Robbz: Hey, friends, welcome to the podcast. Let's kick it off with our favorite sponsor, Blue Crown aquatics. So we have gotten shrimp from these guys. We really do recommend them. We got a nice variety. Jim, you've been raising. how's been going?
Jimmy: It's going great. I love these little guys. They are growing quickly. They are voracious eaters, and I wish I had more.
Robbz: These guys just don't only sell shrimp, they sell a lot of other neocarinal shrimp accessories. Certainly. Check them out. Blue crown aquatics.com and with our offer code aquarium. Guys, you get free shipping.
Jimmy: Free shipping. Nobody does that.
Robbz: It's not just free shipping like I pay for Amazon Prime. No, when you do fish, fish costs a lot of money and shrimp costs just as much.
Jimmy: Does he know he's giving free shipping? We didn't make this up, did we?
Robbz: We didn't make it up, but I'm pretty sure he didn't really realize what we set up. So take advantage of it before he pulls it away again. promo. Code. Aquariumguys at Blue crown. Aquatics.com. And just a sweet in the pie. We have a drawing, a giveaway for $25 gift cards. We have $425 gift cards to give away. So go to the aquariumgyspodcast.com at the bottom of the website. You'll see a giveaway link, click it, sign up, and we're going to get that drawing done at the end of the month. And our goal is to get Robbie Chan himself on the podcast for a shrimp spectacular and make him do the drawing. Because who better?
Jimmy: It's like Red lobster. Endless shrimp, right?
Robbz: Endless shrimp.
Jimmy: Endless shrimp.
Robbz: Endless shrimp. Man, we should work for his marketing department.
Jimmy: We should. And after he probably meets us face to face, he'll probably just punch us. I don't know.
Robbz: We got to ride the wave, right?
Jimmy: Ride the wave.
Robbz: Blue crown aquatics.com and don't forget about our favorite charity, ohio Fish Rescue.
Jimmy: Call those nut jobs up. We love those guys so much.
Robbz: So this week I just got a message from Big Rich, and apparently they are working with their local dnr services to evacuate a massive manmade pond.
Jimmy: Really?
Robbz: And transfer all of these species into a native lake before get this pond cleared out. So they're spending a lot of time, a lot of effort. These guys go insanely above and beyond for fish that aren't even part of the hobby that just need help. I mean, it's amazing when the Dean R cannot reach out. But again, Ohiofish Rescue, give them some love. Buy a t shirt, donate some money, and give them a call.
Jimmy: Give them a call late at night. No, don't call them late at night.
Robbz: Tell them you love them.
Jimmy: Tell me you love them. Tell them that Rob and Jim said what do we tell them?
Robbz: Well, better yet, I want to change this up. Yes, tell them you love them. But above all else, tell Big Rich you love that amazing mullet.
Jimmy: Oh, man. That would make Billy Ray cyrus so mad.
Robbz: 216-773-0407. All right, guys, let's kick that podcast. Welcome to the Aquarium, guys. Podcast with your hosts, Jim colby and Rob tolson.
Jimmy: Oh, what?
Robbz: Hold on. I think we're getting some interference. 1 second. I think we have a problem here, ladies and gentlemen. Jim, what the hell is that thing in your mouth?
Jimmy: I got my birthday gift from my wife.
Robbz: Okay, who gets a Diggery do for a birthday gift?
Jimmy: Me, man.
Robbz: I got a ditch redo, you know, I've seen you know, let's take you out to dinner. Let's go to the movies.
Jimmy: Let's lame.
Robbz: But a digger redu. I thought it was a sex toy when you brought it in.
Jimmy: It is pretty large.
Robbz: And in charge.
Jimmy: And in charge, yes. We went to a rock concert not too long ago. We saw a band called like a Storm that opened up for ozzy osborne. And then we were lucky enough to have them come to our local facility nearby in fargo, North Dakota, and we went to their show, and they play a didgeridoo during their hard rock and act. They are hard rock band. And we got invited on the tour bus with them and talked to them for about 45 minutes, I think we're on the bus. And anyway, we were able to order a Digger dew direct from them, so they made it for us, and they sent it to us in the mail. And so I have a like a Storm didridew, and I'm rocking the house.
Robbz: So well, if I'm doing the math correctly, does that mean that when you go to madonna's farewell concert, you're going to buy a bra?
Jimmy: Some cones.
Robbz: Just some cones.
Jimmy: Just some big cones, yeah.
Robbz: All right, well, I am your host, Rob Zulson, and the other gentleman sitting across from me is hey, it's Jim colby here.
Jimmy: Having a good time.
Robbz: Just digging the do.
Jimmy: Digging the do.
Robbz: Digging the do. Adam is also with us. Adam, help me.
Adam: You're stuck with them for, like, five, 6 hours away.
Robbz: See, this is the pain of being in the actual studio here, but we do what we can, so hopefully maybe we can get you practiced on that.
Jimmy: I'm going to learn to play. I don't know if you probably didn't catch it, but I don't know how to play it.
Robbz: I thought it was a dying moose call.
Jimmy: It could have been. Could be some moose out in the backyard going looking for love in all the wrong places, but that's a whole nother country music story.
Robbz: All right, one more tangent. We're in Minnesota Vikings territory, right? And I don't know if you ever listen to a Vikings game, but you'll hear in the background when they score, touchdown, giant norte Horn. And I thought that's what he was going to do tonight.
Jimmy: Mine is too small.
Robbz: It is.
Jimmy: That's always been the case.
Robbz: Always been the case.
Jimmy: Mine is too small, and it's not big enough, but this did reduce. I'm thinking I'm going to learn something and maybe I'll do some solos later on.
Robbz: If we have some request, message us, guys, aquariumgyspodcast.com on the bottom.
Adam: I have a 20 minutes dirtier to do solo. I already can tell.
Robbz: Oh, my God. All right. You have to play the kazoo or some shit, Adam.
Jimmy: Okay, then we'll get one of those monkeys.
Robbz: And I'll just fart in the mic.
Jimmy: And let's get one of those monkeys with the symbols. That just bangs the symbols. Let's get one of those monkeys, too. We don't pay them.
Robbz: This podcast is degrading now.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Robbz: All right. Aquariumgyspodcast.com at the bottom of the website. We have her email address and telephone number. You can call and leave us a message so you can play it on air and request that Jimmy never play the digger redu again. It's up to you. But I'm right here.
Jimmy: I can hear you, and I have feelings.
Robbz: All right, hearing check is complete. We can mark that on off the list.
Jimmy: One done.
Robbz: One done.
Adam: We got Facebook, too.
Robbz: What? We have Facebook. You're beating me to the punch here.
Jimmy: What's Facebook?
Robbz: I know we're not social people, so getting to social media circles is getting bigger. I mean, next, Jimmy is going to have a Facebook. He already has a Twitter.
Jimmy: I'm not ever going to have Facebook.
Robbz: Everything in time.
Jimmy: No.
Robbz: Hey, if your fans demand it, I have to wear a crop top. You have to get on Facebook. That's the half. These we got to go.
Jimmy: I've heard about Facebook, and that usually gets a lot of people fired, from what I understand.
Robbz: Well, don't post those type of posts. These are just fish fans. Keep the diggery do out of your dairy air. All right. We'll be good.
Jimmy: Jeepers, it's getting tough in here.
Robbz: It is real tough. So, again, we have a new Facebook page, guys. We have a Facebook group that we want to share post comments with. Facebook doesn't allow you to really swap creatures anymore or sell any type of creatures. But we're going to do everything else under the sun that we can possibly do on that Facebook group. So aquarium guys. The aquarium guys community is what we have on Facebook. Certainly join up. We even have jimmy's wife is one of the admins. So we're going to make sure that it keeps clean.
Jimmy: What?
Robbz: I know.
Jimmy: Does she know about this?
Robbz: She does. And she even accepted a few people today. We just opened it this afternoon and we already have over 100 people.
Jimmy: 100 people doing what?
Robbz: We're going to find out together.
Jimmy: Jimmy on Facebook.
Robbz: On Facebook. Being togetherness.
Jimmy: So you're telling me that this new thing called Facebook, which I've never been.
Robbz: A part of, it's not new. Kids already off of it. Mr. pickles has been railing on me all week that were old people for being on Facebook.
Jimmy: I thought it was a place you could swap recipes or something.
Robbz: No, but apparently there's fish people on it, and a lot of them.
Jimmy: Oh, man, they're crazy people.
Robbz: Right? So, again, Facebook. We already have Twitter. jamie's been having fun doing that. Find us on discord. That, by far, is the best way. If you want individual help from us, go on discord. I'm on there all week. Adam has been joining on there. So hop on discord. The link is again, a crameguys.com is on the bottom of the page. You're welcome to join. There's no paid for. A lot of people have patreon that you have to pay to get in. It's completely free. Join us. It's really fun. And yeah, we have question time. Jimmy, we have a big list of questions from statements, reviews, people that pretend to love us all.
Jimmy: Your mom.
Robbz: Well, people that pretend to love you. They actually love me.
Jimmy: Oh, your mom.
Robbz: Well, I mean, it's not mom. I can verify with the names, man really?
Jimmy: Yeah. Who would you make up today?
Adam: It's not betty White either.
Jimmy: If betty White called, it would be.
Robbz: All right, you guys, enough with the celebrity thing.
Jimmy: Fantastic.
Robbz: Let's take a minute. We're getting a ton of listens. Every week, it keeps more and more in building this podcast. So, tracy Morgan, if you're listening, we want you as our celebrity guest on the podcast.
Jimmy: I called it out.
Robbz: I said it.
Jimmy: You called tracy Morgan out?
Robbz: Tracy Morgan.
Jimmy: Yeah, I'm sure. Maybe he'll pull up in his porsche and join us here.
Robbz: Everything in time.
Jimmy: That would be cool.
Robbz: I don't even know if he has porsche.
Jimmy: You know what?
Robbz: I think he makes that type of money.
Jimmy: Maybe he could swing by, pick up betty White, and we could do a double date type thing.
Robbz: In time. Everything in time. All right, so questions. Before we go to the questions, this podcast is going to be our personal favorite podcast. It might go a little longer this week, and it's going to be tips, tricks and hacks brought to you by.
Jimmy: The letter T for tips.
Robbz: So the one good thing that us HEGLEY old aquarium guys can offer is better ways to do things for cheaper, because we're penny pinchers. And Jimmy had a quote this week that said, we're going to make you 100 heirs. Is that correct?
Jimmy: 100 airs, 100 heirs.
Robbz: A million. And errors. We're going to make you 100 errors.
Jimmy: Yeah, we start small, and we'll work our way up to millionaire. But no, we have to make everybody 100 air by saving you some money. And by the end of this podcast, everybody will have $100 bill magically in your pocket.
Robbz: Poof.
Jimmy: And if you don't, just give Rob a call and say, where's my $100.08.
Robbz: Small text at the bottom pocket. Hundred air does not include the qualify insert here.
Jimmy: That's right.
Robbz: So questions, question time. Let's start with and again, we've been having this giveaway, giveaway, giveaway. I added an add comments box. So when people are signing up for this giveaway, which are getting a lot of people signing up, they're actually putting questions in the sign up sheet as well. So it's two birds with 1 st.
Jimmy: So they say you suck, right?
Robbz: So get on the giveaway, guys. But been listening to the podcast since day one. Love the length of the podcast. Love hearing about different topics. Would love to hear something about biotypes, dirted wallstead. There's different types of biomes in an aquarium type and they want to hear more about it. And I think that'd be a great addition for a podcast. It is now on our lists, so learn through the podcast. It's not through direct means. Keep up the good work. I appreciate that. Next one is learn through your Podcast through the Aquarium Co op. While he did not name you directly, he did mention of a new aquarium podcast coming up. binge watched your episodes for two days. Absolutely love your content. Keep it up. So I searched this and yeah, we were certainly mentioned indirectly, but we'd love to have corey on the show. And we did reach out, but we reach out pretty early. We reached out when we only a couple of episodes in too soon. Anybody that has a tutorial content that's supposed to be teaching beginner people about fish needs to be concerned about the type of content they're going to bring new aquarist attention to. And it's fair. Give us time to let it get more episodes on our podcast and prove ourselves before he introduces his young aquarists to be potentially misled. Makes sense. And I'm glad you picked up and thank again for the compliment. There's one more bit at the bottom of this. Also feel it would be fun to have a discussion about shrimp. Shrimp, right.
Jimmy: We might have a guy that we.
Robbz: Can talk to you about.
Jimmy: We have a guy now.
Robbz: So our plan again we talked about at the beginning of the podcast is having Robbie Chan, he is the CEO of blueprint aquatics. And again, they won awards 2018. And who better to have on and talk about shrimp than the expert himself?
Jimmy: And aren't they building a new facility also?
Robbz: They are. We weren't supposed to talk about secretness now.
Jimmy: Secret.
Robbz: Come on. Secret time.
Jimmy: Secret time.
Robbz: He's apparently starting up some details in Chicago, so we'll see what entitles it's. Just make sure you get your shrimp at a sooner time so it can not only send from the California region, but also in the middle of the country.
Jimmy: We'll see if we can get him to confess to some secrets.
Robbz: Secret time.
Jimmy: Secret time. Secret time.
Robbz: All right, so I also have a question that was sent by email.
Jimmy: Was it from the federal penitentiary?
Robbz: It was not. This time.
Jimmy: This time.
Robbz: This time.
Jimmy: I love hearing from your mom.
Robbz: The question is, do I need to put leaves in your tank for them. Also, assuming they mean by shrimp. I got to look at the title of the email. The title of the email has a separate question. So, number one, can you tell me about high protein pellets your guests feed his plato. So the pellets he was using is massive ore. Massive ore pellets are generally used for monster fish. They're almost pure protein. They advertise that they have two and a half I think two or two and a half goldfish per serving. I forget exactly how it is.
Jimmy: How many pets are serving.
Robbz: Yeah, exactly. I don't know how it's done. You can check on their marketing material. But massive or is very much utilized in the industry for high protein and monster fish. So we'll have a link for that. We're going to go over tips and tricks, and we'll try to get that link to you. But check out massive ore. You can get an Amazon pretty much anywhere. And do I need leaves in the tank? Also, I always recommend leaves, and we're going to talk more about leaves in this episode.
Jimmy: Yes, we love having the leaves. almond leaves. You have a trick on that too, don't you? We do a little cheaper one.
Robbz: Let's start right in. So jump in, Jim. Adam and I all sat for the last month and have been creating documents of our tips, tricks and hacks just for this pinnacle podcast, our favorite podcast. So what we'll do is we'll go around and we all drew straws, and Adam got second place. Jim got last. So sorry, Jim. It had nothing to do with Digger Redu. You just have to wait on this one.
Jimmy: I'm just going to play didri do during the whole time adam's talking.
Robbz: Did you read don't? Did you read don't?
Jimmy: Wow.
Robbz: Right?
Jimmy: That hurt. Did. You don't.
Robbz: All right, so I'll go first on the list. So, number one on the tips and tricks, everybody uses different tubes for siphoning in their aquarium. And the process is one of the tube goes in the tank generally has some sort of cone, so you can use a gravel vac on the other end. You have to sit there and suck on the tube to get it started. I've had mouthfuls of crap many times before in my mouth. Not fun. So simply purchase a hand pump siphon. They look, I don't know if you've ever we're in Minnesota, where a lot of us are boat drivers. It literally looks like a little squeeze ball that you put between the line. You give it a couple of squeezes and it's already primed and emptying. No mouth to tube action at all.
Jimmy: It's kind of like one of those old fashioned blood pressure cuffs.
Robbz: Exactly. That's what it is. Except instead of talking why you should eat more cheerios, it's just putting water into a bucket, really. Hey, we're not sponsored by cheerios. If we were I'm just worried about your cholesterol, Jimmy.
Jimmy: Hey, shush up. What else you got there?
Robbz: Next for cleaning, especially in smaller tanks, is the magical turkey baster. So if you have a ten gallon or less, it is a pain in the rear end to get there with a whole under gravel siphon. It makes small ones, but why do that?
Jimmy: So this is for like a quick cleanup, a quick clean up.
Robbz: And turkey bassers are nice. They're really precise. Squeeze the cup point in and they just suck up the waste crap or remaining food and it's a spot check. It's really handy. You don't have to use a net to try to scoop up stuff, you know, disturb the water. You just simply suck up whatever you want and they make turkey basters in any length. Any turkey baster will work. Go in your mom's kitchen drawer right now.
Jimmy: Right.
Robbz: Close them on off thoroughly. You don't want gravy grease back on that thing. And it's really handy.
Jimmy: And use it, but don't put it back. Yes, put it back. And then during Thanksgiving Day dinner, just sit there and chuckle while everybody's watching you eat.
Robbz: Okay? Secret time, secret time, secret time. I just sold my mother's turkey baster when I was younger, and sure enough, I used it to try to get some eggs that were bound. I didn't know when tom on me. I was a pretty newbie at this time. And I sucked up eggs and sure enough, they died. You're supposed to leave those particular eggs alone. I think they're corey dora eggs. Or in a little mound.
Jimmy: Okay.
Robbz: I tried to suck them up to put them in a basket, they all died. But regardless, I just decided to rinse it off and put it back in the drawer. And sure enough, there was a big gove eggs on the side. My mother did not use it until two months later. And guess what? It was Turkey Day.
Jimmy: Thanksgiving.
Robbz: I don't do gravy. I didn't touch any of that. That was used. That was used, yeah. And I kept that to myself and they said how delicious it was that year.
Jimmy: And I hope your mother's not listening to this.
Robbz: I think she started. That's what makes me nervous.
Jimmy: Really? Yeah. You can come to our house for Thanksgiving.
Robbz: All these mom jokes from you douchebags.
Jimmy: Wow. We love you, mom.
Robbz: Love you, mom.
Jimmy: All right, greetings to the penitentiary. Is that where she's at?
Robbz: Greetings. Next on the list. All right, so for those of you that have Acrylic tanks, they can scratch easy.
Jimmy: What are you, the rockefellers? If you have Acrylic tank?
Robbz: Well, no, some people just get them, you know, use or whatever else. Or maybe they have money, unlike us.
Jimmy: Yeah, acrylic tanks are expensive, but real pretty. Pretty easy to scratch.
Robbz: Pretty easy to scratch. So people are nervous when they're trying to scrape algae off their tanks. They try to be gentle or chemically treat their tank don't. Instead, here's a ghetto tip. Go through your collection of gift cards, the ones that you used up online, purchasing your crap already. taco Jones take an old gift card or an old credit card and just use that as the scraper. It's a plastic surface, it still has a sharp ish edge, and it's very safe to go against your acrylic.
Jimmy: Wow.
Robbz: Right? Just what we call the hobo algae scraper. Hobo. The only problem with this is you have to have someone to love you to give you a gift in the first place.
Jimmy: I was going to say or you'll just use your mom's credit card.
Robbz: All right.
Jimmy: By your turkey basis.
Robbz: Secret time. You can also steal them from Walmart because they have those gift card displays. Don't recommend it. Stealing is illegal. But you can totally do it because.
Jimmy: They'Re just gift cards. Wow.
Robbz: Right? Okay. Let's do a legal method.
Jimmy: And you wonder why go into Walmart.
Robbz: You can go into Walmart and ask them for an old used, thrown away credit card. They'll probably pull one out of their basket. Gift card. Yeah.
Jimmy: Okay. All right.
Robbz: Next one. Quilt Batting.
Jimmy: You making a blanket.
Robbz: We're in studio B, as Jamaica so precisely calls it, and there's a lot of it's wall to wall yarn in this room. It works great for a podcast studio because it's already sound insulated, but there is a lot of crafting items, including two sewing machines right to my left.
Jimmy: Your wife has a problem.
Robbz: Right. But what I do is I steal polyester quilt Batting from her and she doesn't even know it until she listens to this podcast. And I'm going to get beat upside the head.
Jimmy: Your mom and your wife don't listen to this podcast. You're just lying.
Robbz: I hope not. Cross your fingers. So polyester Quilt Batting is the best filter material to use and it has to be 100% polyester. It can be toxic to your tank. So you can buy rolls of this quilt Batting online for pennies real cheap. And you have a roll that you can cut to size to fit and use as filter medium if you have some sort of sump, if you have a hang on the back filter that you want to stuff some with any type or just a cover that you can put around a pump head if you want. So Quilt Batting is the best replacement for any type of filter media. Then on top of it is the ghetto media, biologic media. So normally you see people getting these media beads and all these craziness.
Jimmy: They're expensive.
Robbz: They're very expensive. And if you want to use any sizeable amount, it's astronomically expensive. So instead, go to your local dollar store and you'll find these bales of like eight to ten plastic pot scrubbies. It's been used by aquaris for a long time. Use these plastic pot scrubbies in replacement, put in your sump. You can build a filter and best surface area way better than any bio ball that can offer. The only difference is, if you want a moving bed, these don't move real well. They're pretty much flat positioned. So what I've done in the past is use quilt batting. I've used pot scrubbies, and I've just used activated carbon and bags, and I've made my own filter using the three M rubber made whatever you want to use. Plastic drawers, organizing drawers that you buy from a Walmart or Amazon and simply drill holes in the plastic drawers. So the first drawer will be your quilt batting. Just lay a flat layer of quilt batting. The second drawer will be filled with plastic pot scrubbies, dribbling water like rain over top of the scrubbies, collecting the good bacteria. And then the bottom will essentially be your chemical filtration with your activated carbon, if you so choose. Or you can even put a uv filter in, as long as it's not see through and you're not having stuff stare at it and bleach from doing it.
Jimmy: And the uv sterilizer will bleach what? It will bleach the paint. Really? Yeah. I didn't know that can be damaging.
Robbz: That's why they keep it in black surfaces for that. But the filters okay, so this is a great filter. I mean, the whole drawers, they'll cost you $8. The quilt batting a buck.
Jimmy: Or you can get it out of rob's basement pot scrubbies, a few bucks.
Robbz: Getting a few bills of those in the dollar store. And you don't even have to use the activated carbon unless you feel a need for it. cheapest filter, especially for size if you have a small indoor pod, even if you want to trickle outdoors and cover it up, great way to do a filter.
Jimmy: Cheap as heck.
Robbz: Cheap as heck. Oh, boy. Next is my favorite hack that I discovered when I was at a young age. And these have gotten significantly cheaper. Python is an old brand that allowed you to as a tool to change water. It's a plastic piece that you put on the end of your faucet and instead of siphoning into a bucket and then filling your aquarium back up, which I'm so sick of carrying buckets. If you do anything more than two tanks, it's it's a nightmare. Or a big tank. Bucket after bucket after bucket. Save yourself the trouble. Connect a python, this plastic unit, directly to your sink, and you there's a valve on the bottom. You pop the valve open when you turn the water on on your kitchen sink. It will pull water like a vacuum out of your aquarium. So you can literally use a garden hose, maybe attach a cone to the other end of the garden hose and use it as a gravel vacuum. And then just by putting the valve in the opposite position, it pushes freshwater back into the tank. Cool. Literally the best thing since sliced bread.
Adam: And make sure that the water is on all the time. We actually had somebody on discord who would shut the water off because they didn't want to waste the water, they thought, and then it wouldn't work. And so make sure it's on while you're draining the entire time. It drains it like three times faster.
Robbz: It uses the power of the water faucet to actually create the vacuum to pull water out. So you have to have the water on to use the python. And these systems used to cost $150 because it came with just the python adapter, dictator's kitchen sink. It came with a bunch of adjustment valves and hoses. Now they have lowered it to a crazy price. It's like five, $6 on Amazon.
Jimmy: Is it really that cheap?
Robbz: Really that cheap.
Jimmy: They used to be 40, $50 all the time.
Robbz: So what we're going to do is we're going to take a collaboration of all of our tips and tricks and put it into a document for you so you can follow up after the podcast and then also have Amazon links to some of the products so you can go ahead and find them.
Jimmy: So you're making it easy for them to buy all this stuff. Well, hopefully.
Robbz: And also giving them a few page document to read for funds.
Jimmy: For fun, for funds.
Robbz: All right, so next, you know, tip is uv sterilizers. To try to purchase a uv sterilizer hang on the back, you know, intake uv sterilizer, you're looking at a minimum of like $40. And what they've done is, again, it's just an enclosed unit around a uv bulb. And they have a pump running. So instead cut the pump out. You already have filters. You have something in a sump or a hang on the back filter. Instead, you can purchase just the uv light that's submerged like a stick. They come in eight inch, twelve inch sticks. And they're about 1012 bucks on Amazon. It's the best thing to use. It has an on and off switch if you don't run it all the time. And you simply just set that in your sump, set that on your hang on the back filter and you already are moving the water cycling across the light. You just got to put it where the water is moving.
Jimmy: And you've got how many do you have working in your 125 gallon out here?
Robbz: One.
Jimmy: Just one?
Robbz: Just one. Crystal clear.
Jimmy: You got over 100 rummy nose in there. You got plants up the wazoo. There's enough in there, enough plants in there to feed a village. And that water is just crystal clear. And for 1012 bucks, man, what a great deal.
Robbz: And I got the smallest one available. I have pretty large hang in the back filter, so I had enough space for a decent sized one. I just grabbed the smallest one. One light covers a massive amount of space. The only time I really can be concerned is if you're doing like a monster tank or a pond, get. Yourself something sizable. But the warning on this is make sure that, number one, you're hanging the back filter has a lid, because if you have no lid, or if it's a see through type of filter on the hang of the back filter, the uv light will sterilize the paint on your wall. So if you have a color on it, it will eventually bleach out anything it touches. If you have a colored filter, if it's not black, it will bleach out the plastic color.
Jimmy: I need to burl that because my wife just washed her white shirt the other day with some new clothes that turned it blue. So maybe I could use that.
Robbz: Just wrap it, leave it for two years in a window sill and just see what happens.
Jimmy: See what happens. I'm going to do that. She'll be excited.
Robbz: I mean, you should clean it first. That was her goal. But you didn't do long.
Jimmy: I didn't clean the turkey baster. I'm not cleaning that.
Robbz: Oh, man. All right. Next thing is sand. So we talked about another episode on different things for beginner setups. pea, gravel, sand. And sand is so expensive. You go to any type of local fish door, even Amazon, to get all these different types of sand. And the only really variation that they give you is color. There's, what, black, white, earth tone, and then you have the silly sand, which we don't recommend, which is all painted anyway, right?
Jimmy: And that paint eventually just wears off, right?
Robbz: So instead of putting gross painted rocks in your aquarium, instead go to your local hardware store and ask for pool filter sand. Pool filter sand is $8 for 50 pound bag, which I guarantee will work for almost any aquarium. You'll have plenty left over. It's dirty, but once you clean it through a bowl, it is PH neutral, it has a beautiful earth tone color, and there's no cheaper gravel substrate you can use.
Jimmy: I hate sand.
Robbz: I love sand.
Jimmy: I hate sand.
Robbz: And there will always be a debate between us, but it's amazing. Watch cory doras sift through it. Watch, you know, dojo loaches or even Horse Face loaches.
Jimmy: Dig through it, or buy six or seven cooley loaches and tell them goodbye, never see them again.
Robbz: Just poof in the sand forever and ever and ever.
Jimmy: Sand is bad, sand is bad, sand is bad. Nobody likes sand but Rob.
Robbz: So in Minnesota, for the next hack, we don't use chillers.
Jimmy: Why?
Robbz: Because we're cold up here. We're very cold.
Jimmy: I was just kidding.
Robbz: In the summer, we get 80 and we're all sweating and horrible sitting around the AC unit. But in other areas, such as Texas, down south, people use chillers, and some tanks need it colder. So aquarium chillers can be extremely expensive.
Jimmy: You can buy a refrigerator, a big stand up refrigerator, for the same price as a chiller.
Robbz: I think the cheapest I've ever found was like $700. Maybe you can squeeze a deal on Amazon Six, but normal price of those things can go all the way up to $1,300. And they really don't do that great of a job. So here's what I recommend. Go on, craigslist, go on a swamp and shop. Find yourself an old mini fridge, especially after the springtime when college students are coming back and trying to pitch these things. You'll get it for $20 even. So, grab yourself an old mini fridge. And again, we don't care about dimensions. Smaller, bigger, it doesn't really matter. Just make sure that it runs so when you get it in, clean it out, plug it in, crank up the coldness all the way. Get a 100 foot garden hose. Do not uncoil it. Just leave it wrapped up and in either the left or right side walls of the minifridge. You can drill holes right through the side about the size of a garden hose. Stick both ends of the garden hose through the minifridge and you have just built yourself a perfect, better running aquarium chiller than you can buy online.
Jimmy: One thing I like to do when I buy a new garden hose, I'd like to take it and just run water through it, not knowing if they have any sort of chemical or lubricants that they might have used during processing of making it. And I like to run the water through it for a good half an hour until it cleans out, and then you're good to go to adjust.
Robbz: Temperature really comes down to flow. The slower the flow, the colder the water, the faster the flow. It's not going to be staying in that coil in the fridge as long. So you'll have an easier temperature on your aquarium. But just make sure that when you're drilling the holes that you're not doing it to the top or the back of the mini fridge, because that's where you'll go through the free on and all the mechanical parts. It will not be fun, not be fun, not be fun.
Jimmy: And if you leave, that garden hole is completely coiled like it is when you buy it at menards, you actually can put a beer right in the middle of it. And so you'll have a cold beer.
Robbz: Just think of it, you spent, let's say, $25 in the garden hose, $25 in the mini fridge. Now you have an amazing aquarium chiller that's better than what you can buy and a place to put your beer. Put your beer, put your beer.
Jimmy: Good deal. And cold pizza.
Robbz: Cold pizza. Another problem I have is people get all this type of food, they get the wrong size of pellets. Maybe they have a small fish, like a guppy, and they have some sort of high protein cichlid formula. Don't waste money by throwing food away just because it's the wrong size or your fish can't seem to put their mouths around it. Instead, go and find your mom and dad's pepper grinder. Clean it out. Don't leave any pepper in there. If you feed fish pepper, it's not a good deal. And use a pepper grinder. They have an adjustment to show the size of pepper grinds that you want to accomplish. And put any type of food in there, pellets, wafers it'll, grind it all up nice for you, so you can use it for whatever fish you desire. And also it allows you to mix your food.
Jimmy: And what's really nice about that, too, is let's say you have a pair of bristol's plea's that breed, and all of a sudden you've got babies down there, and now you can just set that grinder down a little bit more and grind it up finally for those babies. And mom and dad and babies will all eat that just fine.
Robbz: So, next tip, and this is where we come in for one of our tips and questions, is leaves. So absolutely use leaves. You know, people are using tropical leaves. Almond leaves are the big, big thing to purchase, but they're expensive. You have to go online. You get, what, six leaves for, you know, sometimes even two. $3 a leaf. It's ridiculous. So instead, stop it. Just stop it. Go outside and look for oak leaves. You can find them seasonally in the fall time, or you can find green ones that you can dry out off the tree. If you so want to damage a tree to get leaves for your aquarium, go outside, find them, take your leaves in. If they're green, let them dry out naturally. If they're already falling off the tree, bake them at 170 degrees. You can do it for roughly ten minutes. The time frame depends on how your oven works. Watch them, because we don't want leaves falling off of the tray and starting a fire in your oven. But after that ten minute period, you have nice, dried, crispy leaves to put in your aquarium for shrimp purposes, for other fish purposes, for tannins, they make sure they're oak leaves. Don't use others like elm, because, again, I have not personally tried that. And some other forms say there's risks involved. I know oak leaves have some of the similar tannins to almond leaves, so that works wonderful.
Jimmy: Yeah, I use a lot of almond leaves, but I buy almond leaves by the 100 pack, by the 300 pack, and you need to buy a huge amount just to get a decent price. And the other trick, too, when you have an almond leaf that's almost an almond leaf, or even oak leaf, when it's almost kind of fallen apart, then you want to start soaking your next one, because the baby shrimp and the baby and the regular shrimp will just devour this thing up so quickly. I have tanks at home that have 200 shrimp, and I'll go through an almond leaf, which is probably ten inches long, and they'll go through that in a week. And they'll just devour, it'll be nothing but a skeleton left. So as one's starting to get Skeletized and you want to get the other one soaking, so the bacteria starts to develop. And then the baby shrimp just go crazy on that stuff. Just crazy.
Robbz: Certainly beets you can't beat free. Sure, you had to bake it in your oven. Your wife's going to look at you weird, or your mom's going to like, what are you doing baking leaves? It's not pot, mom. It's just oak leaves from my aquarium. Leave me alone.
Jimmy: Yeah, the other thing, too, in different parts of the country, we don't have it up here in Minnesota, but alder cones can be collected out in the wild. And alder cones are like a really tiny pine cone, but you need to know which ones you're picking. And I've bought alder cones via the Internet, and the shrimp love those also. But you want to make sure that you get the correct, because a regular pine cone will Scunk up your tank. From what I understand, I've never tried it. The elder cones I like a lot because they actually hold up a little.
Robbz: Bit longer and make sure that you're doing your best to know if there's SAP on them and try to get that off right. All right, next thing is stop using filter cartridges. If you want to hang on the back filters or any other filters, stop it. Just next pack. Use up your packs. They come with activated carbon. Whether you want to use activated carbon or not, just stop it entirely. What we're going to do is we're going to put a link in the document and it'll show you can purchase these. It's bio sponge, filter media. It's a certain grade of sponge to really trap all the particulates. And these comes in sizeable sheets. I think we have one that is 23 inches. So you'll get these sheets cut to fit the back, hang in the back filter, and just use those, these types of sponges that will link you, allow you to reuse and clean the sponge rather than continually change cartridges all the time and have the polyester on the cartridge fall apart.
Jimmy: Yeah, and you can take those. When you buy that big sheet, you want to just cut like two or three. So when you pull one out to rinse it out, you can add a fresh one. You can just pop in there, rinse the other one out, let it dry, and you're good to go. As long as you don't disrupt the filter too much. Because if you leave that filter has got all kinds of great bacteria in it, just by changing out the sponge or the filter, you'll still have good bacteria in there to break down the waste.
Robbz: And what I've seen people do is they leave one because normally these hanging the back filters, they'll have two slots and bigger hang in the back filters. So what they'll do is just to make sure that the biological bacteria accumulates in the sponge is they will take out only one, leave one of the gross bad ones in, and then put the sponge on the other side to collect over time. And then once it finally collects on one, then you can take the other out.
Jimmy: Perfect.
Robbz: All right, so when I met you, Jimmy, you had all these tanks everywhere, from different warehouse operations and broken tanks. And when I needed a tank, I went to jimmy's house, and he's like, yeah, help yourself to help yourself to a tank. They're all stained calcium stains across them. And they're no good. Well, they're not no good. But Jimmy didn't have time to go through a pile of tanks with a razor blade and try to individually scrape and clean these off and watch his fingers fall apart.
Jimmy: I'd rather donate blood he'd rather donate.
Robbz: Blood than scrape calcium eyeballs off an aquarium glass. So I took them and I started cleaning them, and sure enough, my fingers almost wanted to feel like they were going to fall off my own hand, and I was getting really sick of it. So I did some research and trying to figure out what you could you use that was aquarium safe. And I tried everything. I bought all these different chemicals from every website I could try, spent a lot of money and really didn't get a lot of great results. Basically, some of them gave me, like, some goo coating that would just make the razor blade essentially slide better. It wouldn't actually clean the tank. Instead, this is actually a shout out to the king of diy, joey. He had a special episode where he had a hint of cleaner that he was using called barkeeper's Friend.
Jimmy: It's a nickel. It is cheap.
Robbz: Yeah, it's like $4 for a giant container of it. And you'll never, ever use it all. A tiny bit on a sponge, and it simply just wipes all that build up right off. Calcium build up, brown build up, any of that whiteish film build up. It cleans right off. And just make sure to do a well, nice rinse. And it does rinse. Very clean.
Jimmy: Yeah. And you can pick that up at your local big box store just over in the cleaning supplies called barkeeper's Friend. It's good stuff. When Rob showed me that, I let him clean a couple of hundred aquariums, and I asked for them all back, and I never got them back.
Robbz: They're just gone forever.
Jimmy: Forever. Gone forever and ever.
Robbz: All right, so I get people saying, oh, I want to do a fish tank, but I want to have to go on vacation, I want to feed them, and I don't want to call people up to feed my fish. Well, if you're going on vacation, use an automatic fish feeder. And it's not like it used to be. The original automatic fish feeders were literally a clock motor. So you clamped this weird plastic thing to the back from the it would literally have the same clock motor you see on just a normal wall hanging clock and it would just feed them twice a day. They have way much improved these systems. They're digital. You can choose a schedule, you can choose spot checks. Some of them are bluetooth, but we have a very cheap hangout in the back aquarium fish feeder for you to check out. These are great, but I have a warning on these. As for a tip, don't use them all the time because people get lazy and just, oh, I'm just going to let them auto feed. Now, your feeding time with your fish is the time to look at their activity, check for colorations, check for breeding patterns, and above all else, check the overall health of your fish. If they're not eating correctly or if something's happening, the time is when you're feeding them and you're going to catch that. You're going to see the ick, you're going to see the fungus start growing, you're going to see their egg bound. That's your time with your fish. So only strictly use these when you're gone. I can't stress that enough. I've seen too many people, oh, my fish just up and died. Well, it's had hole in the head for three weeks.
Jimmy: Or the thing that when people use them all the time, all of a sudden you forget that, well, the thing has been spinning empty for two weeks and nobody's gotten fed. We do some tank maintenance at a hospital in a nearby town and that thing will continually spin and feed the fish twice a day. But every once in a while when you get a high humidity day, let's say the sun comes in through the window and hits that tank and that tank heats up and you get more humidity. Sometimes that feeder, the food inside of it will get kind of sticky and then all of a sudden it just turns into a clump of crud and it's not feeding, it's still spinning, it's still tumbling, but nothing's coming out. So yeah, to use it on an everyday basis is kind of tough. But when people are doing tank maintenance and stuff, they do that. And that's why a lot of people use pellets because they have less tendency to stick together.
Robbz: So getting towards the end of my list here, but the next one is you've seen a lot of people have sumps for their aquarium where they have their filters, all their other pieces. And that's where generally people put plants in their sumps to try to remove the gross entities from the tank help beneficial bacteria. But I encourage you, if you have a hang on the back filter, put plants in that thing, take the lid off. If you don't have the uv filter stuck in your hang on the back filter, take a lid off and you can start with something easy. Bamboo shoots are a great plant to put in the back. They are semiaquatic, so you can completely submerge them if you really have to, and just stick a couple bamboo pieces in the back. I've seen other people put small trays and have other plants in there. I've even seen spider plants hang on the back of the hang on the back filter. The only concern you need to worry about is that the roots don't overtake and block the filter. But if you're checking your filter cartridges, you're going to be able to catch roots by the time your filter cartridge clogs up. Plants do not grow that fast.
Jimmy: Right. But when the bamboo shoots grow too big, then you go outside and you feed them to your favorite panda. Do you have pandas?
Adam: Pandas are illegal.
Robbz: Pandas are illegal, man in Minnesota?
Jimmy: No, just everywhere.
Robbz: What, you collect them and you bring them to the red river zoo, and you bring them to the red pandas or red pandas.
Jimmy: So I cannot keep a panda in my backyard. There are so many rules. I just don't like this.
Robbz: You don't? So you get for being a fish and porter.
Jimmy: So I am not going to feed the bamboo to the pandas.
Robbz: You'll feed them to me, and we'll have them at who. Small pieces.
Jimmy: Well, the salad perfect.
Robbz: Small pieces. All right, the last couple of things that I want to talk to you about. I'm a tech guy by trade. That has been my career. I've been It professional for over 1112 years, and the fish hobby has not jumped leaps and bounds using a lot of technology. So for those that are tech savvy, I encourage you to use some of these alexa or Google devices for your aquarium. And here's a couple of examples. Number one, people use the automated light. What are those called? They're antique. You put them on a clock, and they shut your light off during the night and then turn on.
Jimmy: Just like an old timer.
Robbz: Yeah, it's like an antique timer, so you can use them.
Jimmy: Anything over five years old is antique to rob.
Robbz: I'm sorry, but if you plug something into a light socket, and it's got a ton of buttons that go around, just physical mechanical buttons, and it doesn't even give you a screen, it bothers me.
Jimmy: How do you even get to work in the morning?
Robbz: I don't know. But what you can do is you can get these, what they call smart plugs, essentially just plug into your wall outlet, and it mirrors a wall outlet. It just controls the power on and off. So you can set these up in a relay. So you can plug your lights or extra lights into a smart plug. Your uv light, if you want to shut it on and off and not have it run 24 hours a day, you can plug it into your hang in the back filters or pumps. And what you can do is simply walk up to your lexus, go, alexa, it's time to feed fish. And they go, okay. And then it shuts off. You're hanging the back filter turns on an extra light so the fish can see, and the fish already know that, oh, pump shut off, it's time for food. And they're up to the top. You feed them, 15 minutes later, it automatically turns back on. So go ahead and just take time. Look at these smart plugs. They're really easy to set up through either alexa or Google. They're really cheap. You can get a bunch of these smart plugs for I think a three pack is like 25, $30. And check them out. It's really handy.
Jimmy: Dandy, my Alex is too stupid. She'll just feed them pizza.
Robbz: Just feed them pizza. Well, you have to feed them unless you have some sort of smart enabled auto feeder. Don't do that.
Jimmy: I don't have Facebook. How would I know this? God, I hate you both today.
Robbz: That's okay, old man colby over there. The last thing on my list is cameras. So people have been looking at cameras for fish tanks for a long time. People buy GoPro to stick in their aquarium to scare the living hell out of their fish to take an image. Instead, I recommend it's called wyze Cam. wyze. These are home security cameras. They're really small, and they're $20.
Jimmy: And they are high quality.
Robbz: High quality. They have unlimited cloud support for twelve second clips. The idea is you're supposed to put them in your front entryway, your garage door. And if Ups walks up to their door, you can essentially catch them on camera, destroying your box in the front.
Jimmy: Of your house, kicking it all the way from the curb to your door.
Robbz: But you can use these and put them to the side of your aquarium. So if you're trying to watch how a breeding process is doing from work, it's $20.
Jimmy: $20.
Robbz: Best $20 you can use for your camera, just for your fish.
Jimmy: Can you turn it on? So it's on all the time?
Robbz: It's on 24 hours a day and at the lights off. It has night vision mode, which kind of works in the aquarium. I've used them personally. They'll catch movement, they'll catch bits and pieces, but it really relies on your water clarity.
Jimmy: So this would work really well. I had a pair of angel fish that would lay eggs. They'd lay 300 eggs, and I usually try to leave them in there for a few hours to make sure everything's fertilized and stuff. And then the female would just spend all the time trying to defend the eggs. I had one male that would continuously it was like a little kamikaze. He'd come in and get ten eggs at a time, and she'd fend him off. So I had one of these cameras from Rob, and I put it on there and so I was upstairs watching TV and I could see that they were almost done breeding. The egg slate was pretty full at that point. I decided to go down there and take away the eggs because now that whole slate is full and if I would have waited another hour, he would have probably ate them all. So one slate of eggs, probably 200 and 5300 babies. It paid for my entire system right there just in baby fish snap.
Robbz: And you're set you can set dimensions on the camera. So you can set the camera to if as long as something swims by the slate or in front of the slate, it'll do a twelve second clip and send an alert to your phone. Now it can easily spam, but if you put that slate into a corner of the tank where fish never go, then suddenly, boop, you look, oh, guess what? They're breeding. And now you have an alert push to your phone.
Jimmy: It's crazy.
Robbz: All for $20. There's no monthly fee for this either.
Jimmy: And all my stupid fish, I don't for some reason they all decided they want to breed about 910 11:00 at night just as I'm going to bed, because I'm an early riser. Unlike rob's, I get up in the morning and go to work. And Rob, he sleeps in till like 08:00.
Robbz: Well, yeah, but the thing is, it's your fault. So when you're starting to play marvin Gay upstairs, they hear that and they're in the mood.
Jimmy: Now explain to these young people who marvin gaye is.
Robbz: Oh, don't worry. Right here is where we're going to put an audio clip of marvin gaye. Wait for you now. All right. How was that? Was that not the best?
Jimmy: That was sexy.
Robbz: That was some sexy stuff.
Jimmy: Sexy stuff.
Robbz: My panties are off right now.
Jimmy: Oh my God.
Robbz: Yes, sir.
Jimmy: I'm leaving the building.
Robbz: All right, so that is my list down here. That is my list.
Jimmy: Adam is alive.
Robbz: It's your turn, Adam.
Jimmy: Adam, how are you doing?
Adam: Pretty good.
Jimmy: How are things in wabashaw?
Robbz: Adam'S loins are frothing from that audio clip.
Jimmy: I know. The father of four. How was trickortreating buddy with the kids?
Adam: It was pretty good. It was like the fastest trickortreating ever. I just brought them down one street and they loaded up on candy and we're done.
Jimmy: So speed trickortreating. Kind of like speed dating but speed trickortreating.
Adam: Yes. It's way better to do that.
Robbz: Were they like wilford brimley and just walk up like diabetes and then they just gave you candy?
Jimmy: No.
Adam: In Wabisha we have what's called 12th street and it's basically like a block and a half where both sides everybody goes trick or treating on this street. So literally the kids run from www one door to the next and everybody has candy. And then the cops are walking down the street because there's all these little kids running around, they are handing out candy and people throw candy out of their cars at kids, and they just load up on candy and they're done.
Robbz: Man, that doesn't even allow for razor blades anymore. Cops walking down.
Jimmy: That is the point. Yes. Rob is not a parent.
Robbz: Yes, I have a lot of fish that call me daddy.
Jimmy: Yeah, everybody calls you a daddy. So how many pounds of candy the kids get?
Adam: Oh, I think between the four of them, it was like £18 of candy. Ridiculous.
Jimmy: Diabetes. Hey, diabetes. Secret time. How much did you steal? Tell me.
Adam: Dad taxes.
Robbz: At least half dad tax.
Jimmy: What the hell?
Robbz: Dad?
Adam: You've never used dad tax?
Jimmy: I've never used dad tax.
Adam: Yeah, this is how I teach my kids about taxes or candy, and then I say, it's taxation, and they go, but you stole it. I said exactly. That's what taxation is.
Robbz: Good. Teach them to hate the government. At eight years old. Look at you.
Jimmy: You are something.
Adam: The youngest one is, too.
Robbz: Did you dress up like Uncle Sam or Trump? Just be like, no, that's your wall politicky.
Jimmy: Oh, man. Just teach them taxes. Well, perfect. So what do you have for us for tips? Tricks and tipsters and whistleblower?
Robbz: Hacks.
Jimmy: Oh, hacks.
Adam: Hacks.
Jimmy: Are you the whistleblower? I'm just curious.
Adam: No, I'm not.
Jimmy: Donald Trump says, you know who with the whistleblower.
Robbz: Not a whistle, it's a diggery. Do and didjury don't.
Jimmy: Oh, is this my time to blow the diggery, Adam?
Robbz: God, it sounds dead now. Adam, please.
Jimmy: It's not going very good.
Robbz: Adam, give us a tip.
Adam: All right.
Robbz: He just shit in the mic.
Jimmy: Rock on. There we go.
Adam: Oh, that's a duck for sure.
Jimmy: Hurry up, please, man. All right, your turn.
Adam: Okay, so if you have a lot of fish tanks I do. In my pet store, I had, or I want to say, like, 75 tanks on everything but the salt water and the goldfish. I had sponge filters, and my electric bill dropped almost $400 in one month just by switching all of my back filters into sponge filters. And it worked a lot better. They literally sent somebody from the power company because they couldn't figure out why the power bill dropped so much.
Robbz: Wait, so you're telling me that xcel Energy just shows up and be like, yo, are you stealing?
Adam: Actually, it was the Grand rapids, Minnesota Public Works employee. He came in and was looking around to make sure, and he goes, we noticed that your power dropped. And I go, yeah, I changed all the filters because I had a big blower.
Jimmy: So you had back filters is what you had, right?
Adam: Yeah, I had hang on the back filters.
Jimmy: So you had every single tank, 75 of those things, hanging and sucking up big power, right?
Adam: Yes, and I switched that to just sponge filters and power bill dropped. The other thing that I did is I switched all my hang on the back filters as they would break. To fully submersible heaters, and then I would hang them sideways.
Jimmy: Why did you do that?
Adam: The reason why you hang them sideways is because the heat rises. And if you hang it sideways, you're putting more heat to go straight up. Instead of having it go in a narrow area, it goes in like that, four to five inch or six inch area, and it goes straight up. And then if you have a hang on the back filter, for those that have only a couple of tanks, you put your aquarium heater sideways underneath the flow of your filter, and it'll disperse the heat more evenly around your tank. And if you really want to see how your filter disperses the flow rate, take a small pinch of fish food, put it in the outtake of your filter where the water comes out of your filter, and you can actually see where the water goes, and you can see if you have any dead zones in your tank. And then you can add a bubbler to that spot or anything else that you might need. Also, to grow your fish faster, south American fish need water changes, like massive amounts of water changes, like your discus, your angel fish, that type of stuff.
Robbz: Oh, I thought you were going to say reggae. No. Yeah, they need reggae music.
Jimmy: Reggae?
Adam: No. Have you ever tried it changes? You've never tried that?
Jimmy: Okay, so you don't know.
Robbz: We got to do the research.
Jimmy: All right? We have to get a grant.
Robbz: Just no diggery dues.
Adam: No digger use you people. But I found this out from an older guy who used to breed fish. African fish need current. So on my African cyclic tanks that were for a store display on a 20 gallon long, I would put a 280 gallon per hour filter. And for the first two days, it just bats them around and they find little spots to go and hide from the current. But they grow, like, three or four times faster with current than without.
Robbz: Well, that makes sense. If you look at Americans, right? They grow more muscle. One on a treadmill.
Adam: Yes, exactly.
Jimmy: Yeah, I've heard this many times before. And then when Adam told me, I went and then I got to his store because I used to supply a store and yeah, a lot of those people do that by feeding these things. And the thing is, of course, the warmer the water and the more water flow, the faster they grow. And also with the water, like Adam said, with the clean water, these fish, as they grow, they absorb calcium from the water for bone development. And once that water, all the calcium is out of the water. Then they quit growing.
Robbz: So what you're saying is that if you see a dead deer carcass, cut a bone out, chop it up, put it in your aquarium.
Jimmy: Absolutely.
Adam: That's the way to do it.
Robbz: Not a recommended hack. I was kidding. Need to point that out. There might be someone that all right. I'm not going to mention who. Right. But I decided as a joke on a fish forum that someone was talking about their plato. And I was just trying to make a joke to make a little lighter of the situation because clearly he was upset that his playco died. And I said, well, what am I supposed to do now that it's dead? I don't know how to take care of the fish ish well, most time you just tell them politely flush it down the toilet because it'll decompose. It's a safe spot. It's not going to hit on open water. Way to cause disease. Toilet is a good place, but I just put you need to do a viking funeral for him.
Jimmy: What's? The viking funeral.
Robbz: A viking funeral is where they put the corpse in a boat, right?
Jimmy: They do.
Robbz: And they float it and they light the boat on fire until it oh.
Jimmy: My God, you fall apart. You've got too much time on your hands.
Robbz: I'm not going to say who it was just for the sake of their identity, but they sent me a video, like a week later saying, here it is. I'm like what?
Jimmy: Sure. Shit.
Robbz: There's a little playco on a paper, like origami boat under a bed of matches, and they push it off and it's in this giant rubber made toad of water, and they push it off and they let it on fire, and sure enough, it falls apart. And the whole viking funeral thing and there was music behind it. They did a good job. But don't, my words are powerful, especially places like these podcasts. So I need to be very careful in what I say. I had no idea they take me seriously.
Jimmy: Why would your mom do that?
Robbz: My mom did not do that.
Jimmy: Okay, whatever.
Robbz: It was someone I can't mention, though. Not related.
Jimmy: Anybody I know?
Robbz: They'll know when they listen to it.
Jimmy: Oh, is it anybody I know?
Robbz: Probably not.
Jimmy: Oh, darn right. Because there's nothing more fun than making fun of your friends.
Robbz: Oh, man.
Jimmy: Man, so many fish nerds. What else you got, Adam?
Adam: All right, so the other thing that I would do is I would always soak my frozen food in garlic because I was dealing with a lot of.
Jimmy: Fish from different wholesalers, like garlic juice.
Robbz: Wait, I know you're ethnic, but I didn't know you're Italian.
Adam: No, I'm not Italian. It's a sea kim garlic guard is what it's called.
Jimmy: So it's nothing you make up in a blender? It's something you buy?
Adam: Yeah, it's something that I bought.
Jimmy: Well, we're going to put a link on this.
Adam: Yeah, there'll be a link. And you can actually buy it in, like, I think five gallon or two gallon jugs. They sell it in different sizes. This stuff was the only thing that I found that worked. I use it for my salt water because I would always get problems. It was a food attractant. Everybody would go to it. They seem to eat a little faster and more intrigued with food, especially new fish.
Jimmy: So the appetite stimulant.
Adam: Yeah appetite stimulant.
Robbz: Is that how pasta gets you? It's the garlic in it that makes you want to eat more?
Adam: It's the garlic. Yes. We eat lots of pasta here.
Robbz: Damn it, Bobby.
Adam: And then I had read that garlic builds up in the fish's slime coat and it helps prevent them from getting ick. I can't say for 100% that it worked, but I will say that I almost never had it in my tank. And it was because I would do biweekly dosings of garlic. Most of my fish wouldn't stay there long enough anyways. But the garlic, the allison I think is what it's called, or ELIASON or whatever in the food builds up in their slime coat and supposedly it can't go into it. I just noticed the general improvement in fish health by doing it. It was one of the few things that I could do to control from suppliers and everything else and that it would work.
Robbz: So I've heard a lot of crazy remedies from garlic. Quick story. Growing up went to church, and there was always these nutty people at church that were always crazy about health. And when you went up to them, they didn't smell like they put on their church best. They smelled like rotten garlic all the time. Their breath reeked of it. Even when their mouth was closed. They didn't say where. Do you just smell an aura of garlic on them at all all times? And I just kind of like, oh, they're just the weird people at church, and kind of just let them be up by the wayside. And garlic would always just repulse. My mom, she'd always complained about it after we go home from church. Oh, they're just so gross. And I noticed when we're out on a church camp event, everybody was getting just eaten alive by mosquitoes. But these two weirdos that smell like garlic, and I'm like, light bulb. I love garlic. Garlic tastes delicious. So I just went out and went full on ham, and I just started eating garlic cloves on toast garlic pills, anything I could just to see if it worked.
Jimmy: This explains why you're single for so long.
Robbz: That summer, I never got bit by a mosquito. So proof in point. Wow need your fish so they don't give you mosquitoes.
Jimmy: Actually, right now, if you see that they sell garlic pills for people for overwhelm health. How do you say that? I'm just saying it wrong for their overall overall health. There we go.
Robbz: You need garlic clearly for your cognitive function.
Jimmy: So Adam, quick question. Does this work on freshwater fish and saltwater fish? Yes.
Adam: I used it on both. Then I also heard that it was used as a dewormer for fish but I never really got anything that was wild, so I didn't notice it with a lot of the fish that I liked, like elephant noses and loaches and stuff. You can't really use copper for treating stuff, so I just used garlic on everything, and it worked great. And the garlic never hurts. The live rock for my saltwater fish, mandarin gobies liked the food back when you could before ora started captive breeding them. Garlic guard always seemed to help. I use that, and I sold just tons of it because it was such a big help.
Jimmy: Yeah, and it helps when you believe in a product and you promote it to your customers. But I do know one thing it does not work on. And you know what that is, Adam?
Adam: Diggery dudes.
Jimmy: No. Vampire plecos. Yeah, vampire plecos do not like garlic.
Robbz: Oh, the jokes.
Jimmy: What?
Robbz: That's true.
Jimmy: All of our you know what? Let's call out Jim kitchen. You know, the placo king that we had on last week? And let's verify this. We'll get him on the phone here and we'll verify that.
Robbz: Are you saying vampire swordtails don't like it either?
Jimmy: Exactly.
Robbz: Vampire crabs.
Jimmy: Exactly.
Robbz: There's a lot of vampire creatures. I just on the top of my head, right?
Jimmy: Yeah. That was good.
Robbz: Be proud of me.
Jimmy: Wow. That was good.
Robbz: We're going to call you buffy The Fish slayer.
Jimmy: I'm going to punch you in the throat.
Robbz: Where'S that ditch I went up?
Jimmy: You're not touching my ditch. Reduced. Because I kind of got a cold, and I don't want to get too cold.
Robbz: I don't want the gym herpes.
Jimmy: It's not her piece.
Robbz: What's that thing on your lip?
Jimmy: No, it's a hairpiece kind of herpes. My Lord, this has gone soft in a quick hurry.
Robbz: Adam, you got more for us.
Jimmy: What more you got, Adam?
Adam: All right. Micro blift special blend. It's basically I call it Crap in a Bottle.
Robbz: Wait, t time. Is this the stuff that they had on the podcast with Ohio Fish Rescue that they got high on in the back?
Adam: No, that's something else.
Robbz: Oh, okay. I was getting excited.
Jimmy: That was prime.
Robbz: There you go.
Adam: That was prime. Yeah.
Robbz: Still smells bad.
Adam: Yeah, that smells bad. This literally smells like open sewage. Do not use it if you have open cuts on your hand. Don't get it on a cut. It will get infected.
Jimmy: Don't use it for after shave.
Adam: Don't use it for aftershave you take it. And what I would do with my customers if they had new tanks is I would have them bring, like, a cup or two and fill it with some poop water, basically from the bottom of one of my tanks.
Robbz: Is that what you marketed as cup? Oh, shit. No.
Adam: Now we need more ducks.
Robbz: It was basically that.
Jimmy: You know what? When a bad word comes up, we'll use a diggery dude.
Robbz: Oh, my God.
Jimmy: Yeah, that works.
Adam: Oh, there we go.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Adam: That's going to be better.
Jimmy: All right, what else?
Adam: So what you do is you fill up your tank, you take your cup of crap or whatever. You pour that in there, you put your filter in if you really had to get fish in there that day, and then you let it all settle. And then the next day, you take the microbelift and you follow the directions on the bottle. You pour that in there and your tank is instantly set. Don't cram like 50 fish and a ten gallon tank or anything crazy like you're not supposed to, but if you wanted to throw two or three fish in there right away, you could put the micro blift in it and it works great. I had no problems with that.
Jimmy: So it kickstarts your tank to go to 100?
Adam: Pretty much. And it's like if you need it to go, say, you don't have a backup tank or your tank broke or something and you need to move it and you can't get all the water out, it just helps. It's something good to have, but it literally smells. And don't let it freeze, because if it freezes, all the bad bacteria dies.
Robbz: Then you have worthless crap.
Adam: You don't have good worthless crap. All right.
Robbz: Got anything else?
Adam: I got two more things.
Robbz: Ooh, Melafix. No, hold on. Nobody likes Melafix.
Adam: Melifix works.
Robbz: All right. Melafix is like you just went to your local health food co op and you walked in and that pungent, nasty, hippie smell hit you and they put it in a bottle.
Adam: This is tea tree oil. This stuff works. But there's a trick to it. The reason why it comes in a blue bottle is because light degrades it. So you have to make sure that when you're using this, you remove your activated charcoal and everything else, and you put it in there and you shut the aquarium lights off. If you need to cover it with a towel so that no light gets in for the treatment, that's what you do. I use this religiously at my store because I was trying to use as many natural medicines as I could.
Jimmy: Hippy, hippy.
Adam: It worked. And I didn't have a problem with the fish, and I didn't lose that many fish. Jim will testify to that. He was always mad because I wasn't buying extra fish because my fish didn't die from him. That also means he's a good supplier.
Jimmy: But still, you're a hippie.
Adam: Yeah, but make sure the lights are off with the Melafix.
Robbz: So if you go to Melafix's website and find they have sunglasses for your aquarium with an extra ponytail, you can.
Jimmy: Put I did not know that secret type. Is this a stuff, Adam, that smells like VIX vaporub?
Adam: Yes. Remember you came into my store and I was treating a couple of tanks with it and you said, what the hell stinks in here?
Jimmy: I said, do you have a cold did your mama put vicks on your chest before he came to work?
Adam: But no, that's what I used, and that's why it works, and that's what I found works. But everybody like, it never worked until I shut lights off. And the only reason why I found that out is because I called them and they were like, well, the reason why you put it in a blue bottle is because the light degrades it.
Jimmy: And they said, did you read the directions, dumb dumb?
Adam: No, it's not even on the directions. That's the problem.
Jimmy: That must be how they sell a lot of it, then don't give you directions. Yeah, because there was a pima fix. There's a pima fix and a mellifix. Correct.
Adam: Yeah.
Jimmy: One was for something and one was for getting high.
Adam: I don't know what Melafix was for. Like finrot fish, fungus, that type of stuff. The slime the white fungusy stuff that you see on them. And I only use that one. I never used the pima fix at all, but the Melafix I liked, and it always worked really good.
Robbz: So what's your last one?
Adam: Titanium grounding probes. And you guys will laugh at me.
Jimmy: We do all the time anyway. Yeah, I know.
Robbz: Can it get better than Melafix?
Adam: It will.
Jimmy: What's it called again?
Adam: It's called a titanium grounding probe.
Jimmy: Oh, I saw this on Back to the Future when they're trying to get that car going at 88 miles an hour.
Adam: This is not seen that movie?
Robbz: When you hear the word probe, know that it's not that probe.
Jimmy: No.
Robbz: Yes.
Adam: What it is is it's this metal rod that you put in your aquarium. And then you plug the other end into your outlet and you ground it, and you screw the screw of your outlet.
Robbz: Hold on, we need to restart. You plug it into your wall outlet. Correct. Okay.
Jimmy: Rob is sweating over there. This little sweat bead came right down his forehead.
Robbz: He was like, all right.
Jimmy: This reminds me of when I went to the proctologist. Okay?
Adam: So I had problems because I used to have a lot of discus and big discus. And I had a cracked heater, and it electrocuted everything in my damn tank. I lost L 46, zebra placos. I lost discus that were the size of dinner plates. I was in tears. And then I called Jim looking for L 46, and they died, like, the week before. They put them on sightings, too, so you couldn't get them from Brazil anymore.
Robbz: Cheap.
Adam: You remember that? He laughed at me because I had a mated pair.
Jimmy: Yeah, it was funny because it wasn't mine.
Adam: Yeah, that's exactly it, because it wasn't yours. But I put one of those in there and I've put them in all my tanks with discus, angel fish, that type South Americans oscars, and it absorbs the stray electricity. It's supposed to help with hole in the head, but that could be parasites, charcoal. I've heard of a dozen different things for your high end fish. I always put it in there. That way if you have a cracked heater or something, it will suck up electricity and you can hopefully catch it in time.
Robbz: So it's a lightning rod for your aquariums that have shitty heaters.
Jimmy: Holy jiggle wants heaters are technically shitty.
Adam: If you really want to get into it, I guess I have not found a really good one. The plastic ones leak, the glass ones can crack. The ones with the cages on them. I don't know. Every heater can suck.
Robbz: Insurance policies.
Jimmy: Yeah, I heard rumors, and I don't know if anybody out there is listing. Somebody told me they're coming out with Led heaters.
Robbz: Yes. And infrared as well.
Jimmy: Well, Led takes so much less electricity, but anything that draws a lot of power or that creates heat draws a lot of power. I mean, look at the difference between a 60 watt light bulb that's been on for 3 hours. If you go in there to unscrew it, you burn your fingertips off. Whereas a 60 watt like Led bulb is very cool. But somebody said that they're coming off the Led heater. I've looked everywhere for them.
Robbz: They're an infrared style heater, and they're really not mass marketed yet.
Jimmy: So is it going to save me electricity grabs?
Robbz: It should. It should save you drastic amounts of electricity.
Jimmy: So why can't I find these?
Robbz: Because we're not in China yet.
Jimmy: So it's secret time. It's secret time in China.
Robbz: Right.
Jimmy: Figures.
Robbz: Everything in time.
Jimmy: So let's hope that something like that comes out, because that's probably one of your biggest draws of electricity. Now, in your tank is your heater.
Robbz: Well, thank you, Adam. So, Jimmy, it's your turn.
Jimmy: What do I got?
Robbz: Well, number one, you should start with not using heaters at all.
Jimmy: I like heat in the room, personally. I mean, most of my tips that I have are for multitanks. We're going to do a podcast later on about setting up a fish room, which I've done probably seven or eight fish rooms in my life. And every time you put one up, you learn a little bit something and.
Robbz: How to and he's not just meaning dedicating one room. He means warehouses. Like, you're going to put up some tanks, put a wall up. I mean, dedicate a lot of different tanks. Yeah, just like five tanks at your house. It's a room.
Jimmy: At one time, I had over 400 tanks, but right now we're only running maybe 40 tanks downstairs in our basement. And the whole thing is when we crank up our like, if we have to put heaters in the tanks, it just runs our electricity bill through the goddamn roof. So you're best off just trying to heat that room and keep it closed off, keeping it tight. So that's the way to go. So most of my tips that I have are for a fish room. So if you have multiple tanks and you want to save some money, don't go out and buy yourself a regular type of stand. Make yourself a stand at a two x fours and three and a half inch carriage bolts. There's a lot of good videos on TV, or on TV, on YouTube showing you how to make your own fish stands for your and you can make them whatever size you need. All I say is that when you do it, make it on a two by four is you can do a huge eight foot rack for probably 25, $30 and make sure you paint it when you're done just for the fact that you don't want it to mold or mildew because it is going to get wet.
Robbz: And if you're carpentry inept like myself, I literally have a handicap where I physically cannot put two pieces of wood together. You can go out and try to purchase yourself a pallet rack. They have metal pallet racks. They're definitely more expensive than the wood options, but they're also pretty cheap if you're trying to make a stand that holds hundreds of pounds or thousands of pounds, depending on how many corners you're putting on this thing. Small pallet racks work excellent.
Jimmy: Yeah. That's what we currently are using now in our basement, is we're using pallet racks just for the fact that every time I think I'm done, I will then jerk all the tanks off and then rearrange them into a different and with the pallet racking is you're able to adjust each shelf, and it makes it so much easier. And it holds up to two to £3000 per shelf, so you can put a lot on there. Next one I have is sponge filters like Adam has been talking to. But I make my own sponge filters. You can buy them fairly cheap on the Internet. I like to make my own. I buy a four inch poly foam. I get it from my local hobby lobby. Do not use the green foam because that is a flame retardant foam and that will kill your fish. So you, you buy a 24 by 24 inch sheet of sponge filter and you can I think they sell them as cushion, like, like cushion.
Robbz: Well, I keep making the joke that when you make these sponge filters, you cut them out of cadillacs. And that's essentially what it is.
Jimmy: I'm not taking it out of somebody's car seat. No.
Robbz: Well, I mean, not your car seat.
Jimmy: Right.
Robbz: As someone else's.
Jimmy: Exactly. So out of a 24 inch by 24 inch, you can cut them into four inches or four inch square, and you do your lift tube out of a piece of pvc and then take a piece of four inch tile and silicone it to the bottom. I'm making them from about seventy five cents, and when I make them, I'll do 40 or 50 at a time just to have them on standby. What I also like to do is have maybe 30 sponge filters in a 110 gallon VAT, constantly going. So all of a sudden I decide I'm going to rearrange my tanks, and now I need six more filters. I have them all ready to go. I just drop them in, they're already seated, they're already ready to go.
Robbz: And when he says ready to go, it's not necessarily cycled, which that it does. He keeps the sponge is cycled. But when you're putting a new sponge in, even with the tile to hold it down, sometimes the air in the sponge can cause it to float. And when it floats and you have a tube sticking out of it, that means water on the floor.
Jimmy: It's like 25 little squirt guns squirting all over the place continually. The other thing I like to buy to save money is I buy my airline tubing in 500 foot rolls. And it is so much cheaper to buy a 500 foot roll. I then make a little stand out of pvc so it actually sits there and I can pull it off, cut it with the scissors. I personally like the silicone airline tubing because it stays real soft for a very long, long time.
Robbz: So also you can use this in a ghetto pinch to use it as just cord to tie stuff with. I was putting a weird type of filter and the foam wouldn't fit in. So I just cut off a piece of airline tube, tied it around, and now it's my quick rope because it's that cheap when you buy 500ft.
Jimmy: So again, trying to save money, when I started my little fish room, I run one air pump and I use one and a half inch pvc that comes off that air pump. And I have the pvc connected to the roof all the way around. And they all have little stainless steel air controllers. And you can buy those air controllers on the Internet for buck 59. And each one is very controlled, and you can control each tank to the point where you could have just a little bit of flow, or you could have it boiling. So it's wonderful.
Robbz: Anyway, so what kind of pumps are those? Because they're not just specific piston pumps. They have a special adapter and they're built for doing multiple tanks.
Jimmy: Right.
Robbz: So what's the brand that you've used?
Jimmy: I like the ultima, and that is my favorite brand that I use. And Rob will put up a link on the website for that. And there are several different sizes, and it will tell you in there that this particular size will do 30 tanks, or this particular size will do 50 tanks. So pick out the size you need. I always like to if I got 50 tanks, I'm going to buy one that does 75 tanks, just for the fact it's nice to have a little extra air. You can bleed it off if you want, and have no back pressure. But also they're very inexpensive to run for having one air pump to run 40 tanks. And it makes so much more sense just to run that one thing that's plugged in versus having, like Adam said, having all the back filters plugged in for each individual tank.
Robbz: Because these are not exactly a cheap pump. These are $150 pump. So I was trying to see if there's other ways that I could get around that and creating an official myself. And I purchased these massive outdoor pond pumps. And these things are not meant they're meant to handle quite a few different connections, but not like 50. They're meant to handle many, many feet of line. So you can have a single air stone in the bottom of a six foot pond. Because again, the deeper it is, the harder it is to push air. So I bought one of these, got a massive 20 end adapter, and the pump was so violent and pushed out so much air, it blew the whole end off. Like, exploded the whole tip.
Jimmy: And that was very noisy. Also very noisy.
Robbz: It was not near the quality. So I have to say, this is the way to go if you're going over ten connections, especially when you're having.
Jimmy: It inside your house, and you don't want that, you want to sleep at night, right? When we sit in our sunroom, we can hear like water boiling downstairs. We've got 30, 40 tanks set up, but you don't hear the pump, you just hear the water moving. So that's what I like to use. Those particular pumps, they've always done well for me. And you can get a replacement kit for it when the little diaphragm will wear out. You can get that for about $30. And it's a very quick and easy fix. And I just keep one on hand, and I think they'll last four, five, six years I've had them last. And then all of a sudden you got no air, and it takes 15 minutes to fix it, and you're up and running again. The other one I like to do is I don't like to buy glass tops for my tanks because it's too goddamn expensive. So I like to do is I buy the glass up at the local hardware store. I usually get 8th inch or quarter inch, depending on what size tank I have. You can tell them what size you want to cut to, they'll cut it for you. The front, I usually do about six inches by the width of the tank, and in the back, I always leave about an inch left. So we can put airline holes in and stuff. But if you go online, you can find a six foot hinge, just that plastic hinge that you get with your tanks. And you can cut that hinge with a hacksaw. And you get two pieces of glass in one of these hinges, and you can do. Your whole glass top for under $3.
Robbz: And the glass again, you go to your local hardware store. Almost every hardware store that you have in your local community will cut you panes of glass to replace for windows for any other accessory. And it costs like $2 for them to go cut whatever size pane of glass you want. Just when you get it. They're not going to touch up the glass. They're just going to give you a cut pane of glass. So make sure to take some sandpaper and gently rub the edges. Otherwise you'll have sliced open fingers. I learned this the very hard way, jimmy's like, oh, make sure to put some sandpaper on what? And then I sliced my finger as he said it.
Jimmy: Yeah, you want to use either low grit sandpaper or emery cloth. But I've also scratched the glass being too fast. You just want to hit the edges. And it doesn't take much. It's probably about a minute and a half. And you can smooth out those edges so you don't get cut on them. But emery cloth is a great thing. And you'll save yourself a ton of money because rob, what is a glass top for a 55 gallon tank cost now?
Robbz: Well, it's all custom made, different thicknesses. It can go to the moon, right.
Jimmy: I mean, I've seen them as high as 30, $35 north of that. Right. And so then the other thing I like to do is you can buy the little what do you call them, little lift on top of the glass?
Robbz: Well, they're handles for the little handles. So you can get handles and you can get them online for a couple of bucks. They're just stick on aquarium lid handles. But even further than that, we'll have a link for this is you can go either your hardware store or Amazon. And you'll see those stick on the wall, three M hooks. They're like little circles with just a little hook. So you can put like, say, a fish net on the wall if you want. Well, you can use that as a handle. They're a couple cents apiece. And they work just as well as the specially made branded aquarium handle.
Jimmy: Right. So whatever you want to save some bucks. But there's the way to help. You definitely want to put a handle on it. And so you can open that up and feed your fish. Let me see, what else do I got? The other thing I'd like to do is for aquarium decorations, I like to buy bulk driftwood. And bulk driftwood is not cheap, but it's still cheaper than buying one piece at a time at your local pet store. But what the problem everybody has with the driftwood is that it always wants to float to the top. And what I like to do is just get a huge piece of slate. And most of the pet stores will sell all these odd shaped pieces of slate. And I like to get the one that's as big as my driftwood. And slate is very, very soft. And if you take a regular drill bit, you can drill through the bottom of the slate and then get yourself a small stainless steel screw. And you can screw through the slate very carefully through that hole that you've already drilled and drill into the bottom of that driftwood and then bury that slate in the gravel. And your driftwood will stay put right where you want it.
Robbz: And this is not just for the sake of trying to weight it down at, although it does do that. It's also for if you have large fish that knock your wood over, you'll have it all set the way you like it, and then something will just tip it over and you have to continually make it placos. Some of the playcos I've have love to dig, and they'll just literally push my wood across the tank.
Jimmy: Right. So that just holds it tight. Another quick money saving deal is when you have multiple tanks, I like to buy the four foot Led 5000 lumen lights that you can get at your local big box stores. I picked mine up from a place called Harbor Freight, and I'm getting them for $20 a piece. And a couple of those will light up your entire eight foot rack.
Robbz: So these are really sold as utility lights. So just certainly check out what you're purchasing and be conscious that these aren't waterproof. So if they drop in the tank, you might have a problem.
Jimmy: Right, so I just hang mine, especially when I make my own stands. You can just screw them up there nice and tight. They don't go anywhere. And then I like to put like, six of them on a power strip. And so all I have to do is push the power strip and all my lights go off on my whole rack.
Robbz: And then you can put that to an alexa adapter just to, say, turn on my aquarium lights.
Jimmy: Really? I mean, you're that damn lazy.
Robbz: I don't want to touch things, especially after you have a cold.
Jimmy: And whatnot exactly the other thing that I like to buy? I buy everything in bulk. I buy all my fish bags in bulk because if you have a bunch of tanks, your friends come over, they want to fish. If you go to the pet store to trade in some fish, or you're breeding fish for somebody, you need bulk fish bags. Everything I buy is in bulk. I buy my fish food in five pound increments. And there's also a lot of places like our friend Steve rubiki, he sells all kinds of crazy different flakes. And he'll sell them to you in £1 bags. So he's got £1 spirulina flake, he's got £1 earthworm flake. Where do you find earthworm flake? Where do you find black worm flake? Where do you find egg yolk flake. I mean, he's got all that stuff. And there's other places out there, too. And if you have multiple tanks or if you have friends that mean you're paying $8 for a pound versus paying $8 for a small little three ounce container, you need to save money. Go out and buy the stuff in bulk. Share it with a friend, put it in the freezer so it's not just.
Robbz: Even buying in bulk for a cheaper price. But also, like you said, you can get all different types. You literally make your own mix. So it's not just this just general, generic tropical fish food. You're getting a little bit of garlic that Adam has been preaching. You get a little bit of bloodworm to add in, which normally never come in.
Jimmy: Flake, all kinds of crazy stuff that you can just save a lot of money on. And when you've got these different fish, we had some fish that would not breed for us. And then I talked to Steve rubiki. He said, you don't try this particular flake. And I did. And by God, it did trigger them to spawn. They weren't getting enough Spirulina in their diet, so I mixed that little bit heavier. And spirulina does a lot of wonderful things.
Robbz: Well, I mean, you're never in the mood when you go to McDonald's. You got to be wind and dying.
Jimmy: Wind and dying. So the other thing I like to do, my local pet store that I sell a lot of shrimp to, they sell me gravel for my tanks. I know Rob doesn't like gravel. He's a big. sandman sucks.
Robbz: I don't want to vacuum my stuff. I just want to look pretty.
Jimmy: Adam gravel, like gravel.
Adam: Gravel is way better than sand.
Jimmy: See? Yeah, two to one. But anyway, gravel in a 50 pound bag is probably about $14. And where else can you get anything that cheap? And it's a natural colored gravel.
Robbz: See, we need Mr. pickles in here to back me up on this. He like sand, too.
Jimmy: Mr. pickles is in Canada freezing his butt off.
Adam: Yeah, the Canadians don't count.
Robbz: Mr. pickles is sorry, and he wanted me to tell you that.
Jimmy: Yeah, the other thing. I like to go to my big box store like the menard of Home depot. I get these spring clamps because when I do a lot of water changes, I get these 99 cent spring clamps, and there's just a heavy clamp that you can clamp your hose down to and avoid spilling all over the place.
Robbz: It works great for hoses, any type of attachments. And you can hang your fish nuts on them when you're not using them. But when you have some extras, you can also use them litter to mel Gibson yourself.
Jimmy: No, nobody wants that. Nobody wants to hear that. God, you need to quit.
Adam: Did you do Jim?
Jimmy: Yeah. I'm going to start drinking night quill now.
Robbz: Full freedom.
Jimmy: The other thing for saving some money. I like to buy plant bulbs. Adam doesn't like plant bulbs. No, me and rob's, we like plant bulbs.
Robbz: Adam, we need to talk. You want to be a hippie, but you're not full hippie. You got to grow your own plants if you want to go all the way.
Adam: I've had really bad luck with them because maybe it was the salt coating on them. I heard that they had a lot of nitrates added to them. And I was always trying to keep the brown algae out of my tanks because of the plecos and stuff that I had, because the diatoms just kill plecos. The diatom algae does. So that's why I never had them.
Robbz: But you got to make the compromise you need to earn that ponytail.
Jimmy: That's right. Okay. Recently, jen and I just bought some Madagar lace bulbs. madagascar. That was called.
Adam: Madagascar. Yeah.
Robbz: He knows fish, not geography.
Jimmy: Yeah. I don't know where I'm at. I'm in the basement with robs.
Robbz: With string. A lot of string.
Jimmy: No.
Robbz: And a diggery do.
Jimmy: No. Yeah, I guess we do have a digger. redu. But anyway, the bulbs are about a buck and a half to $3 a piece. And you throw them in the tank? I just throw them in a bare bottom tank until they sprout. And once they sprout, then I'll put them in the gravel. But if you're out to buy a madagascar lace plant, it's going to cost you twelve to $15.
Robbz: That's wholesale prices. I've seen as crazy as 35.
Jimmy: Right.
Robbz: And that's for, you know, just like a sprout, it's crap.
Jimmy: And and then there's also, like, the apon Wonder bulbs that we can get for under a dollar. And I'll throw in 50, and I'll get 45 of them to pop up. And those things, once they've been in your tank for two weeks, they take off and they'll grow three to four inches in a week.
Robbz: And it's going to be pretty hard for us to find links for those products for you because they vary all over the place. I recommend trying to go to wish.com for a lot of these plant seeds, because you can get them I don't know if you've used Wish before. Wish is crazy. They'll just give you an item for free, just to pay shipping. Of course, they're making their money in their shipping, but check them out. They also have loose ones for dwarf hair, grass for the bottom of your tank. Lots of ways to get bulbs and seeds.
Jimmy: Right. And you can buy 25 of them, and even if you only get 18 of them up, you're still money. Money ahead. The other thing I'd like to use, too, is I don't like multiple those glass thermometers or digital thermometers. I mean, you're talking $3 for a glass thermometer for your tank. You're talking those digital thermometers or three $4 per tank. And what I like to do is I bought a laser temp gun, and I can go by every tank and just zap them. And I do have some tanks with heaters in them, so I do want to check those. And when we hit heavy cold here in Minnesota, the temperature in my basement drops, but I still can check every tank with just a pole on my Laser Temp gun. And you can pick those up for, like, $25.
Robbz: And it's also great to use that same Laser Temp gun when you go to your local buffet, you just sit there, you point at the food, you scan it, and then they'll just go make fresh food. They won't even like, who are you? You must be a health inspector. And then they'll just make everything new.
Jimmy: I like to walk in with a clipboard and a tie on, and usually I eat for free, and that's the way to go.
Robbz: That's because you look like a bouncer.
Jimmy: Yeah, exactly. And for those people that love cichlids out there and you know, you can go to the pet store, you can go to your local garden center and buy these large stones. What I'd like to do is I'd like to drive by Target, and they have all these large stones out in the parking lot. You know what the landscape with. I just like to load up. Just take a bucket and just load up. And if they look at you, just say, I'm cleaning out cigarette butts or something.
Robbz: So hold on.
Jimmy: What?
Robbz: Hold on. We got to warn our listeners here, because next we're going to have a video of people stealing ransacking targets across it, and targets have cameras. So if you're going to do this, don't do this. Number one, don't do this. But if you're going to do this right, if you're going to do this, make sure it's some low key place without cameras. Do your homework. If you're shopping there, look up. Do you see something on a light pole?
Jimmy: So probably not the bank either.
Robbz: Go to your local dentist office. They're not going to have cameras out front.
Adam: Why are you giving them tips?
Robbz: They're not doing this. We've established that we're telling them not to. But if they're going to, the dentist has enough money, trust me.
Jimmy: It's kind of like there's that tag on your blow dryer saying, don't use this in the shower.
Robbz: And people do caution, coffee is hot, but yet I drink it.
Jimmy: Yes.
Robbz: I mean, come on now.
Jimmy: What? That was a loud slide.
Robbz: The official statement from the Brain Guys podcast is that it's illegal. Do not steal from people. But if you're going to take a digger, you do, because no one will believe that you're stealing rocks.
Jimmy: That's right. And rocks. And you know what? It's not like they got those rocks don't have serial numbers, okay? So if you're driving away from somewhere with a big bucket of rocks, I mean, prove it.
Robbz: Well, don't do a big bucket. Just fill your pockets.
Jimmy: Oh, there we go. Yeah, don't do that.
Robbz: Don't steal rocks.
Adam: Don't steal rocks.
Jimmy: Don't steal rocks.
Robbz: And don't give your fish nordic funerals.
Adam: Don't no, that's actually a good thing. Give them funerals.
Jimmy: Jesus. Oh, my Lord. The last thing I got is let's talk about pickle jars for 15 minutes. I love pickle jars. I use them for a lot of things. Go out and buy yourself four gallon pickle jars. Those are about $14 for four jars.
Robbz: Now, I have to stop you there.
Jimmy: Why?
Robbz: It has to be glass jars do not do gallon ranch containers because they don't hold fish as well. Although I have gallon ranch containers.
Jimmy: I know you do. Every time we go to a restaurant with robs, he orders ranch, and he looks him straight in the eye. He goes, Lots and lots of ranch. And she goes, no, I don't.
Robbz: I'm not that childish.
Jimmy: Yes, you do.
Robbz: I say copious amounts.
Jimmy: Copious amounts. Exactly. Which means lots and lots. But anyway, I found that if I went over to my local recycling center, and I told the guy, said, I'm looking for some glass jars. They said, how many do you want? I said, Why don't you grab me, like, a dozen? And they called me back about four days later, said, I got, like, 60 of them. And I said, thanks a lot. I went over there. I picked up a Pizza pizza hut for 699. I dropped it off. They were excited. I went home with 60 jars. I was excited, and I love jars.
Robbz: So what do you do with the jars?
Jimmy: I use the jars for hatching angel fish eggs.
Robbz: Oh, I thought you're raw collections.
Jimmy: No, I keep my raw collections in the back of my car. Yeah. I also hatch Brian shrimp in my gallon jars, and I collect leaves, like oak leaves and put in my jars. What are we talking about this for? I've only got 15 minutes to talk about jars. What else we got? Oh, am quill. I like am quill. Do you?
Robbz: You like.
Jimmy: Am. Quill, rob's.
Robbz: I not gonna lie. I I didn't even know what it was until you put it on the list and like, all right, cool.
Jimmy: So so Rob is such a fish nerd, and he's a tech nerd. He's like, nerd squared. He didn't know what am quill is?
Robbz: Nope.
Jimmy: And I love it.
Adam: Everybody knew what it was.
Jimmy: I don't mean Adam like, what are you what are you, dumb or what?
Robbz: I just feel like get some sort of, like, tylenol PM but drug related somehow.
Jimmy: Yeah, and that's why you sleep upside down in the closet.
Robbz: Nyquil. Am quill. It's close.
Jimmy: So am quill. Help me out here, Adam. It gets rid of ammonia and chloramines.
Adam: Chlorine? Yeah, chloramines in your water.
Robbz: And do you use this to rub on the sides of a pool and conversion of it get the chlorine off?
Adam: No, we put this in a fish tank.
Jimmy: Fish tank, dumb dumb.
Robbz: Why do you buy it by the gallon?
Jimmy: I'd buy it by the gallon because I import fish and I'll get in. Seriously, they send 300 neons in a bag, in one large bag. And when you open up that bag, you can smell the ammonia.
Robbz: So you crack the bag open and you just put a little quill in.
Jimmy: There, put a little splash in there, splash it up, and it kills the ammonia right away.
Robbz: So what splash? Are we talking like, I'm going to splash up a little cologne for my night out of town?
Jimmy: I'm talking like four or five drops. It's not a lot. I mean, about that. Then it goes a long way, but when you're doing massive amounts of water changes, a couple of drops, and you're good to go. And it works wonderful. And it's pretty inexpensive. And they sell it by the gallon. By the gallon? I buy it by the gallon.
Robbz: But they do have smaller containers. And we'll have the link for you.
Jimmy: I think that's what all I got for you, robbs.
Robbz: That's it.
Jimmy: I got more, but I'm saving it for the big podcast.
Robbz: Oh, the fish room podcast.
Jimmy: Room podcast. I can't relieve all my secrets.
Robbz: Okay. Also, one last tip for the listeners. So if you're having trouble and you've been working with maybe one of your favorite fish and it's just not getting better, it's on its last leg. Maybe it was a birth defect and it's just finally now croaking. Maybe you see it has a tumor hole in the head and you just can't beat the disease. And it's time that you want to euthanize your fish, and it's a struggle. Just get out your Diggery dew and blow in front of it until it craps. It dies.
Jimmy: You have no love for the Diggery dew.
Robbz: And then your flower horns finally out. You just put him out of his misery in a very, I don't know, soothing manner. It's kind of like how he wanted to go. He wanted a middle aged attractive that was pathetic.
Jimmy: I'm not very good at this, I swear.
Robbz: It sounds like you're taking a pvc pipe and you're trying to fart through it.
Jimmy: I have to.
Adam: And when it dies, you have to go to the viking funeral.
Robbz: All right, please, please, listeners, I'm begging you, make him stop. Oh, there. Now he got something that sounds wait, he did? He doesn't know geography. He doesn't know this comes from Australia.
Adam: Yeah.
Robbz: Please call in. Let Jimmy know he should never play the digger on the podcast again.
Jimmy: Next week I'm going to sing. I'm going to do that song rock the Cat box. Oh, no. It's Rock the kasbah. Never mind. My wife calls it Rock the Cat Box because she's illiterate. I don't know.
Robbz: I'm so confused. Let's wrap this up, guys. So please share this with your friends.
Jimmy: Don't share it with you.
Robbz: Tell your friends to call into the podcast and tell Jim to stop playing the Diggery Do aquariumguys.com. If you like us, share with your friends. Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. We just added a couple of others that I didn't know existed. Cash box others. Give us a subscription and join us on Twitter, facebook. I'd love to hear your guys'tips and tricks and hacks that don't involve the digger redu on our Facebook account to share with everyone again. Last check, I think we're over 110 people. And that's just in a few hours. Joining the group, hop on and join us in discord. That's how you can get us live. You can talk to us on there. We actually have our guests shoot the podcast on discord with us, so we can do this remotely at high fidelity. And we love you.
Jimmy: And the thing is, too, if you don't like this podcast, we have a guarantee on this podcast. We are going to double your money.
Robbz: Back because yeah, it's it costs you nothing.
Jimmy: Two times nothing. We'll give you nothing nothing back.
Robbz: No, we're going to give them our love and affection and then never play The digger redu.
Jimmy: What? Yeah.
Robbz: That's ear rape. That's ear rape.
Jimmy: You know what? I'm thinking about getting a trumpet.
Robbz: Adam.
Adam: I don't have to deal with it, Adam.
Robbz: You do. The Diggery Do makes me want to purchase feeder guppies.
Jimmy: Oh, feeder gump.
Adam: You need more handlers.
Robbz: And that's our podcast this evening. Thanks again.
Jimmy: Handlers out.
Robbz: Let's kick that outro.
Jimmy: Epstein didn't kill himself.
Robbz: That's not the outro. Which one? Here it is. outro.
Adam: Thanks, guys, for listening to this podcast. Please visit us@aquariumguyspodcast.com and listen to us on spotify, iheartradio itunes, and anywhere you can listen to podcasts.
Robbz: We're practically everywhere. We're on Google. I mean, just go to your favorite place, Pocket casts. Subscribe to make sure it gets push notifications directly to your phone. Otherwise Jim will be crying into sleep.
Jimmy: Can I listen to it in my treehouse?
Robbz: In your tree house? In your fish room. Even alone at work.
Jimmy: What about it? My man cave.
Robbz: Especially your man cave. Yeah, only if adam's there no with feeder guppy.
Adam: No, they're endless.
Jimmy: You magic loving Frank fucking mother Frank.
Robbz: Well, I guess we'll see you next time. Later.