Here's the story of timmy. timmy decided, gee, Mom, I want to start a shrimp tank. They went to their big box chain, bought a tank, and the representative told them that, yes, go home, set it up, and by tomorrow, you're ready for shrimp. Don't do that, all right? It's like burning a hole directly into your wallet, killing shrimp directly. All right? Go through the process. Be a good steward of your tank. Cycle your tank fully before putting shrimp in. I at least wait a minimum of two to three weeks for not only the cycle to complete, but also algae and bacteria in the tank to grow to feed the shrimp. So if you're looking for more information on how to properly set up a shrimp tank, you can go to Joe Shrimp shack.com, and he even has a telephone number 952-212-7913. And if you want to jumpstart that bacteria cycle, you can also buy bacteria directly from Joe at Joe Shrimp shack.com using promo code of Checkout Aquarium Guys for 15% off your entire order. Don't kill shrimp for no reason. We'd rather wait, purchase a shrimp on time and have a wonderful tank. Thank you. Joe shrimp shack.com. Welcome to the Aquarium, guys. Podcast with your hosts, Jim colby and Rob tolson. Jim, did you fart? Oh, wait, sorry. We're on the podcast, guys. Welcome to the aquarium, guys. Podcast. I am Rob olson.
You're a dick.
And I've added on this for you.
Thank you.
And Rob is what?
A dick.
Rob a dick?
Yes.
He tells us all the time. He does something embarrassing towards me, and now I have to kill him in the sleep.
I mean, I do it to Adam, but he's already under a towel.
How is house arrest going, by the way?
I'm not under house arrest.
Says the guy underneath a blanket. Okay. Yeah.
Well, guys, welcome to the podcast. We're happy to have you. What happened during the week?
Jimmy, what happened during the week?
You seem to walk in in a particularly frothy mood.
My pond poot it out.
It poured it out.
My pond booted out.
So you should tell the listeners what happened.
I have this pond in front of my home, and it's one of those 300 gallon horse trough looking thingies which is about, what, quarter inch thick. It's that high impact plastic.
It's a rubber made deal.
Rubber made deal. I mean, it's meant to be kicked by horses anyway, so I just dug it down into the ground so it's level of the ground, and I was losing about it's been up there for several months, and I started losing like, three or four inches of water per day. And so I had to shut it down. And I was very angry.
Did you ended up pulling out and figuring out what was wrong?
No. Still sitting here like that after speaking out. I kind of got drunk anyway.
Did you?
Yeah, I was going to do it and then I started drinking, and then all hell went.
Your wife called me to ask what one of my friends names were because she thought it sounded funny. So I could definitely tell you guys got some party going on.
Oh, yeah. We had a few drinks, so it all went well.
Before we go into our weekly updates, this episode is, again, how to be a baller on a budget when it comes to fish tanks. So behold the penny pinching episode you guys have all been requesting.
This episode brought to you by geico I wish.
30% it is brought to you by Joe Shrimp shack. I like Joe shack, where you can be the cheapest of bastards by using promo code aquarium guys at checkout for 15% off the cheapest of bastards. Cheapest of bastards.
Okay.
Yes.
He's got some nice cholo wood.
He does. For those who are listening, I think we told you a little bit in the ad, don't forget to send some love, joe's Way. I think there's a kidney stone that he had to have surgically removed.
No way.
Surgically removed?
According to, like, a vague Facebook post, I think it was surgically removed. Normally, they just use lasers and watch it blast out and watch you scream like a girl for a week. But if they have to surgically remove it, that's something else.
Usually they let you pee it out, don't they?
Oh, they force you. You have to go for, like, 36 hours of pure health before they'll even consider it. And even then, they'll be like, yeah, we'll blast it with a laser first.
But you can go through labor on a baby for 2 hours. And they gave you an epidural one, right?
Which, according to my female doctor, kidney stones are way worse than any pregnancy.
Really? I can't wait to hear all the feedback from the women out there listening right now.
All complaints are to go to Rob's olsen, courtesy of HR department.
All the ladies listening, your tiny virgin and your 18 pound baby is not my problem, all right? That's what the doctor said. I am not here to compare. Again, all complaints need to rob. I'm just saying.
Let me see. We hardly have anybody listening this evening, and we've already pissed off all the rest of them.
Well, yeah, I guess our job is.
Done here, so thanks. Have a good night.
Since we do updates each week on our lives a little bit, and then we read questions, this is how to be a cheat baller on a budget episode. So I want to tell about my mistake this week. I got last month's bill in the mail for my electric bill.
That was funny because you were crying like a little girl.
I have never had, like, a bad electric bill in my house. $200. That's like I guess I could swallow it. I have a lot of roommates, tanks running, all that. It was over $415.
I know why?
Why?
Because I didn't do my math and I had too many things plugged in.
No, electric rates have gone up because everybody is home due to COVID. So electric rates are up to 50% in some areas of the country because everybody's at home, everybody's got their air conditioning going, plus they've got their Internet and everything else. So the rate of power is now higher per person than what it originally would be because originally your kids are in daycare in the summer, or you're gone traveling. Well, nobody can do any of that stuff, so power bills went up.
So you are a factual man. Like, I cannot deny the tidbits of facts you throw at us. Like the whole titty cocka was it? nipple frog thing. Frost on frog things. Thought it was a joke.
Nipples.
Every time I try to fact check you, you seem to be amazingly detailed. So you're saying this I have a question. If the idea is that we're using more electricity at home, shouldn't we get a discount because the businesses aren't using that same amount of electricity?
No, that's not how it works.
No.
And I don't know if you've seen there's coin shortages, which I haven't had.
A problem with anywhere around here.
No, down in Minneapolis, we did. Down in Minneapolis? We did.
Well, I mean, they're always trying to pinch a penny.
That's right. God, you suck. So they're saying that the part of the coin shortages is that people keep their change for the whole year for a summer vacation, and nobody's cash that change in. And what's interesting now, here's a for instance. People are broke, but most banks, only the drive through is open. So in Detroit Lakes, which is our local area, there's three banks in town. All of them got rid of their change counting machines because you can't drop change off through the little tube because it's just drive ups. There's no lobby anymore, so you physically can't even go and cash your change in at the bank in our hometown because they have drive up windows and they will not accept change through the window.
I can't just give them, like, a monopoly money cartoon style bag of change.
No, technically, all money is monopoly money.
So the only way is through that horrible corn star at your local Walmart.
That is right. They charge you a fee. They take, what, 5% or whatever it is of the total.
I'm smelling a scheme here, ladies and gentlemen.
Also with the Trump donator I could be wrong on that one star. No, the guy that owns the coinstar machines. That one you might have to fact check me on.
I might have to, but I was gonna say I'm not, I believe, for Haram Bay last year. Or was it 2016? Who Harambella? Who's horamba. Yeah.
He.
Remember that story where the kid jumped in the gorilla pit and then they shot the gorilla to save the kid's life.
They shouldn't have shot the gorilla.
It was in Florida.
It wasn't a brand new gorilla.
No, it was a silverback gorilla.
Yeah, big ass gorilla. Or harambe.
Anything that comes over the freaking wall is food, right?
Or at least a toy at very worst. So he's going to eat. The kid fell down. Apparently somebody like I think the staff pulled out like a safety precaution. Who knew they had guns at the I figured they have tranquilizers. Why not tranquilizers? I mean help us out here at them. You're fast.
Okay, so if you actually go to the como zoo in the Minnesota zoo, you can actually see where they are. But I am not telling anybody because they are under lock and key.
And don't share that shit on the podcast. We don't want to be playing for another event happening in Minnesota.
Okay, so in case of dangerous animal gets out and they have yes.
So around the tigering exhibits the gorilla exhibits the komodo dragons. They have rifles that are why don't.
They have tranquilizer rifles?
Tranquilizer, yeah, they do, but tranquilizers aren't always going to work if an animals hopped up on adrenaline. Really?
Plus it takes too long.
Yes, I understand. It takes a minute or two for a giant silverback.
So if the tiger is chewing on your head and I have a tranquilizer gun I can shoot them with or the 30 odd six. Or I could go to lunch. I'd go to lunch.
I got questions for people that go to zoos, like what caliber that just sitting by for I do think it's.
A 30 odd six.
Yeah. Crazy.
No, that's a stopping bullet.
You could take down a bear with it, but it's still not like I don't know.
I will ask one of my zookeeper.
Friends please get back to us on that one because that is absolutely the most fascinating shit I've heard all week.
I have another fun fact for you.
Please.
So when they built the new football stadium in Minneapolis, the Us. Bank stadium, there is at least four snipers nest inside the coliseum, which they have during the football games. They have actual snipers up in the sniper's nest watching over the crowd. So if somebody in the crowd would have happened to sneak in a gun and start shooting, then they're allowed to take them out. So now they're putting snipers nest in coliseums.
How do they take them out too?
How does one wear an earpiece and then they get we have them on our sites. You have a go.
No, I think they have an automatic go.
Yeah, you watch too many.
I think they have an automatic go.
Like a kid with a pop gun or something.
What if it's somebody kicking winning field goal?
Or what if it's Drew brees just entering the stadium?
Oh, there he goes. Who.
Dad, it fell over.
We don't want him dead. We just want them winged.
We just want them winged. Yeah, just shoot us injured.
Shoot a thrown arm.
He never throws a football again that way.
What kind of podcast is this?
Well, I don't know.
Not one New Orleans violent podcast today.
Not one for New Orleans.
We don't have very much listeners, do we, in New Orleans? Yeah, we lost somebody because they're probably a New Orleans fan.
Poof poof. So you got any news, Adam? You're quite smiley today.
Well, I was telling you guys about how the nine foot great white shark got eaten by another bigger great white shark.
They figured that made your day.
That made my day. They also rediscovered a new species of shark that they thought was extinct. Yeah, there's four walking sharks off the coast of Indonesia. And then there was one, I think weasel shark. I think gray tipped weasel shark or something like that.
So are they like street walking sharks? I mean, like, hey, big boy, come on.
They are streetwalking sharks.
I knew it.
I just like how you paint that out. Hey, big boy.
What?
I think I saw those in a 90s cartoon once.
That was just TV show.
It's all true.
All right. Street sharks.
Jabberjaw.
I'm going to bring this back. Bring this back, right?
Why are we here?
We're here for fish. So let's answer some questions from some of our listeners. If you guys got questions, rob's a dick. Go to aquariumbased podcast.com. And on the bottom of the website you can send us an email. You can text message us on our phone number. You can call and leave a voice message. That's your favorite.
You can get an etch a sketch, draw a picture, and take a picture of the picture and send it to us. snail mail.
Yeah.
Wait, they've disbanded the post.
Nevertheless, no, we'll get a po.
Box.
I don't want anybody to know where.
I live, all right? So certainly do that. Otherwise you can join us in discord and ask questions live still on the website. So this question, I'm going to read it first, comes from Peter. This is my unheated tank. I have a brown algae growing on the glass. How to prevent it? It's 180 liters liters. Must be from UK. That's a 50 gallon tank, by the way. 47 gallonsish at 180 liters, eheim? Pro turns about 300 liters an hour. Reduced lights to 4 hours a day. Feed two cubes of brine shrimp. I don't know what cubes are measured.
In literal cubes of brine shrimp.
Frozen cubes.
Frozen.
Could they be the individual? Otherwise I see, like those big chunky bastards.
No, there's a frozen food.
This is another country. You never know. Frozen food every other day and a mixture of flake pellets and algae, wafers and bloodworms on the other days. I'm feeling that there's a lot of food happening here. Not only is there a lot of variety, that's a ton of food.
Like any day at your house, right.
He also does a 40% water change twice a week.
That's good.
Which I feel like he's trying to compensate for his over feeding. But regardless, the tank has five black banded sunfish. Might be the sunfish guy from before. I should check that. Six white creek gobies and one hill stream loach. I've recently seen mts where exploiting the good amount of plant growth would rid naturally without burning the tank. Gym. I do have cuddle bone in there to make up for calcium loss as I wish to breed. Sorry for the information. overload. Just trying to give as much as possible.
Trying to breed the stupid snails.
I don't think he's trying to breed the snails. I think he's trying to breed the fish.
I think the snails are showing.
Snails breed automatically.
So is this a picture of the tank that he sent you?
That is I gave you the picture. Jim and I are looking at it as well and I'm seeing a lot of brown algae. So I don't think he's getting enough light. He said he's cut back to 4 hours a day. Number one, that's not a lot of light for anything. I see that some of the plants in there have brown tips on some of the plants, but it's very hard to see over the brown algae. buck.
I see a bright light through the tank. Could that be a window or is that just a reflection of light from the hood?
I think it's a reflection, like going through it to the white wall behind.
Okay.
Check the phosphate levels. When you get that brown slimy algae, you have a lot of phosphates in your water that's all over everything. It's a diatom. That brown shit is a brown stuff is a diatom algae.
And it actually is that all of a sudden we're politically correct.
How dare you.
I agree with Adam.
So I'm wondering if the frozen food has a lot of phosphates in it because it sounds like he's feeding a lot of frozen and then if he's going to breed like the sunfish, doesn't he need it more open than that?
Well, this is just one section of the tank. We can assume that maybe it's more open. We don't know. He didn't give us a full tank shot. Shame on you. But looking at this right, the things I can go over. That was a ton of food he showed us. Flake pellet, wafer cube. It's a whole lot of mix. And there's no way he's taking tiny, tiny pieces of each and barely feeding the tank every day. Immediately I'd start switching to every other day. The only time that you want to feed more than that is especially on a full grown tank and you're not growing out anything. And cold water fish in particular, he's doing almost exclusively a cold water tank. So that tank should be sitting at 65 degrees as a minimum. Especially with those sunfish hillstrom loaches that whole thing.
Did he feed?
He should be feeding every other day lightly.
He doesn't have a heater in there, does he?
I think it's the same sunfish guy. He just told, remove the heater and keep it cold. So that's a ton of food feed every other day, especially for cold water fish. And instead of mixing the food every time you feed, mix up the food. So do just the cubes. Then the next day, just the flake and so on and so on. The only thing that you would have to worry about is algae, which clearly you have some stuff in your tank for placos. You didn't even list placo's as a species. So forget LG wafers. Just take those out of the diet. I really wouldn't worry about banded sunfish. Everything in that tank should be really feeding on protein. So scrap the wafers. rotate the food instead of mixing it, because even if you have not enough light, you'll get brown algae. And you said the phosphates, which is a sign that you're overfeeding something, will grow in your tank if you put too much food. You have brown algae. I'm pretty darn sure that's your something that's showing up, so let us know on that. But then also the rest of the email, it says secondly, when the leaves go brown on the plant, you just trim the leaf or the whole stem. That's to your discretion. It depends on the plant as well. If something's brown on the plant, I just try to trim it, but you may have to. And some crips just snap the whole leaf.
You can just pinch the leaf on it, right?
So do your homework per plant. That's the only recommendation I could do. There's a few of us on your tank. And then thirdly, he says, I'm a heterosexual male who listens to a lot of podcasts, and Adam has the sexiest voice out there. It's money.
It is.
It is money.
And that's what we should have to give Adam. Like, just the first 15 minutes. He could just read poetry, right in the British accent.
That's all butcher.
Yeah. And smoke a pipe in a smoking jacket. that'd be cool.
In a smoking jacket.
Adam does a lot of fan mail.
Yeah, he does.
Even guys who are straight are leaving up on Adam.
And I said a message back, said, thanks to the question while answering the show. My dude also hashtag no homo. Adam is sexy.
Yes, he is very sexy.
And he asked the next question. He literally messages back, I have not sent back. I want adam's permission. He asked if Adam is on pornhub.
He probably is.
What the hell?
Happy to use any reference to wind him up.
Wow. Well, I've seen the Adam wife on pornhub. I've never seen Adam.
Well, Adam pornhub. edick, can you answer this question for the audience?
What's the question?
Pornhub or any other site?
No, probably some dark web stuff because Adam we've all talked about Adam secretly, and we all know he's part CIA.
Kgb.
Yeah, he's a double secret agent.
Looking at him, he's guilty while being a coupon clipper. He's the real maverick here, ladies and gentlemen.
That's correct.
I think I saw him modeling snuggies on Amazon once. Oh, my gosh. I pay for that.
And adult diapers.
Hey, what? Guys, new goal. Adam will send you a personal picture if you PayPal him $15 of him and a snuggie.
Paying nothing and no, you get money.
That's how this works.
Yeah. How about you do like, a sexy shirtless top shot like you're magnum pi. From back in the 80s? Because you probably got a really hairy chest, don't you? I bet you not. Really? Okay, just checking. So that wasn't you on part? Because that guy had a lot of chest here.
Hot. All right, well, let's dive into our topic again about saving you money on your hobby, being an aquarium baller on a budget.
Just don't buy an aquarium drop Mike.
Actually, it gets cheaper the more aquariums you buy.
Wonderful.
That was my answer to the guy who's got LG. Why don't you just buy another tank and start over? This brought to you by aquarium guy.
I'm just going to have a bot that auto emails back. I think you should get another tank. I think you should get another tank. All right, so I'm going to go down a list that I've curated. Jimmy has a list as well. Adam has his quirky comebacks for everything. So please insert where you really want to. Mr. Adam.
Your butt.
Okay.
All right, so first things first. Let's pick on filters. So some of this comes back from our Tips, Tricks, and hacks podcast. I think it was episode eleven when we first started. We're going to repeat a couple of these, but again, we're episode like, was this 52? I think this is going to be we need to cover some ground again. Remind you of how we've already saved you money. You've earned double off of your $0 investment. Was that your joke, Jimmy?
No.
What was your joke? We're going to give you your money back. $0.
Double your money back.
Double your money back. Okay.
Two times. Nothing. Still nothing. Dickwood.
All right, so first on my list is filters. We've talked about this in the past and ways to save money. So, number one, quilt batting. If you want to replace your filter cartridge or repad the plastic insert that you put into the back, you're hanging the back filter. Use it for your canister, filter your sump. Quilt batting is the best way to go. So there is a caution to this. You have to have 100% polyester quilt bedding, not the mix. And some of them have some sort of chemical treatment. So the best way to check this out is take the quilt bedding, run it through some water. If you get any bubbles. You know, there's some chemical on it, and it's not kosher to use normally.
What they do is they take those, anything that they treat to be fire retardant is green being the foam or the batting. Did you know that?
Can we say that on the podcast?
Fire retarded, retardant, retarded. You are retarded.
I didn't want to offend anybody.
All of a sudden you don't want to offend somebody.
I'm not going to lie. I didn't even understand what you were talking about until Jimmy repeated it. I've been licking windows today, ladies and gentlemen. So again, quill batting. You can get two different types on top of the 100% polyester. You can get what they call the quilt stuffing. Don't get that. Get the sheets of quilt. Batting comes into a roll. You cut it to fit your canister, filter whatever filter media you want to use. And I can't explain how cheap that is. You can get like, a roll for, what, 910 bucks on Amazon, and it lasts forever. You can revincent it out, reuse it a couple of times before you throw it away.
Like your underwear.
Like my underwear, that's right. Also, for people that are listening, if you are a female or have a partner that happens to be a male in this day and age, hear me out. Don't buy used underwear on garage sales. Men have a tendency to wear them until there's a reason they want to get rid of them. So public service announcement. Thank you, Jimmy, for the tangent.
Are you speaking from experience?
I am. My mother used to buy sales.
Not one time have I ever seen underwear.
Oh, I have.
On a garage sale, you need to.
Go to the ones where they're missing teeth. Underwear.
No way.
I've seen boxers that have been through one too many rounds. I'm just saying. Right.
So this weekend I was listening to xm Radio because I have xm radio, and they had a comedian on from somewhere in Wisconsin, and he was talking about that. People in Los Angeles, where he's from, don't know what hell a flea market is compared to what they know in Wisconsin. And he told a story about when he was a child age of seven, he bought a live grenade from a live grenade from a guy at a flea market, and he brought it and showed it to his mom, and she goes, what the hell is that? He goes, It's a grenade. And so she went back to the guy and said, is this a live grenade? And he goes, yeah, but I bent the pin a little bit so he can't get it out. And he goes, you take it back and give us our money back. He goes, well, the kid talked me down to $3. She goes, here's your $3, and gets back the grenade back to the guy, and he says, so my mom says, now here's your $3 to buy. Go buy something else you could use. So he goes, Me and my cousin went and bought a whip.
Because that's safer.
Yeah, because this is Wisconsin, and that's how they roll. So if you want to get a live grenade or whips, you go to the flea market in Wisconsin.
Yeah, I was watching one of those YouTube things. They found a live grenade in the river because they're just scuba diving. They had to, like, call in the bomb squad and everything. It's a process. Like, weird deal. anyways, back to the subject filters. So quilt batting, sure, but even better for the hang on the back filters because they have those cartridges. You normally go to your pet store, local Walmart, if whatever brand that you purchase to try to match or order online, they're expensive. Some of them come with carbon when you don't necessarily want to use it and just not fun.
And they've got to also have the generic ones that will fit into your so, I mean, if you have a name brand one that you're spending $9 per box, you probably can find them for half that price just by the generic form that fits in there.
And even the generic forms that I've seen kind of like didn't fit right or they were trying to pop out panels to make it fit. I've seen a lot of bad ones over the years. I haven't bought anything recently. But go online, get yourself a matin filter. It's essentially just a black sponge. Again, it's cut to fit, but this is more of the sponge filter esque sponge. It fits right in to your hang in the back filter. Just make sure that you're cutting it not too high, because let's say that your filter clocks, right, over time, it catches enough, you want it so it overflows the top and doesn't overflow out the back of the hang on the back filter like I did two weeks ago.
But then you got a 30% water change. Wasn't that much easier, right?
But onto my carpet was not the.
Plan, but it's still 30% of water change. It's a win in my book.
Right? So these mountain filters, I've yet to replace mine. I've used mine. The last ones that I've done, I've done quite a few. Generally, the filter burns out before I actually get rid of the matin sponge. They last that long. So, yeah, by far the cheapest way for hanging the back filters. Now, we told you also in the podcast before about pot scrubbies. If you want to buy biomedia, normally you have to go and get these bio balls, plastic pieces, beads, and it's increasing how expensive that stuff is. I've even 3d printed my own. Each ball took 30 minutes to print. It was insane. Instead, go to your local dollar store and buy yourself pot scrubbies. They're just plastic. Take a sniff. Make sure that they're not covered in detergent. I will sniff a pot scrubby. Sir. You go ahead and laugh at me. I'll sniff it up.
You're sniffing underwear? You're sniffing pot scrubbies. You've got a problem?
I didn't sniff the underwear.
I doubt that very much. You probably did.
I think everybody there smelled what was going on.
Smell what the rock is cooking.
But yeah, pot scrubbies are the best way I have in my big sump pot scrubbies. They work wonders cheap. However, they don't work moving, but they're still fantastic for wet dry or just wet. Give it a try. So do we talk about the electric bill next? Jimmy, you can talk about your electric bill.
I know it's still kind of a sore subject on your part.
It's very sore. So again, over $415 from my last electric bill. Adam said apparently because electric bills went up 50%, I'm going to check my electric bill now because that was a crazy amount of time.
Check your price per watt kilowatt hour, because mine was like, it's like up to $7 a kilowatt hour now.
It was very hot last month, too, so central air probably never turned off. You are working from home. You can't turn off the light when you walk out of the room. I've been here.
Well, here it was, the grand, like, neglect from rob's all the way around. So number one, my AC unit, which is a fine AC unit, the furnace heater filter was clogged, so that was stopping air from being pushed through my house like it should be. Upstairs, I have two floors of basement, and upstairs, the upstairs vents were basically except for like, two were all shut because someone got too cold. I was not happy. So I went in every room, bathroom, kitchen. There's literally a towel in front of the one in the kitchen because it made my wife's feet cold. So very angry how she plugged. My entire house is AC, so it ran 24 hours a day. I had it turned to a mode called cool to dry. So it reads the humidity in my house and then turns on regardless of temperature. So if it gets like 65% humidity, boom, it turns on to try to dry it off. So what I didn't think is I have three other roommates with their own bathroom the. thermostat is right next to the door of a continual stream of people taking showers and opening the door to let the humidity hit the sensor. So literally running 24 hours a day.
And you have a few tanks downstairs.
Just a few, adding more to the humidity. So I shut that feature off. And the tanks I have, I have a 125, I have a 75, a 90 square, a 60 tall. I have a new shrimp rack I'm building, and then an entire rack of 910 gallon tanks all in one circulating.
Sump and a better rack.
So out of all of those and a better rack oh, yeah, the better rack, too. Forget about that. I have a was it 34 tank, better rack. It's kind of like the one you see on Aquarium Co op. In fact, it's the exact same one the Aquarium Co op has on their YouTube channel. Fantastic beta rack. Highly recommended if you ever have an opportunity. They're quite expensive, but I had enough running, so I decided, damn, that electricity bill is big. So my biggest recommendation to you, find things you need to unplug. So if you have a multi tank room, such as I do, instead of having each tank with at least one air pump, instead have one linear pump and run pvc pipe in the ceiling. That's what I did. I put pvc pipe up. I removed, I think in total, was it 14 pumps and filters in total. I have like a little pile I posted on Facebook, definitely electric savings there. I switched a lot of tanks over to sponge filters rather than two hang on the backs, for instance, or a canister, and hopefully going to save quite a bit of money.
And we'll give a report next month when you get your electricity bill.
Right? And if it's still high, I'm going to personally take a shit in adam's lawn.
Because it's adam's fault, right?
Because he said something, so now it's his fault.
Well, I will tell you that when I had my store, I dropped my electric bill. Let's see, $550. The first month I switched from hang on the back filters to sponge filters and under gravel.
Wonderful. There's two number one air pumps. Do a linear, if you have a room, one air pump to pump everything. And then you can switch to sponge filters, heat the room instead of heating the tanks. I can't do that, particularly where I'm sitting at. You have a bedroom down here, and it'd be very hot to sleep. So if you can't also look at heater controllers. So a lot of the heaters that you have are efficient to a degree, but they really don't do the job. Having a heater controller is more accurate than the temperature. Stops the heater from running excessively. Certainly worth the small investment on the heater controller. Look into those as well. Now, Jimmy, what I picked on you in the past, you said those good old fashioned rotary timers to use, I made fun of you.
I see them from lights when I had Christmas cheer. But since I've gotten on this podcast, my Christmas cheer has gone down.
It's just pooped. Yeah, well, I'll get you eggnog this year, and I will eat crow and say that timers are a wonderful thing.
Timers are wonderful things. And they do have efficient timers now. And they have timers that don't sound like an egg timer. They go tick, tick, tick, tick. Yeah, definitely not always an egg timer, Jim. It could be a bomb, couldn't it? CIA guy we made a bomb joke.
With the guy with a towel around his head.
Yeah, I don't fly with you. We should go to the airport and just hang out. Adam, no.
They actually let you on planes.
No, shut up.
They do not set up for me, quack.
I can just hear him be like, hey, Jim, why don't we go to panda Express? It's like, a two hour drive. I'm going to take off early for work. Go there, get a boarding pass, go to the Express. Language. You thought it was the boarding pass and boom. panda Express.
I would just never say, Boom, panda Express and a boarding pass in the same sentence.
No, not good.
See, he knows the CIA nsa code words.
That's right. See, I would take Adam to the airport and then pretend like I know him, and then at the very end, when I hand him a suitcase, I go, thanks for taking my suitcase, stranger. And then just run that end.
You have a Beats pill strapped to.
You going click, click, boom, we're going hell.
Okay. Yeah.
So, other things to save electricity, because that is the biggest savings right now. I'm on an old man thing to shut off your lights.
You turn in your dad. That's funny.
I have it's happened.
Do you get off my lawn to the other kids, too?
Mainly because I'm raked over the coals with my electric bill. Get off my lawn. Led, if you still have zeppelin, whoo.
If you stay away to heaven, I love it.
You still have a fluorescent old. Or even, like, the glass bulb hood over your tank. Stop it. Throw that shit out. You're old. All right.
No, sell it to who?
Tell me how to work.
All right, you're not wrong. If Adam can buy underwear at his garage sale, you can sell your wait.
I never bought underwear at a garage sale. That was you.
You can sell your old fluorescent light on Facebook to scam someone else, but be smart. Get rid of those things.
Or just use it to grow your favorite plant.
Led lights are not hard to get. I've heard people having mixed results with plants. I have not had a problem. I don't know if I'm buying the correct lights. I'm just buying the cheapest white Led lights and I have growth like a Mad Men. Do your homework. Find one they're cheaper than hell on Amazon. And get leds. They're going to say way more than.
You kind of plan to grow in. rob's.
Yeah, rob.
Well, I mean, they don't have water pot yet, so we're going to work on that together, aren't we, Jimmy?
Technically, you could probably grow pot in your water. It'd be fine.
I wonder if they have, like, a hydropodic pond plant.
You can grow all plants in water and they'd be fine.
Well, for those who are listening, we do not condone doing any narcotics in your water. But if you do, email us at the aquariumgyspodcast.com. We have the website at the bottom we're really intrigued to listen to your pock roll stories on your aquaponics. You can also switch out your T five bulbs and your fluorescent lights. They have bulbs that are Led inserts. You just swap them out.
Yes. I did that in my kitchen. I did that in my kitchen. What? What?
No. Keep going, Jim. I'm going to ask this question afterwards.
He's almost there. Keep going.
That's right. Should we play the theme from jeopardy here? No, not jeopardy.
Not jeopardy. Click boom. That's his favorite.
Oh, that's right. No, in my kitchen, I have a four foot fluorescent light. Holds four light bulbs.
Wait, is this the lights that look like nipples?
No.
Okay, just clarify.
Not downstairs in the bar. God, I hate you people.
Hurry up. We're waiting. We're on a suspense here.
Did you say hurry up or herpe up? Sound like herpes up to me? No. Anyway, I replaced the damn fluorescent light bulbs with Led. Fluorescent light bulbs cost me about $12, and I went through my entire house. And you don't think you have that many light bulbs go through your house? We had 56 light bulbs in our house we replaced with Led. Just took it up to shorts, replaced them all. We dropped our light bill by 25. $30 the first month, which then I took that money and I bought beer. Just so I can deal with you people.
Contact us. mcgolden light. We want to be sponsored. We are a Minnesota podcast.
That's correct.
Can you take four foot strip lights and pop those out and put the Led things in them?
The four foot strip lights?
Yeah.
I mean, I'm assuming you're talking about the long fluorescent lights.
Yeah.
They have Led four foot floors. They look like fluorescent light bulbs. Four foot long, but they're Led.
Some of them need a ballast. So talk to your guy at Home depot to make sure you're getting the correct ones.
But yes, it was going to cost me about $150 to replace my light above to go to Led fixture. But he said, just try these Led light bulbs for a while, and they work just fine.
Tada.
Good to know.
So use your timer on your lights. Because humans are horrible. I wake up at noon. I'm going to shut them off at one stop. That keep your fish in a consistent schedule and save a couple of bucks. Use timers on your light, timers on your pumps if you only want running certain times a day. Timers with all of this.
Do not use timers on your grandmother's oxygen machine. That's not good.
No, definitely not. So last thing on my electric bill rant right is, are you still on this? I am. Electric bill is important, man. Where are you saving your most money, especially right now? According to Adam. So sumps, normally you would have a hang on the back filter. canister I recommend sponge filters? Never get rid of those. But as far as big tank filters, sumps are, bar none, my favorite, especially when you have a multitank. I have a 75 gallon on a stand and 125 gallon on a stand. I am now going to be putting that on both those tanks. On one sump, I'm going to share them having an overflow on the side, and that will drastically not only reduce my electricity, but also maximize my capacity for filtration. I'll have a wet dry filter. Hopefully I'm going to make them out of rubber made drawers. You can go to Walmart. They have those three tier shelves. Works perfect. You can put a bigger toe on the bottom if you want to feel safe. And have them run both tanks and.
Put a uv in tada uv heater.
Make sure your heater is above your point. Go to refer back to our episode with less of cobalt. It will ruin your warranty with certain companies, but great place to put your heater, in my opinion.
Certainly.
Check it out. Sumps shared on tanks. If you have multiple jimmy.
What?
I'm speaking too much. What do you have on your list?
What do I have my list kind of with the talking about heaters, if you're really watching your budget, you can run cold water fish with no heater, which will save you a bunch of money. Done.
White clouds are pretty, but you also.
Can run I mean, if you're a discus lover, you're running your heater at what, 85, 86. But if you're just running neons and cardinal tetras, you're at 72 to 76. So just by the choice of your fish will affect your budget with the cost of your fish plus with the cost of running your heater and really do your homework.
Some of these fish, they say a recommended rate, but they can go lower. For instance, like African cichlids Andrew Henderson, which is a listener of the podcast, he's from the Minnesota Aquarium Society and he has an entire basement that we helped. There's a video on it, but he ran his basement a lot lower. I think he was like 70 degrees or a little lower than that. Certainly do your homework.
All right. Another one I had too, is we're just talking to scrap before we went on the air here. And you can custom build your own stands and save yourself a tremendous amount of money. There's a million ways to build stands. There's a thousand different woods. There's some people have used blocks and then dressed up the blocks with a wooden skirt. So just by building your own custom cabinet could save you hundreds of dollars.
So to go on the website, right, just on one of the main box stores, the amount of money that they charge for aquarium stands is outrageous. It's not necessarily that they even do them individually. They may do them online, but you'll get I've seen 55 gallon tanks with a stand and hood combo go for 600 $700 for a fancy one.
Right.
It's generally made out of crappy wood enough where it will hold the stand correctly, but it doesn't look that great. The hood may not come with the features you're looking for. Skip it. Build your stand the way you want it, and you'll probably cost a lot less, although you have to put the work in. And then as far as your hood goes, buy your Led light elsewhere or get it separately because a lot of times it's cheaper. And then use glass lids or even the polycarbonate clear plastic lids that you'll find. It like your Home depot menards, they work just as well.
Yes. Depending on what you want to do with lids and stuff, you can go out and buy hinge that hinge that flips your lid back and forth. You can buy that in six foot lengths, and you can go to your local hardware store and have them cut the glass to your specifications. The one thing you'll need to do with your glass is you'll need to take a memory cloth or some sandpaper and smooth out the edges. But you can make your I think cost on a 55 gallon lid is about $29 cost. So I don't know what it retails for a lot more than that. And you probably can make it for about seven or $8.
Well, let's even go further. Right, so I just did my 60 gallon tank, right? And that cost me $2 a pain. It was four panes because I had to have them hinged. So you're looking at $8 in glass. I bought handles. I got this little three M hooks. I was under, what, $5 for the two hooks I needed and piece of sandpaper, what, $3?
Right.
So I'm under way under $29.
Yeah. You can buy a lot of sandpaper for $3.
I just forgot the hinge. I just didn't want the hinge that said it was just another piece of glass.
You can go online and buy those little aqua lid holders. So if you want it to look a little more professional. But like Rob said, you also could use the little three M, the command strips, hook, command strip hooks, or whatever you want. Or you could take some gum and an old stick and put on there for all I care. Or what?
Just lick it?
No.
No. Okay, fine. What else you got, Jimmy?
What else do I have? I tell you what. We were talking earlier about equipment. How many of you out there have boxes? I know I do. Boxes of filters, back behind filters, sponge filters and stuff. If you would spend a half hour one afternoon on a Saturday going through that box, you probably can get enough new old filters, swapping parts and stuff. You probably get two or three of them running. And so you wouldn't have to go and spend a bunch of money on a new back filter, if that's what you want. I know when Rob came back from Ohio fish rescue, you came back with a truckload of stuff from Big Rich, and we've been using that stuff and going through that. And what is one man's garbage is another man's treasure. So you absolutely can save a bunch of money just by going through your old equipment and making that decision. Is this worth keeping? So I might need a part later on, or just save all the parts that you might need and throw the rest away and keep your fish room nice and clean.
So when doing this right, the best place to get rid of your equipment used to be craigslist. You can still use it, but in my opinion, craigslist is sketchy and it's for truckers looking for a good time, stay away from it. Instead, go to Facebook Marketplace, which is the new modern version of craigslist. However you feel about Facebook, it's still handy to use.
And you don't have to be a member of Facebook to use it, do you?
You at least have to have an account if you want to sell something. But if you just want a Facebook stock without messaging someone, you can certainly use it without an account.
I don't even know what Facebook is. How about on it? Another thing that just saved me a bunch of money, somebody locally called me up and said, hey, I have a whole bunch of water, lettuce and pond duckweed. I'm just going to throw it. Do you want it? And I went, Heck, yeah. And they gave me a little container full, and I want to say it was probably about a foot in diameter, this container, and I threw it in my 300 gallon pond. It covered maybe one 16th of my pond, and in two weeks, it covered 90% of my pond. And it is so growing so fast. So if you can get plant trimmings from a friend or an acquaintance and start your plants, I mean, half the fun of having plants is watching them grow, right?
So I'm not going to lie to you. Most of the plants that I get, I don't buy plants traditionally. Like, you go to a petco or order a special online unless I need that one. I like that tiger lotus. That was a wonderful bulb to buy online. But otherwise, most of the time I just talk to a plant enthusiast and say, hey, man, what if I take you out to dinner, pay $50, and you fill up a bucket of trimmings, give me whatever, however you got. And I've never had a true plant enthusiast turn that down like a free burger and some cash. Wonderful. And I have been given the most crazy amount of plants. I'll take a picture, send it to somebody, and like, oh, you have so and so. I'm like, oh, is that what that's called? And I just enjoy the crap out of it.
And how many times have I got home from here with a bucket full of plant trimmings that you've taken off? Yeah, it's a heck of a way because you could easily spend 810, $12 on one plant. And if it's something that you really, really want, I mean, I get it. But for the most part, people just want plants just to look at and they're not really trying to become a plant expert.
Plant people are wonderful if you just give them a flat amount of money and say, surprise me. Highly recommend it. And also if you're trying to look for places network. We mentioned Facebook. That's where a lot of people have those Facebook groups where they sell stuff in your area. But also look for the aquarium societies. The aquarium societies are not just beneficial as far as lectures, information, but also the swaps that they put on, like the actual local area swaps. I know right now with COVID everything's on pause, but you still have the Minnesota Aquarium Society just finished doing an online auction. It was wonderful to try to swap. People could communicate. We all joined in on Zoom. I think there was probably, what, 70 of us online in total all night long. It was two weeks ago.
Nobody tells a week ago. Yeah. Thanks for sharing.
You guys are busy.
You're still a deck Poopon robs.
You are Poopon robs. But no, check those out. You'll find a lot of great things and save a lot of bank.
What do you got, Adam?
With my shop, I switched all my back filters to the underground and sponge filters. He did the room to make tanks all the same. temp. I also did it so that I put my hottest tanks on top, so that like for my discus and stuff. That was always on top because heat rises.
He used to take a lot of fishing on trade, too, and make money.
But that's because you have to, otherwise the people dump them in the rivers and lakes and everything, too.
No, Adam, he's the attractive, all in, skim gentleman that drives a bentley. So he doesn't care about saving money. He's all here to burn his checkbook. Look at the smile. That's teeth whitening right there.
Oh, my God. It must be nice if you roll around on your Rolls royce in wabasha, Minnesota. Yeah.
Okay.
People look up to you and go, yours, handsome man.
He might as well be from Singapore. Well, I'm going to go a couple more on my list, then let's go on to a small rant. Many of you listening to podcasts may be experts. We know we have a lot of new people, but for those of you that have been in the hobby long enough, you should know better. If you have stuff that's sentimental, I understand. Keep it. I have an old MetaFrame tank I want to make. It a historic piece of the 1930s aquaria. I get it. Have fun. But if that's not sentimental to you, throw the shit away, right? If you have an old heater that's from the 60s, probably not energy efficient guys, right? If you have an old rotary piston pump, you have to oil every six months. Definitely going to be an electricity burner. If you have a filter that's been making a slight noise, but it's been still running for the past two years, I guarantee you, you spent six times the amount on electricity than just buying out a new filter. So if you have shit that's verifiably old, it's going to be using more electricity 90% of the time.
If your filters make in a noise, it could be something so simple as a piece of gravel in the impeller motor, or just change the impeller because those magnets wear out after a while.
That's a cheap fix.
Do you watch saving dory. Too much.
Marine land filters. The Bio Will filters, the ones you buy now, they're not modular, they're all fused together. They're a little cheaper because they're made in China nowadays, but they still work great. But when you go in there after it's been used for a while and Jimmy comes over and kicks up your sand and the filter ingests it, it grinds in that plastic gear, and even if you clean it out, it'll still grind forever. That is not an efficient running filter. A new filter is probably, what, $30? Got a new one? Just pitch it. I was the biggest culprit of this, going through and doing this whole one pump air circulation in my tanks, trying to replace it with sponge filters, and threw out a bunch of grindy old filters that have been running forever.
Yes, anything to save a buck.
So before we had our podcast of tips, tricks, and hacks, and one of the things that people kept commenting and still messaging us about is how Jimmy recommended the public to steal rocks.
Yes, absolutely. You don't pay for rocks, people. You go out and pill for rocks on a daily basis. Just a quick story. We used to have our wholesale operation right next door to a bank, and they had this beautiful rock scape out there, and it got dark at night. I'd go over there and fill a bucket and I'd do that for a couple of weeks. And then we used to have all these tanks full of different types of cyclists. We had electric limited chromos and the orange chromos and different things. And we found that they just did much better if they had a few rocks in the tank to be able to hide and stay away from each other. Because when you throw in 50 electric yellow bit of chromos in one tank, they become a little bit territorial. So don't go out and buy rocks. Just go to your landscaping place if you want to be honest. And you know, though, you can buy rocks for $20 a ton. I don't think you're going to need £2000 of rock.
We even had Tyler C eight messages. They're listening to live the podcast right now. You can join as well by going to court. We asked Podcast.com and joining discord, but they message in saying going to landscape centers. Local collecting were legal and or scheduled rock for decor. No parking lots. Jimmy, if I did this wrong the first time, my bad. So local sourcing, you can't just, like, go in some guy's property and take it. But farmers, they love it being taken. So go to your local farmer. They do what's called rock picking because they want to use their machinery. They don't want big rocks in their field. So yearly they try to go through, pick as many rocks out, put them in a bucket. It's a lot of work. So you can either donate your time and pick some rock and take home as much as you want, or they already have a pile that's pre picked that you can either give them a couple of bucks or they probably just be happy enough. You can take whatever you want. I mean, it's for an aquarium. You're not taking a truckload. Or you could be for a pond. Who knows?
You don't know.
Or if you know somebody with a creek that runs through their property, just be like, hey, man, can I go on a little nature walk? I feel like there's banjos involved, like, hey, you want to go for a walk?
No, not with you.
Not with the missing team. All right, so the other thing is food. Now, before we've had a conversation about food in the podcast, buying in bulk is a double edged sword. So what I want to say is buy accurately. So know how much you feed. Know how much it's going to take you to go through, say, six months worth or a year's worth of food. And buy appropriately. You don't want to get yourself a five gallon pail of food and just use a third of it before it expires. We've seen a lot of people do that and then feed old food. All the vitamin C is gone, all the food. And there's really minimal to no nutritional value to your fish, and you're feeding expired garbage. So do your homework. Know how much you feed, and buy appropriately to save as much money as possible while not wasting with the expiration date.
Yeah, take your one can of food and fill it from your bucket. And then each and every time you take food out of that bucket, get all the air out of that bag and spend 30 seconds and get that bag as tight as you possibly can to get all the air out of it, because the air is what degrades it. And we just had I can't remember who it was we had on the podcast. And he schooled us so hard. It was less that's right, less schooled us. So hard on how to take care of food and how it deteriorates very quickly once it gets the moisture in it.
And he also gives the recommendation that if you do have the space in some fridge, put your food in the fridge. Flake. Dry flake food last longer and better in a fridge. So if you have a beer cooler you don't mind sitting in, throw it in there.
Yeah. I thought it was a great idea to put it into the freezer. But then he schooled me and said, well, that moisture then gets kind of frozen onto the flake.
You're killing some of the probiotics.
Yes. Oh, that's right. probiotics.
Because yogurt for fish is cool.
It is.
Hashtag, fruity, pebble, flake at cobalt.
Yogurt is pudding's. Well cultured, cousin. You know that.
Did you hear it before we started?
No, I'm saying that yogurt is pudding's. Well cultured, cousin. Think about it.
Yeah, he said culture.
I said cultured. Or I could tell you some more snail jokes.
No. God, no. We went over those on the best stuff. That was pretty great. Also, grow your food. Right. You don't have to just do flake or all these crazy foods. We heard Peter at the beginning of the podcast, feeding All These Different foods. Do alive. Guys, get yourself a daphne culture running. If you're daring and hate your plants and want to have the risk or have hunting fish, grab a scuds tank, grow some pests and feed live. Even I've heard of people doing, like, an earthworm bed in the backyard. Get the spade and pitchfork out. Not only is live food, most of the time better in those circumstances, not feeding goldfish or other live fish, but daphnia is a fantastic thing to culture. It was what? Vinegar eels? That's another thing for baby fish.
Micro eels, 1000 things.
There's a really good book you could get, and it's Mike hellwig, I think, is his name, or heliwig it's a really good book. It's like 30 or $40, but it's well worth getting. And it literally goes with, like, step by step on how to culture your own food. And it gives, like, everything from in cifornia all the way to vinegar eels to everything that you could think of.
And I have that book. I do too, because Adam got it for me.
Yes, I did.
It's a really good book.
Yeah, it's a very good book.
Hey, Adam, I'm your friend too.
Yeah. suck it.
All right, what else do you got, Jimmy?
What else do I got? It sounds stupid, but a lot of these pet stores will adopt you a fish to save you some money. And it's usually somebody's mean fish or somebody's too big fish. But depending on what you got going on I mean, you could go into your local pet store and either adopt a fish or buy a used fish.
Or if you live by Ohio, you can contact your local fish rescue at Ohio Fish Rescue, right.
And save yourself some money if you're on a budget and there's nothing wrong with saving a fish and giving it a good forever home.
If you can adopt a cat, you can adopt fish. Nobody got to do your homework.
Nobody wants to adopt a cat because cats are too independent and mean and.
They are riskier tank.
I think they have an attitude, too. I don't like cats.
Okay, you're a dog person.
I am a dog person, yeah.
Excellent. What else, Jimmy?
That's all I got right now.
Well, I have ways to save money. So we mentioned before, craigslist, Facebook marketplace, if you find used tanks, I'm really thrifty I wait for the crazy deals of having a tank that has bad seals, because sealing a tank is really easy. I wait for any type of old part of the lady got ripped off. I want some work on the tank. And my goal buying used is fifty cents a gallon. That's my rule of thumb. Unless it's a really big tank. If you have something 125 gallons of north I'll do. Above fifty cents a gallon sometimes, depending on the quality of the tank. But that's my goal. If I get a gallon in the United States of America, that is a great place to be at tanks. I have too many tanks that I want to buy. I can't afford spending premier prices. That's where I get new tanks. You'll want to look for your dollar.
Per gallon sale at your local big box store.
It used to be just one store, but then both of the big box stores in the United States picked it up. So watch for it. You can go to fish forums. They post it ahead of time. Like, hey guys, this month dollar per gallon sale coming up. They have limited it, I think. Now you can only get like 45 gallons, used to be up to 55. So check your store's limitations. But for new tanks, just the barebone tank, dollar a gallon used. I want to be about fifty cents a gallon.
Well, you know why both big box stores do the same sale, right?
Why is that?
They're both owned by the same place.
Are they now?
Yeah, they're both owned by the same hedge fund.
I did not know that.
They're no longer competition. It's all in oligopoly, ladies and gentlemen.
It used to be what used to be ten gallon, 20 gallon, 20 gallon highs, 40 gallon breeders and 55 gallon tanks. But I think they've eliminated 55 gallon tanks now.
No, you can still get 55 g on sale.
I've not seen them. The last time I did get notification from one of the big box stores that they had a bucket gallon sale. And I said to my wife, said, hey, they got a bucket gallon sale. And she goes, why don't you go fill up the tanks you have downstairs?
Now, again, the exceptions are large tanks and then anything that's two gallons and below. It's really difficult as well to get new tanks for. Fifty cents a gallon. Doesn't really happen. If you get like a two and a half gallon tank, you're looking anywhere from as low as $8 to as high as 20 so used. Still, I like to go for the gallon, but expect to pay $5, $6 for that same tank.
What else you got robbed?
Well, you can also use that promo code from Joe Shrimp shack for 15% off using quarrym guys at checkout.
You don't take in any type of code if you go into your internet provider and you start googling stuff. There's a lot of places that they'll have coupons for Amazon for different things and stuff. So if you spend the time, take the time to go looking for deals. There are deals out there every day.
And most of the places that you go for, like online ordering for Live aquaria, Dry aquaria, they'll have some sort of place that says subscribe for updates, do that. Most of the time they'll give you coupons or notifications when sales are happening. But my last and best piece of advice is strictly don't be dumb. It's the thing that costs you the most in the end. So whether it be not researching a fish and realizing that they're going to eat each other and lose money on dollars just disappearing and dying in your tank, or that you didn't do the temperature stuff correctly, I think the best example of don't be dumb is not just doing the homework and research, going online, trying to learn about it as much as you can. Deep dive, but also take the time. Find your club, find a person that is an expert that knows and has had the creature before. I'm going to give you an example of shrimp. I've had good luck with shrimp in the past, but it's never been my best skill set. It's always adding shrimp to certain tanks that are already established. And I don't really care if they live or die. They don't do that well. And I went to Joe Shrimp shack and had Joe seen his entire rack, it was low cost set up. He had a bunch of small tanks in the rack, no heat. The only thing he put was one pump to run all the air. And all the tanks gave me tricks and tips on how to build my own shrimp rack. And I have what, four tanks now trying to set up to 20 tanks, slowly putting them as I get the pieces in and order them. It's expensive, you don't want to do it all at once. And these tanks, the four tanks that I have are literally exploding. There's almost no maintenance. I do water changes every two weeks as instructed. And it just has a wonderful experience that has been by far the most painless process I've done in fish. Keeping altogether. So do your homework. Take time. Talk to someone that's done it the right way.
Take your extra shrimp or fish and use it for store credit or cash to purchase what you need so your hobby does not cost you a fortune. Right?
So I think you got one big one, don't you, Jimmy?
One big one. Let me pull it up here. Adam, you got anything? I dropped this.
Adam?
Did I what?
Did you fart in your towel?
No.
Are you sure?
Yeah. What the hell is the matter with you today, Rob?
Yeah, I just got a fart finish.
I miss you. And I smell something terrible over here. I'm not going to lie. After going through some of these filters, I found out I have two big hang in the back filters in the back of my 125 aquarium. And I pulled one of them off. That was readily and then I realized, oh, this other one hasn't been running for a while. I plug it in just to initiate the egg salad basement. I didn't know how long it's been unplugged. Clearly it's been unplugged a while. I don't do water changes on my giant planted tank that often. I just kind of top off. I didn't see the flow because the plants are covering it or that I would normally see bubbles for flow. And I turned it on. Biggest egg salad smell I have ever experienced from a tank.
And it made you happy.
All right, well, I felt grossed out.
I don't know if there's any truth to this. We talked about this before we went on air. I'm just going to read this. I found this online. A way to save money and water changes. Now, this is the marine aquarium. And for those of you don't know, that's an aquarium with saltwater in it. Very fish for your beginners, Adam. For you. Anyway, here's what I'm reading. And don't take me to school and beat me. I'm just reading what I'm reading.
It says, what you're saying is we don't necessarily condone what's going to be said here.
I want somebody to try this and call me, okay? And I want them to send me their excess nitrate remover.
All right? So do continue.
All right. It says here, water changes. Instead of doing repetitive water changes to reduce nitrates, think about using vodka or ethanol. It's a method to reduce nitrates. A pint of cheap vodka or a bottle of ethanol from your local drugstore costs less than sea salts. And it's a lot easier to squirk 5 vodka in your tank twice per week than it is to do a water change. What a novel idea.
I don't know where to start. I figured that there's a meme waiting to happen for this. Like in Russia, nitrates don't get removed. It removes the nitrates.
I just love this. I'm thinking two swigs for the tank and four swigs for me. It's just water changes are going to be so much easier at my house. So I don't know any truth to it, but I'm on this website and I'm reading it, and the stuff they had before, it made a lot of sense. This one I kind of went so.
I can just hear the clickbait. Potatoes will help you stop water changes.
Like what? I don't know. Why not? So if you want to try this, buy yourself a cheap bottle of vodka. I would suggest getting anything from a gallon on up. Just make sure you have enough, because once you probably ruin your entire marine aquarium of $2,000, you probably want to drink that vodka to make yourself feel better.
My personal thought, how is this supposed to work? Can anybody explain this to me?
In my theory, right, because it's alcohol based and Avedica is supposed to be one of the pure alcohols, it's closest to everclear without the full burn that when you pour alcohol in water, it will oxidize. Alcohol will automatically evaporate into the air over time, and it's probably grabbing and oxidizing nitrates while it's at it is my theory. Because again, when you cook with it, it cooks out. If you let alcohol sit like gasoline, even the same type of properties, it all oxidizes into the air and evaporates.
You consider how much vodka tequila is used in cooking wine. I mean, there's always a reason that it makes things better, that just make.
You forget about the shitty food you're about to eat.
I had some pork Pabil this weekend that was excellent. And we put three shots of tequila in there, and we had other shots of tequila. And then I got the tequila virus, and then I had a quarantine.
I'm glad you quarantined for everyone's safety, especially your couches.
Here's the thing. I'm just thinking about back to this vodka thing. You need to still do the water changes because that removes the chemicals out.
Of the water for the fish. It just doesn't make any sense to me. Would it work for fresh water?
Triton, let's assume not recommended. Right. Don't put this in your active saltwater aquarium. Instead, set up a test thing. Put some plants in there no fish. Add some sort of ammonia based so you can get it going. Make sure the cycle is going. And after you have all of this done, try the vodka treatment. Contact us back. We need to know more. That way we can test other alcohols, like aviation gin and see if we can get Ryan Reynolds on.
We should get Ryan Reynolds on.
Oh, wait, he just sold his company this week.
Did he?
Yes, I think that and what was it? George clooney's alcohol as well got bought.
George clooney's alcohol made him a flipping fortune.
What was it, like a billion?
Yeah, it was a tremendous amount of money.
I think Ryan Reynolds got his for like, 600 million.
No kidding?
Yeah, for like a no name gin company that was pretty crazy.
These celebrities and stars that are doing all these different types of booze and things, I did not realize it until we were at a concert, and this is going to come right back. We were at a concert and we were doing a meet and greet with a band, and this gal pulled out a bottle of wine out of her purse. And I'm going, how did you get past that security? She goes, they don't look at me because she's probably 55 years old. And she goes, why would I stick in a bottle of wine in here? But what we're doing, we're going to meet the band Warrant anyway. Warrant. One of the guys there has his own wine company, and this woman had over and she showed us pictures, over 400 bottles of booze signed by stars that she's met. And she she buys all her bottles and she either you know, you can buy a bottle sometimes online that will be signed and stuff. So she has all this booze. She says she has about $4,000 in booze on the wall that she'll never open up because they're all signed autograph models of booze, which is incredible. So it's just amazing what these stars are making these days on stuff not attributed to what they're actually doing.
All right, so message us. We're very concerned that this one is completely false, so we're not giving it a whole lot of substance here. Don't take our word for it. This is just something we found online. But if it does work for you, let us know. And for Dan Acroy that's listening in the podcast, we want Crystal Head Vodka rights to sell for aquarium cleaning purposes.
I saw Dan ackroyd and we got the bottle over at the house, don't we, Rob?
Indeed. Well, for that, I think we've saved people enough money, this podcast, don't you think, Jimmy?
We did. And if you don't think we saved you enough money, then tune in next week and we will cost you money, right?
So if you think we saved you money, go on accordionpodcast.com. Go on the bottom there's, merch. Otherwise you can donate directly to us, really help support the podcast hosting fees. That and maybe we can get jimmy's eyebrows done.
Yeah. And if anybody knows betty White, could you give us her phone number? We still want to get betty White on the podcast woman hottest Woman Alive and still have a huge crush on her. If anybody knows how to get a hold of who's the other guy we want it on?
I mean, who don't we want on?
Chris Rock. We want a Chris Rock on. So if you come down, everybody knows Chris Rock. Just give him a call. Give him rob's number to have him call us.
Well, thanks, guys, again. And Adam, you got any last corpse for us?
No.
Adam the man that knows so much about frodom frogs and titty lin tucap. Not better. Not at all better.
That was that was a tremendous amount of information that I'll never get out.
Of my head, ever.
Right up right up there with the dolphin thing last week.
Never going to leave. But well, thanks again, guys, and we will catch you next week. 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 to be so sexy until I heard adam's voice. Go frank yourself.
Don't you know that's my boy? Don't you know.