Hey, guys, just want to take a minute for our sponsor J Four Flower horns. If you are sitting in front of your aquarium wondering why you're no longer enjoying it, well, number one, you may not see them so clean the glass, but two, you know, bring a piece of the extreme to your tank. Have some fun. Go to J. Four Flowerhornsnut.com. He not only has amazing awardwinning flowerhorns you can get nowhere else, but also extreme fish like Bashirs platinum, Bashirs albino, arowana even has blue eye, bristle nose, platos King Kong parrot cyclist. What do you guys want? Go there. Go now. Find yourself some extreme for your tank and get 10% off while doing it. Go to J fourflowerhorns.com and use promo code Aquarium Guys at checkout for 10% off your entire order. Also, to celebrate J Four and Flowerhorns sponsoring the show, we put out a little love. Go to our merch store. You'll see it in the show notes. It's the aquarium. Guys. Merch line. And we have added a new line of merch saying I love cock. Now, cock kok is the ball on the front of a flowerhorn. So certainly check out the silly new merch line. Love for you to pick some up. It certainly helps the show and certainly at mention J four flowerhorn on social media just to let him know that you love cop. Guys, keep the stories coming in. We want to do a user submitted story time for storytime four. Certainly send those in. You can send them to the Acquiring Guys podcast website. At the bottom of the page you will find our contact method. You can email it to us. You could send it a text message, whatever is most comfortable for you. Hell, you could even send us an audio recording of you telling the story. But send those in and let's kick that podcast. Welcome to the aquarium, guys. Podcast. Jimmy, I did it. What did you do?

Rob'S?

I bought a 1952 Ford truck, and all I can think about is putting a tarp in the back and turning into a koi pond decoration in my yard.

You should, and it would absolutely be really cool, but unfortunately, I think it would probably die from all the rust.

Just iron poisoning.

Yes.

I'm your host, Rob dawson.

I'm Jim colby.

And I'm Adam ella Shire.

So, ladies and gentlemen, today how do I put this? I put a lot of work into trying to find guests. Jimmy, Adam, they they both help when they can, but Jimmy and Adam have a ton of work to do. Adam, how many hours do you put in a week?

On a good week, 70 ish.

All right. Jimmy, you're what? 80?

80. 85.

85, right. That's a week. So a lot of the scheduling is left to me when I have free time. But now even I have a very busy job as I've transitioned to a new It job. So we're decided to take some rounds and Adam decided to reach out to some guests. And Adam, you got a big one. I will let you introduce your guest, sir.

Okay, why don't you introduce yourself?

No, you can't go that way. Bob, likeens, was kind enough to come from pjack to join us on the podcast. Bob, thank you so much for coming.

Oh, hey, it's great to be here. I appreciate the invite.

Now, before we get too much into things, because normally we answer a few questions be at the beginning of the podcast. But what is pjack for those that are listening?

Well, the long version, for starters, is the pet industry joint advisory council. We are really not only the biggest, but the only trade association for the entirety of the pet trade. There are several other associations within the pet trade that focus on specific areas, but we are focused on the entirety of the trade. And what we do is the regulatory and legislative side of things. So we do the government affairs, work for the pet trade, everybody from manufacturers and distributors to live animal collectors and breeders and all the way across the entire gannett.

So, ladies and gentlemen, we have officially brought a pet lobbyist onto the podcast. Jimmy, that's the mark off of our notch right there. Our total poll got better.

It did. And just last week, I got a nice email from my friends at Secrets Farm saying, I'm asking all my customers to please go to Pjack.org, check them out, see what they are doing for industry, consider becoming a member. And I thought that was pretty cool.

Absolutely. And I do have to let people know because we're going to get fan mail on this. We have not received a single dollar from pjack to be on the podcast.

Well, that's good because I don't have any to give. Right.

See, there we go. So he's on our own accord reaching out, and Bob was kind enough to come back to come on the show with us. And I just can't wait to grill him.

Wow.

Bob adam has been huffing and puffing over the stuff that's been happening a lot of different places. There's all that horrible shit where they're trying to get rid of the entire aquarium trade in New York.

We have no, the entire pet trade in New York.

Yeah. So the entire pet trade in New York, we have all the horrible shit that continues to grow in Florida. We're trying to be reactionary to Arabima getting released, and now they're talking about shutting down fish farms in Florida all the way to the pinnacle of the horrible shit that's happening in Hawaii. So I don't think there's been a better time to have you on the podcast.

It's great to be here. And as I've said often, of all the things I worry about, running out of work is not one of them.

That is definitely not it. So before we dive in and just pick on Bob the entire time. Jimmy, do you have anything that happened to you this week?

No, not really. I brought in some shrimp in the other day and I lost them all.

What?

I mean, I lost them. I mean, they're not in my tank, they're not on the floor, they're not behind my mat and filter. So I lost my I lost 150 a model shrimp.

So what you're saying is Chris Angel went in your house. Something here is no, shrimp made them disappear.

They were there one evening. The next morning, I was going to go bag them, and they're all gone. And a mono shrimp, they'll crawl around a little bit more than a regular shrimp. And so I thought, well, maybe they crawled out the back, hit the floor or something. I cannot find them anywhere. No bodies, no nothing. So I'm just totally and you have.

No cats and your dogs can't reach behind the rack.

I don't know what happened to them.

Can you vent them out and eat them?

Rob? Well, I'm convinced there's a hit put out on your shrimp as a message, as a warning of having Bob on the podcast.

Probably.

I got to ask. freshwater shrimp?

Yeah, I'm sorry.

Okay. I was just wondering because I did have a salt water tank where when I was breaking it down, it turned out there was a ten inch bristle worm living in my substring.

This guy knows what's up.

Yeah. No, I brought in 150 amano shrimp. I was going to put them in my plant tanks because I wholesale plants and got a lot of string algae from my too intense lighting. And I thought, well, I'll put them in this tank and let them settle for a few days, and then I'll take and put them through my plant tanks and they disappeared. I thought for sure they crawled behind my matin filter and couldn't find a damn one, so I don't have a clue. I mean, I'm hoping I put them in a wrong tank somewhere, a different tank, but I've gone through all my tanks. I've only got, like, 40 tanks, and I can't find the darn tanks.

You know, I've done a lot of pranks to you over the years.

Yeah, that would have been a good one.

That would have been a great one.

Yeah.

Quick tangent before you get in the deep dive. Right. For those that don't know, jimmy and I have been friends now for what, the better part of eight, nine years?

Yes.

I went to my family's grave site like we do every other year.

Don't tell me they're missing, too.

They seem to be there. I haven't checked with a metal detector, but I'm assuming there's a hip underneath the ground somewhere. So we take the flowers away and we replace them with fresh and there's, like, ornate little white crosses, wooden crosses with flowers on them and whatnot. When we get there, there's, like, pieces of plastic flower, and then all you see is this picket white cross with paint chips coming off of it because it's weathered over the last year or two. And we just throw them in the back of my car. We drive back home, and my wife decides, hey, rather than throwing those away, how would we just stick them in jimmy's front yard? So that's exactly what we did. Not knowing Jimmy was just about to go on vacation.

I was on vacation. I got a panic phone call from my son going, who did you piss off? My son's 30 years old. He goes, they came over, they were staying at their house to watch our dogs, and we were at the state fair down in Minneapolis, and he comes home and there's three white crosses, which are about two and a half, 3ft high on our front lawn.

And they're just little dudes.

Yeah, they're a pretty good size.

I mean, it's not like a nine foot one that you light up fire for a ceremony down south.

And so, yeah, it took us a long time to figure out what happened and stuff, but I thought, do I have the clan here?

I didn't even think about it. We were just putting junk in your lawn.

That was a lot of fun that we played practical jokes on each other.

I'm kind of upset I didn't do it on Halloween.

And what happened to you after you did that to me? I mean, did you find some balloons in your bedroom?

Balloons with glitter, baby powder and what else in it? Our snack, for all I know.

Yeah. So when rob's went on vacation, I filled his bedroom full of balloons. I put baby powder and glitter in there, and he thought it would be good ideas just to pop the balloons. And it looked like he had a couple of strippers in there doing cocaine.

I had that laser that we had on the podcast Burning. What was that? Aptasia. And I decided to pop the balloons with it. That was a terrible idea. Lots of baby powder and glitter. I think I still find glitter in my bedroom.

Yeah.

So the moral of the story is prank your friends. Sorry for the tiny tangent, adam, I know that you had news prepped, but we're going to do news next week. But you have any other personal news? Adam died, ladies and gentlemen.

No?

Okay.

Adam got nothing. Let's start this out then.

All right. Yeah, let's kick it. Bob, I have so many questions for you, and I know that you're here to talk about a couple of different subjects, but we always ask every guest what got them into the fish hobby. Now, I know you have fish, but what got you into this pet lobbyist organization?

Kind of a long story. I mean, I've had fish since I think I had my first tank when I was in fourth grade, and I've had them most of my life since. But I spent the last 25 years or so in the army, so doing government affairs for the pen industry was a long way from my last career. But it just happened that my last job was a congressional liaison for the army, and I was working in the pentagon and working up on Capitol Hill, and it just set me up. They sent me back to school to teach me government affairs, and it just set me up to work in government affairs. And I always say that an army retirement check isn't enough to retire on, but it's enough to be a little choosy about where you work. And when pjack I saw Pjack's ad for a government affairs guy, I jumped on it because it was in my wheelhouse. I've always been a fish guy. I've always had dogs. I mean, right now I'm on a horse farm. I got two horses, three cats, two dogs, and one fish tank, and my daughter's got a frog. So this was a good fit for me. And it's something that it's easy for me to defend and speak well about, because I don't have to strain my credibility to do it, because I'm a believer that companion animals are a great thing for people to have.

So that's what's gotten you in, is you said last dawn of duty was being a liaison. So what it was, say, like, your first job, because it shows here from your bio that you are the vp of pjack. Is that correct?

Yeah. I'm the Government Affairs vp. I was actually hired about five and a half years ago as the government affairs director, and the organization was a great fit for me. And I love the businesses and the trade and the hobbyists that we represent. So it's worked out well for me, and I'm hoping it's worked out well for pj and for the trade as well. But I love doing this, and I have no aspirations to do anything else.

So I just want before because we're here to pick on the subject of Hawaii specifically, because there's so much happening there, but if I could get, like, a briefing on the state of the union of how pets are looking for score seven years ago, I'm assuming that you categorize pets into different categories by what they are. Is it cats and dogs, horse trade, the aquarium trade? What all pet relations do you cover?

Yes, although my wife would disagree with you. We don't consider horses pets. Those are livestock. So pjack does not handle horses. But you're exactly right. We handle canine issues, cat issues. We have small animals. We have herps, your snakes, and your lizards and your frogs. We have avian, and those are our focuses. And then we also actually have a separate subcommittee that handles Xenotic disease issues as well, and we work regularly with the CDC on that.

Oh, that's another one we could go into is how we got all of our cool exotics taken away because some idiot in Wisconsin let monkeypox go.

Is that what happened?

This is why I brought a two by four. So we knock Adam off the ledge, right? Keep him back because Adam, he gets fired up.

Yes. We have to give Adam some stuff, some alchem selzer, calm the stomach down. Yeah.

And Adam knows I'm a Wisconsin native.

Oh, are you?

I'm sorry. I'm so sorry to hear that.

I didn't say you.

I said there was an idiot in Wisconsin.

Yeah, maybe one of your family members. Adam, is that your no. Okay.

No, they put the African crested porcupines.

Next to next to what?

Prairie dogs.

Next to pray dogs.

Because back in the day, you used.

To be able to buy everything without needing a usda for everything. So you could get literally African crested porcupines and pet stores, and they would sell for, like, $500.

All right, but before we go over, because I would like just a briefing on us, the state of a couple of different industries and what Bob thinks is most at risk. But I know Adam has a ton of just random questions. This is your opportunity, Adam. Give him some weird shit.

No, I want to hear what he thinks of the state, because I just found out that they were trying to pass. They added a new bill saying Xunotics, an amendment to the lacey Act or something to prevent exotics due to COVID or something.

Well, we're seeing that not only at the federal level, but even at the state level in some states this year, when the government reacted initially to COVID, they were really focused on addressing COVID. Since then, it's been just a target of opportunity where everybody is now trying to find a way to attach their agenda and put COVID in there somewhere so they can get their agenda advanced. And that's what we're seeing with the lacey Act move. If you're speaking about Marco rubio's bill, senator rubio's bill, it is more focused on invasives than it is on zoonotic disease. And there's actually a really good bill, the 2021 Future pandemics Act, that really does a good job of addressing the real risks of bringing a zoonotic disease in without creating a bunch of secondary effects that would crush the pet trade and for that matter, the seafood trade. We've done a lot of work with the sponsors and with senators and congressmen to advance, so we actually recommend people look at that and look at supporting it, because it's a great bill. But you're right. Last year, because of COVID everybody took a step back, and we didn't see that many bills. And the state legislatures and the federal legislature were really only doing the things that were really important. And this year, it feels like they're trying to make up for lost time. We've seen a huge increase in the number of bills that address all kinds of things in the pet trade. And we've got the best researcher in the world working for pj because we look at probably 2000 bills a year at the state and local level as well as federal that in some way touch the pet trade. And we need to sort through those and find out which ones are really important and address them. We're seeing a lot of bills this year trying to close down pet stores that sell dogs, that sell puppies, and we're seeing a lot of bills that address zoonatic disease without really understanding what Xenotic disease is and how it works and what the realities of it are. So it's been a busy year and it's only March. Well, this is always the craziest time for us because a lot of state legislatures aren't open all year. They'll close in the next couple, three months, so they're trying to get everything moved. Now, this is the time of year when we're drinking from the firehouse.

So what are some of the most outrageous issues that you see happening as of this year?

Really, it's been volume more than craziness. We are seeing a lot of local bills on pet stores that sell puppies. We've been pretty successful in dealing with those issues at the state level where the legislature can call in the state veterinary and in the Department of Agriculture and so forth and make an informed decision. So instead, we're seeing that activists will go to localities, go to towns, counties that don't have pet stores, get it on the agenda and get a ban to selling puppies past when nobody even knows about it until after it's happened. So that has been the biggest challenge this year. But we are seeing more and more Xenotic disease bills. And the challenge, especially when you're dealing with herbs, with exotic pets or with fish, is people don't understand that whenever you've got two living things, there is a risk of a zoonotic disease. I mean, that's just reality. And what you have to look at is how high is the risk of catching it as well as how dangerous is it and does that disease already exist in this country, so it doesn't do us any good to ban it. I mean, the, the most common zoonotic disease is salmonella. But you know, you wouldn't ban imports because of salmonella, because it's everywhere.

You know, I've had some experience with salmonella and you have a better chance of getting salmonella poisoning from the chicken juice, from your chicken package at the grocery store than you do from a lizard. And just to be able to take precautions to wash your hands. And that after you've handled a lizard or whatever it may have been that carries salmonella. That's part of the reason that you can't get baby turtles anymore because of the salmonella, because young children are putting these turtles in their mouth. But yet you still can buy raw chicken at the grocery store. And there's more reported cases of salmonella poisoning there than there are from reptiles.

Yeah, we've talked about the baby turtle thing being banned by the usda, and for the listeners to remind them, the usda requires that if you're going to sell a turtle, it has to be four inches and over. If it's under four inches, the usda deems that it's too great of a risk for the public to have in their possession. And you're not allowed to sell an under two inch turtle, but you still.

Could lick a toad.

So for bob's sake, Jimmy, you used to wholesale turtles to different pet stores. And what was your take on getting hit by the usda?

Usda not a happy bunch of people, but we were down in the state of Florida, and every pet store in Florida was selling small turtles. And we talked to them down there and they said, yeah, you can sell these small turtles if you have people signed the waiver and saying it's for educational purposes only. And so we came back to Minnesota. We sold a few turtles. Somebody turned one of the pet stores in. They contacted me because I had supplied them, and she told me, you can't be selling them. I says, well, people are signing off on the waivers, and it's for education purposes only. She goes, yeah, we know that. That's the loophole. And now that we've told you, the loophole is closed. And so she goes, you need to take all these turtles and destroy them. And I said, okay. And she goes, you need to put a full page ad out in the paper where you've sold these turtles, and they need to be brought back and destroyed. And so I typed up what I was going to put in the newspaper, and I sent it to them, and they said, no, you can't put this in there. I go, what do you mean? She goes, the part about we're going to destroy the turtles. She goes, People are going to go crazy if you put that in there. I said, well, that's what you're going to do, and that's the truth. Right. And so they finally backed office and just quit selling them. And so that was a lot of fun.

They'd dropped the case. They didn't want the bad PR of them forcing turtles being killed. And that was that was that. No more turtle dealing.

No more turtle dealing.

I will put my straight up lobbyist hat on, though, and say that we work very hard representing the responsible pet trade, and we are big believers that if there is a law that doesn't make sense, we need to be out working to try and change it rather than working the loopholes.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. No waivers, Jimmy.

No waivers.

No waivers.

But the whole state of Florida, you can go to any pet store at that time and buy them they have.

Tightened up the language on those waivers over time as well.

Right. And you can go on after this podcast and you can buy a turtle off the Internet from anybody. And there's people that aren't there selling the small map turtles for two inches.

The moral of the story is you're very bitter.

I'm still a mad because I didn't want to kill any turtles.

And you didn't get your turtle is the most important part.

No.

Well, Bob, back to the subject at hand. I appreciate you giving a little bit State Union there on just seeing the mass amount coming through. Again, this podcast is being recorded March 22. So that gives you an idea that he's that busy towards even the second half of March. So good on you for doing the due diligence and the lord's work on keeping our pet hobbies and intact, sir. But for the listeners, because, again, we have Advanced Hobbyists Intermediate and beginners for the listeners that have never heard anything, what exactly is happening in Hawaii right now?

It's kept me busy for several years, if you guys have the patience for the long version. Back in 2016, 2017, a group of activists sued the state and said that the use of fine mesh nets in the aquarium collection permits was illegal because the state was not doing an environmental protection it was not in compliance with the state's Environmental Protection Act. So the activists lost their case against the state at every level until it got to the state Supreme Court, where they won. So it got kicked back down, and the lower court got told, all right, figure this out. So they came back and they said, okay, they can't fish with a fine mesh net anymore because that's what the permits so that resulted in most of the fisheries on the Big Island of Hawaii being closed, the aquarium fisheries. And it also resulted in the other island where a lot of fishing is done, which is oahu, having to use methods to collect aquarium fish other than fine mesh nets. So when that happened in 2017, we started working with the fishers in Hawaii to do the environmental assessments that were required under the Hawaii Environmental Protection Act. We've been beating our head against that process for about four years now. We did an environmental assessment for the state, which was then rejected. So then we decided, okay, we'll break it up and we'll do a separate environmental impact statement for each island because the two islands are very different. Big island is where most of the yellow tanks come from, and oahu is where most of the other fish, such as flame, rasses and things like that, come from. So we broke it up. We did two separate environmental impact statements. We finished the one for Big Island and submitted it. It was rejected last year. And now we are in the process of using the input we got from the state in refusing, in rejecting those documents to advise us on the content of our documents going forward. We are probably within the next few weeks going to be submitting the final Environmental Impact Statement for oahu. And we are in the process of redoing the final Impact or the final Environmental Impact Statement on island of Hawaii. And that right now has been submitted to the state and is open for public comment, our draft version of that. So we're taking public comments on the Hawaii document. We have already taken public comment. We're finished with the oahu document. And this has been three and a half, four years, hundreds of thousands of dollars that neither we nor the fishers have despair at a time like this. And based on the most recent court decision which said that for some reason aquarium fishing commercial fishing licenses are different than food fishing commercial fishing licenses, and now those are invalid too. So now all aquarium fishers are out of the water in Hawaii. There is no legal collection going on in Hawaii at this point.

And you keep saying the fine mesh netting. What's the problem there? I guess I'm kind of confused.

The whole thing started because aquarium fish collecting was like any other fish collecting in Hawaii. If you had a commercial marine license, it was legal to do. But there was a second permit required if you were going to use a fine mesh net to collect aquarium fish. And that's what the activists sued the state over originally. So that's why the fine mesh nets were banned from being used.

Now, in my honest opinion, wouldn't a fine mesh net, wouldn't that be what you want to use on an aquarium fish?

Or something delicate?

Yeah, for something delicate.

Yeah, you're exactly right. What they did was they banned the use of the most efficient tool that is also the safest for the animals. They allowed larger nets where the fish can get hurt. They allowed other methods, but they got rid of the most effective and safe tool. But that was what the activists wanted. They are not after managing a sustainable fishery, they are after shutting down the fishery. And that was their avenue to do so.

And by activists, you mean the wonderful people from peta and humane Society?

Right. Who exactly was on the opposite side of the coin? Was it just them?

No, there's another guy.

No, you're right. The big groups are funneling a lot of money into this fight. But there is an organization in the state called for the fishes that has been very active. There is a guy who has been this was just the latest in several attempts to shut down the aquarium collectors because he runs a dive group, he runs a dive tour shop, and he saw them as competition, I believe he's referred to as snorkel Bob.

I thought that it was because somebody went in his area when he was trying to do. A dive or something, and then he got mad.

I don't know.

Yeah, it's a big ocean, people. Let's all share and enjoy this wonderful thing that we have out there. snorkel Bob.

Probably works for smelta.

Snorkel Bob.

No, see, you guys are all wrong. What happened was the aquarium collectors were down there and they were nude, and snorkel Bob didn't appreciate that.

I just don't get why you can't how do you catch these fish now? Use your imagination and take a photo.

No, they're thinking that they're going to use submersible drones, and it's just going to be clamped by some magical nerd.

Technology, which is a long ways away.

So exactly. Again, it impacts not only the aquarium collectors, it probably impacts, again, you said for sure, the fishers. What does this involve?

Coral.

I'm assuming coral of all kinds across the gamut was also affected by this. Correct.

Well, coral hasn't been collected. Coral has not been legal to collect in Hawaii in, like, 20 years. So that was never an issue. Coral collection doesn't happen in Hawaii. It was just a matter of the aquarium fish. And you're right, it hurts the trade, it hurts the hobby, it hurts the small businesses, but it also crushes the hopes of being able to captive breed. There have been a lot of advances made, but it's been a big struggle to try and advance captive breeding of yellow tanks, but now they're not even going to be able to get the genetic stock. So it really is a problem. And you can't just say, well, we'll captive breed instead of wild caught, because it just doesn't work that way.

So let's take a little walk down remembrance trail for the aquarium hobby.

Memory lane.

Yeah, memory lane. We have had this issue in the past with freshwater fish, so let's pick on the zebra placo, for instance. The zebra placo, a gorgeous specimen, is only found in one river. And to prevent that river from being overfished, because, again, it's one of the most eye catching placos in the freshwater hobby, they decided to put a ban on importing the fish. That fish was really not readily available for years in the hobby. It was just a complete shut off and stop. That fish was able to be bred, but that fish had problems. It can only carry around six pups at a batch. It's very sensitive and requires soft water. But at least in that scenario, we were able to reproduce it in captivity in small numbers, and there were only so many in the United States at the time. So if you had a pair of zebra placos, you're sitting on a gold mine. Even these right now, zebra placos are going for 100 and $8200 a small fish on wholesale lists. It's a crazy price, even this many years after the fact. And that's a fish that we knew we could readily breed in salt water. That is not the case. You mentioned yellow tanks. How long has it been since we could actually breed yellow tanks in captivity? Five years? Four years? And that it's not real high success rate.

As a matter of fact, last year's magnus show was the first time they ever had second generation captive bread. And the number of eggs and the whole process required is incredibly labor intensive. It's nowhere near being commercially viable. I can't say that it's not commercially viable yet, particularly as a sole source. It will definitely be able to supplement wildcard, but it's not ready to be a replacement for wildfire.

What they do with these fish, and again, I'm not speaking for saltwater, let's just go to the fresh world again, that's my expertise. You see these different fish that can only be cotton captivity because they don't understand how to reproduce them. So for years they could only catch siamese algae eaters. They could not figure out a way to reliably reproduce at all in captivity, so they used hormones to induce them into breeding. We talked with the Florida excuse me, the ffta. Oh, my gosh, he's going to kill me. Help me out, Adam. The Florida.

Co op?

Yeah, the Florida fish for coop of farmers, they spend a collective on research for different fish to add to the hobby so they can be farmed out of their captive environments. And they're just now getting to freshwater species such as like the freshwater dolphin and and other species. But again, that's just for the first time being done in captivity. This takes time and they're doing it to help species that are in risk in the wild, because there's quite a few. The zebra placo was certainly one of them. But as far as, like, different species in Hawaii, blanketing everything doesn't make sense. They're not just banning a single species because maybe that species is under risk, they're banning everything because they want to, regardless of population sustainability or anything else. And showing the different ecological benefits of harvesting. Like even in the Amazon, we've had Scott from Project paiba piaba. Project piaba piaba, dammit, I'm going to get that one too. On and showing that sustainable, catching the fish in the wild, the sustainability of that, especially with the rain cycles, that showing those fish would have died anyway due to the deprivation of flooding and ponds drying up in the forest, that it's 100% sustainable. So neural research, it seems like it's taking place on which species they should select and just doing a blanket one based upon some silly notion of a fine mesh net.

You're exactly right. As a matter of fact, the one benefit we've had in doing these environmental impact statements is hawaii is probably the best managed fishery in the world as far as nearshore marine fisheries go, and there is a ton of scientific data on it. So basically what they're saying is they're shutting down the best managed and most robustly studied fishery in the world just because. And when you I mean, using your example of freshwater, the hobbyists have taken the lead on a lot of these environmental issues. You look at the African cichlids. I mean, there are a ton of African cichlids that would be extinct if it weren't for the hobbyists. They put nile in the lakes, and all the cichlids got eaten, and those species wouldn't exist anymore if it weren't for the hobbyist breeding. And when you talk about coral propagation and being able to culture coral, hobbyists led the charge on that, too. Back in the day, scientists, the educated ones, used to say that that couldn't be done. It was the hobbyist that changed everybody's mind on that. And keeping these species out of people's tank is limiting the number of people that can try and do things that add to the sustainability of these different species.

This is just like a loophole that the activists have found.

Right?

But I can't have a damn turtle.

You can't have a turtle still. Shut your mouth about the turtle. Hey, Jimmy, what turtles breed from their butts?

We're not talking about that again.

But no, for those who are listening, again, that's from the freshwater standpoint, salt water has so many more challenges when it comes to breeding. Again, yellow tang have been staples in the hobby since the beginning of saltwater saltwater tank preparation. But I'm trying to find a better word for that preparation agency since the beginning of the common saltwater aquarium trade. But just now we're getting a second generation, and for saltwater species that's way more prevalent that we just don't have the knowledge, the expertise, or unlock the secrets, because we haven't paid enough research into a lot of these different species as of yet, and it takes time, and there's no plan of sustainability. So another point I want to point out on this that just kind of hurts my brain.

A lot of stuff hurts your brain.

This whole thing. I didn't know it was just the fine mesh net. So this is like eye opening. I understand why everybody's so damn pissed. You have federally banned species for the sake of protecting the habitats like the Asian arijuana completely. In the United States, you are not allowed to have it. Federal agents may come to your home if you're trying to find one in the black market. It's the same people that smuggle cocaine into the country that bring Asian arijuana in. You can read the book behind the Dragon Glass to get the idea of how expensive the trade and all the terrible pieces behind it. But that was done for a purpose. They banned Asian arijana because an Asian arijuana on the market, if it was, say, an open market like Canada, goes for $2,000 for a single fish, take where they are in their natural habitat and say $2,000 American is more than it would make in about a year or two years of income for the average person. So all you have to do is catch one fish in a river and you're making more than two years of in your income that would easily destroy a habitat. And it's become some sort of like black market trade on fish. So now take species that are exclusive to Hawaii that should have been and are sustainable, and they're blanket bands. Now. We have now made a really high end trade of susceptibility for fish. It just hurts my mind that there wasn't even a purpose for that. You see the purpose for something like an Asian marijuana that they're trying to protect habitat. There's no reason for the majority of species in Hawaii that were sustainably taken that now we're going to turn these once a few dollar fish into hundreds, if not thousands, over time dollar fish if we don't have some way to get those collectors back in the waters.

Yeah, you're exactly right. In fact, the current version of the island of hawaii's, eis, actually cuts down. Hawaii has always had a white list of 40 fish. You could collect the most recent version, the newest version of that document. Now it cuts it to eight species that would be collected on the island of Hawaii. And every one of those species is one that has either a stable or a growing population. So there is, you know, while it has always been sustainable and collection rates have always been much lower than would threaten populations, now they will only be collecting species that are either stable or growing populations and still collecting very small percentages of those species.

How does this work for education places? Let's pretend I'm a zoo or National Geographic and I'm trying to find an endangered species to somehow document and protect the species or trying to breed them in a zoo. Like, how does that work? Are zoos banned from this as well?

Well, it wouldn't matter who's going to get the fish if it can't be collected. It banned for the aquarium trade, for aquarium use. So you can go out and fish them with a spear all you like. You can collect all of the achilles tank you want with a spear gun, but you better not keep one alive and put it in the fish tank.

Wait, what? I feel like my brain just didn't click on that one.

You can kill them and eat them, but you can't put them in a fish tank.

So wait, I'm trying to like the.

Only species that are under pressure in Hawaii are the ones that are the only aquarium species that are under pressure in Hawaii are the species that are also taken as food fish.

I'm trying to put myself in the spot of taking this ideal and putting it where I live. I live in Minnesota, in the land of 10,000 lakes, and we are blessed with more shoreline than most tropical regions can offer. Ours is very different, but I'm trying to imagine that there's a law that says we can't collect the fish in Minnesota. We have a lot of restrictions, but we do have collection rates where we have live well laws. We do have collection rates for kids to take home a sunfish from the lake and keep it in an aquarium and raise it throughout. I mean, there are sustainable ways that the dnr have made things to propagate into a tank. But I'm trying to like, rationalize my brain that allah says I can spear a sunfish. That's something close to me philate need it, but heaven forbid collected life. It's just utterly mind boggling.

And to put it in terms of when I lived in Milwaukee, that would be like saying even invasives can't be collected. So it would be like saying you can go out to Lake Michigan but you can't collect ALWI even though they're just going to die and wash up on the beach anyway. The mental disconnect is just so obvious. But this is a matter of philosophy. And when you're dealing with folks who believe that fish don't belong in glass prisons, then there really is very little way to come to common ground and find workable solutions.

Go ahead, Adam.

So even the Bang Eye Cardinals that are technically introduced in the Hawaii, you can't take them out of there either?

Correct. I mean, the Bang Eye Cardinals are an interesting fish anyway. They probably are under pressure in their native range. But the people that collect bangai Cardinals have transplanted them and put them in a whole bunch of other places. So they're threatened in their natural habitat, but they're invasive in ten other places.

Aren't they considered invasive in Hawaii?

I'm not aware of the bangai Cardinal being a real problem in Hawaii. Maybe it is. That's not something I've gotten involved with. I will tell you. Working with Citizen and the bengai Cardinal, the issue that they were running into is when they banned them from the aquarium trade, from aquarium collection. This is a slow moving shallow water fish. What do the locals do? They collect them and they use them for bait, to fish for food.

Fish.

That's not funny.

My brain. My brain, it hurts. All right.

Sightseeing is a whole another order.

Let's pretend just for a minute that's.

Just amazing though, that you can do that. That they do that, right?

Let's pretend for a minute that I am an aquarius in Hawaii, that I have my own tank. I have not harvested anything and I just so happen to have yellow tanks. I've purchased them. I have them in my tank. Now the law is out. I'm at risk of having yellow tanks in Hawaii, am I not? Or is there some like, gray area where they put it in the bill somewhere?

No. Well, no, it's not. Although there have been bills to make selling aquarium fish illegal. That has been tried in Hawaii on a couple of occasions. And they have now also banned not only commercial collection, but even collection of somebody who wants to go out and catch something and put it in their own tank. But it is not illegal to have them. You can have it. You can't legally get it. You have to have already had it or find a way to magic it into your tank.

Well, that's what sounds like some black market shit to me.

Well, that's what's happening in Florida right now, is that they're saying that they took those 15 or 16 items. reptiles in Florida saying that they're going to be bad now. But you can get a free permit to keep your Iguana if you have an Iguana now. But once that iguana dies, you can't replace it.

Are you shitting me?

No.

That's florida.

In Florida right now. iguanas tegus what else? Adam there's quite a few items.

Burmese rock, pythons. anacondas yeah.

Nile monitors and stuff. So if you have one in Florida now, they've backpedaled a little bit, and you're able to keep your pet now for and you have to get a permit from your city or or the state and it's free. But once that that pet has perished, then you can't get another one.

So we do have a question from one of the users underneath that Florida act. Is, sir. Mix a Lot anaconda Song Band Is that yes. Bob has no comment.

I'm staying way out of that.

No.

Now I'm even further out of it.

It's a rap song about nonsense. You don't want to know about it.

Bob oh, I'll send it to you after.

No worry, bob I look forward to it.

It's a classic.

No, it's not a classic. It is not a big cross Christmas.

Get my ringtone.

Yeah, make it your ringtone. Yeah, absolutely. And then when you're in church on Sunday and your phone goes off, you'll get a lot of cute little looks.

From you'll get some winks.

That's right.

I don't know where to go from this.

You totally drove that one into the.

Diet that was going to play how do we say retarded yachtsi and just.

Trying to you can't use that word.

It's our podcast, man. So if I was to do that, just roll the dice and try to guess what silly shit could come up with, this would not be it. I mean, you're saying that they cannot be collected, but then if someone collects it and they just so magically happen to have it, technically, you could have had it before, and we have no way to prove it. There's just a whole ton of gray area because they just did a thoughtless blanket band.

But now that the usda has told you not to have those turtles right, it's over.

It's long gone.

Bob where do you guys get your funding from? Because you talk about these activists and they get all their they have seemed like they got money falling out of the sky on them.

For do we need to put up a donation link immediately for for pjack?

Oh, please God, yes. Yes. We are a we're a 501 c six. We are a we are a membership organization. So our money comes from our members paying their dues. So I guess to make my pitch, please join pjack. If you're a hobbyist, the stores you shop in to get your fish supplies, to get your different products, ask them if they're pjack members and encourage them to be pjack members. One of the things that is unique about our product committee is it is the only committee in pjack that is able to raise and spend its own funds. And that is what has been, along with the fishers themselves, supporting all of our efforts in Hawaii. So that has been donations from across the trade and across the hobby. Several of the members of pjack have been very generous in supporting this effort, but we desperately need the help. And if you go to go to our website, pjack.org, and please contribute to the aquatic fund, because there is a lot of work to do. Hawaii is not the only work we do. We've funded two rounds of research into trying to develop a test to detect the illegal use of cyanide in aquarium fish collecting. So Hawaii is not the only thing we're spending money on, but it is the black hole into which I throw money.

I mean, the cyanide treatments, we've heard a lot of stuff. I mean, for years, a lot of saltwater collection has been the process. As they spread cyanide, the fish come up and they scoop the fish. It just makes it easier access to collect fish. And it's a terrible way of doing it. And they've now, I can't say recently, it's been going on for a little while. One of the more hard hit fish is rope fish. Generally, farmers for years have been breeding them in low cost, low budget areas in other countries. And they use cyanide treatments to kick the rope fish up out of farmed ponds, something that they could easily take a fine mesh net and dredge to get all the rope fish out. But instead of wasting the time, they just spread cyanide in and collect the rope fish. That's why for a long time, rope fish were very hard to keep after importing from different areas. And a lot of pet stores stopped bringing them in. As of knowledge of doing that, there were inflammation of gills bleeding out, all kinds of horrible stuff that were happening to rope fish in those collections for use of cyanide. Is there any other things that you guys have seen that you guys are fighting against?

There are a lot of things that we're fighting against. Minnesota had, a couple of years ago, had passed a law, a whitelist law for invasive species that said you couldn't bring aquarium fish into the state unless they were on the whitelist and they just left it at that and left it to the State Department of Natural Resources to figure it out. Luckily they did the responsible thing and they reached out and said, hey, can you send us a list of fish that are in the aquarium trades? We can evaluate them for our whitelist. And the aquarium trade sent them a list of about 3500 different species and they took a step back and said, maybe a blacklist makes more sense. The state agencies supported that and the sponsor of the original bill supported it. And that change got made because the big challenge with a whitelist is, just to be clear, a whitelist says you can't bring a fish in unless it's on this list. A blacklist says you can't bring the fish in if it's on this list. Unfortunately, Maine has a white list and the problem is once these things get written, they never get reviewed. The species that are on maine's whitelist are from the mid seventy s. And the aquarium trade and the aquarium hobby have changed a ton since the 70s.

Yeah. Besides the federal list, minnesota now only has I think, like 22, 23 species that have been banned. I mean, federally that's across the nation that there's other regulations and whatnot. But the list that we have now, I'm actually kind of pretty proud of stuff like eurasian carp that are coming up from Mississippi that are taking over the waters. Even though we like we always make fun of that. We call them the pean fish, the dojo loach. But there's a reason it's banned in Minnesota because it just excels in our climate and even taking over some lakes in Michigan. So I think we feel like we have a very reasonable band list in Minnesota and it just hurts my brain that it was completely reversed. 3500 different species. I don't remember that one.

Yeah. I am very thankful for all the companies that import and breed and wholesale the fish for putting together such a comprehensive list of what was in the trade. Because as you said, Minnesota soda has handled it very well. And that's why things like Senator rubio's bill are so concerning because that bill would basically ban it. Well, yeah, and crush interstate commerce. And if there is a threat, then the state needs to look at its environment, its climate and determine that there is a threat, which, let's face it, Florida has a lot of species that could be invasive. But yes, it makes sense maybe to ban lionfish in Florida. It doesn't make a lot of sense to ban lionfish in Minnesota. There is not much risk it's going to be invasive.

We were talking a little bit earlier, but too about how you guys go to bat for the dogs and the cats and the other different animals. But I'm just reading here really quick and I'm just going to throw this out because adam used to own a pet store.

I'm a wholesaler and I'm addicted.

Yeah, you are something else. This is something that was sent to me and it says here's an issue. So the issue hb 1711 bans the regulated retail sale of pure bred puppies and kittens by retail pet stores in Illinois in favor of only allowing those stores to offer dogs and cats from shelters and rescue facilities in Illinois. It's despite the fact that the retail pet stores in the state already are sourcing their purebred dogs and cats from usda regulated breeders that are required to meet the standards set forth in Illinois state. What they're doing is they're forcing these pet stores to start getting rid of the animals in the shelters. And here's the deal from what I've understood is so your local shelter would bring in these dogs and cats into the pet store and the pet store would be forced to sell them and then give them back the money. And so they're basically doing a service for free.

From what I understood, it's actually even worse than that and you're right. Not only are those breeders usda regulated, they're actually licensed. They're Class A licensed breeders that are inspected by the usda.

And that's not easy to get, by the way.

No, it's not.

They crawl up your wahoo when they come and inspect your dog. I'm serious. I got a friend that's usda and he tells horror stories about stuff.

One of the biggest frustrations in that whole fight has been the usda's unwillingness to defend its own reputation. They get slandered a lot and they don't push back and it's frustrating. But the bigger problem with these what we call a rescue model bill is that first of all, it assumes that the shelters and rescues are even willing to work with the pet stores, which generally they are not and won't provide animals. Second of all, the shelters and rescues don't have enough animals. They have to, particularly in the northern states and more than anywhere else in the northeast, they have to import dogs for the shelters and rescues. They bring dogs in from the south, they bring dogs in international or to meet the demand. The shelters and rescues cannot meet the demand for dogs. And third of all, if you've got a pet store and you've spent all this money setting up your pet store, all of your animal holding areas are designed for puppies. The only dogs that are in shelters are pit bulls. So now you're going to take adult pit bulls and try and put a dog that size into a facility that was designed for an eight week old puppy. So it means that not only could they not profit from, they would have to completely remodel and revamp stores in order to do it.

And then on top of it, the liability when you are selling large dogs with unknown people come back and say, I got Hypothesia and in the state of Minnesota. You have to take care of that one year guarantee and stuff, which that's.

Another sleep pile of bs that you get a warranty on your dog, you could abuse it. Something else could happen. You could malnourish your dog. But it's the pet store's responsibility to warranty the dog.

Yeah, and here's the other thing, too, is that God bless the shelters. I really believe there's a good place for these shelters, and they do a great job. But let's face it, though, I mean, you go into our local big box store and they're selling one eyed six year old tomcats for $200.

No, it's more just in a local one. I will leave names out of this. We're not here to badge your individuals here. There's great humane societies across the United States. We have one in our local area. I had a friend just purchased a cat from there. Again, it wasn't one of those issues. It's a one eye.

He didn't purchase it. It was an adoption fee.

No. Yeah, it's an adoption fee. I think he paid over $700 for that individual cat, for a farm cat. And they said they would give him back a small amount of money if he got it neutered or spayed within a 90 day period. There's that. So technically, we could say it was, what, fairly $99, $600 for a farm cat.

And here's the thing, is that some of these particulars, they beat up the veterinarian staffs around the area, and the vets are doing all the vet shots and stuff for basically little or nothing. And they spade or neuter, these animals normally before you get them. But if you're really out there to help the pet, why not just put an adoption fee of a nice $100? Because you probably don't have much more into it than that.

I mean, there's a bunch of them that are nonprofit. 501 C three. There's nonprofit agencies, but there's also do your homework. If there's private humane societies next to you, a lot of them are for profit, and if they don't have that, you know, 501 C Three, you said you're 501 C Six.

We're c six. We're a we're a membership organization. Right, but you're absolutely right. You know, there are there are lots of rescues and and a ton of shelters and humane societies doing fantastic work.

Absolutely.

Do your homework.

But yes, support your local humane society. Humane Society of the United States does not have any association other than a lot of the same words in their name. They don't have any relationship with your local humane society. So support your local humane society. It's actually working with and for animals.

That need their help and stay away from peta.

We've had a bunch of people approach us since we've had the podcast, asking us to be on the podcast, particularly the people that like to start up that we call fish rescues. We've had Ohio fish. Rescue on multiple times on the podcast. I've been on their live stream countless times, and they do a fantastic job. It is as anybody can equate for the largest fish rescue definitely in North America, if not the world. They have 100,000 gallons over that in their house rescuing massive fish that were not intended to be purchased by skilled pet owners. There is a place for different types of humane societies, but we have a big scam that people come up to us and say, hey, I'm opening the So and so State, the So and So County, the So and So Town Fish Rescue. And they're not registered as a nonprofit. They're taking fish just for the purpose of reselling and pocketing the money. They're not doing the sake for the health and good of the creature. And we have a lot of issues with individuals asking inquiring, hey, you'd love to be in your podcast. Hey, love for your support. And there's a lot of scams going around. We've even seen a couple small time ones that people were quote unquote, rescuing fish to display at their airbnb seasonally and then throw out and kill or sell if they could. If they couldn't sell and they'd kill them, I mean, they'd call themselves rescue companies. So do your homework like you said. Do local. If you know a guy close to you and they've done the due diligence, they're filed as a nonprofit, do your homework because there's so many different places scamming.

It's just the point where you could buy a pure bred, beautiful persian cat kitten for $300 usda. Now I'm going to go get a farm cat which needs a loving home, don't get me wrong. But to spend $300 on a farm cat that somebody gave to the Humane Society, I had a few years ago, somebody dumped off some kittens to me, which I didn't want. I was delivering at a pet store. I had my back of my my minivan open up, and I was delivering a bunch of fish. This gal came into the pet store and said, I'd like you to take these kittens. And she goes, I'm sorry, sweetheart, I've got eight kittens already. I can't sell them. She goes, well, if I can't give them to you, I'm going to kill them. She goes, don't kill them, but I can't take them. And I got in my van. I left the back of my van open because it was very hot that day. And I had all my fish in there. And I got about 40 miles down the road, and I started hearing cats meowing in the back. I got 100 miles north, and I called my next door. I said, hey, somebody just jumped some kittens off on me. Do you guys have a Humane Society there? And she goes, yes, we do. I said, can you give me the number? So I call my cellphone. As I'm driving, I said, I've got these six kittens. I explained to her what happened. She goes, yeah, you can drop them off. When I dropped them off, she asked me for a check for $300 because I had to pay her $300 to take these six kittens. And so I just took these six kittens. I gave them away by the time I got home because I had seven, eight other pet stores to go to. But here, here is a humane society charging me $600 for trying to do the right thing. And to this day, it still makes me mad.

You wouldn't believe how much stuff was dropped in front of my store overnight.

Yes, you guys are the fire department. Bob, you were trying to say something before on the prior comment.

Oh, I don't remember. I'm not that bright. You got to bear with me.

We got a couple of questions from the audience here. So going back to let's see here. Man, the Chat is going crazy. I got to go back through a lot of different pieces here. So if you guys want to join the debauchery and listen to these live, we try to do them on Monday nights at 07:00 P.m. Central Time. You can go to aquariumgyspodcast.com. On the bottom of the website you will see a link for discord. That's actually where we're listening to this now and on our twitch at twitch Tvacquariumguys. Due to the fact of not having an editor, we are slow rolling the podcast, but we're still trying to at least do something on it every Monday nights. So come join us. One more moment.

I will admit that I am afraid to try and look for the Chat because I'm afraid if I get off of this page, I'll never find my way back to no worries.

I will read it for you and the class once I get there. Okay. What are the reasons they are giving for the rejected studies in Hawaii?

There were a series of things. I think what it really came down to was the Land Board and the Department of Land and Natural Resources wanted to ensure that they had more latitude to change the number of fish that could be collected or the species that could be collected if there was reason for it. The bottom line is our proposed solution, our preferred solution in Hawaii is the same as it is everywhere. We prefer what good sound science says ought to be done. I was naive enough to think that that was a non controversial comment once.

Upon a time to follow the science.

Yeah, exactly. And there is a ton of science on this. But this has become a very politicized issue in Hawaii and we are just trying to get back to a discussion about the science and what the science says because that's pretty non controversial. It's pretty cut and dry that the fishery is very sustainable. So we are not concerned that the science will result in the closing of the fishery. We don't believe the science says that at all. And through all of the public comment periods we've gone through, even the people most opposed to the fishery have not been able to provide any science showing that the fishery is a problem. So they just go after it on other grounds. And for them this is a moral issue. They just don't philosophically believe that people should have fish tanks.

Now, Bob, I have kind of a weird question, but as a licensed collector, can you only take so many yellow tang a day or a week or a season? How does that work? Before they were banned?

Yeah, you can do zero.

Well, thanks, but.

There is no aquarium collecting going out in Hawaii anymore based on the most recent court decision. But there was not a limit on yellow tang collection. It was controlled by the market. And the yellow tang is a very prolific fish. A single yellow tang will lay a million eggs a year. And the aquarium fishery, I mean, you know, the fish that go into an aquarium, they're collecting the juveniles, so so there, there is no shortage of yellow tang. And, but with some of the other species there were bag limits, but not in the case of the yellow tang. And now as this document goes forward just to provide additional reassurance to the state and to concerned parties, the fishers are proposing bag limits on yellow tang along with all of the other species.

Yeah, I know when I would import them from overseas also, they would have a limited quantity that I could order. I could only order five or ten depending on the season or what they had and stuff. And that I totally get. And so if they're trying to sustain this forever, it doesn't seem like there's going to be a problem that they're going to run out of yellow tanks tomorrow, right?

Yeah. The yellow tang is a very strong population. There is no risk of running out of yellow tangs, as you said. And add to that, Hawaii can be a challenging place to collect fish. The big island is very susceptible to weather that makes it impossible to go out and boat and collect fish. So it's not like people are out there every day collecting. And at this point, there are only eight collectors trying to get their licenses on our document. So eight people are not going to collect that. But even if they could be in the water at 50ft deep, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, they couldn't collect enough to impact the population of that fish. And what they are proposing is far, far short of that.

What about like flame angel fish and some of the other rare hawaiian fish? Did they have limits or were they.

Just kind of it depended on the island they were being collected on? Most of the fish being collected on the island of hawaii, off the island of Hawaii, were in a fishery management area. There's really very limited opportunity to dive for aquarium fish outside of that. But in oahu, there were less restrictions and a wider variety of the species are collected in oahu, where a larger number of the yellow tanks are collected off Hawaii. So it varied depending on where the fish were being collected. But in both cases now for both islands, the documents are recommending that the state put bagel in this. In effect.

The next question I have, I'm actually going to pick apart a question from one of the listeners. What other areas in the world are now being affected by either no collection rules or anything else? What's next on the horizon or already happening internationally?

There's a lot of pressure not to collect coral, which has turned into a huge problem with places like fiji and so forth, and Indonesia, because the rules are written so broadly that it affects mariculture. And fiji had a huge I mean, incredible amounts of coral were being propagated right off the beach and in essentially farming. And what they did in that case was banned the export. So you've now got this captive bread or maricultured coral that because you did it in the ocean or even if you've done it in tidal pools, can't be exported. So that has been a big problem internationally. I will say. You mentioned Florida. We are seeing some of the same activists and the same noises in Florida that we've been hearing for several years in Hawaii.

I mean, Florida compared to Hawaii. I know I'm not going to have a very popular statement on this, but I feel like Hawaii is completely out of nowhere. There's not a lot of science behind it. For some reason, they picked arbitrary fine nets as the target because it was a loophole. Florida, on the other hand, has a long history of being a farm area, and for years they weren't doing it in a proper manner. If you go into some areas in Florida, you look in ditches and you'll see angel fish, neon tattoos, guppies, and you'll see a lot of places where in the past they haven't done a great job of keeping their farm species out of waterways and just so taken back by Florida, it's a very small territory. They're not fish farms, they're not releasing a ton of species. It's just strictly collecting local stuff. But, yeah, even Florida, the extremes that are going now in the opposite direction, going too far in the reaction of snakehead, the boas, now arapaima going through and just blanket banning, you think that Florida is also going to be locked down very quickly.

I think there's going to be pressure for it. It's a challenge because, let's face it, public opinion and public knowledge about the idea of invasive species and things like that has changed a lot over the last 2030 years. And there are still negative impacts happening in Florida from things that were done decades. And anytime you're dealing with invasive species, it is much easier to deal with it before it becomes invasive than once it becomes invasive. So it will continue to be a challenge. But there has to also be an awareness that things are not being done in the way that they were when those problems were being created. And you can't wind back the clock, but you can certainly make sure that things like that don't happen in the future. And I say quite a bit that we're not an organization that opposes all legislation. It just has to be sound, science based rule, and you can legislate and regulate in a way that does not have the secondary effect of putting everybody out of business. It's more work to do, smart legislation and regulation, but it's worth the trouble. And this is something we should be able to do. We should be able to have a responsible trade and control invasive species and protect endangered species. They're not mutually exclusive. We should be able to do all those things. And we can if we have enough of a voice to convince legislators to put that effort in, because there's a lot of work for them and there are a lot of demands on their time and a lot of people vying for their attention.

Yeah, it seems like they tried to push a lot of this stuff through very quickly, hoping that nobody notices. Just like when they just did all the COVID stuff that they just push through legislature and stuff. My pension was just saved. I'm a teamster. I work for a bread company. And our pension has been so mishandled over the years, and somehow they snuck it into this last legislature to save our pension. And so a lot of the stuff just they throw too much stuff at everybody and you got to have everybody's attention at one time, and that's almost impossible.

You talk about the COVID issue. The first round of COVID was about dealing with COVID and dealing with people that were in a desperate situation because so much of the economy shut down. This most recent round has been very much about taking care of pet projects. We had to work very hard to get lacey Act language out of the COVID bill. Literally the last two pages of that bill were all about importing animals, and it had nothing to do with COVID or anything else. It had to do with expanding usda and banning importation. And we had to work very hard to get that language out. And luckily, we were able to find some legislators that didn't believe a COVID relief package was the place to address invasive species issues.

Well, speaking of reacting fast, one of the things that we've talked about in recent aquarium news is the moss balls. You probably heard about this incident. Moss balls?

Zebra mussels.

Yes. They came from Ukraine. They just distributed everywhere. Pet cos. Pet smarts mom and pop shops, everybody were having issues. And we've seen in state after state the dnr reactions are all over the place. Some don't care and said, make your own decisions. Others have completely walked into stores, wiped the shelf, or forced them to bleach the balls in front of them. There's been different import regulations that dnrs are doing. We've heard all kinds of craziness. What have you heard being in a completely different world than us?

Well, actually, it's not all that different a world. When that news broke, I spent the next 36 hours emailing and telephoning our members that deal with this large and small retailers as well as wholesalers. We've got memorandum of understanding with usda and Us fish and wildlife service, and we've been speaking with them because we wanted to publish guidance and we had to put out an alert to our membership. And we focused on doing that as quickly as we could, but we didn't want to do it without having guidance in it. So we went back and forth with the retailers, with our scientific consultants, and with the government to try and work out a responsible way to handle these if you have them in your store, as well as to give them guidance to give to customers. And we got that out. But we continue to refine that as we look at, well, does copper work better than bleaching, or can you just use salt? Can you do things short of wiping out the tank and having to set up an emergency tank long enough to get your tank cleaned? So we continue to try and refine what we're telling folks on that. But we were very involved with that right from the jump as soon as we heard about it.

What are you telling folks exactly? We have in Minnesota here, we have a lot of experience with zebra muscles, and there's different strains of them, not necessarily of like, species, but our zebra muscles versus the ones that are probably supplied in the bucket probably have different adaptations. Ours go through Minnesota, winners of 45 below zero and freezing temperatures underneath up to 24 inches of ice.

They just burrow themselves deep in the mud.

Right. So we have a very resilient muscle. So what are the recommendations that you guys have published? In a nutshell, always get myself in.

Trouble via bridge, sir. Not having it in front of me. Essentially, it was take the if you're a store and you've got these in the cups, a lot of them were in the bed of cups and things like that. If you've got them separate, bleach them or boil them and throw them away. Don't flush them, throw them away. If you've put them into tanks, separate out the fish. Make sure that you're doing your PH balance and using stress meds for the fish when you're doing it. But pull the fish out and clean it with either treat the tank with 140 degree water, which we were originally concerned would be too hot for tanks, would actually cause damage.

Yes, you're talking about some old tanks with some older seals, or heaven forbid, you're using a meta frame tank with that lead oxide.

Which is exactly why we reached out to our members that actually build tanks and said, hey, will this work? Right. And our recommendation was then either bleach or hot water, treat the tank, separate out the water, make sure you're not putting the water down a storm drain or anything else like that, and then do the refill, do the probiotic type treatment as well as the stress treatment, and get that tank reestablished. We continue to look at if it can be done with less draconian measures. But our initial recommendations really had to be something that we were sure would work, because the worst thing we could do is put out recommendations and have them not be strong enough to be effective.

And you can't be too careful on this either. We've had people that are in certain areas where they take care of garbage next to waterways. Not that the garbage leaches in, but let's pretend in a terrible scenario that you're playing the final destination version of your moss ball travel. You went to a store, you bought a container of moss balls. You had them in your tank. You realize, oh, shit, they have a zebra muscle. You took them out and immediately didn't bleach them. Let's pretend that you didn't go through that process or boil them or whatever temperature you recommended, and certainly go to pga's website. I'm assuming you guys got this published for everyone to look at as well.

We do.

Wonderful. And you just disposed of it in a trash because, again, you don't want to flush it on a toilet. Don't put that in the waterway, even in your sewer, because it could propagate in your city sewer.

We did not know that.

That was a big one. That Minnesota has a couple of spots where that's been a problem in the past from fishermen bringing them from lakes and invasive species.

Zebra muscles are getting in people's sewer systems and clogging sewer systems because they're breeding in the sewer system.

They somehow found a way to make life happen in the midst of your shit.

So you guys need to all go back to my system where I've got a septic tank in my back.

Right? There you go.

That's right.

So you put it in the trash. The trash guy collected it. It's now in a trash heap. Suddenly a bird grabs your zebra muscle, pecks it, and drops it in a waterway, right? You can't be too careful bleach them. Sterilize the balls themselves. If you have any worry, there are good, clean balls out there bleach your balls. That's the T shirt that we're going to be putting.

No, we're not wearing a T shirt out at all.

Bleach your balls, bob's face. I'm so sorry, Bob. We should have warned you.

You warned me.

So I read they're telling people to microwave their moss balls, and I'm thinking, boy, but that smells really good.

Jimmy, have you ever accidentally baked a rock in the oven?

Once upon a time, I collected some rock from the shore. I thought it was really pretty. I thought, I'm going to sterilize it in the back.

Go for you, buddy.

It smelled like ass.

Not just smell like ass. Let's pretend that you got the unlucky rock and it was like a geode and there's a small air pocket in.

This, and they explode that's even more.

It's like M 80 on steroids. It's going to shatter your oven thing.

It was my mom's oven. I was 13. I probably didn't care.

If you want to explode a zebra muscle in your microwave, by all means, but it's going to be a stinky, shitty mess. I said, bleach your balls. And now everybody's quiet. So I'd like to apologize, listeners.

Bob, this is a fine example of why some animals eat their young. Right here in front of me, Rob just goes off on tangents and just.

Jimmy, will you quit calling me delicious?

Yeah, you're not delicious here.

So, Bob, some of the final notes here. What are some of the other things that you're seeing come up on the horizon? Because right now, again, this is definitely taking your attention. But there's got to be some other concerns, some other normally we ask we have product people on the podcast like, oh, what's coming up next? Well, I don't want to be gloom and doom, but what's coming up next, Bob?

It can be really hard to say. These things tend to go in waves. You had the picture of the beta fish up, the social activism stuff. You never know when it's going to take hold. The whole push to get Pet Source to stop selling beta fish had nothing to do with sound science. There's actually some very good science at a University of Florida that tells us that beta fish do very well in these smaller tanks. And you definitely don't want fast moving water. That's not the kind of fish they are. But it can be hard to be the facts guy in an emotional argument. So we we will probably see more things like that. We do see the push occasionally for things like, you know, there there will always be the folks that want to get rid of goldfish at the fair. You just need to look at all of this legislation first through the lens of does it make good sound, scientific sense? And then, given every opportunity to do so, how will this be misinterpreted and used against us?

You just you just can't predict the future, especially with the erratic, crazy people. We always pick on people on fish farms because the beta hobbyists are always the the first ones. It's not in a 135 gallon tank. It's not correct for a beta. As the joke going around, I think.

It was India actually briefly passed some laws saying you had to have five or ten gallons per fish and some other things. I think that got repealed pretty quickly. But these things do take hold, and if you're not watching closely, you turn around and there are a whole bunch of really silly rules out there.

Well, we wouldn't be asking the questions if we didn't ask you some hard ones. Bob, so far we've talked about the state of Hawaii, which clearly is an easy subject to beat a dead horse on. I mean, it's crazy what they're doing. It doesn't make sense, honestly, however you try to cut it. But pjack, we've talked about how it's protecting the rights of people to have pets. I, as an American citizen, should have the right to have an ecosystem in a square container. That is a fundamental right that I'm happy to have. What do you guys do in protections? Because before you talk about cyanide and protecting fish, what do you do for different pet groups to protect and maintain the well being of pets? I don't think that you guys get enough credit for that because it just looks like you're a lobby group that just protects people's rights to have pets. You guys do, from your website, seem to do a bit more than that.

Well, we try to. I would like to think we do. We work very hard on animal welfare issues. We right now are once again working very hard on a pause bill, wounded warrior bill that would get trained service animals to ptsd, sufferers military service related injuries, which is obviously something very close to my heart. And you're right, the other side of that is continuing to ensure that people have access to the pets they want. And that could be things like breed specific bands and anybody from landlords to towns deciding that some breeds aren't acceptable, judging the danger of a breed that broadly. It could be places that have banned ownership of snakes or ownership of reptiles. That's actually something we see fairly common commonly not so much this year, but a lot of bans on snakes or owning constrictors or putting size limits on constrictors that just aren't scientifically based, putting everybody who's selling purebred dogs out of business. So we try to work very hard on both sides on ensuring the welfare of the animals and ensuring people have access to well bred and responsibly collected companion.

Well, Adam, do you have any other questions for Bob? I know you've been itching, man. No, I'm good. You got them out? Yeah, no, nothing, nothing right now. I would like to see, is there a future bill for pet store owners that get stung by their own products to make sure that they have access to insurance? I want to say I want to back that one.

Well, I don't know if workman comps applies if you're the owner.

Right? It does. There's no one there to save adam's life.

Stupid is what stupid does.

It's not as bad as the blue ring.

And I will caveat every word I have said tonight with I'm not a lawyer.

You know, over the weekend, I was watching one of these doctor excuse me.

You got that COVID in your throat there, bud.

Knock right in rod's face.

Hey. He does that every time I say, Bleach my balls, Bob.

Take me away. But I was watching one of these veterinarian shows and they like, Dr. So and so is exotic. er. And this guy comes in this weekend and I was watching this. He comes in with a two toed sloth and an anteater as pets. I'm going, Where do people find these things? And why is there a legislature about that? Do you really think a two toed tree sloth is a now you got.

The sloth people against us.

How dare you, jimmy yeah, well, you've offended everyone. A jim yes, I know a guy. But when you see these things on TV, it kind of glorifies. These great people go, oh, I need one of those. How come people don't ever just go, I need a goldfish.

What did they say about the tiger king thing? Like demand of tigers went up like a million percent after the tiger king.

It's just like when Disney did. Well, not Disney. That movie company that did the dory thing.

Pixar.

Pixar Disney.

That's not actually true, though. It's urban legend. It is widely believed that nemo drove clownfish sale. It did not. The seasonally adjusted clownfish sales were the same.

Were they really?

Because when they were getting ready to release Finding dory, several of our bigger members were working directly with pixar to do messaging. Because while a clown fish is actually a pretty easy entryway into saltwater aquariums, a blue hippo tank is not. It's a more difficult fish and it needs a bigger tank. So we had members that were actually working with pixar to message that this is great, we hope it gets you into aquariums, but dory probably is not your first best fish. But the whole thing about nemo driving clownfish sales really is mostly myth.

The only thing I heard is that it actually drove prices up for a time, for a short period of time.

I'm just going to blame Ellen degeneres for the whole thing, personally.

And clownfish are actually one of the saltwater species that are easily capped at Brett.

Yes, it is. We had Matt peterson just on the podcast a month or two ago and very successful clown breeder who have done a lot of designer clones over the years.

So you guys want to hear something bad that's going to happen?

Have we had enough doom and gloom?

No.

Can't we just giggle about bleach our balls and move on?

No.

You know the guys that did Tiger King?

Oh, God, yes.

They're making a movie documentary style of the reptile trade, and they have literally picked the biggest ass hats that you can find in the reptile trade.

Oh, boy. Bob's writing notes down right now. Yes, bob's literally writing notes down right now.

Prepared. Apparently they got the venom boys, and I think they got who the hell else? I just know they got supposedly the venom boys and a bunch of other people. Basically, they like to handle hots and giant snakes, and that's going to be the next one. And I'm just like, okay, so if you guys are in reptiles, buy whatever you want now before that comes out, because that's going to destroy the reptile trade even further than it already is.

You made the Bob right notes.

Sensationalism versus reality. I will tell you, there are always going to be shows like that. But on the other hand, shows like, I don't think they're making new shows anymore, so I can probably get away with peroni. The guys that did Tank, they did a lot to expand interest in having an aquarium and to broaden what people thought of as an aquarium. So in a lot of ways, there are times when those things really help, and there are times when you kind of wish they'd picked somebody else to represent it.

Yeah, I've gotten so much flak on this program because I'm the oldest of the bunch here, and I grew up watching the Bartiman Bailey ringling Brothers Circus on a Friday night once a year.

Can we talk about that? Because you've brought this up in the.

Podcast, I'm bringing this up again.

No, I don't need more shitty emails. Right balls I can take.

No, but again, like you said, those guys got interest in tanks and fish. And I understand that people don't want elephants in the circus, but you take the elephants out of the circus, and now kids, especially in urban areas, are never going to probably see anything like that. And it's hard to defend and love and protect something that you've never seen. To have an elephant in a circus. I'm not saying that it's the right thing to do is put a tutu on an elephant and make it dance around, but people do that with their kids all the time, too. I'm taking my kids dance class, going to make them dance, and they don't.

Want to go taking away yellow tanks from I'm just saying hawaii is not going to love his children anymore.

I love elephants, and if you don't see an elephant, you're never going to love an elephant.

Next podcast, there's going to be a pound of peanuts on your side of this table.

I'm going to talk about elephants the whole time. Look at that. Bob's making notes, going, I'm not talking to these guys again. Block this number. Block that number.

I am doing my best to keep lighting up in here since we have there we go.

Don't worry. You look pretty, Bob. So, Bob, do you have anything else that you'd like to talk to the audience about? I know that in the show notes, there will be the link to donate directly to pjack. If you guys want to do the aquatics fund or any other funds that they have listed on the website. Of course, we're going to have in the Aquarium Guys podcast the aquatics fund link, but certainly consider supporting them and becoming a member on their site. Bob, what have you got for us for last notes?

I sure appreciate you guys time. Please. I am happy to be back anytime you'll have me, and I appreciate the plug. And I would just ask all the hobbyists out there that are listening to encourage the stores that you do business with to join, because we work very hard to keep all of the stores that handle companion animals afloat. And we would appreciate their help in doing it.

And the website again, is Pijac.org. Bob, thanks so much again for coming on. And we're going to have to have you back on. There's going to be some other heinous thing we got to get the inside scoop on. And I just think it's going to be way too soon. Although we love having you on, we.

Need definitely need a part two.

I appreciate it. I'd be happy to do it. And somehow I think there will always be something exploding that we have to deal with.

I hope it's not a snail in a microwave.

We have an order, Bob, next to me. Come on. We need some great news. Like you got the entire country, Brazil, to go to blacklist instead of whitelist. That's the news we need from you. Just as a happy note.

That's a bad thing. I'll work on that, and you guys can work on funding it.

All right, until next time, guys. If you like what you hear, go to cornwall's podcast, donate to pjack. Otherwise, you keep our lights on, give us a couple of bucks, support our sponsors, and look out for that Bleacher Balls T shirt. No, we'll throw out. You know what? We're going to take our own pocket. Some odd percent of that is going to go to replacing moss balls for either the audience or some pet stores. So we're going to figure out something.

You said you're going to do a Bleacher Balls T shirt, and I'm going to buy a T shirt. And you know which one I'm going to get for you? The one that says Fluke you.

Well, if you look here, Jimmy, go fluke yourself. We have this wonderful list from last podcast that you missed due to almost having COVID and didn't.

I almost had coveted but didn't.

Right. So we have bleacher balls. We got a picture of an angel fish saying, I'm honey for heaters.

We're not doing that one. Either.

I know a guy is supposed to be some kind of t shirt. And why can't I breed rocket?

You forgot the salt, Bob.

Yeah, and then the salt one just a salt shaker, Bob.

We've done 80, 85 episodes. I've only missed one, and this is crap. That happens when I miss one.

That's what happens.

Well, I look forward to rolling the Promises show.

Hey, Bob, thank you so much for doing this. We really appreciate it. And thank you very much.

Until next time.

Bye. Thanks for having.

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I never knew that a Minnesota accent.

Could be so sexy until I heard adam's voice. Go frank yourself.

Don't you know that's for my boy don't you know.