call up cigarettes farms, get one Blue Diamond discus sent to me and not have to buy a bag of Blue Diamond discus, which will cost me about $300. So it's all about how far can you make your dollar stretch and still have a nice selection of fish for people?

Yeah. So to transition a little bit over to Rob's, give Jimmy a bit of a break. If you want to go smoke, if you got him.

Whatever floats your boat.

He's a rocker. It's more heroin.

And I don't shoot it. I snorted.

Keep that under the bridge there. It's in the mic rib. You know, they're getting really creative with how to get it in you these days.

They are.

That's how they get you.

Mcrib suppose if you put the COVID vaccine in the mic rib and we all be vaccines.

Got them all for it.

Got them all.

I would do it in a second. Are you going to get the COVID vaccine?

100%. I see the Pfizer commercial. It says you trust us with your dick because they make the viagra, right? So you trust us with your dick. Why not trust us with the vaccine? Seems fair enough to me.

Wow. I thought I was going to nut.

Switching over, Rob. Sorry, guys. This is just how I function. I just wait for everything to calm down.

Well, you should.

We have this is my programming. See now, rob's, what was again sort of using that phrase? What was your sort of AHA like you witness something that just makes you stand there and go, whoa, fish.

So I was like, I don't know, six or something at my grandmother's house looking at the fireplace mantle. And she would actually have a stepping stool just for me. So I could go up there, prop myself against the stepping stool and just stare at this. I think it was like a 75 gallon maybe plus to me, like a tiny person. I was looking into the wonderland that I've never seen before in my life. It was better than TV. It was a massive community tank. I would watch all these corridors dig through different mixed substrates. She would have an array of a lot of different breeding baskets with a lot of stuff going on. This is when she was toning down after doing a bunch of different breeding. And my mother would literally go visit grandma type thing, stay for 3 hours, and then we go home. Catch me. Fell asleep on the step stool leaning right against the fish tank, literally face against the glass. drooling.

You're wedged. I don't remember you're a little. Oh no, you're just wedged.

When I was six. I look like a person now. I look like I ate that person. That person is no longer on. So I can't remember an AHA moment. I just remember the first heart to heart experience. I have to have this forever. It's there. I love it to death. I always ask mom for fish and it was just over. Grandma's aquarium was always the coolest thing in the world and still have tons of memories of that.

What sort of was your grandma's level of expertise? Because there's this familial connection that a lot of people have within the hobby that I learned tonight that Jim as well has a story about his grandma doing this, that it sort of gets passed down in the family. So what really was your grandma's level of expertise?

My grandmother had a lot of different expertise. She started, from what I can tell from documentation, from the early 60s, if not 1960s, and dove into the hobby. Her and her husband both were into it pretty heavy. They were trying to find, I'm assuming, family friendly things that they could afford to do. So they have their own hobby and they can participate with their children. So they would raise all these fish and have a lot of fun doing that. They did make trips to Minneapolis, go down to the pet stores at the time, and she would make a mission to just kind of find what she likes. The best breed here and there, obsessed with community tanks, hated cichlids, and I'm pretty much in the same boat. I think I've grown to love cichlids over time. Some varieties, like shell dwellers, stuff that are more unique, but if I'm looking at an African cichlid tank, I almost could care less. That's just how I've always been. Her expertise really big into betas. It wasn't much high end betas, at least as far as I can tell from her notes and the story she's told me. And so she tried to ask for imports, stuff like that, and then bred out of her house. And she would keep male pears together, grown up from tiny babies, keep them together and sell them as permanent pears to never be separated. Normally, male betas attack and kill each other. So having two male betas in the same tank, they're grown up from a tiny baby, miraculously didn't kill each other. They've always been together, they've never been separated, and there's never been aggression. Now, if you put in the third beta over, but if you keep the pair together, you can sell them as is.

And I think that sort of like that continual discovery is something that I see with you, with your sort of choices in the hobby. Because I don't know how many times you just told me, like, hey, I just got this. Or, you know, Jimmy, how often is rob's? Like, this is my thing now?

Every 15 minutes.

Every 15 minutes. And it's what it feels like. I mean, there's a there's a while there. He just had ten, you know, ten lawn mowers out in the yard. And he's like, I'm into small engines.

Now, or at least I'm getting a taste. I think it's more of just like, do I like this? If not, here's an affordable way I could try. We're going to give this a good, solid college go and find out what my thing is.

Yeah. And I think that's admirable in its own way. I love dabbling and everything, like me dabbling in fish stuff, but I'm not ready to commit. I'm not feeling it.

Unless it's denison barbs, unless it's denizen barbs.

Then it's swear to God, okay, you put that one in time out. If that barb dies, we're done. Sir, that barb is a treasure.

He's finally on the up curve after all this time.

You know, one of the funniest things is when I said the word denison Barb and you just lost your mind.

I lost my mind? Like, you know the name. Like, normally it's like Rose Line shark or cool looking fish was what I was expecting. Full on Dennis and Barb. I'm sold. Like you did your homework at that moment. I'm like, micro interview time. You've been doing your homework. Yeah.

That fish is, what, six inches long? He's a national treasurer, a lot like.

Tom hanks, but he didn't get COVID that's the fish didn't get coveted.

But he has ick. So I mean, teach the wrong yeah.

You have to deal with it sometimes.

He is your fish room's dad, clearly, just as Tom hanks is America's dad. What sort of was your beginning in the hobby then? So you have this grandma who's crazy expert at this. I've seen the book. I think it's super fun. With all the notes that you put in there. When did you start getting serious about it?

Pretty much right away. You know, Grandma had the tanks set something up at my house. I live in a lake, so every day was going out to go fishing. Love the the water world that I I grew up in and always had some sort of aquarium on hand. It was always something small. I was really poor growing up. Really, really poor. So if I had a tank, it was something that I found. A garage sale. Bits and pieces. And I remember doing odd jobs for the neighbor that owned ostriches. I would go out, feed the ostriches, tell them with chores. That was in and of itself a complete story. But I'd saved my pennies from the ostrich farmer and finally I was able to buy two different tanks. A small, like, 40 gallon with a stand and then another 75 gallon, which I still have in my basement.

Jim, what is it with this area, with people in exotic animal farms?

It we don't have tigers. We need more tigers.

I've never heard of the ostrich story. So that's the problem I heard about.

You know, I come from the town.

You peaked up.

I perked right up.

We've got the peacocks and the buffaloes where I'm from. And apparently ostrich is over in literally woods.

The buffaloes are literally in, like, the city park. The weirdest shit you've ever experienced.

Where I grew up, there's at least 2500 buffalo within a five mile radius of where I grew up. So I grew up around buffalo my whole life. And to me, it's not anything exciting anymore. Not like a prairie dog or something. That's cool.

Prairie dogs are great. Oh, God, they're so much fun. They just, you know, they go in and out.

All right, small tangent on the ostrich thing. You weren't allowed to wear hats. You shouldn't have long hair because all ostriches pick the shit out of you if you walk in. They're very social creatures. As long as they're not breeding, they're pretty tame.

I'm reminding myself.

Grab your hat and run with it.

I'm remembering how rob's would always talk about his luscious, long, curly hair in his youth. And I'm getting some ideas in my hood here.

Yes. They try to whack the noodles. And let me tell you, you're talking.

About your hair, right?

Dewey, the ostrich farmer thought it was the funniest shit ever. I'm sitting there ow, just going off and, like, I'm holding, like, a feedback. And don't feed him, and he's just giggling.

I mean, you know, an ostrich probably likes ramen.

I guess I'm six foot. What? Two ostriches are huge creatures, and there's no equalizing with them. They're towering above you, and they pick your hair. What can I say? And ostrich omelets are pretty dope.

Okay, that's a segue.

Yeah, that's a segway. And we're talking about an ostrich butt. So I don't want to know if.

I'm oh, do you have anything to add here?

No, I've got nothing on ostriches other.

Than he does feel like he wants to put his head in the sand.

No, I just was thinking to myself.

Laugh at that, damn it.

I wish an ostrich would kick him in his hand.

That was such low hanging fruit there.

We just recently went over to brainerd, Minnesota, to our local zoo over there, and we got to feed giraffes, and that's my new fascination, these giraffes.

Get out the credit card.

I think I need one.

Well, we know that he has issues with credit cards. Okay.

Oh, not anymore.

Not anymore.

No, they've been taken away.

He's thoroughly chastised.

All right. So kind of going back to this knowledge that was sort of, like, passed down from your grandma to you, and we have a very literal form of this literal form in the book. And, Jim, I assume that you would have learned a thing or two as well from your folks. I don't know how to phrase this without it sounding a little weird.

Let's go to the weird places.

So what do you think was lost when they are no longer with us? Like, this information that they have? Yeah, see, I don't know how to phrase this.

No, I feel like that was pretty well put. Everything you can go to an encyclopedia, wikipedia page, fish lore website, whatever you're looking at, and find what they have as here's parameters, here's what we've seen as their diet. Here's the breeding. But they don't really tell you insider secrets. They don't tell you when water changes. They have brilliant color. When you introduce mice's, shrimp along with zebra danos, they have an interaction between them maybe protecting a cave. There's so many anecdotal notes that are so valuable in the hobby that only either experts, people that have put a lot of heart and soul into it, all that information gets lost from a transition and transition mom passes away. You cherish those memories and stories, and if there's someone you can share it with, you found a podcast to do it with. Great. There's just so many people that are experts out there in different fields that I think we can glean and we don't lose that. I have again. Book from Grandma's notes. I definitely take that to heart as I'm sitting there showing you the book, putting my own analytical notes and just realizing I'm not publishable, but I should certainly record this somewhere. What I've learned is valuable to at least me and mine. Imagine what someone with a PhD or 35 years of breeding has just to compare to someone like me that just does this for a hobby.

What I miss about the whole thing is the simplicity of it all. I mean, how easy it was. I mean, back in the day when our grandmothers were alive, there was no Google, there was no Internet, and it was a book, maybe an encyclopedia, and they're just going off of what they've been told by pet stores or they've learned on their own and they never made it hard. I mean, sometimes I think we take this hobby and we make it too hard. And back in the day, we weren't worried about PH and that sort of thing. We're just doing water changes. Fish aren't acting right. Let's do a water change and maybe throw a little salt in. And I remember my grandmother always had a box of that aquarium salt there and stuff. And I miss the simplicity and the actual just fun of it. We spent a lot of hours doing different things, trying different colors of gravel, the old clown puke and all that stuff. I just miss the simplicity and the camaraderie and the fun of it all.

Everybody, I'm assuming, because again, how I started into it was being poor, not having a lot of connections, being a kid, everything's a mystery. And I'm assuming that's how it was for you. It's just fun exploring, learning new things. The only thing you hope you would have is maybe an aquarium club 6 hours away that you couldn't go to.

Yeah, so, and I don't know how you'd find out about the aquarium club, honestly. I mean, it was either phone calls or you saw something on the bulletin board and that was it. There was no putting it on the internet or getting on a mailing list is probably another thing.

You felt like Indiana Jones discovering some treasure on your own.

As you said, there's so much information out there today. And I think there's a lot of people, especially if you read any comment section, who are very good at spewing that information back out and telling you how you might be doing it wrong, because this said to do that. And a lot of these things, once they get passed around enough sort of become the new common knowledge and sort of the new conventional wisdom. Whereas with what you guys are talking about is sort of that this is my lived experience and my way of handling things with sort of information today of like what needs to live and what kind of water and what kind of situations and how often you should be doing this and what fish you need to pair with. How important is you could say, either conventional wisdom or traditional wisdom. And also how important do you think it is to challenge that?

So let's pick on Jim kitchen, right? He was on I can't remember the episode number. Jim Kitchen is an expert on pseudocanthicus and at the time, most of the pseudocanthicus species were not bred in captivity. So he pioneered on that basically going to those exact same scenarios that you sat with your family, Jimmy, trying things out. Let's see, something's happening, water changes, something else is happening. Let's try testing it on our own because there's no book for this. And the stuff, the anecdotal traditional wisdom, if you will, that he provided just like one of the examples where getting them to breed. He understood that females are getting choked in traditional caves that they make. They're not able to breathe in a mud bank. They would have at least enough where they could get oxygen through the water going through the mud. So he contacted universities, talked to art professors and said, hey, can you make me a cave with specialty clay that's breathable? And he gave him the exact instructions. They had interns at colleges make caves and he was able to successfully breathe. First time in hobbies species of pseudocanticus with anecdotal traditional information and stuff like that is 100% invaluable that's. Where are we going to have an expert that says 75 different versions of pseudocanthicus never before bred in the hobby and make sure that that correct information gets passed? It's just not if that goes with his notes and he passes, it's lost forever. So if we're able to touch someone in a 60 minutes, hour and a half episode and able to grab at least their most vivid points that they've learned for anecdotal evidence, we have done the best thing that we never could have assumed to do with the podcast.

Yeah, with Jim Kitchen, aka. Also known as the pleco King. Jim Kitchen, what a wonderful guy. And he shared all these secrets with us with all of our listeners. And for those of you who know Jim Kitchen is it's no surprise, you know, that it's no secret he's in poor health. He has parkinson's disease. It took us many hours to record that particular episode because a couple of.

Breaks throughout and we made it comfortable for him.

Yeah, because he was having problems with his parkinson's and stuff. But he stuck in there with us through the whole thing. He says, no, I want to get this done. I want to get this information out. When we got done, we kind of got off the air with him and stuff, and we were very humbled that this man took time. I mean, he's not doing well. He took time off to tell us secrets to help other people because he doesn't want to take him to his grave. And that was a very humbling experience for all of us. And we are very, very humbled to have him on the podcast. And I can't thank him enough.

Now, you mentioned, is it important to challenge information? I believe that's always, if you're getting information on a website, number one, you don't know where that came from. wikipedias can be changed by everybody. It's literally the encyclopedia of the world. So if you want to make a clerical edit, guess what?

You can.

And that might turn into some dead fish. One of the things I'm looking over at, my 90 gallon tank, right, literally read this through books throughout the rummy nose tetras. They weren't hugely popular for years. I think it was like ninety s is what we did homework with. When they finally took like, nanotank craze and the information that they had in 1950s, because they have that same book, and they've made revisions to it over the years. And I have the original copy all the way up to some newer copies. And that's one of the books my grandma made notes in the original copies, little to no information, basically told where they came from. It had a drawing, did not have a picture. It had a rudimentary drawing of what they could have even looked like and had no information. Next edition. Oh, they look like they're shoaling species. Who knew? And the revisions came as more and more information trickled. Well, we've seen them in hobbies. They're now farmed, and people are like, oh, they're they're a tetra. They school. You need slow moving water. Well, let's challenge that. Traditionally slow moving water, where do they come from? So talking with ivan that we just had on the podcast, he's sitting there watching them climb up small waterfalls, like going through whitewater rapids with ease, just seeing them jump in the rapids where they're happily sitting at all times. So traditional information can certainly be skewed. Take it as it is as a starting place and then explore from there.

How important do you think it is for people to find out this information on their own, to do the hard work and the exploration?

When we started this podcast, my concern is that I'm the oldest guy in the podcast, and I feel like there's not a lot of young people coming into the hobby. And when I first started in this, nobody would give me any information. And like I said, I started out in the 90s. There wasn't really the internet out there to look up stuff, and it was very, very frustrating when people would sit there and say, yeah, I can't tell you. So it was kind of like my goal to help out younger people, to bring them into this hobby. Because right now, honestly, all the young people, all they want to do is be on their phone. They want to be playing pokemon or doing whatever they do on their phones. And you go to these fish clubs and there's nothing but old people. I mean, I'm not picking on them. I'm just saying that there's not a lot of young blood in there. Down in the Minneapolis area, there's a lot of people that are bringing their children and grandchildren into it. And that's what excites me about it. Let's get these kids involved. Let's keep this going. I mean, I always feel like we're a little bit behind aquarium keeping from other countries like Germany and whatnot. And those folks over there are just rabbit about how they keep fish. And look at how over in China, how they keep goldfish. They put them up on a pedestal and they're spending thousands and thousands of dollars on goldfish. So I just wanted to bring some awareness to the young people and to not put it in a dried out scenario. I mean, we have a lot of fun. We have a lot of laughs. We talk about punching each other in the throat, and Robbie talks about nothing. So anyway, we just wanted to try to bring a little excitement and a few laughs because when I listen to something on the radio, I can learn something, but if I get to laugh, it's just a bonus.

You're talking about how it's beautiful in China, what they're doing with goldfish, sort of the level of enthusiasm in other countries that you just perceive to be it's a more popular thing and people are more into it. And I do think that when you get to a certain point in this craft and I would I would very much call it a craft, and that's sort of what I identified with, that these are guys who are taking a lot of time to learn something that they love and also get good at it. On the other hand, it's fishkeeping, to me, sort of seems like performance art because depending on what species you have, they could be short lived or long lived, but a lot of them sort of end up on the short end. So it's fleeting in this way because you're literally dealing with keeping something alive. How do you sort of deal with that as part of the process that what you're doing has a time limit?

I just don't look in the mirror if I look older today, I just don't want to be reminded by my fish. No, I think it's most prevalent in killyfish, right? Killy fish have the best amount of documentation, not necessarily for the species, but who else? If you talk about cichlids, there's not like a massive Aka cichlid association, not rainbow fish. Killy fish? Do killy fish have diehard fan bases? They have more documentation than anybody else. They have auctions. They make it better than any other fish club to join, but yet it's still not popular. You'll see only select amounts of the hardiest of kilifish, but yet you don't see a bunch of different kinds. Access to them is a little bit mixed, and it's because a large majority of them are annual species, and that is extremely intimidating for people to start into, including myself. I'm getting into it. I've done it in the past, but not to the degree I feel like it should have been. I feel like there's an injustice done. I need to know more to share more. We just had a fantastic gentleman talking about killy fish on the podcast, and it just blows my mind that more people aren't into it. It's literally the most colorful species you would get in freshwater is kilifish, and yet hardly anybody who touches them, because, well, it's not going to be like my cat that lives ten years. So I think there's a bit of a gap there for some certain species, but I think that it's not talked about. I have people calling me asking, hey, my beta just died. What did I do wrong? Well, how long have you had your beta? Seven years.

Well, that's incredible.

That's a nice, good, long lifespan for a beta. Like, you should feel accomplished. You gave them a nice, long, healthy life. Clearly, you had them in the correct environment.

And that's one of those things that really got me in, is that you build these relationships with your fish over time. I think a lot of the people who don't look into it just beyond the bare surface, like maybe they've seen a tank in, like, a doctor's office or like, a dentist, and you're like, oh, it's nice to look at, but until you start looking into it a.

Little bit my cat is just so adamant this evening.

He loves me.

He's horny. The cat. Oklahoma blueberry pancakes.

You know, the blueberry pancakes are getting me every time I hear that one, but great. Where was I?

It's awesome about getting connection with your fish.

Yeah.

And life expectancy.

Not even getting connection with the fish that you have. It's being able to see the relationships that other people who are into it have. Because, if I may invoke their name, a great example of this is what the guys over at ofr are doing, the Ohio Fish Rescue, where they will keep people's fish so that they can come and see them again, even though the original owners no longer can take care of them themselves. There's just something about this community that is so heartwarming and so kind. If you just know where to look and on the surface level of it, you think that's fish, they're nice. They just kind of float around until you sit down and you look at them. And then you start seeing like, oh, this one's got an interesting behavior. And then suddenly you know how to pick out the one of the school. And you give that one a little name, and then you start to like it more. And you like this guy morton. Oh, well, this guy I've had for five years. He's insert name here. Or I'd imagine if One eyed willy really does a good job here, he's going to be one for the history books. But sort of these not your penis, Jimmy.

Not your penis. So I don't think I've told many people about what happened with that fish. By the way, if I can go on a tangent. Yeah, sure. I went to a pet store down in the cities, and I got asked for a and you got any rainbow fish on hand? I only have two females. My male bossami died a long time ago. He had a growth. And maybe they have something. So I look in the back, their back tank, and they have a bunch of, like one and a half inch, one inch passami rainbows because COVID decides to ruin everything. Do you have any other fish? It's like, oh, One eyed willy. What are you talking about? Oh, let me show you. He's got this beautiful full grown passami rainbow, and it's literally one eye. He can't sell it. No one will take him like I'll take it. No, no, on the house. And he just gives it to me. And now I have a wonderful fish. And yes, it only has one eye. Call it Lucky the Dog, but definitely that's focus. It's named. And now, of course, he's the center of attention in the tank. So the connections that you'll have with your fish and cats that really demand.

Your attention during I don't know why we brought the cats to the cabin, honestly. We'll just take you over here and edit this part.

You said brigg pussy to the cabin. I just showed up with it.

Jim, I'm glad that you were literal in this way.

You could edit that out.

No.

If anybody out there is not really too much into fish, I don't know if there's anybody who would be a listener like me who isn't into it, but kind of vibes with your energy.

I'd like to apologize for the addiction now that you have and also what have you named the denison Barb?

Well, you got the three new ones. Honestly, I forgot about the big one.

There was the three new ones.

So rob's got three.

Dewey and louie.

No, it was denise, denick, and Dennis.

I feel like that's perfect.

Rob'S knows how to please me because.

He do blueberry pancake.

I mean, I get banana pancake. You didn't say Johnson.

You didn't say Oklahoma. I'm a little scared right now.

I want some pancakes as I have diabetes.

So I know he's been after these things for months. Right. But you just can't get them for I don't know. Maybe there's something going on in the world right now that makes it difficult. But he finally did. And I tell you what, I have never been happier.

It's just for you, clearly.

Exactly. I appreciate it.

You're welcome.

I can accommodate with faith.

This is such a shit love fest. I tell you guys, honestly, I don't.

Know why you're broadcasting this to people, because it's got to be just this.

I'm just going to turn down the freaking light. And you, too, could hold hands.

They asked for an interview.

We'll play muskrat love, and you two can just giggle in the moonlight.

I just feel like he nailed the connection because everybody's like, oh, fish. Like, you can't pet a fish like a cat.

Some of them you can. And that blew my mind. I was like, oh, wait, wait.

Penis fish.

You can do what with? With a penis fish or an Oscar or something like that, right?

It again, weather loaches will come up, and they'll interact with you. They want they actually physically want attention, snacks and treats. But no, most fish you can't. So it's hard to interact with. So I'm glad you got that point down and hilarious that you got today, my fish. But do continue.

Well, I mean, somebody's got to. It's sort of like, why do I love that fish? Is because they just dart around the tank and they try to school with anything in there if possible. So they make everything else run around the tank really fast. And you're not going to understand that and get an appreciation for it unless you take the time to be like, oh, let's go beyond the surface level. Because I was working on an idea for a documentary about the hobby. Because I was like, there's so much going on here that I think is so crazy. Between the familial passing the hobby down through the generations, the fact that everybody calls it the hobby was the first funny thing they're talking about. It like, you have to be in the know, right?

Yeah, Jimmy, you got to be in the hobby.

You watch a guy on YouTube who just started out maybe bought a tank like two weeks ago, and he's like, yeah, I'm in the hobby. They're so confident about it. It's like they really want to be there.

Apparently it's elitism.

Who knew?

To me. No, it's not really elitism, but you got to be in the know, you know? So and the other funny part is.

I'm going to pray for both of you tonight when I go to bed.

That the Tiger King blew up during COVID And it just seems like the perfect film.

I don't know where you're going with.

That, but I don't get it.

You know Tiger King.

Eccentric people.

Jim and fish. Jim how long are we going to put up with him?

Honestly, it's kind of like when you choke a smurf? How do you know when to let go?

All right, you got any more questions?

Yeah, I mean, what shade of blue do you stop holding them under the water?

But what I mean is, as I'm explaining what I see to other people, because that's my job, right? Take my excitement and pass it on to other people. My medium is just felt, whereas your medium is podcast. So everyone who I tell who they don't keep fish themselves, they're like, wow, wait, what is going on? And sort of like, there's some crazy stuff going on here, but it's also, like, crazy cool. And there was nobody who I talked to who was like, I don't know. So I think that's a little bit of a sign there, you guys.

Do we're hotter cold as a community, apparently.

Yeah. And let's see, where else am I going to go with this?

Wait, where's the pancakes on your list?

He's going to take it down a dark highway, is what worries me.

He saved the best for last. Don't worry.

Really?

It's all your questions after this.

So I've started to formulate an opinion of what I, as an outsider, would sort of see successes or being successful in the hobby. And I'm going to say what I think it is, and then I would like you to sort of give your opinions on that and then both of your own individual ideas of what being successful in the hobby is.

So not $18,000.

Well, obviously now, I would define success in the hobby as you have fish, you are living them to their full size and to their full lifespan. And that's it. That is what I would define as being successful. I think it's a series of getting better at having your fish not die.

I mean, yeah. And then from there, can I breed them? Is it good quality stock? Can I make a better fish? Can I make something shinier? Can I have it have a cooler tail? Can I do this for a living? As always. I was like, oh, I like fish. Wouldn't it be cool to have a pet shop and then not know what's going on? So everybody has a different vote of success. We've had people on the podcast that measure the success in competitions. Not only how well can you keep it alive, but how can you have it thrive? How can you have it had the best attitude. Like the flowerhorn episode we had was nutty. It was a lot of cock jokes. I get it. kok the ball on the forehead. But honestly, talking to him about the passion of competing was Westminster kettle Club stuff. So everybody has a bit of a difference, but that's the base measurement of success. Can I emulate in my square piece of hardware the best environment for this creature to live a full and successful life? I mean, that's bread and butter to me.

I agree.

That's it.

Yes.

You're that guy. And, like, okay, everybody in the class, you got to make sure that you comment on everyone's stuff. And jim's over here like, I agree. Maybe that was really helpful. That was super constructive. Thanks, Jimmy.

Jimmy'S a business guy. jimmy's measurements of his success is making sure you're delivering a good product and your bowling kisses at me.

No ching ching.

The mocksman and doing it with a thick wallet.

I would say that mine is focused sort of a lot on the ethical side of doing right by the fish, which that's sort of my own personal view of it. So do you have a different view of what success is as a wholesaler?

As a wholesaler, what I deem a success is getting the product that my customers want. I love a challenge. I know robbie does, too. When somebody says, oh, can you get me this certain beta? There's a new beta that was just published in tropical fish hobbyist magazine here a couple of months ago, and I've been looking for this particular beta. I personally think it's very, very ugly. It's kind of a plain bed with one spot on it, and I don't have the name of it offhand, but I've been looking for this now from about three or four different wholesalers. I'm getting closer to getting it, but every time something new comes out in a magazine, it drives some sales and stuff. So to be able to find that as a wholesaler and get it into the marketplace faster than anybody else is what I really try to go for.

That's what jimmy and I actually expanded our hobby together. I had this insatiable thing to learn everything about all these species I haven't had. So I started going through jimmy, because jimmy is a fantastic connection, and we're finding all kinds of crazy species that even in my grandma's documentation says I've only seen once. Don't know how to try again. Maybe weren't even in fish books. Like I always mention, anabelps, jimmy found the annabelle for us. They almost never come up on fish lists, and they're like a crazy, bug eyed, four eyed creature dolphin. And we decided that we're kind of good at finding unique things. Jimmy has a lot of different connections. I have a lot of different private party connections, and we decided to do a business together.

People might enjoy hearing your misadventures before you guys started becoming the aquarium guys and doing this podcast. So other than both touching the same gallon of ro water in the grocery store and being soulmates ever since, we touch jugs now. What?

No, we did not.

Okay.

So how did you guys end up going into business together? And sort of what happened between saying, like, oh, you don't need ro water in this town, and, hey, we're running a business?

Well, I was minding my own business once again, and I was at the local grocery store after we just moved into this town. I moved from another town 20 miles over. I saw this goon over there filling up all the Ro. He was standing there and filling and filling and filling Ro.

And I was trying to do 100 gallons of Ro and jugs, five gallons of jug, and that's a lot of mass. And I was doing trips back and forth in my house.

And so I just I said to him, I said, I think I think you said something about you're filling your aquarium. And I just said, be careful. If you put straight Ro water in there, you will strip the body, slam off the fish, and kill them. And I should have just kept walking because then I wouldn't be doing this podcast for Robbie. But that's how we met. And I had previously, five years earlier, had been running Ro water in 125 gallon tank. I got distracted. I had somebody over there helping me, and I thought I was going to do like 50% Ro. I went to lunch. I came back. The tank was full. The ro was pulled out. I threw in about 75 angel fish, and I watched the bodyside and come off of them and watch them all die within about 10 hours, strip anything.

Off of a paint. I had a reminidizer. But you sat there like, no, I live in the same town. You don't need to use Ro. We have pretty good water for fish and showed me some more testing strengths.

Yeah, so it was just trying to save a fellow fish lover from killing his fish. I brought in all these angel fish into my breeders, and what I'd like to do is throw a 75 fish, 125 gallon tank and watch them pair off and pull pears. I had 100 pairs at the time, and I thought I knew what I was doing. But they're getting and just a simple mistake. And I killed a lot of fish. So it's just trying to help out your fellow your fellow aquarius and making sure that you don't do the same stupid thing I did.

So I started talking back and forth. I'm like, holy shit. I live in a tiny town. There's a fish, another fish guru, and just different questions. And he's like, what do I want to put in there? I've never done freshwater lobster before. Never done that at all. So he's like, oh, I can get you those. You can get me those? Are you some sort of, like, mystical dealer? Yeah. Like what? And then he's like, no, no, like, what else you're looking for? I'm like, well, some of these are like, no, those aren't compatible. I've tried it. And plus, you can't even order into Minnesota. And this dude was this wealth of knowledge. I spent immense amount of money getting rare fish through retail means. And I mean, like, doing favors. Like, I had to spend, what was it, $150 for one female rainbow fish that was bred from Gary lang's stock. Now I have this new wealth of information and a connection to the wholesale market, and I finally get a taste of what the margins are on those what he had access to, and I lost my mind. I'm a tech by trade, sort of like you have access to all these fish. You're wholesale stores. Why aren't you selling online? We can easily sell for lower prices online because you have all this access and you're clearly the practice of ordering all these fish for me and me going crazy on all the different things for a few years. Why can't we just do it for other people? So we started Fish finders Plus with the idea that if you have a fish wish, we'll do our best to find it. And we really did. But it came into a lot of business issues. Number one, and most importantly, shipping, which is the biggest issue, was aired down with COVID We had a shipping contract worked out with the Postal Service. Exclusive to Postal Service. They gave us lower rates because we're online retailer. And as we're working out the contract, amazon did a multibillion dollar contract with the Postal Service, and all the little guys got cut, including us. So they're cut our great way of shipping to be competitive with everyone else gone. When people ask for requests, I want one of this one really special looking beta that I saw in this magazine and we find it and then tell them, Sorry, minimum quantity 100. From the one person in the world that we can find that breeds it. They're like, oh, well, I'm good. I just wanted to pay $0.99 for something that looked cool. So the business model of finding a fish wasn't good. And we learned from people that, like, Steve bickie has been doing this for years, that the only people that really succeed online are the big box stores that do more than just online sales. Like the wet spot in Seattle that you can get all kinds of crazy, unique fish from, or people that do it better than anyone else. Again. We mentioned Ceber bicky J four flowerhorns. There's people out there that have their corner and they're known for the flowerhorn, the seahorse, the angel fish, and they just own that market.

Yeah, it's very hard to be everything to everybody.

We kept overhead low. We did close the business, but it didn't cost us too terrible much at risk. We set it up well as a test run, we learned a lot. And I would give them the chance to do it again from the stuff we've learned. Absolutely. We're sitting here as failures, aren't we, Jimmy?

I'm used to it.

How do you guys deal with failure? You hear all the time fun stories about losing a lot of money from the two of you. And me no longer being able to see a really fancy arijuana. That was super dope, too. Even just now, where I'm sitting, I'm looking at rob's tank. He's on the phone, and I see a deathly expression in his face. Jim, I see him turn pale just before you got here. And you know, rob's, he's like, I put this plant in this tank, and I just need growth space. I know it doesn't look like it fits that well. And I'm like, okay, Rob, I think it detracts, but you're in it for the money, clearly, so I guess and he just goes totally pale, and I'm like, what just happened? I'm looking the dojo loaches. They're digging around in the substrate. It looks like they're trying to find something, but he's on the phone with somebody, so he's now paying attention to the tank. And I follow his eyes, and I see just the tiniest little snail. If you could see Jim's face right now. No, it's worth a million words.

Does Robbie have trumpet snails?

I got herpes.

Jim? Yes. We can't be friends anymore.

Don't drink the aquarium water. How do you deal with failure, Jimmy?

I live about a block away from Robbie, and tomorrow I'll have freaking trumpet sales.

Yeah, they're going to crawl through the.

Snow because he gave me plants the other day.

Different tank.

You're clear.

Different tank.

So you're telling me that I don't have the gonorrhea of the aquarium world right now, and I'm supposed to feel good about it?

Yes. You do not want to go home.

And bathe in bleach and then maybe drink some what do you call it? Liquid plumber and just clear myself of this horrible, horrible disease that you have over here.

Well, I think that answers our question. Jimmy doesn't deal with failure. Instead, he makes fun of his friends. That fell worse.

Now, that's projecting. That's not very healthy.

Nobody ever claimed that I was healthy. I tell you that much. You look back in history, you look back at the guy that invented wd 40. It took him 40 times to come up with a good lubricant. Seriously. Look at colonel Sanders. colonel Sanders, kentucky Fried Chicken King. He wasn't a success telling he was in his 60s. So I just feel like it's never too late to to make yourself successful. I mean, when Rob says, we're going to start doing this podcast, I thought, Great. What source? Think it can happen? We have some groupies that hasn't happened yet. No groupies. Oh, no.

There's a ton.

You just never have a social media profile that's good. I've heard about Facebook. I don't know what it is, but I'm not going to ever go on the computer.

It's that place where he got poked once and deleted it.

That's right.

Well, I don't like to get poked by strangers, either.

Blueberry pancakes.

So the moral of the story is Jim punches throats, and we repeat. fluke yourself a lot and then own it and learn from it and make the next wd 40.

But were some of those moments tough to get through?

Oh, yeah. When you're paying your bill and you're going, let me see, I still owe $8,000, $5,000 for some dead fish. This is going to suck. Yeah, it's painful to a point, but you pull up your big boy pants and you continue on. I mean, nobody ever gets ahead in life by completely quitting. It's not going to happen.

What advice would you have out there for the people who are getting into it and they're going to face these setbacks?

The best advice I ever got was from Paul norton, and I've said this a hundred times on the podcast. norton happened to be fisheries at the time, and Paul norton says, Jim, you can keep a healthy fish healthy, but you can't get a sick fish healthy. And there's a lot of truth to that. Once your fish gets sick and they go downhill a little bit, it's never quite the same. So if you treat every fish that you bring home and you quarantine them and you treat them like they're sick and before you put them in your regular community tank, you'll be so much more successful. I know we all get very excited when we come home and we want to put that new fish in that tank and stuff, but you never quite know what could be wrong with that fish and stuff. So you want to keep your healthy fish healthy and you want to bring in your new fish and just quarantine them and treat them like they're sick. Give them a little bit of medicine just in case. So it's kind of like having some vitamin C in case you might get a cold.

Don't go alone would be mine. Find a community. There's a ton of places online you can find. Even I'd say some of the worst places is my favorite would be reddit. I just got a Beta. I put it in a bowl and then suddenly you have 324 comments hating you to your core. That is the easiest way to, you know, I tried fish once five years ago and be one of those guys. Don't be afraid to fail and find a place that's there to help you when stuff does go south and you didn't quarantine in the first place.

There is no dumb question, really. I mean, if you don't know, you need to ask. And don't feel dumb about it and don't make people feel dumb about it when you answer the question unless it's robbed. That's okay, you guys.

Now the aquarium guys for about a year and a quarter, year and change, year and some change your one year in. Do you have any reflection, sort of looking back at what the journey has been thus far?

I honestly didn't think we'd ever get as far as we have. And now the future is so bright, we got to wear shades. We are getting such wonderful comments from people. We're getting such great guests, thanks to Robbie. Adam is a wealth of information about reptiles, about the obscure things in the hobby, or things in the hobby.

I missed one you guys would shout out in the earlier episode, so shout out to Adam.

Adam has been a friend of mine. He was one of my customers when I first started. I met Adam when he was about 15 years old, and I've been friends with Adam for about 20 years now. Just a combination of somebody with retail experience, wholesale experience, and somebody who's just batshit crazy like Robbie. It seems to work and it's been very successful and looking forward to doing more stuff eventually, after this whole COVID thing is over, we're hoping to be able to get out and do some speaking at different places. We've had people reach out to us and ask us to come out and speak at their aquarium clubs. We're not sure what they're expecting from us, but I'm just going to bring some nachos and beer and show up.

Is there any sort of thing that you felt sort of like either that's been sort of like, I didn't think that I would feel this way just because I've been doing a podcast. Has there been any sort of profound effect on your life?

I mean, getting to see Jimmy at least once a week is always a good spot in my life, MC rib sauce and all. Jimmy is the big, profound piece of my life. Other than the community. Honestly, the community just blows my mind. We have people that are on our discord night and day posting, helping each other with content. And literally we only advertise the discord on the podcast so no one else can see it. So it's just people that know the podcast, know jimmy's terrible punch throat jokes and have that camaraderie and understanding that this is our passion and they have the same mindset to share with each other. That's the hugest part, is everyone listening blew our mind. We're in the top 25% north of the 25% of all podcasts because of our listens, depending on the day, we're number one. randy Reid of the aquarist Podcast. We back and forth with him on who's the number one podcast. Listen to that podcast. Fantastic quality. We're the guys that add a little dick jokes into it for a comedic pleasure. That guy's a real deal. Check it out. But we would never have guessed this would happen. And tickle pink by it. We get messages, a continual stream, having the podcast with telephone number to text us. And I literally answer text messages whenever I'm awake. It just goes directly to my phone. It's got an ID filter. And I get text messages from people all over the world. We only refinely pick questions week to week in the episode. And we're just a couple of guys. Love the fish hobby. Want to talk to other people and learn more about the fish hobby. And we're making a connection with people on a level we never even knew. We got people that want to know how our day went, want to know what's next in the podcast, and then just blow our minds. Like that's the traditional stuff we get.

I don't know if we should talk about it, rob's, but I think we seriously should. Something that blew my socks off, and I think we've never shared this with anybody. Back in August, when I was on vacation, do you remember what happened?

Remind me. You got really hammered on a cruise.

No, this is back in August. My wife and I were out of town, and Rob sends me this text from a listener.

And someone said that I was feeling low today. I thought that it was going to not be tomorrow. And just from having a laugh from guys that felt like my friends saved.

My life today, it basically said, I want to thank you guys for stopping me from killing myself.

Didn't expect that for a podcast at all. But if we can make any impression in someone's hobby and make their hobby a bit more enjoyable was all we're looking for and share information. But clearly we're making way more of a connection we ever, ever dealt with. And a lot of tears from all the aquarium guys in the circle for that one. They got us off guard.

And I remember the morning that you got that, I was doing my usual. I come down here, I wake up before rob's, or well, I used to. He's got a different job now, and I would turn on all of his tanks for him because I just thought it was kind of fun. And he's just there in his room, and he's just sitting edge of the bed, and he's just stunned. And I'm like, oh, rob's, what's going on? And he's like he just didn't know that what he was doing could do that for someone else. And I think that it's because the consistency that you guys are honest, the fact that you guys are giving of your time, your expertise, and you put a lot of effort into making sure that the people that you get are also sharing in that same mission that you guys had were get people to have this information. Talk about something that you love. Be able to express that in such a way that other people feel the same excitement that you have. You will never know what you've done for somebody else, truly, because not everyone's going to say it, but I think as you go along, it's these little kind of moments that will remind you why you do what you do.

So, yeah, definitely change our skus, for sure. And this podcast means a lot more than just what we originally intended to us. And if we can make any impact, even if we didn't expect it. We're happy to help in anyway.

I don't think we've ever talked about this on the air. And for the privacy of our fan, of our listener, this was a family guy who had a nice family, has a nice family, and he was thinking about checking out. And what we said, I don't know. That made him think twice about it. But life sucks sometimes, and if you just need a laugh or you need a friend or you need somebody to give you a hug, you don't ever know what you say to a person on any given day, how it affects him. My mom taught me a very valuable lesson in life, and she says when you go into a place of business, you say hello to everybody that's working there, from the janitor to the president of the company, and just something so little as saying hello to a person. How are you doing today? You might change your life. You don't know. So as much as we love to joke and pound on each other and stuff, just to be a friend and just to be a comrade to people, that's all what life is about. Take care of each other.

Is there anything that you guys want to say to your fans that maybe you don't? Because in discord, it's usually pretty lights, pretty fun, having a good time. Or, like, rob's is always on a video call with somebody after the show, it seems like. But is there anything that you guys would want to say to your fans that you maybe felt like you haven't been able to or haven't quite had the great way of expressing?

I just have genuine appreciation for people stepping up and giving each other help on this podcast. They have fun. They poke funny each other and stuff. But these people will answer your questions. They will back you 100%. And the community that has developed from this podcast just blows me away every single week. And I don't see half the stuff that Rob sees.

The amount of art creations, the amount of how do I do this? Hey, I want to try this. I've never heard anybody do this before. I even use my own community. I think last week I was asking I set up a dehumidifier in my corner for a mess I made. I wonder if I could use that water again. And I just go to my community and like, no, I killed fish. It's gray water. So the amount of collaboration we're not the experts in anything. We're lucky enough to get some experts. But we have such a wonderful, open, welcoming community. We love our fans to death. We expect, like we have almost a perfect review rating. My favorite review is our only three star review. And the guys, they're not really funny, but good information. Like, that's how we feel about ourselves.

They're not as funny as they think they are.

You guys clearly. Think we're something we're not. And we're blessed every day by you.

The one thing we don't ever claim to be as experts, ever. But we will try to find you the answer.

If a doctor practices every day, we're certainly doing something lower than that.

Absolutely right.

Well, do you guys have any plans for the future? It's end of 2020. You've got 70 episodes under your belt. What do you guys got in the works?

Story Time is our biggest, biggest episodes. We started at Story Time because we have a lot of tangents in the podcast. We collected them and hey, can you do just a podcast filled with tangents? And it's hugely successful. The last we're now on storytime three, we've had YouTube or different celebrities we've had in the podcast before. So a lot of times it's been like a YouTube celebrity or somebody with unique stories they can bring to storytime next, we want to do, and this is a call to action for you guys. We want a user story time episode. So for you guys that have had hilarious stories, heartbreaking stories, we want your story submissions sent to us so we can read them on the next Story Time. We want you guys to be the center of attention and we're going to pick our favorites and send out prizes. We want to see what you guys got at the plate. And we already got a couple because I got mentioned to some people in Discord. We already got a couple of stories going in there. They're certainly fantastic. We want that from you. Otherwise, for content, we book these episodes like two months out in advance. And we try to do this at 07:00 live so we can have a studio audience. And now we've broke limits and Discord for how many people can listen live. We've maxed it out a couple of times. So what we're going to do now is during the live episodes only on 07:00 P.m., we're going to try to do these on twitch. We've spun it up to give it a test run. We're going to have to ramp that up because we don't have enough space and discord for people to listen live. So growing pains that we never expected to have the listens. We have fans we have and now we have to look for more solutions to accommodate more people. So as far as the list, I can give you a few that are coming up on the calendar for future dates. And again, you're listening this on Christmas. So we have a couple of episodes already in the hopper, such as another episode of Dr. Fish, killy seahorses. We're going to be doing an interview with watercolors Aquarium Gallery in Michigan. They have a wonderful store. Then instead of it being a pet store, they want to do it as an art gallery. And you're welcome to buy their art, which is the fish. It's a wonderful concept. I'm really excited for that. We have David boozer of the ftfa. It's a Florida co op. Fish farmers. We're bringing Scott back on by popular demand from the tint, because everybody loves brown fish, fish water. More to come. We're continually doing a list of different content requests, and we do every episode evergreen. So if you want an episode, demand it to us on Discord. A lot of these episodes come directly from user feedback saying, I really want a flowerhorn episode. We got one of the grand champion flowerhorn owners. It's literally that back and forth. We try to listen to our fans, so message us in. And there's a hint that we might try and this is again, might be doing an aquarium certification course for beginners. We have so many beginners coming to our podcast, and a lot of our topics, we try to answer questions as though someone's heard about flower horns for the first time. But again, it's a lot of advanced topics. We have newcomers that have never set up a tank before that want to get into aquarium. So we want to accommodate them and have a more handhold, still comedic college style course where they pay for the course and become a certified aquarium guy.

And then they get a free T shirt. Oh, I'm just hoping for it.

If not, there's T shirts available now.

Yeah, we've been doing this podcast, and every time we get a great guest, they turn us on to another great guest. Robbie is a hound dog when he follows those leads. And if so and so says these guys are okay, then these other people will come on. So what we've been trying to do is get as many guests as possible. We've been blessed by cigarettes farms, too. They allowed dr. Fish to come on. They actually have him on the payroll working when he's talking to us about.

Fish, he is punched in working for segregation farms on the podcast, helping us.

Out with questions, and we never thought that would be possible. And he's been wonderful. And then as we have the Doctor Fish episodes, we have all the other episodes that's kind of like school. And then back to rob's. Talk about story time. That's kind of like recess for us, where we just sit back and this letter rip. And so it's been a blessing. It's been very fun, and I'm looking forward to the future.

Well, guys, I want you to stay authentic, stay genuine, keep up with the humor. I hear people like it. And most importantly, just stay curious.

And as Scott feldman says, stay wet is moist.

Award.

Well, we can't take his catchphrase. We'll have to do, like, be moist.

How about this catch phrase? Go flute yourself.

Well, I don't know if this is exactly what you had planned when you were like, hey, come out to the cabin in the middle of the woods here. But that's my part. I'm going to go say Arvois and brave the storm. So.

Thank you, Aaron. It's been a real pleasure having you on. Before we go, Jimmy, you have a Christmas story. It's a Christmas episode. Read them.

I need some music, dude.

All right.

You got to turn the lights down low.

Just for you, Jimmy.

That's beautiful.

Little campfire going on for you.

Oh, that sounds nice.

Yes.

So, as many of you remember, last Christmas, my good buddy rob's olsen sat down and he read us a beautiful, beautiful home called The Night Before Christmas. He totally slayed it. And this is my rebuttal. And so I want to read this to you sitting here in my smoking jacket with my pipe and sniffer brandy. Rob, you can look up with a sniffer of brandy.

I did. I looked it up last year.

So you know what it is.

I do.

All right, so I like to call this one The Nightmare of Christmas. Now, this hasn't been copyrighted. Maybe a few lines you'll recognize, but this is 100% from my heart, and it's all 100% true. It's called the Nightmare of Christmas. It was the night before Christmas when all through the house, not a creature was staring, not eating a mouse. The scene was so dull, so bleak, and so boring. I sat there drunk, staring at the flooring. So I put on my shoes and my superman cape. Well, it's not a real cape. It's just my wife's red drapes silence. I kill you. You see, for most of the night, I had been drinking from a flask. So a party I was looking for, that was really my task. So after a quick walk and stumbling around, I was looking for the biggest party that could be found. I rounded the corner and saw a huge tent. Hell, yeah, a block party. So off I went. The music and lights were really pumping, so I let myself in. The place was jumping. After my eyes adjusted from the darkness and lights, I started to scan the crowd. Wow. To my delight, it was all my favorite characters from all the great Christmas shows. It was like a dream. How they all got there, I really don't know. There was ralphie from The Christmas Story. He was sitting there counting his toes. Well, now I know why. He had a spoon up his nose. In the corner, I caught just a glimpse. heck, yeah. It was Charlie Brown, but he was dressed like a pimp, so Lucy was looking real pretty and hot. Charlie Brown tried to celebrate me, but I chose not. Well, it's because we all know Lucy is crabby and bossy, and if I hooked up with her, they'd be looking for my dead posse. No, that was wrong. I got to read that again. That works. No. Well, it's because we all know lucy's crabby and bossy. If I hooked up with her, they'd be looking for my dead body with a cartoon sheriff's posse. linus and pigpen were doing some shots, but by the end of the night, they'd be sitting with the cops. Then there was frosty the snowman in the middle of the room he was talking to all the misfit toys all on live Zoom. You see the Coronavirus Pandemic has taken his toll oh, good grief. There's peppermint patty swinging from a pole kermit the frog was so drunk and so green he'd been drinking tequila no, he's dressed like a queen santa and rudolph were flying around the big room and there was frosty putting him live on Zoom. And so I ask why can't famous people have just a little bit of fun? Now on YouTube we got a drunk Santa flying indoors shooting off his gun just when the poop was really hitting the fan kevin from Home Alone showed up oh, crap, this should be grand. He came right in and shook off the snow what's he got with him? Oh, hookers and blow as the music got louder and the party goes up a notch what did I just see? Kevin hits Santa right square in the crotch. So just like Studio 54 live from the 80s, cocaine fell from the ceiling, and then it got crazy. You see, this year has really sucked, and it's been very depressed. So my advice to you is to get drunk and crazy and totally undressed. So when you sober up, sometimes in 2021, maybe you can all put away the drugs, the booze, and maybe even your gun. So with this simple poem, I hope to find you safe and sound because 6ft sucks when you're buried in the ground. So merry Christmas, everybody. And that's how the grinch stole Christmas. amen.

Wonderful. Thank you, Jimmy. Merry Christmas to one and all. I need you to read my obituary. obituary someday.

Oh, definitely.

Well from the aquarium, guys. Podcast. Merry Christmas and.

Happy later.

Sure.

Until next week.