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Robbz: You welcome to the Aquarium Guys podcast. Adam, did you know that Calerpa Taxifolia is federally banned?
Adam: The federal government and their goddamn mother rules.
Robbz: All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Aquarium Guys podcast, where we're going to do a little bit of short one today. Questions and answers. Jimmy's gone. We got Dan in the hot seat. Say hi, Dan.
Dan: Hi, failures.
Robbz: I'm your host, Rob Zolson.
Adam: And I'm the host, too, Adam El Nashar. F that pet.
Dan: No, it's, it's Adam L. Nashar and the aquarium guys.
Robbz: Yes, thank you.
Adam: Yes. There you go.
Dan: Oh, man, it's like Benny and the Jets.
Robbz: You guys are just spicy today.
Adam: Well, that's because we went through a 1 hour podcast. Of all the ways the government's going to find a way to best thanks to that goddamn. Can we even say the name on this one?
Robbz: No. Next. So today we're going to be answering your questions. I'm going to be opening up the aquarium guys email. You guys can submit your questions to aquariumguyspodcast.com. Excuse me, aquariumguyspodcast@gmail.com. Maybe that's why they haven't been sending it in. I'm going to start Jack ads. I'm going to start, and I really hope I'm not double doing these questions. First question is from June 18. So that kind of gives you guys where we're at with these questions when it is August 23. So we're going to get caught up here. It says, hey, guys, I've been listening to your show for a long time and love it. I have two questions and input on both concerning the fish trade, which I know you guys would know a bit more. About one time while visiting my local fish store, the owner was unpacking his shipment and saw a tank full of half beak fish gasping for air and dying. I think he lost the whole bag. I want to have your input as store owners and longtime in the trade. What do you think as back of the envelope calculation is the number of dead fish in the industry? I am from Israel. It is a relatively big ship supplier in the trade. If they produce a million fish a month and every person here buys ten fish, there's no way that there's 100,000 fish keepers in Israel needing ten fish monthly. Otherwise we are shitty fish keepers. LOL. Where do you think all these fish go? How many of them die? If you consider all the traders out there, from seagers farms to the Southeast Asian guy breeding in plastic betas, what is a turnover in a fish store? Imported DOA and dead fish in the store?
Dan: Well.
Robbz: I know it can be very bad. I've seen bad stores open up. I've seen bad stores have a fish section that fails and their reptile, their critter section that succeeds. Yet they still continually to try having a fish section and these people will just blow through it and they will consider that the Fish department is what they call a lost leader. A lost leader is if you go into a department store such as Walmart, you go into the back section. All the televisions that Walmart sell are generally sold at a loss. They're anywhere between 10% or just break even on all of the televisions on any given day at a Walmart area, because Walmart has done the math and they know and they put the TVs at the very back of the store because it's a loss leader, getting you in to buy other products that do make them profit. So if a pet store handles the fish Section as a lost leader, they'll put it in the back. They're not taking care of them very well. They die. That could be an absolute ton of fish. But if you're doing it right. Luckily we have Dan from Dee's Fish Co. Here. What would you say is an average of shrink in a given month at a fish store?
Dan: We don't lose any mean, that's the goal.
Robbz: Just kind of like Minnesota wants no deaths on the road, but people are still going to hit each other.
Dan: There's always losses. I think most of it happens at the wholesale level. And when they come in, usually it'll be like the tail end of something, like they try to get rid of them before they're passing away from parasites or that bacterial infection claims them. But at the store, I don't know. I'd say probably like 10%, 20% maybe.
Robbz: Okay, 10% or less top. I was going to say 20% would be a bad month all the way around, but you can expect up to 10% from fish stores. Adam had a fish store as well. And on the books, that's where you want your shrink to be, no greater than 10%. So if you're ordering 1000 fish, 100 die, there's your average.
Adam: But here's the other thing. I put my fish towards the front of the store, and then my fish sales tripled.
Robbz: Yeah. You were not a lost leader. You were a win leader.
Adam: Yeah. So what I'm thinking, those fish died. Half beaks probably died is probably because they medicate, depending on what color the bag water was. So it could have been, A, they didn't have any salt, or B, the medication that they used to knock them out, because half beaks are really sensitive to shit. Sorry, I'll watch my swearing. They're really sensitive to medications and you have to be careful how much you dose with them.
Robbz: So I'm not going to do numbers, my guy, but I'm going to try to answer your question the best that I can. I believe you said Moshi is this guy's name. I'm butchering it. The best answer I can give you is percentages, not numbers. You can do the numbers of how many fish are produced. I'm going to tell you that a breeder is going to cull 40% of his stock off the top when they're bred and they have inbred traits or they don't have the correct color line, they're not going to sell. The mature thing to do to make sure that you're getting the best and strongest thing is to cull stock that doesn't fit. And a good breeder chures no less than 40% of their stock in those situations. So that right off the top there's 40%. Then that breeder gets it over to some sort of industrial middleman. That transfer, you can expect a 5% lost. Then from the middleman, they will ship, say the middleman's in Singapore, the breeders in Singapore, they will ship that to one of the Seagris farm wholesalers across the sea, and you can expect another 5% loss. Now they're making up for it with the pencil. Penciling. They're getting this fish for some cents, marking it up to X dollars. And then the fish store that finally gets it, marks it up, which they're going to be looking at no more than 10% loss. So you do the math on how many of the hops those hopes hops those do. Yes, that is a lot of fish. But when each type of fish produces a ton, you're not going to want them all to live from the culling state. That's the level that people have the most difficulty hearing is the culling stage. You can listen to some of our podcasts in the past about how that was a hard topic and how it should still be done now. The second question he has is, while watching YouTube, I saw a video about a guy who opened a monster fish store and was thinking, since it wasn't clear from the video, if you want to stop the trade of monster fish and make Ohio fish rescue obsolete and not have environmental disasters like Florida, shouldn't be the goal to close down stores like that. And others, since they don't seem to check in the stores. If they have the means to take care of the monster fishers fully grown and not the store size, they don't have to releasing into the wild or another Ohio fish rescue job. I would like to argue that if it's a true good monster fish store, the majority of them educate them better than most mom and Pop stores. Most monster fish stores have a giant tank on display. They can show a couple of those fish full grown. I would like to pick on J Four flowerhorns. He gets a lot of exotic, rare, big fish in. He's got an 800 gallon tank just like these fish. Go has an 800 gallon tank, and they have a massive paku in there showing you why you shouldn't have it. Yet they still sell monster fish to clientele that will take care of them. So generally, monster fish stores do it better in most scenarios than others. That's my argument. Should there not be gonna. I'm gonna go to my America list and say we're free to do whatever we please, but we should all be ethical and try to think forward so we don't have to have laws enforcing us to do it. You. Yeah.
Adam: And then more of the wonderful pea people come in and, yeah, we don't.
Robbz: Want pee people on our parade. The pea people. There's one for you. Adam.
Adam: Yep. Did you see the meme that I put on the Aquarium guys Facebook page?
Robbz: I did not.
Adam: Oh, there's a picture of basically the average person that gets the monster fish. And I'm talking about the college students that come in and won an Oscar because they kill and eat everything. They're the same types of guys that have lifted trucks with the testicles hanging from the back.
Dan: Those are the guys that go into Petco to buy Balla sharks.
Adam: Yep.
Dan: You know the ones.
Adam: Yep, I know. And then girls have a name for them. They're called Pinky Pete's.
Dan: What?
Adam: Pinkies?
Robbz: Pinky Pete's.
Dan: Pinky Pete.
Adam: Pinky Pete's.
Robbz: Pinky Pete.
Dan: Who is gaslighting you, Adam?
Adam: Nobody's gaslighting me. So the girls would refer to them as Pinky Pete's because their dick was the size of a pinky.
Robbz: Huh.
Dan: Can't relate.
Robbz: That was so beneficial to the podcast, Adam. Thank you for that. I appreciate you.
Adam: You know, I don't have to say anything the rest of the time.
Robbz: No, are you kidding? That's going to be everybody's favorite clip, right?
Adam: Somebody edited, isolated the one of me going on my rant about the government.
Robbz: Pinky Pete. All right, next question from Justice. Love you guys. I'm a patreon suBscriber. We better answer this question good, Adam, or we're losing the subscriber he paid.
Dan: Money to talk to.
Robbz: Rob, I listen to all of your podcasts. Yes, all of them. You might come across a dumb question, but how do you know when to use an ice pack and when to use a heat pack? I would love a little video on this, maybe with your Patreon subscription to explain to people like me. Lol. In the past episode, I remember you saying that when you ship something and it gets on a plane, once it's up in the air, it doesn't matter how hot it is. The ground, it will be freezing in the cargo area. I just wanted to check this and make sure, check on this and get more options on using heat packs for live fish or food cultures. So of course I messaged this guy saying, because it seemed like he would need to ship something. So I didn't want to wait till this episode, especially when this came in as a request in June. I was like, would you like to answer here on the next episode? He's like, both. So I already had a pre canned answer. So you tell me how I did, Adam. I said, I just do the math of what temperatures will be and what I'll be shipping. If I'm shipping shrimp and I'm in San Diego in the summer, I'm probably going to add an ice pack. If I'm shipping Angel Fisher, discus. I'm in Minnesota in the fall, I'm going to add a heat pack. If it's temperate. I'll only use the foam box with no pack at all. The name of the game is to prevent drastic temperature changes as the cargo area and the airplanes, they still don't freeze in the summer. This is why we ship in foam boxes even in temperate times. How do I do?
Adam: Sounds good.
Robbz: Is that decent? Anything to add?
Adam: Well, I would just say it depends on how you're shipping. If you're not shipping by airplane and it's going by truck, probably going to want to put some ice packs in there.
Robbz: Now.
Adam: Correct me if I'm wrong.
Robbz: Can you.
Adam: Heat up ice packs now with the gel?
Robbz: I don't know, but I feel like that's like three steps away from like a toilet bomb or something.
Dan: Are you talking about the jelly onEs?
Adam: Maybe, because are they still in the trade? They were in the trade when I was in where you could either freeze them or heat them up and then they would excrete.
Dan: I know the ones you're talking about. Those are expensive. I feel like that they work expensive.
Robbz: I feel like that's like one step towards how Amish heat themselves in the winter in their carriage by putting heated rocks underneath there, right.
Dan: You just boil up an egg and put it in the box.
Robbz: You just stick around in there. Don't worry if it burns your thigh. That's how you feel.
Dan: I think the biggest thing is people that work at like, wholesalers, the people actually boxing your fish and shipping them. Not everybody in an industry is like a fish person. So they don't know, hey, maybe I shouldn't put 100 of these to a bag. That sounds like a bad idea. So the shrink, there's so many variables involved.
Robbz: Well, that at least gets you going there. Thanks for the question, justice. Next one, Zach wants to know. Hey, curious what kind of snails you think these guys are. I have one mystery snail in the tank with eggs all over the bottom of my frog bit. Didn't realize that mystery might lay without a partner. So, mystery snail eggs, they put them on the top part of the aquarium, generally where there's air. So if they're putting them on frog bit, it's a little more difficult. Well, what I'm going to do is I'm going to copy this image. I'm going to paste it in discord, and if you guys aren't listening in Discord, to catch these podcasts live, get on it. Go to aquariumguyspodcast.com. Bottom the website. You'll find the discord link or even in the show notes. And it's a heck of a picture. It's 18.47 megabytes. So he gave me the Mondo resolution.
Adam: Where is this picture? Yeah.
Robbz: So there's picture one, and here's picture two coming at you. So that one does look like a baby mystery snail, and the other one looks like a mystery snail. And the other picture you gave us showing the bottom of the frog bit, looks like a small piece of mystery snail egg. So, yes, I don't think that you've had a single mystery snail lay eggs without a partner. I just think that they may have had some going away sex.
Adam: They usually do.
Robbz: So know that if you're getting one snail, that that snail probably went to a party the night before. You know what I'm saying?
Dan: It came out of the snail orgy tank.
Robbz: Yeah, it had some fun sometime. Just assume mystery snails.
Adam: Hermaphrodites.
Dan: No.
Robbz: Imagine that they're Schrodinger's. Snail could be with eggs. It could not be with eggs. I just assume that it has eggs. Wait, are they.
Adam: So, wait, I'm wrong on that. They aren't hermaphrodites.
Dan: I think it takes two to tango.
Robbz: Yeah. Even if you have an asexual snail, it still needs another partner.
Dan: They're not like the Ramshorns that can just.
Adam: They're not like Malaysian trumpet snails then.
Dan: I love Malaysian trumpet snails.
Adam: They're garbage.
Dan: Who needs substrate when you have snails?
Robbz: I'm still confused. I'm still confused. Are you worried about them being asexual? Like, it doesn't matter what parts they have, they both can get pregnant.
Dan: No. Well, it's male and female because Malaysian.
Robbz: Trumpet snails, for those that are listening, they are asexual. And as long as they have the partner, they'll figure it out. Mystery snails do have male and female. Okay, I think that's the question you're trying to get.
Adam: Pond snails.
Robbz: Great question. Look up mud snails. I just kill them, and I want them to die forever. So I really haven't done the investigation on them. All right, next up, full biz. Hey, guys. Just want to start off by saying, love the podcast. This is Tracy, by the way. From July 16, I want to switch all of my tanks to sponge filters. What's the best large, high output pump, in your opinion? I had an Alita Al six a that didn't last very long before I had to rebuild it, and it really did not help. Any ideas? Well, number one, if your Alita is failing you, it's probably not sized correctly. Most of the time, people will get a pump that's too big for their needs. And it will burn out. It's just a diaphragm. If the diaphragm is overworked, you Got to let more air out. So that's most common cause Alita is a great brand. However, not sponsored aquamerical on Amazon. You can look them up. They have AP 40, AP 80 and AP 120. They're great price. I've had a lot of luck with them as well. Alitas are good, but they're a little more expensive. This is great for your bang, for your buck. In fact, right now they're recording this podcast. A 40 lpm one is $100. Pretty damn decent. Yeah, pretty damn decent.
Dan: I like the vivo sun ones. I was pretty impressed with Vivo Sun. Vivo sun makes a pretty mean high GPH air pump.
Robbz: Hell yeah.
Adam: I was just trying not to make sexual jokes that entire time you were talking, Rob.
Robbz: Yeah, I don't think the question was what dick pump works. I think that. Well, they'll find that on their own. Also, don't put an aquarium linear piston pump on your dick pump. All right.
Adam: Wow.
Robbz: All right, Rick says hi there. Just started listening to podcast last week. I'm already through a lot of episodes. I'm relatively new to the hobby in about a year, but progressing fast. I already have two tanks installed CO2 on my 20 and absolutely love it. Had a quick question on my filtration on my 20, which is about a year old at this point. I run a hang on the back filter as well as a small sponge filter, mostly just for the aeration. I noticed the flow on the hang of my back filter is getting a bit slow. I have stacked with two coarse sponges with a mesh bag of ceramic biofilter bits. My question is, should I never replace the coarse sponges when I do a water change? I rinse the sponges out once a month, squeeze them out and get pretty clogged up. I was thinking of changing it with a new sponge in a month or two replacing the other. I don't want to remove much of the good bacteria. The tank is pretty heavily planted and the tank is medium sized rocks and driftwood with gravel substrate. Thank you for your help, dude. Don't get rid of I've used the sponge filter until it literally doesn't work anymore where it falls apart in your hand. Just rinse those things out, Put them back in there. Your pump on the hang in the back filter is going to age with time. It's not going to be as cheery in the morning to pump through. If you had let's make something up 100 gallons an hour a year. In 80 gallons an hour is probably to be expected. They don't last forever. And as long as they're flowing enough, who cares? Let it roll. Keep using the same sponges. There's no reason to change them unless they're not working. This is where Adam comes in and be like, you're so full of shit. You need to get a new one every six months.
Adam: A new one of what?
Robbz: New filter. Just scrap the whole filter. I don't know. I'm not getting a lot out of you of this question. This one. Help me out.
Adam: You don't need a back filter if you've got a sponge filter.
Robbz: Well, I like to have both.
Adam: Well, that's because you overcompensate on everything. Robbie.
Robbz: What if you wanted to use Dan's dick pup Filter?
Adam: Well, yeah. And I could also put an air pump my ass. That doesn't mean I'm going to do it.
Robbz: Thank you. Thank you. For Adam. US based answering service for the aquarium guys. Nope, I don't want to read spam. All right. Peter the sunfish guy says, hey, guys, it's been a while. I have a four bed house. I plan to do away with the wife and kids I'm recarpeting. What I want is a gerbil tank style aquarium for an octopus. So tubes are going up from the tank to each room so it does not get bored. What's the best way to secure the tubes? What's the best octopus to keep? Is there any entertaining, any tank entertainment recommendations? To prevent my new blue ring octopus from escaping? Can you guys help me set up this and fit it?
Dan: So you should do.
Adam: Is he giving a shit?
Dan: You're going to want to do a lot of research beforehand by playing like Metroid or Castlevania. And then you just build a network of tunnels around the house. Got to give them little boss battles, items, gear for enrichment, as far as what species go big or go home. Just get a giant Pacific octopus, and then one day, when it's unhappy, it'll just crawl out and end you.
Adam: Now, here's my whole thing. So an octopus can fit through the hole of anything that its beak can fit through, if I'm correct. Didn't we hear that from the Pacific? That lady. Yeah. So as long as this beak can fit through anything, it can go through anything. I don't even know if you should have tubes. Really. Just give it a bunch of toys to play with.
Robbz: I'm loving how Adam's really taking this question head on. And answering it like a professional. You shouldn't have a Blue October octopus, dude.
Dan: The gutter snipe biotope.
Adam: Shouldn't have it. What was that?
Dan: The guttersnipe biotope.
Robbz: I remember that old meme. It's a series of tubes. One of the guys, the Senators, tried to describe the Internet series of tubes. The Internet is a series of tubes.
Adam: I'm going to have a Blu ring tank, and then I'm gonna send it pictures to you guys, and I'm gonna.
Robbz: Have all of you follow up questions. How big should each individual tank be? By the way, the octopus is half complete. Shit. But I'm glad I got Adam thinking. I would like to pull this off with a $3 budget. Kindly go fluke yourself, the sunfish guy. So, Peter, thank you. I needed this laugh.
Dan: Just steal a bunch of PVC.
Robbz: All right, we have Lars. Lars. That is the first person, their first name. And I'm not going to lie, I kind of like it. Hi, guys. I started listening to the podcast. I'm enjoying it so far. I was wondering if you guys have done a podcast about lighting in an aquarium. I recently got a fluval aquasky 2.0 to replace the shiny light in the tank that came with. I'm not really sure how I should adjust the settings to get Max possible growth and maybe adjust a little algae for the snails. Thank you. Here's the problem. When you want Rob's to do a podcast on lighting, and Rob's himself gets his lighting from an actual dumpster, he literally dumpster dives for fluorescent basils. What do you want from me? I once bought a Costco light for a shop and use it for my aquariums. Am I going to be your de facto guy telling you how and what spectrum and to what penetration you need your lights at? No. I'm the guy that uses gorilla tape to kind of block the excess rays out the front of a broken garbage dumpster find. So, Adam, what do you got for record?
Dan: You think that's a joke, but I've fixed dumpster lights with them down here.
Adam: Yes, I've done the same thing. I've used just regular shitty light bulbs. My favorite story is going, and when I was setting up my animal room, buying four foot lights from Walmart and Home Depot, and apparently I bought them in front of a cop because he was wondering why I was buying so many grow lights and so many four foot light racks. But it's like, they don't need much. Now they have some really cool shit. Does Fluville still have that really cool light that you can program so that it goes to red, to blue and everything.
Dan: Dan, that's the aquasky.
Robbz: All right, real talk here. Real talk here. That is aquasky, by the way, anything. I got a used light from a budy buying an aquarium. I got 125 gallon aquarium and it came with unmatching lights, but it had a little controller with it. And he says it was really cool and fancy. It emulates a rainstorm. And I'm like, yeah, this is the exact shit I don't spend money on. But I decided to give it a whirl because guess what, it was free. So I plug it in on my 125 gallon tank, which I still have the yellow penis fish in. It's old, it's my last dojo loach. And when he dies, I can't get any more.
Adam: I'll get you some more.
Robbz: He's like twelve years old. He's huge and old. He's blind. And I put on this. Apparently he has some sight left because I put on this wonderful ambiance. It literally looked like a thunderstorm. Like every now and again you get like a thunderbolt. It would flash across the tank and then trickle back. It was really cool. It emulated a thunderstorm really well in the tank. I'm like, oh, you know what, once a month, maybe twice a month, I'll go in and instead of shutting off the light, I'm going to put it on rainstorm mode. So I put on rainstorm mode. I wake up in the morning and I watch the thunder go off and see the Dojo load shoot out of the water because he's so spazzed out and not knowing what the is happening, he hits the ground and I have to actually go fish him up, put him back in the aquarium. And I'm never using that mod again. So that was the one time I wanted to use this cool new fancy light. Nah, I'm going back to dumpster finds.
Dan: It emulates a bad GFCI.
Adam: You know, we're not going to get Hagen to ever sponsor this podcast now.
Robbz: I know.
Dan: Actually, real talk, I did have one, I can't remember the name of it. It was kind of like the Aquaneets, but a little bit nicer. And it had that rainstorm feature on it. And that would make half of the fish in the hobby spawn like corridor. They just love a good rainstorm. You pair that with a water change, like a cold water change.
Robbz: Easy peasy. Tada. All right, next question. Saltwater Fish. Hello, my name is Christopher, I'm a fan of your podcast. I used to listen to it all the time when I was working during COVID and wanted to learn more about the hobby. And I swear you guys got me through that damn job. Ha ha. I remember listening to one of your episodes when talked about a cool fish, but I can't for the life of me find it again. There is a fish that can change its orientation. They decide what side of the rock is not on the bottom of the ocean of your tank and will start swimming diagonally before the changes. I'm so confused.
Dan: Headstanders.
Robbz: They don't pick orientation based upon that. What I'm trying to get through this. They will decide that the side of a rock is not the bottom of the ocean. Your tank and will start to swim diagonally for a while before it changes to the bottom. So it must not be sexual orientation. It must be swimming orientation. Yeah.
Dan: Like an upside down catfish.
Robbz: There you go. That's probably what he's thinking of. Or handstanders. Either way, you're kind of getting it. Handstanders. That's because they swim through such high powered water that they're kind of upright. But upside down catfish absolutely will. But they don't do that for when it gets mature. TheY just do that when they're younger. I suppose so. Yeah. Look it up. Upside down catfish. They are part of the Sedontus family. They're a great community fish. Check it out. I know we spoke about it illegal now too. They are not.
Dan: Okay, just the backpedal. I don't feel like we answered the last question very well. We just went on a tirade about dumpster lights.
Robbz: The real question is, are we going to do a podcast about lighting? We're going to get an expert. That's the question. We'll do one. But you don't want it from me because I'm going to tell you exactly how to jerry rig it.
Dan: Just go steal somebody else's setup configuration online.
Robbz: I once used one of those shop hallion lights with the super high powered bulb where they have like, a little metal cage around it they use for sheet rock work. I use one of those to heat an aquarium in a pinch.
Adam: Yeah.
Robbz: So I'm not your guy.
Dan: I kind of kicked myself for not stealing some dumpster lights. One time there was a mysterious garage fire, and then like a week later, a whole bunch of high pressure sodium lights ended up in the dumpster.
Adam: I would have taken every single one of those.
Dan: More than likely, it was a grow up that burned down. But I did not have a truck at the time to throw all this stuff in. These were huge ballasts. They were like 6ft across.
Robbz: All right, next question. Matt wants to know. Hi there. I just found out. I found this podcast and I gotta say I am hooked. There are less podcasts about this hobby freshwater than I would have expected. The few that I've tried are either too specific to a species and lots of science all over the place with general fish questions. Not to mention there are some that I just don't think is good advice for new people in the hobby to be exposed to. You guys do topical episodes. They are varied each week, not just on different fish each week. I especially love the jar episode. Dan, hats off to you for that episode. Most people won't touch the subject for fear, for pushback, but bowls and vases are a hell of a lot of fun.
Dan: We raising discus in here, man. You don't want none of this shit.
Robbz: You don't want none. Even just as emergency for fry plant propagation used for other tanks. That's just one that sealed the deal for me. I'd love another episode on them with tricks, techniques and scapes. You are also super knowledgeable while still being a regular fish. People that don't just know it all. Have you heard or what? A dumb fish question, people. So keep it up. It really stands out. I do have a question. I swear. It's random. Are there any? Everyone should watch movies or documentaries about fish keeping. Like anything for newbies and learning about setting up to fall deep into this world. To Wallstead to battle between natural low tech versus high salt fresh, etc. Anything. I love music. Love me a good rock dock. So people, where's the fish docks at? Keep up the good shit, Matt. When we got this text message, I was sitting in the living room with Dan. Dan was a bit high. I was just, scratch that. Actually, I think that was the one night I tried gummies. Could be. And Dan and I were sitting in there like, what in the world? Documentaries. Can we watch? Say that again.
Adam: Did the gummies not work? Robs?
Robbz: They didn't, actually. That was when I tried a gummy and nothing did anything. I was kind of bummed. But regardless, Dan got high.
Dan: Can we have the editor cut that?
Robbz: We were sitting there like, what? Fish docks are there. And we sat there for a moment, we searched on the television and you know what we found? We found this sweet kick ass. Was it from National Geographic? A. What was it? Tanganikan cichlids.
Dan: Oh yeah, it was like Rift Lake Cichlids or something. It was filmed in, like, God, 2030 years ago, easily.
Robbz: We found it on YouTube. It was so cool.
Dan: It actually was pretty nice for the time it was filmed. It was very progressive.
Robbz: I have it. It's called Jewels of the Rift. Yes, they have it on YouTube. It's in six parts.
Adam: Animal oasis.
Robbz: Here it is.
Dan: Animal oasis.
Robbz: There you go.
Adam: Feature presentation.
Robbz: Once you hear that noise, if that.
Dan: Sound don't take you back.
Adam: Graphic was good.
Robbz: All right, so check this out. It's a super old documentary called Jewels of the Rift. And it is so good. And it goes deep on freshwater cichlids from different lakes in Africa. And I'm telling you, I sat and watched the whole thing. It was so good. So I don't think there's a lot of de facto really good documentaries. I think that you can watch a couple. This is probably my favorite in one direction, but we could really use, like, an in depth Netflix documentary about the hobby. If you're listening. No one wants to have a rehash of the Johnny Depp versus Amber Heard trial. All right, you, Johnny, got success. Live with it. And get us a fish documentary.
Adam: No, because it'll turn into something like Tiger King.
Robbz: I'm good with.
Adam: It'll turn into, like, the Fish king.
Robbz: I'm pretty sure that big Rich himself got approached because of the Tiger King about a deal. Doing a show with him. They should pick that guy up.
Dan: On a side note, can we pour one out for National Geographic?
Adam: Yeah, it's gone.
Robbz: Yeah.
Dan: In case you guys didn't know, there's no more National Geographic.
Robbz: I thought Disney owns them.
Dan: They got canceled, know, being National Geographic and all.
Robbz: I'm so confused.
Adam: No, they got bought out by then.
Robbz: And then Disney bought Fox.
Adam: Got rid of the entire editing department.
Robbz: Yeah, and Disney bought Fox. So now Disney has the asset. So it's dead for now. But I guarantee that'll be rehashed, demonetized.
Adam: I don't even think the magazines are still made, are they? Nope.
Robbz: Sad day. That's actually where I found my first porn. Moving on. So, yeah, check it out. Jewels of the rift. They're a link on YouTube. Next one, Jared wants to know. Hey, guys. Love the podcast. I've been along for every episode. Been keeping aquariums for ten years. I have 46 gallon tall with a canister filter. Wanted to try switching to inline aquarium heater instead of using a submerged heater. Wanted your opinions. Have you ever tried one? Thanks. Keep up the good work. This particular gentleman says, been wanting to head up to Dee's Fish Co. LivE in a particular city in Minnesota. So you'll see Jared soon, hopefully. Okay, so in tank heaters, I have used the inline heaters. I've used only the internal heaters, not just the glass heater, titanium heaters, but I've also tried one of those. I bought one of those German under the gravel heaters. If you haven't checked those out, they're really cool, really popular in Europe, but I have not used in line.
Dan: They're not so bad. Just make sure that all your fittings are tight. Tight. And after the heater, wouldn't be the worst thing to just drop a little probe and a saddle valve in there.
Adam: Adam, have you terrified of electricity in my tank? Killing everything again?
Robbz: Have you used inline heaters, Adam?
Adam: No, I actually just go to heating the room now because of all my issues. I've looked at inline heaters and I wanted to try them, but I'm just a little leery of heaters, especially when you shove them into. I don't know how they'd work. Maybe I'll try one. I wonder if you put them in like a fluval or something, that they'd work really good.
Robbz: If this isn't proof that we're not a know it all podcast, I don't think anything else will. We've never tried it. We're very open to admit it. And guess what? Because of this, I'm probably going to buy it in my heater, because this sounds real cool. And I'd just like to figure out another way to electrocute my ass. Yes, I found them. They have it on Timu, baby, I'm getting the shitty versions.
Adam: What the is Timu? It's like a shittier version of wish.
Robbz: Yeah, it's like the new wish where you can order something, wait six months, and then have in your hand they.
Dan: Steal your credit card and don't send you the stuff.
Robbz: You're bitter.
Dan: No, actually, a lot of stuff's coming out where people are getting their credit cards hacked from Timu.
Robbz: Is that right?
Dan: Yeah.
Robbz: I'm going to stick to wish then.
Dan: Yeah, wish never let me down.
Robbz: I mean, besides every product.
Dan: Yeah, besides the three month shipping, but there you go.
Robbz: Chat says Timu only takes ten days. Clearly you're sponsored by Timu, because that shit ain't true. All right, next we have Nancy. No, Nancy wants to sell me a website. Nancy doesn't get her question answered.
Adam: National Geographic still exists by the HA.
Robbz: There's still chances of getting naked Africans sent to my door.
Adam: There's a huh?
Robbz: I said ha. There's still a chance of getting naked Africans sent to my door.
Dan: Oh, jeez.
Adam: God damn it. That's like one of the most racist things I've ever heard.
Robbz: I'm not saying anything that it was literally. That's back in the day, if you were a 90s kid, you got those cool zoo books you saw commercials with. You got.
Adam: Books were awesome.
Robbz: Yeah, you got this. I forget the nostalgia is in my brain, but it was basically like this cool storybook Learning center magazine. So you had those two, and then you had National Geographic, and there was like 33% chance there's a naked African somewhere in the front or back cover.
Dan: National Geographics Areolas of the Orinoco Basin.
Adam: God damn.
Robbz: Dude.
Dan: That's how Heico Blair got his start. You think he was down there looking for Tetras? No, he was down there looking for Tatas.
Robbz: Okay. I can't breathe. We got to continue. I got only got a few more questions. All right, Don, message. Go ahead.
Adam: National Geographics done by the end of next year.
Robbz: Oh, my God, guys. All right, Don has a question. Says hi. I caught into the phenomenal idea recently. I'm looking for a support for a project. What's the largest saltwater aquarium you've built? Then they said, imagine the craziest, because I literally just sent them back a question mark. Imagine the craziest idea for an aquarium. Nothing sinister or Mermaid keep. What would it be?
Dan: Your shit box over here that's overgrown with every aquatic organism known to man.
Robbz: But it's the best Petri dish I've ever had.
Dan: Crystal clear.
Robbz: All right.
Dan: Infuriating.
Robbz: Largest saltwater aquarium I've seen built is the 2000 Gallon Aquarium that we've had on one of our prior episodes with Sean Kramer. It was breathtaking. I've never seen a reef tank like it, and I looked it up. It's probably one of the top 30 tanks, 20 tanks in the naTion. Did I build that? No, I mean, I put together probably 125 gallon salt. How about you, Dan?
Dan: Shout out to Maverick Falcon for planning on building that 500,000 gallon saltwater Aquarium.
Robbz: Yeah, we have a fan that's from Singapore, where all the rich people live. And he had contractors and one of the fans in here that wanted to do it for a while. Adam, what's the biggest saltwater aquarium you've done?
Adam: Biggest one that I've done is I helped work on a 210 Gallon reef tank.
Robbz: There you go. And then what's the craziest idea for an aquarium? I want to do a dill tope for those that don't know you have all these different biotopes. Well, I want specifically an acroaction of glass aquarium dildos as my dill tope. For those that haven't listened to podcasts before, I normally take aquarium dildos, glass, non fancy dildos, and I'll hide them in my friends'aquarium. I've done this to different people over the years. I've put one in Ohio fish Rescue. I've put one in just a lot of places. Stores, friends'aquariums, I'll even get a text message later. I went to J Four flowerhorns in Chicago. I left one in his tank. It's just a thing that we do. And you take that and you pass it to your next friend and it's like a chain mail from the 2000s, but it's in a dildo. In your aquarium, in your friend's aquarium. It's a lot of fun. So I want to do a dildope. That's the craziest idea. How about you, Dan?
Dan: Actually, there was what I used to joke about for the longest time. Then one of the big aquariums in California actually went ahead and did it. I can't remember if it was Aquarium of the Pacific or Monterey, but one of them has a whale fall biotope.
Robbz: Oh, my.
Dan: Yeah, it's really tight. I mean, hagfish, crab, like the works, all the goodies. Just gorgeous. Probably smells like shit, though.
Robbz: How about you, Adam?
Adam: Blue ring octopus is what I'm going to be setting up.
Robbz: Yeah, you want that blue ring? You want that gerbil cage? Blue ring octopus tank?
Adam: No, I'm going to actually set up a blue ring octopus.
Dan: Oh, my God. Put a hamster in there.
Robbz: You just feel bad because you bleached that one years back and now you want to redeem yourself. Well, I like it.
Adam: But you can't have that where general public can stick their hands in the shit.
Robbz: If you live in South Dakota, you can. They have a rule. Even if you have, like, let's say like a pony ride, you can't sue them if the horse injures you.
Adam: Well, yeah, but we live in liberal, Minnesota, where you look at somebody wrong and they'll sue you because their feelings were hurt.
Robbz: So let's move to South Dakota Post. That's a blue ring octopus. And when they get stung, it's not your fault.
Adam: Well, it's bitten, but yes. Okay.
Dan: I mean, if you go by the dick biter cage and it bites you in the dick, it's kind of your fault.
Robbz: All right. Oh, man. That is it for questions that we have in the email. Let's check chat real quick. Chat has abandoned me with her questions.
Dan: Well, let's go over to ask for help.
Robbz: Yeah. What's your favorite asks for help there, Dan? Since you're going to.
Dan: I don't know, let's open it up and see what we got.
Robbz: Should we go to I screwed up.
Adam: Oh, one guy's got a nasty aquatic worm in his tank.
Dan: Oh, who do we.
Robbz: Oh. Want to read that one, Adam?
Adam: What is this foreign creature?
Dan: That's just Adam Ash.
Robbz: All right, I'm there with you. Oh, my God. There's a video that almost looks like.
Adam: A bristle worm, doesn't it?
Dan: No, it's fresh water. That is a leech. That's a leech. 100%.
Robbz: You got a leech.
Dan: That's one of the Chinese leeches. What is it? The worm? Leech. Leech.
Robbz: There you go. And if you want to ask your questions, get help immediately. We have a whole community on here. Go to aquariumguyspodcast.com by the website, you'll find the discord link or the links in the show notes. I love join. Get your stuff done in here. I just want to see if there's any last ones in here. Here we go, Molly. Pregnancy complications. My friend's balloon Molly is really pregnant and looked like it was about to be ready to birth. When we looked at her again, she had something hanging out of her. Is this a problem? Can it be fixed or just being paranoid? And According to the picture, we have a very fat balloon Molly with. That's poop. Yeah, that's poop.
Adam: Feed it some peas.
Robbz: Well, yeah, that's poop. You have a very pregnant fat balloon Molly, that's just pooped. Yeah, see, in fact, Myrtlewood decided to put on here the scientific nomenclature for the problem is she's taking a fat shit. So thank you for that. Thank you for that. Well, guys, Adam, you got anything else for the podcast here?
Adam: No, I think we're good. I've went on enough rants and swore enough for the day.
Dan: You want to get one more out?
Robbz: If you guys want to look up the Ariolas of the Orinoco.
Adam: Damn it. I have heard white people say some racist shit, and that is the most racist thing.
Dan: And that's why we can't have National Geographic anymore.
Robbz: I'm sorry, Adam, say that again.
Adam: I'm talking about dinner in and northern Minnesota racist. Where they make the Southern people that play banjos with their toes seem normal.
Robbz: Thank you. Thank you so much.
Adam: Get those black Africans shipped to my door. Jesus Christ. And I'm gonna get yelled at.
Robbz: All the that got this went off the deep end quickly, guys. Thank you for your questions. Please keep sending them in. You keep sending them in. We'll keep doing episodes answering your questions again. If you want answered faster, go in the discord and support our sponsors. To support us, consider going to Patreon Patreon.com Aquarium. Guys, throw us a buck. You'll get VIP content. You get this podcast unfiltered.
Dan: Yes, Adam, throw another f bomb in there just to make sure the editor's paying attention.
Adam: A couple of brown job editor, whoever you are.
Robbz: Till next time. Thanks guys for listening to the podcast. Please go to your favorite place where podcasts are found, whether it be Spotify, iTunes, Stitcher, wherever they can be found. Like subscribe. And make sure you get push notifications directly to your phone so you don't miss great content like this. The Internet is a series of tubes.
Adam: Nobody's gaslighting me because their dick was the size of a pinky finger.
Dan: You just boil up an egg and put it in the box.
Robbz: You just dicker on in there. Hey guys, also don't put an aquarium linear piston pump on your dick pump. I am hooked.
Dan: Yeah, gets really tight.
Robbz: I just kill them and I want them to die forever.
Adam: I'm talking about dinner in and Northern Minnesota racist where they make the Southern people that play banjos with their toes seem normal.
Dan: I love Malaysian trumpet snails.
Robbz: Yeah, that's poop.