Beat yourself up hotline. This is Robbie speaking. How can I help today? Is this the beat myself up hotline? Yes, sir. If you want to beat yourself up, this is the place to do it. I'd like to beat myself up. Please. Go right ahead when you're comfortable. I ordered from another one of these shrimp guys that sent their package, and again, I got a package of dead shrimp. They weren't colorful. They weren't alive. Hell, they're not even edible now. They're so damn small. I mean, when am I going to learn? What am I going to do? Just set my wallet on fire while it's in my pants and I'm wearing it? I just don't even know what to do anymore. Wow, you're really good at this beating yourself up thing. Well, I mean, it's just something that you get better with at practice. I guess. I've been told that I'm so good at it because I do it all the time. Well, you can go and not beat yourself up and go to Joe Shrimpshack.com. They have 15% off using promo code aquarium Guys at checkout, and you even get free six inches of chola wood, and all better. They have a live arrival guarantee. Oh, man, I wish that I would have thought of that myself. Why can't I ever think of anything myself, but just not good at anything? Wow, you are good at this, Joe Shrimpshack.com. Don't beat yourself up about it. Welcome to the Aquarium, guys. Podcast with your hosts, Jim colby and Rob dolphin. All right, guys. Welcome to the aquarium, guys. Podcast. Jimmy.
Yes.
Jimmy, you looking good today, buddy.
I did.
I put on new shirts for you.
I appreciate that. You're smelling good. Normally, you smell like bread. And I'm on a diet, and that's frankly offensive, really. I'm not even carb gluten free, and I just can't I can't handle it anymore.
How's the fat shaming going?
Fat shaming is great. So before we get into that, I'm your host, Rob Sulson.
Hey, I'm Jim colby.
And I'm Adam.
On the shower today, we are happy to have less from cobalt aquatics back on the podcast. And Les right now is in an undisclosed location, staying as quarantine friendly as possible on a sunny beach, showing us some sunsets and beautiful white beaches. So only you can guess where he's at.
I'm guessing he's on the beach.
Got to be North America, though. That's where I'm guessing. Les, how are you doing, buddy?
I'm doing great, guys. Thank you for putting up with me.
And my sunset for the listeners. We're going to do best quality we can being in these disclosed locations. It's a little wind on the beach, and you got a chronic pop, don't you, buddy?
I got my cobalt yeti with a nice rum punch going right now.
Now on sale@cobaltocoquatics.com, I hope.
Do you get the rum punch with it? I'll take two.
All right.
Mango rum fruit punch with fresh cut pineapple watermelon and lime.
Oh, my. Jimmy feels out of place. He's like, why can't I live that life?
Right now I'm thinking I wish I was in the bahamas, too.
Don't we all? Well, again, thanks for joining us. We're going to answer a couple of questions from our listeners. But again, you said how's the fat shaming? And I did round two of fat shaming. I went from I think it was like, was it 370 something? And I'm down to 344. So I'm losing weight steadily here going forward. But I started out with fat shaming as my motivation. It's clearly working. So I did another round. My favorite was they moved that rack out so your belly didn't hit the towel rack. He was referring to my new beta rack. I just got fish related fat shaming. It's always a good time. Adam was nice to me. He didn't participate in fat shaming this round. How dare you, adam.
I didn't know it was a public thing.
Absolutely. You got to go to my Facebook adm. Is a friend fat shaming me lose more weight.
What's Facebook? Oh, boy.
Yeah, he's like, what is a podcast now? He's an epic podcast. podcaster.
And now I want to know what Facebook is.
Well, now we need to get you a Facebook page.
No, we're not going on Facebook, actually.
That would be hey, Jim, did you bring the dog collar for this time?
Oh, I never even thought about bringing the dog collar.
Shame on you.
All right, we're taking a collection for rob's shock collar.
Collection for rob's shock collar?
Shit.
I'll buy two, one for each leg.
So we got some questions this week, and the first one says, hey, I asked a couple of questions a couple of months ago. This is in discord about keeping a pond in extreme heat. I remember that question. I think we read it on air. I said I've put a cloth over the pond for shade. I'm still having issues cooling. I've been putting gallon jugs of ice to keep it below 90 degrees. I've got it down to 82. But with me back to work this week, I won't be able to ice the pond. Any ideas? Also, tap water is 87 degrees right now. It only gets hotter as the summer goes. So I can't use consistent water change to cool it either.
Obviously, they're not from Minnesota, right?
So that and even in Minnesota, I mean, we have water that gets real, you know, real pea warm. So it gets that 97 degrees in lakes and ponds and streams. But it's going to happen. What you need to do is just need to ride the wave. The fish species that you have in a pond are going to be koi, goldfish, stuff like that. They're going to be able to handle those temperatures. The idea is you try to reduce it as much as possible by doing shade. Using ice is crazy expensive. To get that much ice in there continually. And really it's going to be a drop in the bucket for any size pond. So forget the ice. Don't worry so much about cooling. Instead, worry about water parameters. You don't want the water turning. Start green blooming with algae. You want to have extra airstones in the pond because the moment the heat gets so high, the less oxygen is in the water. You don't want to just show up to your pond one day and your fish are gasping at the top because no oxygen. So put a couple of extra airstones in there, run them high, run them hard, and don't be afraid to have a running water feature that actually sprays water into the pond. So ice is a bit ludicrous, but if you want to get real fancy and you want to watch your wallet disappear, you can buy yourself a big old fancy aquarium chiller.
That's way too much money. The other thing you can do, I mean, reading what they wrote there, they're freezing milk jugs full of ice. And so I think they're just putting the milk jugs, Rob, in there full of ice, which you can just reuse over and over again. But here's the thing. The top of the water might be 90 degrees. What's the bottom of the water? Put your arm all the way down into the pond, just like a lake. You know, when you're waiting in a lake, the top of the water is always warmer, the bottom of the lake is always colder. You know, put your arm all the way down to the bottom of your pond and actually see how cool it is down there. Because down there might be ten degrees colder. But I'll check it, I don't know the depth of your pond. The other thing you can do is also take and put in pond plants. So the additional shade should would keep some of the sun from getting in there and heating everything up.
And if not, make yourself a ledge because you would be surprised. Just putting an object in there to create a shelf in your pond at the bottom creates its own form of cool. It's incredible what you can do.
I like your idea, too, about putting extra air stones in there, because air stones coming to the top will dissipate very quickly the heat. So you're probably only going to I don't know what your temperature is at night, but with the extra air stones, I'll dissipate some heat. The ice drugs are still a good idea if you're really concerned about it. If you have any other issues, you can just always take all your fish out and give them to me. Just a thought.
Hey, Rob.
Yes?
Why couldn't they just make that homemade chiller where they cut into a fridge?
Well, the idea is you're keeping the fridge running at all times. So we talked about, I think it was episode eleven it was tips, tricks and hacks and get yourself a mini fridge on craigslist for $100. You cut holes in the side and what you do is you take 100 foot.
Garden hose.
Gardening hose. Thank you, Adam. I'm full on stopping here.
I thought you had a stroke. I did.
I had a stroke.
I was waiting to see what happened and I was rapid weight loss. I was going to call 911 right after when she was billful.
My blood sugar is clearly crashing, guys. I got to have some starburst jelly beans next to me. But anyways, get yourself 100 foot garden hose and that acts as a coil and you pump water through it. It changes the temperature because the longer the water is in the fridge as it goes through and run through the line, the colder it comes out. So that essentially turns into a chiller. But the idea is that in the summer, even running that fridge, it's going to be running 24 hours a day because you're going to continually pump warm water into that fridge. So it's never really going to kick off if you're doing it right. And that's a lot of expense to have a fridge running 24 hours a day versus just having a fridge working in your home, kicking in and out.
The only other thing I can come up with off the top of my head is we can send my ex wife over there and she's pretty frigid. Tell her it's a hot tub.
You don't want it to freeze over.
Jim oh, it freeze over. Yeah. So the ice queen. There we go. Put her in there.
Hashtag elsa. All right, so next question we have Peter emailed us in, says, hey, guys, binge all your shows for the last three days. Top job you guys do. I'm from the UK. And really got into sunfish. Most of them are prohibited over here and require a special license. I have managed to obtain black banded sunfish and some banded sunfish. On my list is the everglades pygmy sunfish. Is there any information you could give me on these fish? I'd be extremely grateful. Had success with black versus the normal bandit. Kind regards, Peter. So we do have again, the band of sunfish are north American fish. Most of the sunfish that we have native in Minnesota are normally like blue gill or pumpkin seeds or how we call them in Minnesota. However, I believe in southern Minnesota we do have bandits on fish. I've seen them kept in the hobby. They grow about two to three inches and they're fun. Again, they hold the characteristics of any other cichlid in the tank. They make nests in the sand, a wonderful pet, but they sometimes have muted colors. That's why you don't see a lot of them in the trade. However, the banded one has nice pattern of light speckles all over. It's almost like a starry night cichlid, but with the tans and browns. As far as my recommendations for those fish, keep them cold. There's no reason to have heaters in there ever with any of these sunfish species from north america. That really is the case that I can think of. Yeah, keep them cold if you can. Most of these things that you get are acclimated to live food. Take your time, use a tweezer, try to have them hit a pellet or have dither with another fish that is hitting pellet, the better. You can get any of these predator fish off of. feeder fish is always the best. Otherwise, live black worms, bloodworms, they almost hit without any issue because, again, a lot of these are from the wild species.
You can even chop up earthworms and put in there.
Sure.
Night crawlers. We just talked about it the other night when I was over here. Rob, one of my friends, has got a goldfish tank outside, and he put his bug zapper over the goldfish tank. So every time a bug goes in there and get zapped, it falls in and they eat the flies or the mosquitoes or whatever falls in there, the moss. And so these fish are used to eating that also. So you can always SWAT flies through on there and see if they'll hit those.
I mean, it works out really well because you're not going to get so many bugs during the day, but at night, you're going to get a big wave right before, like after sunset, and then right in the morning when the bugs are moving. So they're getting fed like twice a day. They'll grow fast. Sunfish act like a sacred they can have aggressive nature is the species that aren't done when they're breeding their territorial like any other nesting species. I think those are the core things to do. Otherwise, they're extremely hardy fish. They're not commonly kept due to being a native species in America, but again, you being in UK, I can see the interest. It's something that's a foreign species and be fun to have in your tank. But there's not a whole lot of issues I've had with them. They're extremely hardy and keep them cold. Now, the pygmy sunfish, they have an entire library on that. And I'm not going to lie to you, I've only had one, and it wasn't for that long, and it's sold. So these are more of like the black pygmy sunfish you see in the aquarium trade. They're coming away from florida. They're quite small. They're nano tank fish. I don't have a ton of experience. I want to get some more and more of these, but I would assume the perimeters are the same. But check because that's at least a documented species in the hobby trade. Well documented. And I know that when you have a school of them together, one male is the one that shows color, is the dominant male, I believe. So you have an experience with those pigmy sunfish, Jimmy.
I have absolutely zero experience with sunfish. When I was a kid, I caught a couple off the dock and kept them in my mom's aquarium for a little while. That was before I knew it was illegal to do, but I absolutely love them. Here in northern Minnesota, we have a lot of restaurants that have wildlife, sunfish, different things like that, and aquariums. So when you go to the restaurant, you sit and you take a look at all the natural fish swimming around. So there's a lot of people that just absolutely love them. So congratulations on your tank and keep up the good work.
All right, just to double check here to make sure we have no other questions, sometimes we actually get an email right during the podcast and we are clear, Jimmy, so let's unmute less and join back in the undisclosed location. How are you doing, Les?
I've tucked behind a chair, so hopefully the audio is wonderful.
That is a beautiful sunset in mystery island over there.
It's better than the view of me.
If you insist. I don't know. We don't get to see you that often. COVID is mean to us, but good sir, before we start, how have you been since the last time we've talked? How has COVID treated you as far.
As the cobalt goes? We are located in our main office and warehouse is located in South Carolina. Fortunately, we have not been directly affected at all by any of the COVID with any of our staff or employees, so that's a blessing. South Carolina has definitely been one of the states that's trouble. And we're right on the border of North Carolina, which is also not been the best. So we're lucky that way. We sell pet food, so we are an exempt company. So although it is not necessarily directly affected us, obviously the economy, especially in April, everything. But right now we have more than we know what to do with, more orders than we can really deal with because our entire supply chain, we have stuff all over the Us. That we get and we also have stuff from Europe and Asia that we bring in. And everything affected by freight rate, timing, everywhere has been affected somewhat. So we have a lot of orders and our supply chain is trying to catch up. Other than that, I have not had a haircut since March, so I got this why I'm wearing the hat. Some serious Florida hair craziness. I gave away part of my location. Although Florida is exploding, we are doing our best location we're at to hide from social distancing ordering.
You look to be on an empty beach. I think you're doing it right.
Yeah. The place where we come down here is definitely a northern destination. And in the summer when we come down, there's almost nobody right here because they're all snowbirds. This little section of place we come is the exception to the rule. So it's a good thing.
Earlier today, I talked to Julie, my salesperson from seagrass Farms, and over the weekend they went to Bush Gardens. And she goes, we had the whole place to ourselves. Just heard today, now that they're already closing up Disney World in Hong Kong. Hong Kong is already closing it up.
Again on July 15.
And I asked her about what they expected in Florida, because the state of Florida, they get all their money from the tourists. And there is no tourist down there right now.
As you know, that is not the case we're on. This is the first time we've come here this early that we came here. We drove down Wednesday. We didn't get here until late Thursday. This is the tail end of the 4 July weekend. And wow, it was way busy, way busier than again, right in the little section we're in. It's okay, but there's a lot of people and we're wearing we have some N 95 masks that some of our suppliers have sent us. My family, we're pretty park junkies. We love Disney, we love you, and we're wearing N 95 masks when we need to down here. And if you're at a park, oh, my God, you're trying to wear a mask in the heat down here, it's 90 plus degrees and 70, 80% humidity with heat index way over afternoon, like anytime after 12:00. There is no way, no way that anybody could actually wear their mask for more than ten or 15 minutes without pulling it off. You're just sweating, in my opinion, anyway. I would never attend an amusement park right now. And as much as the economy needs it, I don't see how anybody in their right mind would open it, because nobody in the afternoon is going to obey those mask rules because your face is sweating and it's impossible. We went to another place today.
Another.
Place here to check it out. We'd never been before. We drove down a few hours and nobody was wearing masks located. And we had to walk down this public beach access thing, and we had our N 95 mask on, and nobody was wearing masks. We were sweating. It was miserable. Again, we were talking about how would you ever go world or Universal or Seamorld and deal with that? I mean, nobody, nobody, nobody, nobody. And I feel for any employees that have to do it on a they're dying, and the only way to deal with it is hydrate. And to hydrate, you have to take the mask off. And you're right, you're going to take a break. I feel for anybody that's in the service industry that's the work done in the seat, and you can see why Florida is spiking. It's just tough to wear the mask.
All right, guys, we just now moved from outside. We're picking up way too much noise, and we went inside into a wind free environment. So welcome back, Les.
I'm sorry. I was hoping to share a sunset with you, but didn't work out.
We got to share what we could. So we just left off with talking about the COVID masks and how it is for business and especially there in Florida. So we appreciate the update, but let's dive into the heater topic. So again, just give a little preference of the history of heaters. I want to do just the very beginning. And modern aquariums are from essentially started like a 1930s, 1950s era. And how heating really was begun in those modern square aquariums is MetaFrame tanks had slate bottoms. So if you wanted to heat your aquarium, you use essentially a bunsen burner below it, right against the slate and very inconsistent way of heating your tank. It could easily overheat for no reason. You had to monitor it like a hawk. And if you wanted to shut it off, immediately got cold. Again, there's no real way to regulate that heat well by doing that. So I'm not sure the dates 1950s, they started coming out with the glass immersion heater. And last, give us a little background. You told us before that you have some insight on who did it and how.
Yeah, again, when you asked me to do this, I don't think you realize the can of worms he opened up with the history that I have been blessed with in the aquarium industry. I've worked directly with the inventor of the vizy, therm heaters for more than 20 something years now. So through aquarium systems and you mentioned MetaFrame. When I worked for marineland, we were purchased by a company, and that company, shortly after they purchased the perfecto group, which was Perfecto and aquarium systems at that time. And then those three companies became the aquatic wing of the united petroleum. And perfecto had bought MetaFrame previous to that. So I've had the luxury of meeting everybody from MetaFrame all the way through. So when you talk about all that, it's a pretty crazy history. But the visit thermal heater is the number one heater in the world for many. I don't imagine anybody's beat it yet. And it was really the first user friendly submersible immersion heater, as you mentioned. So penplex was really credited originally with the first immersion heater, but it wasn't sealed. So it had to have the thermostat and the controlling unit had to be hanging on the edge of the meta frame tank or depending on the brand, you had back in the 70s, hanging outside because that glass tube, which is either back in the day, it was originally glass, but then it became either borosilicate or quartz. So depending on the heater manufacturer, you chose one or the other. So quartz tended to be a little more durable, but boros silicate was pretty close to the durability, but at a fraction of the cost. So you either took one or two different angles with boros, silicon, or quartz. Once the original glass heaters were discovered that they were too fragile. There's two main differences in controlling units or thermostats. And then there's the different ceiling methods. There are different extrusions glass or silk or plastic or titanium, and then there's a few different heating elements. And then within the heating elements, there's a few different ways of diffusing the heat or separating the heating element. So where do you want to start? I got too much information for you, for sure.
Too much, for sure. So as far as the history goes, it's a bit of a fog, because, again, I'm a younger guy. All the stuff I get is from aquarium books or the old heaters that I get. I still think I have my grandmother's heater from the 60s. It was like a penplex one. I think it's glass.
I really do.
It's super thin. And she had two of them, and the other one shattered for no reason whatsoever.
There was a reason you drained the tank and you didn't turn it off.
There you go.
Crap. Number one heater failure is user error. And it's super obvious when it happens, is the element is in the bottom part of the heater, and then there's a buffer zone, and then there's a control unit. And even in the old immersion heaters that were not submersible, if you did not unplug that heater and allow that glass to cool, and you drain the tank halfway down and you expose that element to air, it cracks. And it cracks right at the level of the heating element every time. And I can't tell you that's our number one glass heater call at Cobalt or at marineland or at tetra, every heater that ever dealt with, I can tell you within not even a second of looking at a picture, whether it's a manufacturer or whether somebody did a water change without letting the heater cool. It's an absolute easiest thing to see. It's a definite break right at the heating element. And the only other way of breaking it that's a user error is where they position the bracket. And if they position the bracket over the top of the heating element, they do a water change, the same thing. It might break a little lower, but it's super easy to tell. I'm sorry to everybody that doesn't get a warranty after that fact, but it's a guaranteed user error 90% of the time.
Can't say stupid.
You can. Now, I'm pretty sure that we actually didn't even use it. I think it just cracked by sitting in the box because we didn't have it wrapped. It was just it hit something, and I was good enough at that time.
If you plugged it in, modern day etl or ul heaters, if you plug them in and you have them out there, there's a test called the cheesecloth test, and you have to put the heater on a piece of cheesecloth, plug it in, and it can't catch a cheesecloth on fire. And that's one of the hardest tests to pass as far as an etl or ul certification.
I don't know. Cheesecloth was that volatile.
Yes, it's called the cheesecloth test. It's a technical term.
Who knew I would buy some cheesecloth? You got a ghost weed out the crappy. Japanese off brand ebay heaters.
Let's do some drink and we'll do that on your base and see if we can bring your house down.
I mean, I've electrocuted myself enough, I might as well. But going back to the history of heaters, so again, I really don't know how this details came about. Right now, I only know of three other different three total heaters. There's the immersion ones that we spoke of. There's the undergraduate like flexible bars that I've seen in the past, and then out of the tank bottom mat heaters. And this is generally used, I've only seen it like nano aquariums. Outside of those, is there any others that are used in space or have been used and no longer used in the past that you know of?
There are some inline heaters that are borderline whether they're submersion or not, but there's some sort of radiated heaters. But in general, 99% of the heaters out there are immersion. Very few people use cables. cables are pretty popular in Europe and planted aquariums because it keeps the substrate moving. You don't end up with getting a noxic zone because you get some circulation within the gravel bed or the soil bed. So that's typically where you see cable heaters. Under the mat heaters are basically nonexistent. Maybe in the early 90s there was a few people dabbling with that, but they're really not around much at all anymore. There's still some used in reptile aquariums or a terrarium style, but in the aquatics, I can't tell you the last time I saw an under the tank mat heater. But if you're a hardcore plant guy, there are still some cable systems that are available out there and they do a pretty good job, especially if you're trying to keep your soil from going anaerobic or anoxic. You'll see those sometimes.
Well, I guess the next question on the list, besides your list is how did Cobalt get into here? We talked before when we were on the podcast, and again, Cobalt started your company. You want to do things a little differently, and you guys picked your not necessarily favorite, but where you guys think you could fit best in the aquarium market. Heaters was clearly part of that, correct? Or how did you get into heaters?
Yeah, exactly that. There was some opportunity with some heater designs that I knew of that were out in the marketplace that had not reached the Us. Yet, and we partnered with some of those companies to bring those to the Us. And there were specific reasons why they were not brought in. Mainly brand positioning and worrying about price points. And when we started. Cobalt. We wanted to bring good heaters out, and the price falls where it is. If it's a good heater, people will buy it. And that's the mantra we took for it. So our heaters, they're not cheap, the neither of them specifically, but they are of the highest quality and the most accurate.
So going down your list again, by all means, let's just follow that. And then we can do follow up questions because clearly you have too much information to give us. Those are fantastic highlights to hit. I mean, a lot of times we have to prod questions out, but you're always prepared less.
I don't know about that, but let's talk casings. So there are three basic types of case of the heater. In an immersion style heater, you either have glass or you have a, and I'm going to bolt the next two together. Borosilicator, quartz. And even though they're different, they're basically the same. It comes down to a price point, the durability and whatnot are pretty similar. And then you have plastic. Those are your three main outer casings.
I don't mean to interrupt. I'm going to keep popping in question because I've only used like, the courts or the glass or whatever is offered. It's always like a glass like material. And as of recently, the last ten years, where I'm seeing this influx, especially the amazons of the world, you're seeing this influx of metal heaters, or what they call titanium heaters, even though there's no way that could be that much titanium in those heaters.
I'm saying I forgot titanium.
I'm always leery of them. I've bought quite a few. And if I'm going to get electrocuted by something out of the box, it's going to be one of those, like, nine times out of ten, whatever brand I buy. I don't know if it's like, the world hates me, but I almost shit my pants from putting that in and getting electrocuted.
Well, we don't want you shit in your pants.
No shit in your pants.
But Rob, if you shit your pants, does that count as a weight loss thing?
Oh, my God, that's some good shit. No shit.
No shit. Seriously, is that a common thing? Like, is it just a design flaw where if something does ground up, it just hits the outside casing? Is it insulated? Why? Or is it just me? Is it just me?
You're a dummy.
Mainly it's you. The casing material really doesn't affect whether you have a stray voltage or excess current in the aquarium. So whether it's glass or boil, silicate, I'm sorry, I forgot titanium. Plastic or titanium, those are your main groups. So that doesn't really affect, again, stray voltage or current. So what you'll see, and one of the biggest misconceptions with people is they'll have a voltage sensor in their aquarium to detect stray voltage, especially marine guys, they'll want to know, oh my God, my corals are all dying because they're stray voltage in the tank, stray voltage doesn't really mean anything. It's the current that is the problem. And if the current is what shocks you and the equals iron squared thing, there's all sorts of formulas and whatnot around it, but current stray voltage really normally isn't a problem. And again, the casing normally doesn't affect it. What affects it is seal of the casing. So if there's a hole in the casing somewhere, or if there's a leak in the oring, or if the resin isn't completely sealed off your heating element or your electronics, whatever, and we'll talk about thermostats in a little bit. If any of that is exposed, you can get current into your tank and that's what gives you the kick. And I know I've been hit a number of times in my life. That's probably why I'm so crazy. I mean, I've been knocked on my butt a couple of times by current either from a fluorescent light or from a heater. And it definitely can hit you, but that's 99% of the time has nothing to do with the casing. What's dangerous about titanium heaters is if they are correctly sealed and there is an issue, they tend to go explosive and then you have metal going everywhere, explosive.
I just want to make sure I heard you correctly.
Yeah, titanium heaters, it's one of the reasons we don't have them in our portfolio, is they're the most potential danger of any heater. I'm not saying that every titanium heater is dangerous. There are some quality ones out there. But the level of liability that you face with the titanium heater is definitely up there. In some respects, they're the safest and in other aspects of the most liability.
That is interesting. I've never heard that before. Everybody that we've talked to in the past talked about titanium heaters and how fantastic they are and I did not realize they're that explosive.
Well, if they're sealed correctly, there's nowhere to go except out. And if they're sealed correctly, that means a good thing, but if there's a failure, that means it's a bad thing. Again, there's a reason we don't have them in our portfolio. The liability aspect is pretty big.
So basically it's like a pressure cooker bomb.
And definitely there's some safe ones out there. It's just not something I don't want to talk too bad about it because some of my good friends in the industry have them. It's just not something, it's not a road that I would go down as a manufacturer.
I'm looking at my titanium heater over my sump and this thing. This is my third one I got in a row. They're the first two electrocuted me. This one electrocuted me to lease and I just gave up. I'm like, I'm not going to buy any more. I'm just going to put a titanium grounding rod in there and leave it and figure out just like spend real money on a heater that has nothing.
To do with the casing that has to do with it's a good and bad thing. It's a good thing that you're getting shocked because the heater isn't sealed so that means it's not going to blow up on you. But the bad thing is letting water in and you're getting straight current into the aquarium and you're grounding yourself and getting knocked.
I have a good question. Earlier you talked about the plastic casing and I've seen that on a couple of occasions. Are they as efficient, the plastic casing as the glass casing?
In some cases they're more efficient. We have a higher and when I say more, you're talking 10% at the most. We use in the old days at aquarium Systems when I was there, they're all using glass, polymer plastic. So it's a glass filled plastic and you can get a higher heat transfer out of them. So you get a higher gallon to watt ratio out of them. So yes, they can be more efficient than glass. And mainly it's not necessarily the casing that is what's causing that. It's the way the heating element is dealt with inside the casing.
Well, I just thought it was fantastic when I saw the plastic casing, I've actually had heaters laying on the ground and stepped on them barefoot and broke them and I thought, well this one probably can take a little more of a beating. But why hasn't the glass ones come with the you don't like to have safety glass and car windshields and whatnot is there anything like that that is in the future that you've seen or heard about?
Well, safety glass is tempered. So if you have a tempered glass heater, the chances of it cracking are a higher. So you actually don't want that because you want a yield glass that's got a little more rigidity to it. If there's any sort of potential failure point, a tempered is going to immediately crack and then splinter all throughout the heater. So it's actually a negative in the heater world.
Oh, okay. I never even thought of that. That is pretty incredible that for all these years I've thought about if they had better glass, tougher glass, it would just be a lot better because I have bought probably literally 1000 heaters in my lifetime and I've never really been and I've never really been impressed by any of them to be honest. But I've never owned a coal bolt heater.
Well, the big thing, and it's three different types of glass again that are predominant. There's regular glass, which is pretty much nonexistent now unless you're buying some super, super cheap import, no brand name off of ebay or whatever, basically nobody's using just straight glass anymore. Boros silicate or courts, those are your three different glasses and boros silicon courts, they're pretty comparable. Like I said, there's maybe a 10% difference, but there's a big price concession between boro silicon courts.
I'm sorry if I'm checking, I just saw there's a bunch of memes that they put into the channels here. They're like modern problems, modern solutions. Titanium Heaters. And they show like a landmine in the ocean.
I didn't mean to blow up titanium heaters.
Oh, blow up, blow up, blow up. So we have a question from too.
Much run punch, too much rum punch.
Do you remember the old movie stripes? And they say to the crew, so am I to understand that you guys perform basic training on your own? And they went, yes, sir. And they go, what happened to your.
That is not what they said. You got to get your quotes right. That's a fact check. Yeah.
What happened to your sergeant? Blown up, sir.
Exactly.
So we got a question from one of the listeners. How do cable heaters work? Apparently, some of the listeners didn't even know they existed. So just a quick jaunt on that one.
They're basically a glass heater that's not wound into a tube, but run through a cable system that you then wrap or not wrap I'm sorry, put in, like, a serpentine pattern underneath your substrate, between your glass and your substrate so that it will evenly heat the entire bottom of the aquarium. You won't get as many hot spots, but it will create an uplift of heat, which creates a circulation through your soil bed. So, again, a lot of plant people in Europe, the really big, heavy plant users in Europe, love the cable heaters because it creates a cycle through the aquarium and they don't get in toxic or anaerobic areas in their soil, but they can have a thicker soil bed with lattery and all that to have a more stable soil bed and better plants long term with that.
Basically. That's kind of like how some people run, like, petg tubing in their garage floors and run water through it, right?
Yes, very similar. Exactly. In this case, it's just a giant resistor. So it's not water. It's a cable is basically your heating element. We haven't gotten into this yet, but your heating element is basically called Nichrome nickel chromium, but the techy term is Nichrome wire. So basically it's a niche and wire that's plastic coated or some sort of coating. Normally it's plastic coated that you then rather than having 100ft of it in a little tube tube, you have 100ft of it running up and down, up and down, up and down in the bottom of your aquarium. And if you're not watching me, I'm doing the up and down, up and down, up and down. My family always teases me because I talk with my hands.
The other thing, too, with the cable heaters, with a warmer substrate, do you not get better plant growth?
Yes, in theory. That's why a lot of the big plant people like in Europe, like them, they can have a deeper substrate base. They can really layer the ladderite and the different gravel, clay ladderite, soil ladderite, whatever you guys are. There's money plant people out here that know more about that than I do. It's not my specialty, but I know you want to layer it. The deeper it is, the more nutrients you can have and the less you have to supplement, and you don't necessarily have to use as much co2. And there's all sorts of ins and outs and benefits to it if you want to go through the trouble of using it. But you then end up with a cable running down to the bottom of your aquarium like an airline, but it's an electrical cable, and then you got this giant cable all the way through it, which ends up being potentially a lot of fail points. Anytime that you're rapid going back and forth with it, any one of those pinch points could result in a spot where the plastic may not like it and crack earlier than another spot and ends up with issues like Rob says, with getting shocked. So there's lots of pitfalls to it if you're not very diligent about how you install it. There are definitely some high end plant guys that love them.
Yeah, the substrate heaters you can still find here and there. It's hard to find, like a posting on Amazon for them anymore, but they're still here and there. And I know only a handful of people that have ever used them, and they're short term. Essentially, how I've seen them use in the past is one and done. If you put in an aquarium, don't touch them. The moment you touch them for the second time after they've been in your aquarium for any normal length of time, they'll start cracking and immediately you don't even want to risk it unless you like getting electrocuted. It's a one use deal. It's not one of those things where you want to keep it running for years or swap it between aquariums. It's use it once, use it a long time, and then just get a new one or not.
Yes, as long as you don't touch it. They're normally all right, but the minute you start fiddling with it, you're going to crack them.
So again, especially when you're spending $50 to even $100 on these things because they're hard to find. It's not necessarily my favorite, but by all means, let's continue with you left off. We interrupted you so rudely. And you were talking about casings, and I think we got through that. Plastic is better by 10%.
It's a better heat dispersion. If they're using a glass filled plastic blend in injection molding, you can get a higher heat transfer. It's a different technology. Is it better or not? You can get higher heat ratio. Transfer ratio, for sure. I like it better than glass because it's a lot more forgiving. If you have a quality heater, plastic heater that it won't crack if you do not unplug it. When you're doing a water change, it should last through your human error or user error. When you are doing your water change, it does have a lot better thermal resilience than a glass or borosulkin heater.
So what was next on your list that you wanted to go?
We talked about casings a little bit early on. We talked about kind of the history of it. The Penpax and hagen heaters back in the day, where you had the white cotton at the top of the heater and the top had to be out of the aquarium. The next generation was a vizzy therm, which was the submersible heater. And basically what they did is they took that glass tube and they shoved a plug with some orings on it into the end of it so you could put it down underwater. And so from there, that's where the submersible heaters evolved from, is basically putting orings on a plug like a bottle of wine cork similar, and being able to submerge them. So all of them still use the same style thermostat at that point, but you have the ability to not worry about getting water into them to some extent. And then from the 1980s when that was developed all the way through. Now the designs are just evolving to try to still improve on that oring design, whether it's molded into the plug, whether it's an extra oring whether it's two or three different levels of orings or layers within the plug that goes in to try to increase the ability to keep water out of that heater when it's submerged.
What is it you were saying about heating elements?
Even the basic ones back in the when they were first developed, they're all based on nichrome wire. So nickel, chromium wire. And if you look in any heater that's not painted, you can see the coils of silver wire that's inside of them. It almost looks like a spring. That is a single loop of wire that can be actually up to 70ft long if you unravel it all the way that's coiled, and they coiled down and up, down and up, down and up, down and up. And 90% of the heaters that we have in the Us. Probably 60% to 70% of the heaters worldwide are all made out of nicrome wire heating elements. There is another style called ptc that's pretty popular in Asia, caught on a little bit in Europe. It has some really good potential, but only in freshwater. It's very corrosive in saltwater. So you don't see it really much here because nobody wants to take the risk of ul liability or etl liability of a ptc heater being accidentally put into a salt water and having somebody sue them. So you don't see it much here, but you see it a lot in Asia. But nicrome wire, again, is by far and away the most popular heating elements inside of it. And again, if you take one of the older or any style glass heater that's not filled with something, whether it's sand or a really solid tube, ceramic tube, you can shake it. You can hear that wire, the springs basically shaking around inside the heater.
So is it safe to run a heater when those wires are shaking at the bottom after some point of use?
Unless they're broken? Yes, they're fine. Now, sometimes if you get this is where the ceiling comes into effect. Basically, the quality of any heaters, if it's a submersible, the heater is the seal. If any water gets in there, it can actually rust or corrode the Nitrome wire. And instead of being a spring, it might jump five or six loops together, and then you get a direct current. And basically that spring is a giant resistor. And so you're trying to spread that resistance across as much wire as you can to get a nice even heat distribution throughout the column of the tube. And if you get any sort of jump or corrosion where you're skipping over it, you'll get hot spots. And those hot spots are a problem. And how we mitigate those hot spots and mitigate the chances of that corrosion is by how you separate those coils. You separate those coils by either some sort of ceramic core. And the Vizzirms were the most famous one for a solid ceramic core that, if you looked at it from the top down, almost looked like a starfish. And in between each blade of the starfish was it a coil. And the coil will go down the length of the tube, wrap around the bottom of the starfish, and then come up the next vein of the starfish, go over the top of the leg and then back down and around, all the way around. So you would have each coil separated from each other by a vein of ceramic. And that ceramic did really wonders in that it acted not only as a separation of the coils, but it also acts as a heat sink. So when the coils initially heat up, they don't necessarily radiate a ton of heat out up to the glass tube. They heat up the ceramic core. And so instead of getting if you can see me, I'm going to do a graph here. We got a graph. Instead of getting an external temperature on the glass that goes up immediately when the heater comes on, you get a gradual kind of curve that comes up because a lot of that heat is being sucked in by the ceramic core. And once the ceramic core heats up, then the heater starts heating up, the external glass heats up. And then when the heater shuts off, it doesn't immediately plummet again because the ceramic core is retaining heat. And then that ceramic core dissipates it. So you get a nice bell curve of heat distribution, of heating it up and then cooling it down. And that really helps the longevity of the glass boro silicate or quartz in the case of the vizy, therm it's quartz. In the case of cobalt's acuterms, it's borosilicate. I think tetra is borosilicate. I don't remember off top of my head what hagen is, but you can see almost every heater calls it out now what the material it is, but it will help that bell curve. If it's ceramic core, the cheaper version of that, I'm sorry, I'm going to stop any questions about ceramic core or microme elements because I'll just keep rambling. I was wondering, why doesn't anybody have they tried other materials besides the ceramic core, like you were saying that some of them had sand and stuff in it is literally the best material, or.
Could you put like gravel in it or something?
Ceramic is really good. The next version is what's called micah. And micah almost looks like a fiber board. And you'll see it looks like fiber I don't know, fiber board. I don't know how else to describe it. There's a bunch of fibers. It looks like fibrous metallic cardboard. And if you look at a cheaper heater, you can see that you'll see these veins of micah. And micah doesn't have the insulating properties that a ceramic core does. It will just reflect the heat. So you end up with the spikes in the heat profile on the glass.
I was just wondering, isn't Michael the same stuff they make countertops out of sometimes similar?
Yeah, it's the same material, but it's woven together. Countertops are more formed. But yes, the reason they use it in countertops is because heat resistant. In case you put a pot on it, it's not going to crack or do anything. But it's the same material, but it's different construction. So the other thing that there's a type of sand and sitting here right now, we don't use it. And it's been nine years since I had dealt with it. I don't remember the technical term for the sand, but you'll see some that are sand filled and that is designed to keep the Nitrome wire separated so you reduce the chance of corrosion and try to dissipate the heat. But it doesn't have the same heat sink as ceramic. So in my opinion, in a glass scenario, the best thing to use is ceramic core. It's the most expensive and it's the hardest to do, so you increase in the labor costs, but it's the most reliable and it gives you the best heat dispersion, both on the front end and the back end. Sand would be second, but it almost dampens it to some extent and doesn't have the same heat capacity. So it won't give you the nice bell curve. It just keeps it from getting super hot. And then micah is the lowest of the alternatives, but will keep the corro and the sorting potential to a minimum.
Well, we're on the subject of wear and terra on heaters. Let's talk about some of the best practices to maintain your heater and positioning in the tank. We started some of the podcast notes why heaters suck, and frankly, besides the point that we're just taking a heating element and expecting that to kick on and off for years on end in the tank and expected to do well is crazy on us, number one. And the technology that we've done, I'm looking at a heater that's been in my I've used in my care for eight years. That's incredible to me that just having a heating element sitting in my tank, reliably kicking on and off to within three degree measure is a feat of its own.
It's a visitor.
Is it?
Yes.
I'm looking at it right now.
Yeah. I don't even know I got it for free. The people that make it are all good or used to make it are all good. It's a factory in Italy. Why do heaters suck? I'm going to step on my soapbox right now and tell you why heaters suck. Heaters suck because some time, a long time ago, the manufacturers, unbeknownst to themselves at the time, decided to make the most technology difficult thing to make a commodity with a handful of friends.
I am hearing somebody's, Mike. It was Joe Shrimp shack. Joe, how do you do?
What's up, Joe?
I'm trying to mute it and stuff like that.
No.
Perfect. Live podcast. Welcome, Joe.
Is that last? What's up, Joe? How are you doing, bud?
Hey, buddy, how are you doing?
Doing good. I know Joe. He's a good guy. I try.
All right, Joe, you got to tell me where to buy shrimp and what promo code to use, and then I'll meet you.
Aquarium guys.
Come on. Got to do it.
Go to Joe shrimp shack.com. Thanks again, Joe. I appreciate it. Now go back to your tangent. Sorry, Les.
All right. So soapbox. Why do heater suck? Decades ago, the manufacturers somehow got into this competition and lowered the price point. And the most technological challenging thing to make is put a giant resistor into a corrosive environment and heat your aquarium. Basically, you guys, especially up north, there's no reason I'm sorry. There's no reason in the world you guys should be keeping tropical fish in Minnesota and Wisconsin, and then you'll spend now that we got joe kind of chimed in. You needed them now. But Joe is out there selling shrimp for, what, $70 for a freaking shrimp that's this big. But if you try to tell somebody to pay $50 for a heater, they're like, what are you talking about? I'm not paying $50 for a heater. And for whatever reason, that's the only piece of equipment in the aquarium industry that everybody thinks should be cheap, and it is a challenge to make. And for whatever reason, we as manufacturers in the industry have agreed to letting the consumers dictate the price point on this stuff and try to make them at the lowest common denominator rather than making them a life support critical function and safe and reliable. And I have tried my best over my 20 something years of manufacturer to get around that, because it's not so. It's not so that anybody would spend. You go buy a starfire aquarium with the greatest clearest glass ever and pay $500 for a four foot tank. But if I ask you to pay $45 instead of $30 for a heater, you have a conniptional off my soapbox.
I'm blown away. I just gave the acknowledge of eight years. The idea that we're doing that is crazy and that we've been so successful and that people complain. But the complaints that I get are what I keep finding out. Like, you do the research, you get these claims in, people say, hey, my heater burnt out. You look at it and go, no, that's user error. I'm not covering that well, of course, because you know symptomatically how to treat these heaters. You can see that, oh, it has a crack in it, or the seal is gone. You were explained to us how you recognize that right away. Well, we're not far off. We see people's heaters. They message us in their discord. And every time we hear, oh, my heater sucks, I look at it and like, yeah, you broke it, dude. Or, Your cat bit the cord. Or, It's literally 40 years old, and somehow it burnt out, and now it sucks. filters run last time when you were not complaining about it. But what are some things we can do to make our heaters last? And what are some of the easiest mistakes you see everybody doing? novice or expert?
Everybody, including me, I've done it dozens of times. You don't unplug your heater when you're doing a water change and you drain the water down and you crack your heater, the number one thing to do is the second you're doing a water change before you do anything, you unplug the heater. Unplug your heater before you start a water change. You do that, your heater will last forever. Now, your fish won't last that long until you plug it back in. After you do your water change, which I've also done dozens of times, where I've unplugged it, done the water change, and then, like, three days later, everybody's covered in it, and I'm like, Why is everybody sick? And then I checked the temperature, and it's 68 degrees because I didn't plug the heater back in. So if you have anything, some sort of reminder and I actually made a suction cup thing back in the day where it said, heater plugged in, heater on off. And I would have it plugged up on the suction cup onto the tank up. And then when I would go to do a water change, I would turn it upside down, I would unplug it, I do my water change, and then if it was still upside down when I did my water change and I knew I had to. Plug it back in. That would put it back on. And something similar like that with a magnet or a suction cup. Something to let you know whether your heater is plugged in or not. unplug it before you do a water change. When you're done with your water change, plug it back in. You're going to be great. If you're a sump user, do not, for the love of God, put your heater in the sump. Why not put it? Because you will break it.
No, I won't.
Come on, I'm calling you on this.
We actually had to put it in our warranty that we do not cover some heaters in the sump, because people say, oh, I have an ATO. I'm fine. Well, when your ATO fails, your sump runs dry and you crack your heater, guaranteed, every time.
All right, so help me out with this. I'm going to pick this through. I have a sump system. I have nine tanks running through it. It's a recirculating system. And I've set it up so that my pump is on the shelf. So in an emergency, or if you.
Have it on the shelf and you have a designated reservoir that the heater is not going to be exposed, you're the exception to the rule. Golf clap. Good job, golf club. Most people don't do that. And they put it on the base of their sump. They have their pump down on the bottom of the sump, and the pump will run that thing down to half an inch, and the heater is exposed, and it'll crack every time. I've done it. I've definitely done it. everybody's done it.
I've done it twice. Once because my wife moved the cord and moved the heater above the pump.
And throw ten NASA under the bus.
And the first time why are you.
So mean to her?
I'm going to divulge something that I've never done publicly right now, but I've actually done it at a trade show.
And you got no crap. Nobody did you nobody dared. Yeah, I'm somebody else.
I'm pretty sure.
I'm going to give you a million dollar idea right now, and you can run with it because I'm too lazy to do anything with it and too stupid. So one of my friends just recently came by, and they're driving this Mercedes benz camper, and they were going into fargo to get a new windshield put on, because the sensors on the windshield come on when it's raining, so you don't have to reach over there and turn on the button. So why can't we put a sensor on a heater that will, once it's dry, will turn itself off?
They have that my titanium guy that shocks me has an error thing because I tested it. Because I tested it. Because I was just moving it into the sump, right? I pulled it out, like, e one, when it lifted out of the water and did not come back on until it was a submerged and I had to restart it. I had to pull the plug and plug it back in. It does it every time it gets dry at a certain spot on the heater. Is that normal for heaters or is that just like my luck?
What is normal to have a system.
Like that or something that you see these? Or is this mine a fluke?
Is there a sensor on these things?
There are some that are out there that have sensors, but they're typically heaters that have the ptc element that I talked about earlier that's not really reliable in saltwater scenarios. And so most of those sensors have some sort of ground they're a grounding thing, right? If they are not seeing current and if they corrode at all, then they fail. So you have not seen them in the Us market. Typically the heater that you have, rob's, is probably not a ul certified heater with that sensor in it because you can't get the ul certification with those.
Thank you.
Because they're not necessarily reliable. Now, are they out there? Absolutely. There's a lot of them out there in the world. Again, most of them have to do with ptc element heaters that are out there. And they work really well on soft water freshwater tanks. But anytime you start getting any tdc, especially with any hard water or end up in salt water scenarios, you end up starting having corrosion problems and then those sensors fail. So there isn't that magic bullet out there yet that anybody's developed for that sensor, but that would be the ideal. I've seen some prototypes back in the day. It's been years, but that actually had float switches and all sorts of things where you put a float switch down 30% down your aquarium, and when it drops, it will shut off. But nothing that's ever proved consumer viable has really come to pass yet.
So you're telling me I'm still going to pay $70 for a good heater, but I'm still going to blow it up myself.
If you choose a plastic heater or a well made titanium heater, you shouldn't blow it up. Cheaper titanium heaters or a cheap plastic heater have that potential. But a quality titanium or a quality? Because I don't want to blow up. I don't want to talk bad about titanium heaters. Overall, there are definitely some ones out there that are quality, but there are some that out there that are not. Just like everything, but the good quality titanium or good quality plastic heater should resist the user error that we're talking about. If you drain it down, they will shut off, depending on the thermistor. The temperature sensors inside a heater are called a thermistor. And the neotherm, for instance, there's five in each one. So there's five different places where it's recognizing the temperature. But once it drops below a certain point and certain things at certain temperatures, it will shut the heater off and so before it will have any issue with any sort of cracking. So there are some titanium heaters out there and there are I know the neotherm for sure will do that and it will give you that buffer as a user so you don't crack them.
Okay, so what about placement in the tank? I've always been a firm believer that you need to be where the flow is. So if there's a hang in the back filter, if you have the canister filter pointing in a certain direction, or even if you have a power head moving water in your tank, you need the flow to match the heater wherever it's at. But if you don't have an obvious place to put it, in my opinion, I've always put it horizontally somewhere in the tank, at least a little bit lower. That way you're spreading the heat and not just overwhelming the filaments or any other thermostat mechanism on whatever heater you have. Is that correct?
It depends on the rating of the heater and submergent rating. If it is rated for 36 inches or higher, you can definitely put it horizontal. And that's a good thing for the exact same reasons that you mentioned. You get a nice even heat across the heating element and it's going to create a convection current up and down at the back of the aquarium and roll the aquarium a little more than it would. You really don't want to put it near an air stone. Airstones tend to have a negative effect even if you get a lot of flow. But flow is a good thing around a heater in general. The worst case is if you look at a thermal camera, which we've done in the past, is if you don't have a lot of flow, you end up with the cone of hot and then it dissipates out over time over the aquarium. So you end up with if you're checking the temperature on, say, a four foot tank, and you don't have a lot of flow, and you have the heater on the left corner, on the front right corner, you're going, to see a more dramatic temperature fluctuation, and it's not going to be as warm, and it's going to be hotter over here, and it's going to be a longer dwell curve. So your temperature curve is going to be much more elongated and down than you would on the right next to the heater. So flow is going to keep a more homogeneous mix. It's going to keep your entire tank at a more consistent temperature. Your heater is going to have to work less, so that's a good thing. And horizontal, as long as you have a good IP rating on the heater that can handle the depth, horizontal is a good thing. But you don't want to put it touching the gravel because anytime you're touching a surface with those heaters, you're creating a point where you're not getting even. Heat distribution and you're potentially going to crack it. I'm not sure if he's talking smack, but he's giggling.
Of course joe's going to come visit us, talk a little crap. So again, if you guys want to listen and join these podcasts live, go to Aquariumgistpodcast.com. In the bottom of the website you'll find our link to discord. discord is our place where we actually record these podcasts. mondays at Seven central is when we try to aim to do these podcasts each week and come and join the debauchery. We have a bunch of people they're typing memes. Joe joined us to say hi, and again, he's typing in the chat. That's how you do questions live. So come join the fun guys. You're welcome to it. But just on the point of using airstones on heaters so I have a particular issue, and I've seen a couple, like a handful of other people. I have an extremely densely planted tank. I have a 125 tall, and I have no space for a heater that won't just burn plants. So what I did is something I shouldn't do, shaman robb, is take my heater, put it in the corner, and then make sure it has a rotating flow behind my plants, like a slow flow. And then just to make sure that my heater up and down is getting the correct flow and not just burning the plants next to it, I put a very slow flow stone next to it to, one, bounce the leaves away from the heater, and two, make sure there's a little bit of slow flow going up on that vertical heater. You said that's not a good thing to do.
Correct air in general is not a good thing to do at a specific level. Depending on exactly where the air is up against the heater and the level of flow, you can set it up so that it will work. But you're also the guy who built this pump up on a ledge and put his heater below the pump. So you're the exception to the rule. So your individual situation may be fine, but as a general rule, I would not get on any podcast with thousands of listeners and say, use an airstone around your heater. Can it be done? Yes, evil can evil consumpt the Grand canyon, but not everybody with the dirt bike should try it.
Can you clip that out? Last from Cold, monk said I could put an airstone.
So how often does a heater actually fail on its own?
Every time. Technically, every time a heater fails, it's on its own.
To be more specific on jimmy's question, in the warranty range, how often does that happen with most manufacturers that are decent?
Never. That's how they keep selling them.
No. Even at my old job, legitimate claims were less than 3%.
That's incredible. Pumps don't get that well.
Mga pumps are even less than that. Every product is a little bit different from any manufacturer you're shooting for a five to six or less. Three is fantastic. Less than one is outstanding. A bunch of research on this in my profession to try to see what other manufacturer norms are, and that's across all manufacturing. Because no matter whether you're making an aquarium pump or whether you're making the dishwasher, there's human error involved. I had a dishwasher catch on fire in my house. I haven't had a heater do that, but I've had a dishwasher do that, and I've had to go back to Kitchen Aid and try to get them to warranty it. At some point, if somebody shows up to work at a manufacturing line, they just are feeling down in the dumps for that day, whether it's COVID or whether it's tequila, somebody shows up one day and doesn't do something exactly right on that production line, you end up with one or two heaters or one or two products. Whether it's a tire or whether it's on a car, whether it's a dishwasher or an aquarium product, you have that human error that something is potentially happen that is not going to meet your spec and you're not going to catch them all. And the ultimate field test is always a consumer. So there's always some level of failure that you're going to see just because of the human element.
Now, I've had some beginners message with this podcast. We accommodate to beginners, as well as advanced aquaris. And I just want to point out some of the most ridiculous places I've seen heaters. Do not do any of these. Don't put them in your filter, especially a hang on the back filters. You may have a small heater. Don't put it in there that's plastic. I can't explain how bad that would be. Don't do that. Don't put it towards the surface even though you have direct water flow onto it, just like it's a stump issue. If you're going to evaporate water, you'll burn out your pump and cause a grounding issue. Don't put your submersion heaters that aren't meant to go underground anywhere underneath your substrate. In fact, keep it away from any objects if you can, so help it, in your aquarium.
That's probably one of the biggest issues with people. The beginners is putting their heater under the gravel, for sure.
Don't put your heaters and decorations, and I think one of the stupidest ones that beginner aquarius do. Don't zip tie your heaters together. Like, if you have 100 and some odd gallon aquarium and you have a heater that says it has 50 gallons, don't put two heaters together with a zip tie. Don't lick windows. Don't use a little bit of common sense. You're putting electricity with a thin insulator inside water. All right? Don't be dumb.
And robs, don't run the microwave with the door open. Right?
Right, robs? Thank you for that. I appreciate that.
You're welcome. I mean, besides the infamous thing that we've all heard about, it's a common thing. You see it on threads. You see the people using multiple heaters in the same aquarium. Not saying you can't use multiple heaters. There are scenarios where to use multiple heaters, but make sure you're spacing them.
Actually, on larger tanks, I recommend using multiple heaters.
Yeah. If you have a long he's making.
Sales left and right here.
If you have a long six foot yes, sales. If you have a long six foot tank, instead of doing 1300 watt heater, it's probably going to be cheaper for you to run two heaters. And it's going to do a better job if you don't have power heads pushing a mass circulation around that tank.
So the other thing is that if a heater fails, whether it's by the manufacturer, whether it's by age, or whether it's by user, if one of the heater fails, you still have another one or two heaters functioning. And whether it fails on or off, sometimes they'll fail on. We haven't talked about thermostats yet on how that happens. But if they fail on a smaller wattage heater, if you're sizing a heater correctly to your aquarium, it's not going to be able to physically overheat your tank. The American mentality of too much horsepower is why we have heaters fail and cook tanks. If you size it correctly or you undersize it and use multiple, you're not going to have that too hot or too cold ever, and you're going to be able to capture any mistakes. So that's why I always recommend using multiple.
So let's talk just a little bit about why heaters not why heaters fail, but when they fail. We've talked about electrocution. electrocution is so common for the stuff I do because apparently I'm a dip shit and shit my pants. So when you get a new nobody.
Is arguing that point at all.
I'm going on when you get a new heater, especially when you're ordering from stupid places like wish.com, like Rob is always doing, because I have this podcast that I want to do in the future, and that trying to get all my aquarium products. I want to build an entire aquarium from wish.com and see how bad it was in all my struggles. That's going to be a podcast.
The insurance company, after you burn your house down, the insurance company can listen to this podcast and go, yeah, we're not covering you 100%.
Failed.
Failed. So if you're going to get a heater, especially one that you don't trust, use heaters. Find easier, accurate ways to test them. Use voltage meters. See what you're getting in the tank. Don't just be like me. Plug it in and stick your hand in there and see what happens.
Right? Then there's a difference between voltage and current, right? Voltage won't shock you, current will.
Exactly. So know how to use your voltage meters. There's plenty of different settings. Do some googling before this, but don't just stick your tongue in there. Next is failures that heaters don't just simply shut off. Some can, just the thermostat fails. And guess what? They just burn in your tank. And suddenly you'll get home and you'll smell something, you'll look over and your discus tank is either boiling or freezing. Either way, having that backup heater helps in a smaller heater. That's what you're describing. My worst scenario that I had was I got some rare rainbow species. I'm a big fan of Gary lang's work, and I traveled all out of state to get rainbows, brought them back home. Thank God I separated them in two tanks. But immediately I had an old heater. And the next day, again, I came in there, and it was probably, what, 100 degrees in that tank? It was literally fizzling in the water for some reason.
So it was a ten gallon tank. You had a 300 watt heater in it, right?
More than likely, it was probably a 20. And it was a hefty boy.
So that's the American mentality or the North American mentality of too much of more horsepower is better. And then the actuality and the heaters, if you size them correctly for the manufacturer's instructions, it would be physically impossible for that heater to overheat your tank to that degree.
And that was a dumb. I didn't have a sticker. I didn't know the wattage of the heater. Don't risk stuff like that.
I do have one little bit of advice that I have learned. Like every Aquarius, I've got a box with 25 heaters from 30 different manufacturers. At the end of the day, you're wondering which ones work. And so, like a dumbass, I take it, I hold onto them and I plug them into the wall. And then once I burn my fingerprints off, I know that one works. So my son was over one day watching this, laughing his head off, and he goes, You've got that $30 meters? Yeah. The home meter is actually one of the laser thermometer. Yeah. And he said, Why don't you just lay them here and turn them on and use that laser thermometer to see if they're heating up or not? I did, and I only burnt two spots in my countertop.
So I would recommend that. So this has been one of the things that I don't know we may do eventually, but I've never done. If you go onto YouTube, which I know all of you guys go on to YouTube, right? And you want to know whether your heater works or not. There's nobody, to my knowledge, that's done this video, which is how to use a multimeter to see if your heater works so you don't burn your fingerprints or your counter, or your cheesecloth, or your tank. If you Google how to check a water heater electric heating element, there are tons of videos on how to use an om meter to simply put it on the probe and check it to see if it will work. And in essence, a electric water heater for your home is basically the same as what we do in aquariums, just on a larger, more industrial scale than what we use in aquariums. Now, I'm not saying go out and use a water heater, a general water heater for that, because it's different technology and there's a lot of corrosion of possibilities and whatnot. But from testing standpoint, if you turn your thermostat up and hook up an omitted and follow the instructions on how to do that, you can check and see if your meter works or not. But the thermostat has to be in the on position or closed position to do that. Again, I've contemplated doing that video I don't know how many hundreds of times, and we have yet to do it. But you can check it with an old meter that way.
Remember, next time I commit a crime, by the way, to use an old heater and burn off my finger.
That's right. Just grab 2300 watt heaters. Any chance.
Right there? Those two, no fingerprint.
Don't try that at home, kids. All right?
You'd be leaving DNA all over the place.
Just on the heaters?
Just on the heaters. Smell of a diabetic. bacon.
I smell bacon.
Robs, anyhow, a couple of questions we got from the listeners here. Can you get better life out of a heater in a sum compared to a tank? If you do the rob's method of putting the pump above the heater?
Your mom asked that.
That was daryl. But I just added that last bit because we already talked a little bit about this. But if it's in a sum, technically, could it last longer?
If you have it in an area of high movement and if you have an overflow, especially like a durso style overflow, where you have a standpipe in your overflow that's getting all the water coming through it, that's where you want to put it. I always recommend putting it in the overflow because all your tank water comes through there. It's hidden from you, it's away from fish, it's away from plants. It's not in your sump. That's number 1. Second place, if you are advanced enough to figure out how to build a sump, the rob's method, I'm not going to recommend that, but yes, it would work equally well. But I don't recommend it because 99% of people are not going to do it. Right. Just avoid putting a heater in a sump. If you put a heater in a sump, for sure, with cobalt heaters, it instantly voids your warranty, especially on glass heaters. On the neotherm, it does not on the plastic heaters, but on the glass heater. If we find out it's an assumption, your warranty is void because we know 99% of the time it's going to be user error. So will it perform if you do it? Absolutely correct? Yes. But do I recommend it? Absolutely not.
All right, so the other thing that we have for topic is wattage per gallon. It used to be like back in the day, especially reading old manuals, that it was x watts to this many gallons. Now with different efficiencies, how has that changed? I know with your models I've looked up on your website, a 300 watt for your highest end heater is up to 100 gallons, whereas the different other version goes to 80 gallons. Is that just for efficiency or how the thermostat runs? Why are those changing? The heat just getting better.
That has to do with what we talked about before, the ceramic core versus resin versus mica, and then also the heat transfer of the plastic versus glass. So the one that you're talking about with the higher efficiency is our neutral raider, and those are resin filled. So the Nitrome wire is run down, separated by mica in the initial phase, but then the entire thing is filled with resin. So we have a very efficient heat sink and emission and heat transfer in that that we can get through the resin and plastic better than we can with glass. So we can get a higher wattage two gallon ratio with that technology. If it's a glass technology, you're going to see whether it's glass, borosa or quartz, they're all going to be very similar, if not exactly the same. And if they're not exactly the same or very similar, there's some marketing wisdom going on because there isn't the ability with the existing technology that's in the marketplace to make them that much different. Where you see the biggest difference in glass heaters is within the specification of the accuracy. And that has to do with a little bit of whatever the insulator or heatsink core, whether it's ceramic micro, sand or whatever. And also the thermostat technology, again, we haven't talked about thermostat yet. The thermostat really affects that resolution, but not necessarily the waters per gallon.
Well, before we go into thermostats, we have one more question from one of our listeners. If I have an old heater that's been going for ten years, should I be upgrading just for the sake of energy efficiency or should I just let it run? Is it going to cost me more to run it or buy a new heater?
Unless you're switching over to different neotherm style technology with a higher heat ratio, any glass heater that you buy today, and I say glass and I'm meaning borrowed quartz or whatever, I'm saying glass in general, you're not going to get any better heat transfer in general. Why should you replace your heater? You should replace your heater anytime it's out of warranty, for instance. And I'm really not trying to preach commercials here for my own brand, but if you have a heater that's less than three years old and we determined that it's not your fault, we're going to warranty it and we're going to give you a knee either, every time, no questions. Asked, even if you don't have proof of purchase, if it's determined by our customer service staff and sometimes not every time, but sometimes it makes it all the way up to me. If it is our fault or if we determine that there's something wrong with that heater, we're going to replace it. And there's a date code either on a tag or on the printed on the court itself, depending on the year that we made a transition to have it printed directly on the court. If that date code or that lock code of that heater is within the three year spec, we're going to replace it. So for a $30 to $50 investment, especially like Rob, you mentioned you had those high end rainbows that you got from Gary lang that you killed. It was probably a five year old heater like you're spending all this money and trying to researching on where to get these fish. Just get a warranty so that you're covered. I would never recommend using a heater more than three or four years old ever. I replace them every three years on my aquarium have forever. They're the most volatile piece of equipment and the most vital. Again, if you're in the north, you shouldn't be keeping tropical fish when it's negative 40 outside the only reason you do it is because of this $30 heater, right? And it's working. It's butt off to try to keep that temperature stable for them and they wear out. It's like you don't keep a set of tires on your car forever and eventually they wear out. It's a moving part. Even though it's not moving. It's a living piece. And it's vibrating constantly. It's heating up, it's cooling down, and they wear out. So if you have a ten year old Peter, replace it as soon as you can through whatever your economic situation is with the new one and get something that's within warranty, so that if there is any issue, that any quality manufacturer is going to cover the situation. But if it's out of warranty, it's out of our hands.
So one more question before thermostats and what does warranty cover? Because I have this assumption that if I buy a product, the warranty covers the product unless it has some other labeled insurance. Like, for instance, if I buy a wall mount for a TV, there's two different wall mounts I buy. It would be a wall mount for just my own risk, here's a $25 wall mount. Your problem. But if I buy that $125 wall mount, that's coming with an insurance policy that if it breaks, it covers my TV, and it has to be installed by a professional. So I assume that all quarry and products only cover the heater itself to be replaced, not my damages to my fish and all the craziness. What does the warranty actually cover?
I think this was just come up and I didn't really want to answer it you. Don't have I'm going to give you an analogy that one of a friend on the livestock side of things told me one time, because they sold their heaters, or they still do, and they had somebody that came through them with a claim and they were trying to charge us. I don't know. It was something ridiculous about $7,000 of livestock. And he goes, I don't understand people that want a heater to replace everything in their aquarium. If I'm driving down the road on firestone tires and the tire blows out and it takes out my entire right side quarter panel, the passenger door, I spin out, I hit a rail, and it munches my front bumper, I don't expect firestone to cover all that damage because I got 70,000 miles on that tire. And I think that's a great analogy in that our heater manufacturers responsible all the time. No. And does our warranty cover specifically in the letter of the law, cover that kind of thing? Absolutely not. We specifically say we will only replace the heater. Now, that being said, if we have a problem that is determined is a definite manufacturing error, and it causes some definite problems. On a case by case situation, we will work with the person. That doesn't necessarily mean we're going to replace everything. That doesn't mean we're going to place anything. But on a case by case basis, we do work with what we can to make sure that consumers done right by anything that our heater causes.
See, we can't let you go without hitting some at least the hard questions.
Yeah, we would. Reputation the letter, the law is no, we do not have to cover anything, but we don't want to be that manufacturer that leaves people out there hanging. Now, if you zip tie your heaters together.
No, we're good. That was a plenty of explanation. Otherwise, the third episode that we're going to have last on, he's going to bring his in house lawyer.
For instance, we started off this whole discussion a long time ago about doing water changes, and if you water changing, your heater cracks and then your tank suffers because of that. That's why we require pictures of any failure. We can tell immediately if you've done a water change and you crack the heater. And if that's the case, we're not covering it. We may on certain occasions help you out. It depends on how nice you are. If you're super abrasive, you're not getting anything nice. Carries a lot of weight.
Well, there we go. So thermostats let's finish your list.
Get them fired up.
There you go.
I got them, boys.
All right, thermostats so way back in the day, the very first thermostat for an aquarium heater was developed and are you going to play the video? Because I got this little hand thing I do.
Yeah, we're watching live on the discord.
I just don't know if you do it on the other no, we don't record the video.
It's just a podcast that's in the future we're going spotify soon.
Someday you'll be a contender, huh? You never know.
You got to let Joe have all the YouTube fun.
I'll try not to use my hands on back in the day. If you remember, some of you may still have the style thermostat in your wall if you haven't upgraded the digital or the nest style thermostat. It's the old slider or the dial. And when you turn the dial or I'm using my hands, when you hit the temperature that you're currently at, you'll hear a click. And what that click is, is called a bimetal thermostat. It's basically like a light switch in your wall where you have the wire coming from the wall and it's touching a piece of metal, and that's your hot side of the switch. The other side, where the wire goes to your heating element, is attached to two pieces of metal that are laminated together. There are two different types of metal that are laminated together, and they expand and contract at different rates depending on the temperature. And what they'll do is when one expands and contracts, or the other one is expanding or contracting at a faster rate, it will cause that piece of metal to bend, and it will either bend towards the thermostat or bend away from the thermostat. And so as it's colder, those two pieces of metal, as they're expanding, contracting, will bend towards the other pole on your switch, and then they physically touch. And when they physically touch, that's when your heater turns on. And it's just like turning a switch on the wall, and you hear that click. And sometimes you might even see a little spark coming through the plastic on the wall. And that spark is, as they're coming close, there's a little bit of arcing as they finally touch. And that is essentially the exact same thing that's happening in a biometal heater is there's one piece of metal that is moving and touching the other piece of metal, completing the circuit and turning the heater on.
How do you replicate that in such a tiny space inside your aquarium?
Heater engineering wizardry comes in, and that is exactly why we have problems with heaters failing, is that you have this big electrical box with twelve or 14 gauge wire that are handling that switch. And if you look in your room, like in a normal room, you might have, say, two or three light bulbs, and say, those are 50 watt light bulbs. That's 180 watts. A lot of aquariums use a 300 watt heater, so you have roughly double the amount of wattage going through a much thinner ribbon of a switch. And a lot of that power coming through causes arcing, especially if you have any sort of heat or any sort of moisture getting into it through a failed seal. In that immersion heater, like we talked about before, you can get arcing. And whenever you get arcing, that's when you get problems with heat or failure, either on or off. And this is where my hands come in. What will happen is because this isn't a pure movement, this is two pieces of metal laminated together that are fighting each other. And what you'll get is fluttering. And that part of that switch will flutter really close to your other pole, but it won't actually touch. And that fluttering will cause potential arcing. And that arcing could then superheat one side of that pole or other and that super heating. And then, once it finally touches, will cool almost instantly and then weld itself shut, which means it's welded on. Or it can, over time, actually melt the other part of the switch and part of it will fall off and then it won't have enough travel anymore to actually touch the other pole. And then your heater won't turn on anymore. So a biometal heater has a potential failing in either direction because of the arcing and long term use. So the ten year old heater has been doing this hundreds of times, potentially a day on the high end, at least twelve times a day on the low end of it coming on and off and potentially arcing. Those seals at the top have been letting little droplets of moisture in forever. The corrosion happens and you should be replacing that either. But that thermostat is the point of failure. That fluttering and the arcing can cause all sorts of issues. Now, before I get into how we get around that, any questions about that? Because I'll keep rambling.
I just have a conspiracy theory. Right. I know you're not going to, but I think that everybody from the Lord of the Ring series that were habits are now suddenly on your employee line assembling them, just saying they need the tiny fingers.
Oompa, loompas.
Right.
You are wise.
Anyways, I got to plead the fifth on that.
That's classified information. He'll share with us a lot. Not that.
Just the way he was describing all the fluttering and all the touching. It reminded me of my first high school dance.
I feel like that I want my square dancing choreographed by less, don't you?
No.
Anyways, go ahead, buddy. We apologize tangent.
So never in my life did I think that peter's discussion would end up talking about square dancing. I'm not sure how that happened. That's a question.
We offer a very specific service here.
At the aquarium, guys.
Frog often runs a microwave with the door open.
Hey, we're not licking frogs either.
That's another podcast. Wow. Square dancing and heater technology. I got to think about that one.
Please don't let it hold me back.
So what do we do as manufacturers? That's ancient technology. How do we get around that? If you're still using bimetal and there's two ways of fixing that, one is by putting neodymium magnets, tiny magnets, on your contact point. So when they get close, you don't allow it to flutter. It gets close to snap shut, and then once it's snapshot, it's on until you're hot enough that you have enough power for it to pull it off. So there's no fluttering in or out, and you end up with a really consistent snap on and snap off of that. Now, the downside to that is that you lose resolution. So you decrease the liability and increase the longevity of that switch, but you lose resolution. So heaters that don't have a neodymium switch, that use a bimetal heater technology or thermostat technology can have a tighter resolution, say plus or minus zero one I'm sorry, plus or minus one or maybe two degrees fahrenheit. But if you use a Dodm heater, your resolution is going to be three, up to four degrees resolution.
You got any other questions for them?
No, I'm just totally blown away by all wait, the different I do.
So if that's the case for adjustable heaters, what's the case for all these predone heaters? I think what are they supposed to default at? Like 76 or something? 78.
It depends on exactly what the heater technology is on that. So you adjust like on a lot of the heaters, there's a little dial on top and you're adjusting basically you're adjusting the fulcrum point on the biometal heater by doing the adjustment so it's going up or down so it will travel quicker or longer to it. So you increase the thermostat potential on it. So on a preset, you just don't have that adjustment capability.
Now, I got a strange question. I have heard people talk about this, and I don't know if there's any truth. Is there going to be such a thing as an Led heater or infrared?
Well, there's two different things there. So what's the question?
I actually had somebody, one of my friends who's been in the business a very, very long time, telling me that he's been trying to get these Led heaters, which are supposed to use a lot less watched. And I'm trying to think, that's the.
Same guy that told you about this licking fraud conspiracy.
No, that's mine.
Will there be an Led heater? I'm not going to say there's not. Do LEDs produce heat? They do, but they don't radiate heat necessarily out of the Led element. The heat comes off the heat sink off the back of the Led. That's why LEDs are so fantastic about that and LEDs, the reason that they're so great at light emission is that they produce more light with less infrared. So it's kind of going backwards against Led technology. And the whole reason that LEDs are efficient is they can produce light without heat. Exactly. But you need heat to heat. So what about infrared to finish the answer on the LEDs? I'm not saying it's out of the realm of possibility, but it's definitely not on anybody's immediate radar. Because it's going against the mainstream technology of LEDs is to create as much light with the least amount of heat so that's all the capability and all the potential in LEDs is going to produce light, like visible light with the least amount of heat. And so there's basically nobody doing research in the other direction. Now, is there a possibility? Maybe, but it's going against every vein of the Led industry to do that, so I wouldn't say it's probable.
Yeah, when he told me this, I thought exactly the same thing. I thought, how can this even work? But he said that something like, they're working over in Germany on this. And I'm just going, whatever.
Did he look at toad when he told you this? Before or after this?
What's that?
Did he look at toad before or after this?
He did not look at toad. That was actually a conversation that just came up because we're talking about Led lights. And then it went right into Led heaters. And I said, I've never heard such a thing.
Wait, are you willing to default this gentleman's name? No, I called it on the Led.
Complete tangent on technology. But the Led, you have the actual diode, which is a chip on one side. Then there's the TJ joints. TJ is where the chip actually touches the positive negative pole. And then behind the chip, you have your heat sink. So you're attaching your diode to a heat sink, and then you got these two poles that come off of it. The TJ, which is the temperature at the junction, that is the critical spot on any Led construction. And it's a solder joint where those two poles come together and touch. The Led connects to the anode and the diode pole. And that pj has to because of the solder technology that exists in production, LEDs right now has to remain below 70 degrees C. If it gets above 70 degree C, you have TJ failure. Completely different topic about Led technology versus this. But that's one of the reasons why I would find it very irregular that somebody would be trying to use Led technology as the heat. Because the TJ at the diode to the anode and diode plane or point poles has to remain below 70 degrees because of solder, at least right now.
That makes total sense.
Now back to infrared. Infrared is typically a contact heat. It's not a radiant heat. And you need to have it hitting something and kind of radiating on something to do it. I don't know of anybody working on that as well. Maybe there's an opportunity there, but I don't know. I haven't seen or heard of anybody working on that at all.
So to wrap this up, I know there's probably a ton you missed again. You said, we don't know what type of landmine we walked into when we first started this with a can of worms, but is there any major pieces you felt like we direly miss before.
We the only other thing we talked a lot about bimetal technology. So the next thing on thermostats the next generation, which came out eight, nine years ago now, is electronic thermostats. So electronic thermostats take away that bimetal physical movement and use computer chips to control it. They're a lot more accurate. They are a solid state function. So you don't have the moving parts, neither thermagen. I believe jbj has some. There's a handful of manufacturers that have them, but that's the next generation. They're a lot more reliable. As far as the thermostat, they take away a lot of those pitfalls, but there is a higher cost to them. So we talked about casings, we talked about heating elements, whether it's PTC or nichome wire. We talked about the fill, and we talked about thermostats, and we talked a little bit about history and what not.
To do with zip ties. But I appreciate your time, Les. It's been a lot of fun. We'll get you on. Hopefully we didn't rise up your lawyers for episode three with you, but hopefully not. We appreciate all your time and honesty, sir, but last question. What in the secret R and D lab can you share with us that's coming out for any cobalt products?
Well, we're working on this led infrared heater.
God, we nailed it right to the wall.
Nailed it. We'll take a 1% of royalty and.
It'S controlled via brainwaves. It's pretty fantastic. You just think about what temperature you want and the Led infrared system just makes the tank exactly that temperature. It's pretty awesome.
And it's zip tie compatible, actually.
It's in the instructions. You zip tie it to your undergraduate.
Lift tube only above your thump, above.
Your tiny broken spirit. I love it.
All right again.
Thanks, Les.
And guys, stop by, be like, Joe, come visit us. And we're still planning on a couple of episodes here in the future. We're looking to do conspiracy theories as a podcast. So Jimmy is obsessed.
Conspiracy theories. I'm telling you, all the manufacturers are jerks and they're trying to make your life miserable. There's a lot of conspiracy theories.
We're going deeper than that, sir.
Let's do a two hour podcast and how to avoid filling warranties.
I am doing some hard work on some conspiracies that will blow your mind, that will make jimmy's obsession with bigfoot look like.
I can't wait to look like it's normal. I can't wait to hear all jfk and elvis are still working on stuff in a lab somewhere.
It'll be like the same level that Abraham Lincoln invented peanut butter. Conspiracy theory.
Didn't know that.
But if you have conspiracy theories, go to aquariumgyspodcast.com, email us, text us, call us, go to discord, leave us a message, and we love you. All love you. Anything.
Jimmy I'm sorry the sunset on the beach didn't work, guys, but hopefully we made it work. Once I got back to the condo.
I tell you, that.
Beautiful scenery with everybody from the bottom of our heart.
Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule and your vacation. Our apologies to your family for taking you away, but thanks a lot.
I mean, worst case scenario, now Adam is going to form himself a sex in the feet.
Thank you for that.
Bye, everybody.
Anytime. Really appreciate you guys.
Thank you. 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. I never knew that a Minnesota accent could be so sexy until I heard adam's voice.
Go, Frank kiss.
Don't you know bad for my boy don't you know.