Hey, guys. Welcome to the podcast. We always kick the show off by talking about our loyal sponsors that help this show keep the lights on. Joe Shrimp shack.com is the place to get the best shrimp. He's in Plymouth, Minnesota. He is your local yet national Shrimp Man. So go to Joe Shrimp shack.com, use promo code Aquarium Guys at checkout for 10% off your entire order. Jimmy, why haven't you ordered this week's batch yet?
Well, you know, I'm waiting for the weather to get better, and the weather is getting better, so there's no more excuses for anybody not to order from Joe Shrimp Sack. Shrimp Sack?
What? I like it. Joe shrimp sack.
I can't wait to see him. We'll see him in two weeks at the show.
That is the best 40 and slip. I'm not even going to edit that. Oh, leave it to stay there, Joshrimpsack.com.
I had a wild weekend. That's all I was thinking about.
Love you, Joe. See the Expo, and don't forget about our charity, the Ohio Fish Rescue, to give you guys an update. I've been messaging Big Rich back and forth every now and again just to keep tabs with them. tracy is doing a little bit better every single day. She's out of the coma state now, in a vegetative state, so they're hoping that she'll move on to the next stage. And every day her signs are a little bit better. All her levels are now finally back to normal. It's just a slow process, and they use your prayers, their love, and if you want to support them and help with medical bills and their needs right now, certainly go to the gofundme link in the show notes. They're a fantastic charity, wonderful people that really dedicate their lives to fish. So check them out. The Ohio Fish Rescue, they still do videos on YouTube, and I know they're very thankful. They have all the love and support that they've been given at the time of this. They have $6,600 towards medical bills. For someone that doesn't have a full time job and is self supportive, it's still not enough. Every penny counts, and I know that it's meant the world to Big Rich and Josh. Certainly check them out Ohiofish Rescue or find them on YouTube. Ready to kick the show?
Let's do it.
Welcome to the Aquarium, guys. Podcast with your hosts, Jim colby and Rob dolphin. This week we're changing enough. We try to plan out podcasts a month in advance, plus sometimes try to get some scheduled. We have scheduled Taylor from Simply Beta, and she just got the flu. Thank goodness it wasn't the coronavirus.
No, she just got the flu. Not feeling very well. If she is listening, get well soon, it will have her on again very soon.
We are planning to have her on again in the future. We're going to work that out. But in the meantime, just by chance, we're lucky enough to get dan rowe, the president of the Minnesota Aquarium Society to join us today. Dan, how are you doing, buddy?
Oh, I'm doing pretty good.
The big thing that we need to talk about is the expo that's going to be coming up. It's the 21 march. Is that correct?
You got it.
Well, perfect. Before we dive into that, we got news to clean up.
What's that, Rob?
Well, number one, I'm Robbie olsen.
I'm Jim colby.
And I'm Adam Ellen shar.
You've been mean to me. All right. I was not near you were vicious.
To Jim when he was on his vacation.
Vicious. Vicious.
Let's talk about this.
I object. Frankly, I object. Let's recap for the audience and what's gone right. We supposedly love each other.
No, we don't put that out there. That's way heavy. No, we tolerate each other.
I'm just saying I tolerate you.
You might love me.
That's probably more like there we go.
You wink at me, you slap me on the hind den. It's a bond. Really.
That's for my fun.
That's your fun. What happened was Jim goes on this cruise, and I decide that he's going to be gone for almost a week. I can't leave his house on bamboozled. So I go over there, and of course, his son is house sitting, so I have to work with this with his son, and, you know, hey, Kyle, I'm going to come over, I'm going to do a prank. What should we do? And I decided to get a glass dildo and put it in your aquarium.
Yeah.
You clearly appreciated the joke. You saw it within 37 seconds after coming?
No, it was 27 seconds. My wife walked in the house, put on the suitcase, and she goes, what the hell is in my aquarium?
Well, they immediately knew it's me because there's a little tiny porcelain sign next to it that says the Aquarium Guys podcast that you didn't put in there.
I did not put it in there. We had not washed out yet.
Apparently what happened is and I boiled the dildo just to make sure it was completely clean. It was a new dildo, by the way.
What you had said to me is that you cleaned it.
I did.
I did not want to know where you put it and how you cleaned it.
It was cleaned and it was in your tank, but maybe the sign wasn't cleaned. Don't know. But apparently you guys lost a discus and blame me.
No, I would blame you. Yeah, we're all blaming you.
Oh, clearly, in revenge of me killing a discus and putting a personable object in your aquarium, you decide that when I leave to go help one of our fine guests in West Virginia to come back and fill my bedroom pretty much 50% of the way up to my nipples of balloons.
Yeah, I put 150 balloons in there. That was a lot of fun for me.
Shame on you.
You didn't kill any fish.
Well, no, but it gets better. We're both sick when we got back because that's what happens when you travel. You get sick. That's the new 2020 thing is you got to get sick when you're gone. So we get back and I decided to use the blue laser that we got introduced to by Sean kramer on one of our prior podcasts that he uses to burn pests in his saltwater aquarium. So I grabbed that thing, I put some my red glasses on, and I start lasering these balloons, just popping off my laser beam and then realize that they're filled with baby powder and glitter. You douchebag? Yeah.
It was like going to the strip club wasn't around.
That's not glitter everywhere. One, you shouldn't smell baby powder when you go to a strip club. And two, it was on our beds. No prep work. So I had to take all the rest of the balloons out. We had to sanitize and clean everything because glitter is the herpes of craft supplies. It really is.
I thought it was kind of funny because I was waiting for you to say something about the baby powder. I was going to tell you it was anthrax.
Oh, great.
There you go again.
Do you guys not understand?
I am flying in June.
There's nothing wrong with that.
Adam, this message is not brought to you by smelter Airline.
Not smelter.
Actually, we do have to use schmelt on top of it.
You might want to change your name and maybe put a mask on because.
Profiling, he's definitely filing for the TSA precheck right now. I would see what's happening.
I don't know if I even get qualified for that.
No, you'll be strip searched.
They basically go in the TSA precheck. Are you Arab? I'm sorry, you don't qualify.
And that's because Adam is half Arab.
Exactly. He has all the olive skin. He tans better than us. That is his sacrifices. He now gets felt up in airports.
I'd pay extra for that, actually, but that's me.
All right. Well, do we actually have any other news that we need to bring up other than what we have? I think we're good because the last podcast we got finally caught up with emails that we've been long disregarding. Although there is a couple of questions that we're going to address today in the topic. So today's topic that we're going to cover is I'm moving from state A to state B. What do I do about my fish? And if a storm happens, how can I best prepare my aquarium for said storm? We've been beat up on discord a lot. So that's going to be our topics for today. Of course, we're going to cover the Minnesota Aquarium Society and the Expo first. So dan.
Yes.
Thanks again for coming on the podcast. Where do you want to start? You want to start with the Aquarium Society or the Expo?
Let's talk about the aquarium society local club, twin Cities area, founded in 1931. So we're coming into our 90th year coming up next year, so that's kind of a big deal.
I heard Jim was original member, weren't you?
Yeah, I was one of the founding members.
You were? Okay.
Yeah, and I was 35 then.
I'm sorry. Continue.
I don't know if we're the oldest, but we're probably one of the oldest in the country.
I've been told by many members that you guys are the second oldest in the nation, and I don't know who's got the title. If you guys know, message us on the aquarium guys podcast to let us know, because we're going to take them out. We need to clearly wrap them somehow. Give them kudos.
Absolutely.
For those who are wanting to check it out, we do meetings once a month, first Thursday of every month. We do them over in roseville. But you can check us out our website where we post all the stuff. Aquarium dot mn.
Fantastic. And for those that are listening and they're in the Twin Cities area, you know, roseville is easy enough to get to its central northern part of the metro. I always explain the metro in Minneapolis St. Paul area as a big square. It's always surrounded by the 494 694, so it's always in the postage stamp quadrant. So just center north. Easy to get to for everyone.
Good description, Dan.
How many members do you guys have?
Well, let's see. I think last board meeting we counted in about 225 or so active members.
So large.
Yeah. We got people to come and go all the time. They're in the club for a couple of years, drift away, come back. But in terms of our active roster, when you count all the families that are in there, it's probably 200 to 225 somewhere in there.
So where do I sit? I pay dues, but you guys are too far away for me to show up to meetings. Am I a passive member?
Well, you're still an active member. We'll count you.
Excellent.
They'll take your money any day of the week.
I get brownie points.
There you go.
Yeah. A whopping $18 a year. $20 a year, whatever the membership fee is.
I joined for a sale price of $15. I got a promo code on the school podcast that will be talking about later.
Actually, I joined and then I fell away.
Did?
A shame on you.
I never make it to a meeting, but I liked being a member. It's nice to be in it.
You guys ever come down for one of our auctions?
I've been down there several times for different auctions and different shows and whatnot, and I really enjoy talking to everybody. Everybody has got great information. If they don't know the answer, they'll send you to somebody there that there might be a rainbow fish person here, might be somebody that's a shrimp expert here, and you guys bring in some great speakers also.
Plus we got the old timers like Mr. 1931 over there too.
Wow, you guys are just punching me in the throat already.
Love you. For those that have never experienced an Aquarium Society, what does the Aquarium Society benefit and why should I become a member? For the listeners that want to, or even some of the listeners that are remote and still want to help the cause and purchase membership, what are the benefits of being in the club?
Well, I'd say first and foremost, I think everybody right now, we're doing this on discord and everybody's going out to the Internet to try to find information. And it's kind of a little bit of an overload. You get some good stuff, but you get a lot of bad stuff. One of the benefits of having that connection to a local club is you get people with years and years of experience that have tried it and can tell you what works in their experience and what hasn't worked for them beyond just getting that networking thing. You've also got the auctions are a big draw. If you want to pick up some stuff that's a little unusual. The value of some of the speakers that are coming in, you can hear some big national names that are in the hobby. Younger guys coming in, like the Lucas Brett and corey mcelroy of Aquarium co op. And then we've also got some old timers like I know we've got rusty wessel coming up a little later in the summertime, kind of spans the gamut. And you can get some really great information, get to meet the folks up close, hear about their experiences.
If you're a member, is there a mission to these events or is it just part of the club membership?
No, actually, that's the great thing. All of our monthly events where we bring in speakers completely open and free to the public, we want people to come in, learn what we're about, and then if you choose to support us, that's great. I think it's 15 or $20 for an annual membership and that gets you access to some of the extra events. We do tours, fish room tours. We go to some shops, sometimes early before they open up. If you do happen to sell at our auction, you get a price break as well with your membership.
Now, real quick, how do you guys I mean, when you bring in these national speakers, they're not free. You have to pay airfare, you have to pay speaking fees, pay for hotels. How do you guys come up with the money to pay for that?
The auctions are a big part of that. The dues more or less cover the cost of renting all of our facilities, and they cover a little bit of the speakers. But most of that comes in from the auctions that that we run throughout the year. So, you know, any seller that comes in. If if you're selling and something sells for $10, you keep eight of that, and the club gets $2 of that.
So the club gets 20%. If you're part of the club and you sell $200 worth of fish, it might be 25%.
I'm not sure what the exact split is, but it's something around 2020 5%.
But that's fantastic. I mean, your club members are making a little money. You're paying for your speakers. You're bringing people in that you aren't normally going to find locally without traveling a long way to hear these guys speak, because I know a lot of these speakers will speak different places, but maybe only speak seven or eight times a year.
Yeah, and other guys are on the road all the time, but it's about catching them at the right time. I enjoy the auctions. For us, I have a little bit of fun because I get to auction up there. Now, I'm not one of those guys that can rattle off. We got five to 600 items usually every time we got to rattle through over the course of a day. So it's not spending a ton of time on anyone, but it's a lot of fun. And I'd recommend folks come down and check it out.
It's right after your 10th auction. You need a belt buckle up and told, and that's when your superpowers come and big hat.
I got a little ways to get there, but some of our old timers that have been auctioning for a while, they could just have those big belt buckles running all the way up the front.
So real quick, what is the strangest thing that somebody's brought in to auction? Auction? Just curious.
A dolphin. A dolphin? Wait, I'm joking. I'm joking. Please, Dan, continue.
I don't know if I have an answer for you guys on that one. Most people bring pretty normal things in there.
Well, Adam just needs to sell his children. That's what he's thinking right now.
I am not selling my children.
Nobody wants me now. At the back of our auctions, we partner with organization called Habitat. They do a lot of work for unwanted pets that can't be cared for anymore. So specifically more the aquatic things. So I'm sure they've gotten some pretty strange items in at our auctions.
Well, we have to get some more information about these folks from you, because our charity of choice right now is Ohio Fish Rescue. And that's exactly what they're doing, is they're taking large fish that people can't take care of anymore and give them a forever home.
So, Dan, when is the next auction?
For those that are listening, it's in April. I couldn't tell you the date off the top of my head.
First Thursday.
It is not the first Thursday. So we run the auctions on saturdays because they start about registration starts about 10:00 a.m.. We auction 11:00 A.m. Until we run out of stuff, which is usually four to 05:00 p.m.. So it's an all day event on a Saturday. I would guess it's either the second or third Saturday in April. But again, check the website out. It's going to have the dates, times, locations, and it'll be all on the front page.
I cheated and went ahead and go into the website. Aquarium mn. Certainly check it out. We have all the Minnesota Aquarium Society information and it looks like it is Saturday, April 18 at 11:00 a.m. Is the auction. So certainly check it out on their website to be a part. Come see it or at least check out some of their information online the week before that. You even have a how to breed shrimp gathering for the monthly meeting. That looks real fun.
Yeah, that's going to be a great time.
We forgot about the other thing that he does, their breeders program.
We've got our breeders program and our horticultural program. So for people that are into either breeding different lines of fish, different species, or cultivating different aquatic plants, you can rise the ranks and get some awards for your mantle as you work through that.
That's what I'm looking forward to.
Breeder or grower?
Breeder.
I start with endlers. Once I get my fish from going, I'll be putting in a bunch of stuff because I kind of want one of those breeder trophies, the breeder awards, because I've always wanted one of those.
Your wife should give you one for four kids. Just saying.
I didn't get any awards for that.
You just got a cigar and said good luck.
Good luck.
I didn't even get that. It was more of a yelling. Lots of yelling.
Lots of yelling. All right, so moving on, the aquarium expo certainly tell us how that's been and how it's changing this year.
Last year we decided to shift the focus of the expo. It had always been kind of a dog show, but fish people are coming in. They're judging fish on their color finish shape, making sure it's the ideal for the different species. It was very member centered and we said this is a great opportunity for us to get things out in front of the public and use this as an educational avenue there. We partnered with Auggsburg University. They have a new science building. One of their biology professors has been in the club for years and years and they offered up that location to us. They've got a couple of saltwater tanks in there. Had our expo there last year. Outstanding success. I've been told by several people that we had upwards of 1000 people walk through the door over the course of the day. So we said, you know what, great central location, great opportunity to teach some people. Running seminars all day, showing people the different fish that are available to them and getting into the marketplace so people could take some stuff home. So we're hoping to grow that again, this year and keep it going. Now that there's not really too many midwest things, who knows, keep it growing. Maybe it could be the next aquatic experience.
See this year we're going for 3000 or bus. That's what we have to hit. Mainly because we're there.
Wow.
What are the activities or some of the events that are going on during the expo that we can look forward to?
The biggest thing that's going on throughout the day are probably going to be our presentation sessions. We've got two different rooms, a larger one and a smaller one. I'm going to be talking about anything from filtration, different equipment, how to breed certain species of fish, learning the ins and outs of aquascaping or plant care. And then some general knowledge and question and answer sessions for folks who can come in and ask an expert.
And how many speakers do you have this year?
I would say we've got twelve sessions running throughout the day. Some of them are panels, some of them are individuals.
And just in case people are worried, we do not have a panel or session. Just scare the new fish comers in. So don't even worry. We'll stop the fan mail before we.
Do have a booth. It's in the parking lot back next to the dumpster.
Come see us. We're going to autograph people's faces. No we're not.
Yeah, bring us some warm lunch because it's probably be cold off the parking lot.
It's right. We heard that there's going to be a buffet. I mean, they're catering in golden corral.
I didn't hear that.
It's a sushi bar. Jokes, jokes. Calm down at him.
Throw a punch Jim.
Throw.
So is there any sessions that you're holding Dan that we can look forward to or are you just the captain of this crew?
For now I'm just the captain of the crew. I'm going to be running around like crazy that day. But all of the sessions that we've got are from local folks that have been in the hobby for years. And so it's local knowledge, people you can access after the expo, it's not just somebody that flies in. You say hi to them and jet set off away.
This is a silly question, but will there be food available there because people jimmy, calm down.
We'll bring in quiznos.
No, but people come in and spend 8 hours there easy just because Jimmy.
John's like right around the street.
Actually a funny story about that. Last year I know we end up running out. We got one of the volunteer coordinators runs out to grab some of the people working the thing, some lunch and he goes about 130. Well he calls back and says Jimmy John's ran out of bread. He sent too many people down there.
That's pretty great.
So you're telling me to bring my own bread is what you're saying.
Yeah, bring your own hoagie.
I might bring a grill and we'll do some tailgate. Now there I'll be selling hot dogs for a buck.
There's a coffee shop up top that sells snacks and coffee, and we should have that open up again this year. But given how central it is, there are plenty of places within walking distance that you can grab some chow.
Awesome.
So that could make for a full day. Get up on a Saturday morning, go down there and enjoy all the speakers. Meet a lot of cool people, hear a lot of great information. So it sounds like a fantastic Saturday to me.
And our sponsors have been hooking us up. We have got raffles out the wazoo.
Out the wazoo?
Yeah. Tons of stuff, from tanks to equipment. We're going to have some fish, we're going to be auctioning off or raffling away, and that's going on throughout the day. So come at any point if you show up at nine, awesome. If you show up at four or five. Awesome.
Is there any fee to join the experience at all?
No. Free.
Come free, win some free prizes, maybe walk out with the tank. And we're even working with Joe Shrimp shack to see if we can get some shrimp at the table to give away some door prizes, even from our booth. So I'm assuming there's going to be a lot more than just us there.
So you're saying Dan is probably the oprah winfrey of the fish world because you get a tank, you get a fish, you get a free net.
That is the sweetest thing anybody's ever said to me.
And he's not even going to make them pay taxes if he's going to be the oprah, you're going to be the Ellen Degeneresist. Making people dance as they walk in the door.
That's what I'll do. Yeah, right.
Go to the blonde hair, the whole thing.
We're going to get jiggy with it. That's where we should put this song, right here. Get jiggy with it.
We got to make sure we get that on camera.
Oh, you do?
We'll get it on camera?
Yeah. Have you ever seen jello in an earthquake? That's me dancing. Just sit there and jiggle.
I've never seen wrinkly jello before.
Shut up.
All right, Dan, again, thanks for coming on the podcast and joining us for the topic, for those that are interested. Right. Because Dan is the president of the Minnesota Court Society, we're going to have a link in our show notes. It's an lbr video. Check it out. It's a tour of dan's fish room. Dan rowe, again, not confused with Mike Row, which is a whole different YouTube column entirely.
I like to refer to him as Uncle Mike. Unfortunately, there's no relation. But, man, he seems like a cool uncle.
I've met him twice and he's been up here in our area. He's done a thing where he went getting cars out from underneath the ice. He also was here at a turkey farm. And he is all here with one of the bait farms, and I've met him twice at the same gas station, at the same table, eating a hamburger. And he is a hell of a funny guy. He's still around.
He's just working conventions now, doing dirty jobs.
Yeah, that's right.
Anyways, we'll have that in the show notes for you. And let's dive down to our topic. I think the first thing we can talk about is what to do when moving. So we heard, Dan, that you're going to be putting your house up for sale. What better topic to bring you in on than how to move an established aquarium system to another location?
I'd say step one is hopefully you're not moving out of town. If you're moving around in town, have a friend look after them. That would be step one, without a doubt. But that's not always available to everyone. And some folks are moving out of town as well. I think the biggest thing you can do is just working on getting prep ready. If you're going to be transporting fish for a couple of days, start fasting them ahead of time so they're not making waste of the water.
Well, I think we should also talk for a minute about the scenarios. There's easy scenarios, like my last move, I moved across a very small town. It was pretty easy to set up. Then you have the moves where you actually have to drive a few hours or even on a state, and that's where it's going to take time. But the bigger matter is, do you have two tanks where you can set one up, beginning to get it established, and then simply just transfer the fish, which is by far the easiest. Most people don't aren't able to do that. If you have, like, 125 gallon tank like mine, spending that much money, you just have two tanks to transfer. Doesn't really work out.
And a whole lot of it, too, is timeframe. I mean, if you're moving from an apartment to apartment, you've got a day. But if you're moving, buying a house, you might have an extra three or four days where you can bring the tank in first, which I've done, or bringing the tank in last and leave it at your other house. So there's so many different scenarios that we got to go over.
So let's just talk. Worst case, you don't have an extra tank or you don't have extra tanks, plural, to maybe spread the fish out. Let's just pretend it's a 55 gallon and you're moving from Minneapolis to fargo, right?
That's a good five hour trip or 250 miles.
Dan, what would you do in that situation? If you're going to be moving and you have to move from one house to another, what's your first steps?
So I'm tearing down and I'm setting up completely fresh in a new spot.
And you only have one tank. You don't have any other one tank.
You.
Only got one tank, so you got to move the tank and the fish. What's your prep process? You said, number one, start by weaning the food so they're not essentially crapping in a bucket or bag.
Yeah, essentially. I'd stop feeding them three, four days out. Just let whatever is in their system run through. I'd take every bit of biomedia you can and try to keep that wet through transit. If you got sponge filters or let's say you got a hang on the back and it's got that little either plastic insert or maybe a baggie of ceramic media, take that out when you're ready to move and throw it in your transportation bucket, throw it in with the fish, it'll still do its job.
Or even do a separate bucket. Like I put a lid on it because generally if I'm going to do it, I have sponges throughout my tanks and those are going to spray crap across my nice new car. So go to your local lowe's or Home depot, get yourself a bucket and get a sealed lid. For that particular case. If you're real parented and worried about it, what's the next step, buddy?
So you got your bio figured out, you got your fish all fasted. At that point, I just say you're pretty much ready to go. I mean, drain the tank, net the fish, and get in the car and start driving. Now one of the things you got to consider is how long your drive is. Think about if fish are sitting in buckets. They're good in buckets. Depends on how many fish in the bucket. But let's just say you got maybe four or five adult African cichlids per bucket. You've probably got about six to 12 hours on that before you're really going to be concerned. Now, I know other people are going to have different takes on it. Some people will say, oh, they can only stay in the bucket for like 2 hours. I think that's a little conservative. And some people will be like, they could be in the bucket for like three days. That might be a little bit extreme. But if you've got 12 hours or so, they're probably going to be just fine sitting in their bucket as long as they're not too cold.
And I think too as a dilly daily down the road, that bucket is splashing a little bit. It's making a little bit of air for your fish as you're driving along.
See, I'm one of those paranoid individuals, so I always try to go like best scenario, if you're like Jimmy and I, you got someone, or at least you might have on your own, a tank of oxygen or no friend, maybe you can stop by a welder, shop, whatever is convenient. And putting them in big individual bags with oxygen is always my first go to rather than a bucket. But most people don't have an oxygen tank sitting around. I'm a paranoid person. I'm not going to guess 6 hours. If I have a five hour journey, I have to make a couple of stops for lunch or a roadside repair. I don't want to be on a clock. So I'm generally going to be purchasing a bubble box. And you can get these bubble boxes at any type of bait store. You can get them cabella's, you can get them Bass Pro Shop. They're pretty cheap. They're $20.15, $20. You can get them even on Amazon. And essentially all it is is like 2d batteries and a switch. It hangs on the side of the bucket. And these things run for about 24 hours. So you can leave a nice aerator in the tank for a nice cheap price if you're paranoid. But if it's a short trip, yeah. Again, the 6 hours is a nice time frame.
Think about folks that get fished by mail. Those things are sitting in bags for up to two to three days. Granted, they're probably pumping that bag full of oxygen, but even at our auctions, people bag stuff up the night before. Let us sit in there. It's only when you're overcrowding too much fish waste and too little water that you're going to start running into issues.
Yeah, it's almost more of an ammonia issue than it is an oxygen issue when you do the bags. That's why doing the food prep, making sure you're giving time before you feed is almost more important than making sure how much oxygen is in the bag.
If I'm hauling large fish, a lot of times people will give me oscars or they'll give me large fish. A lot of times I'll take a bottle of ample with me also and just put a drop or two in the bucket. Then maybe if it gets to be a long trip, I used to go up to the Canadian border and back. it'd be 12 hours of driving. I might stop and get gas. I might put a couple more drops of Amcool in there just to help control the ammonia.
See, you used to bring prime, but then you get high off of it all the time.
Yeah. Plus I sell it by the Canadian border.
Don't tell anyone. For those that are listening, you can go back. I think it's episode nine where we listen to some stories of Big, Rich and Josh taking fish across the country and traveling with these monster fish. And they were using substantial amounts of prime and got high off of it in the back. So it's always been a joke of ours, make sure to crack a window when you're using prime.
Yeah. I hate prime. It smells bad.
Again, you pull the fish out, you have another bucket. Or maybe it's the same bucket, depending on how much media you have, whether it's ceramic, media, sponges, whatever it may. I've heard a lot of people saying, no, save all the water. Put all the water into these five gallon containers and fill your car are with it. Because you're going to need all that when you go. Well, you're not. The only time that you're going to really need some water and you don't even need that much is when you're going from a soft PH to a hard PH and you're moving across the country. You don't know what PH it would be. You're going to have enough in those couple of buckets or even take one smaller bucket along to drip acclimate with the water that's in the bucket. You have enough tools there that you don't need to bring your water from your aquarium. They're already going to be in a new environment. The best thing is to just start the moment you bring them and acclimate to the water there. I don't even know where people got the idea, frankly, of bringing all the water across with them.
That sounds difficult.
Yeah. A lot of work. That's a four letter word. I've been told by Jimmy about work.
Yeah. And the other thing, too, they're talking about buckets. That's a go to for a lot of people. Another place you can buy some really good buckets is at your local bakery. I'm talking about scratch bakery where they make donuts they don't bring them out of the freezer and make them. I've got some of the coolest buckets ever from our local bakery, which they have the big rubber seal on them. You can snap that lid on so darn tight you could probably throw it out the window when you're driving. It wouldn't even leak. And usually you can get those buckets for a dollar or two at the bakery versus your big box stores where you're paying $3 for a bucket.
Is that what you see frosting on your face every time you deliver fish?
That's why you see frosting on my fish, yes.
Got you. They're glazed, raised glazed, raised blades. That's what it is. That's the new color I forgot to mention. Another thing you can do is if you have a lot of fish like you overcrowded basically this on a 55 estimate. But say you have a couple of tanks that you're traveling with. You have multiple buckets. You don't have to use just one, one bubble box or buy multiple. Another thing you can do is take your single air pump and you can use that single air pump, just one that you plug into the wall. Use them for multiple buckets in the back of your car. You can just get a car inverter, they're $30 and essentially turns your cigarette lighter or car outlet into a wall plug, which you can run your pump up. Your car has to run. But that doesn't matter because even stopping for gas, it's not going to worry because you got 6 hours generally on those buckets. But if you're going a long trip, lots of fish. I use an inverter all the time for a lot of the multiple buckets where I want to segregate fish. Next step of the process is setting up your tank. As long as you're keeping those fish in the car, they're going to be relatively warm because you're going to probably crank the car. And we say warm because we're in Minnesota, we always worry about freezing. So when we crank heat in the car, it's 90 degrees in the car. So your fish are probably going to be somewhere around that 74 range.
Below zero.
Right below zero. So when you bring them in, the only thing you have to worry about besides oxygen and the ammonia is heat. I've seen people wrap buckets with traveling blankets. It really doesn't work for buckets. But if you're setting up the tank and you need time to get that tank set up and they're going to be in a cold basement, try to use a space heater. Or if you do have a small aquarium heater along with you, be cautious of temperature changes. You want to keep those fish as acclimated as possible. Otherwise, I've seen people go to the hunting section of Walmart and buy heat packs that you normally ship with with fish anyway and stick them and tape them to the sides of the buckets.
That sounds strange as heck.
I mean, you got to do what you got to do, right? It's a redneck, cheap solution, but it'll work for part time heat on your aquarium.
Wait, don't those ones sorry, Jim, go ahead.
Don't get them wet.
Yeah, I was going to say, if they get wet, don't they cause like a chemical reaction to melt the plastic?
No, most of them just solidify and just no longer work. So don't get them wet. Keep them dry.
But the other thing is, too, if you're moving across the country, go over to your local pet store and say, hey, you have a fish box I can get from you. Because I'm not kidding you, most of these places will give you a fishbox because they've got 200 of them in their back room.
Or if you go to jimmy's house, he's got a small leaning tower of pisa in his garage at all times.
Yes. So I've always got boxes, and recently I drove down to Arkansas and picked up I don't know what did I pick up? Like 12,000 placos. And I took 17 empty boxes in a minivan and I went down there. I came back from Arkansas, and I spent overnight in Minneapolis. So I'm not sure if they were in the bags. Probably about 32 hours. Lost four fish. Those fish boxes just work wonderful, and that's what they use to ship them on the airlines and whatnot. So stop by your local pet store and just say, hey, can I get a box and some bags and some rubber bands from you? And also if you want to use the oxygen and most people don't have access to an oxygen tank. You can go to your local bait store and say, hey, can I get some oxygen from you? Flip them a couple of dollars and they'll air up your bag and then you're good to go. And it's easy, easy peasy.
The bait stores already have those oxygen tanks on hand for their customers. So just giving them a couple of bucks, they're like, what? And they'll take it every single time. Flip the guy at ten, he'll be like, how many bags? I don't care.
Or else if your grandmother is in a home and she's on oxygen, just swing by, say hello to her, steal her oxygen tank, fill up your tank, and when grandma's blue, give it back to her. I'm just saying.
Well, make sure you don't switch that out with the co2 tank.
There you go.
Just make sure that grandma's got enough to make it back to the pharmacy. That's right, Ken. Confirm this works, but it's not unethical. How dare you? I just told Jimmy I know what I'm doing to him when he gets older. Stealing all his oxygen tanks.
Don't they make those little compressors so that you can carry them around? For people that have old people that have like, emphysema or something?
They do. They're about $900 oxygen. Couldn't you just use $100?
Yeah, they're about $900 from what I've been told. I've never bought one, but yeah, I mean, there's numerous things you can do, but I'd rather flip the bait guy two $3 and buy a box and put them in there than buy one of those.
Dan, are we missing anything for the travel recommendations?
No, I don't think so. I mean, I think the only thing I'd say is you kind of got to do as dark as it sounds, you got to do a little cost analysis and go, all right, I got a tank full of we'll use platties, for example. Am I really going to invest $150 to move these things across a couple of states because it's going to take me a few days? Or do I maybe want to sell the ones I have and start fresh in a new place?
That is fantastic. I didn't even thought of that.
Yeah, you can go to your local aquarium society and donate those platties and then just order new when they're ready from the same aquarium society.
Now, I know some people, they've got emotional attachment to their fish, or maybe they got something special that's going to require a bit of care. But at some point, you got to do a reality check and go, I love these things. They're awesome, but how much hassle is it worth versus just bagging up your sponge filters, keeping them dry, getting to your new place, plopping your tank down, filling it up, going out to the shop and getting something new and fresh.
From your local prison? Now, yes, because when you go to your new home, your new town, you want to meet those pet store people anyway, and you want to go and see what they have to offer. Plus, their fish have already been acclimated to the water in that area. You might be going from a soft water area to a hardwater area, and your fish might not acclimate very well when they get there after they've been stressed out for a couple of days.
And I'm not saying that's the right path for everybody, but at some point you got to consider and say what makes the most sense here? Is it worth working on that countdown clock that I'm sure we'll talk about at some point?
I think the last two things to add to that is we only talked about an example of traveling like a five, six hour trip. If you're going across the country and you're from California and you're suddenly going to move to Tennessee, that really doesn't work out because you're not going to road trip. Most likely if you are, it's going to be in a U Haul and fish aren't probably going to make space casualties in a giant, uhaul, in those situations. Like you said, cost analysis number one. But number two, you could just ship them to yourself, box them up, get yourself a styrofoam box, heat packs, add oxygen to the bags, and just like you'd ship them to sell them to someone in the country, you can ups them to your new address. And I mean, you're probably going to be there in another 18 hours anyway. You might beat them there. As far as oxygen, I completely forgot to say you can add some plants to the buckets or bags. Guppy grass goes a long way.
Oh, yeah, guppy grass, horn, ward, water sprite, any of those plants that just float around, they suck up nitrates like crazy.
And those fish usually will just kind of go in there and just make themselves a bed. And what a great little fish airbag you've just made for your little friends. They're in there not getting knocked around in the bucket. You put that plant in there and that really slows down the motion of the water and gives them a place to hide.
Well, I think for all intents and purposes, we've covered at least the basics of traveling. So if you've never traveled before, you're trying to think of for the first time, hopefully these tips will work out for you. They certainly work out for us. But the other questions we have is disasters. What happens if disaster strikes? And the most common is power outage, but we can also talk about some other natural disasters. If you're in an area where there's hurricanes or tornadoes or even earthquakes, there is little to do to prep for your fish thunderstorms. You have a good insurance policy that covers your fish tanks.
Yeah, that doesn't happen normally. I mean, I don't know anybody other than a couple of special people that have got an insurance policy on their tank unless it's something really big and really dramatic.
So the most common, like you said, is thunderstorms. And that's just power outage. You can get a power strip to protect it. Otherwise, like Adam always recommends, is getting a titanium grounding rod in case it blows out. A heater or something else in your tank is always the best method, or, heaven forbid, you have your computer right next to your aquarium and lightning struck both. Nice to have a grounding rod there to protect fish. The most common, of course, is power outages. Dan, what do you do to prep power outages? I'm assuming, number one, you're a plant guy.
I don't really sweat power outages so much. I mean, your typical power outage, you're going to be out for, well, sometimes just a couple of minutes. But let's say it's a few hours. In a few hours, nothing's going to go wrong. I wouldn't sweat anything in a couple of hours. Maybe if you're in a basement and it's the dead of winter in Minnesota and the power goes out, and maybe you got electric heat versus gas, things are down, houses cooling down, grab a blanket, throw it over your tank. If you're really worried about that, unless you're thinking you're going to have extended several days worth of power outage, not a whole lot I'd fret about.
Yeah. In Minnesota, if you're out for, say, over 12 hours, you're going to have a lot more issues than just your aquarium. You're going to have your pipes freezing, you're going to have a lot of other issues. So extended power outages in Minnesota really just don't happen unless you're in the boondocks. We do our best to get power back up and running just for the sake of heating homes, but you're still going to see the six hour power outages.
I'd say this just from my own experience. I don't know how many times I've gone to sweep around the fish tanks, or maybe I got to service something and I end up turning the power strip off to my tank and I forget about it for a day. I can't remember one time where I've forgotten about it for 24 hours, turned it back on and had a dead fish when I came back. Now, granted, I keep fairly temperate stuff that can handle it. I don't know if you're on a discus at 85 and they drop down to 60 over a couple of hours, you might have some issues, but in general, I think 24 hours you're going to be perfectly fine.
Yeah, I think when we're talking about thunderstorms and stuff, I've experienced this several times where everything comes back on, but your darn pump doesn't come back on because it has a magnetic little wheel, it gets stuck or whatever. I think probably just as important as after you lose power is just to make sure that everything is up and running. Because that's where I've had trouble in the past, too, where, like, all of a sudden the pump doesn't come back on, but you go by and see the lights are on and you just assume everything's working.
So a good rule of thumb is if you had to reset the clock on your stove, check your aquarium to make sure everything's still running.
That's a good point.
Some other tips is, again, this is with planted tanks, we don't have to worry about it so much. lbr aquatics this is the entire lecture that they just had for the Minnesota Aquarium Society that you were telling us before the podcast. Again, he's noted for having nothing running in his tanks and it's completely plant based. That's how tanks were done in the early days of the modern aquarium. From the 30s on is you use plants, but let's say that you don't have plants and maybe you're over stocking a bit too much. You're going to have to worry about time wise. So some time frames for a normally stock tank that we can try to use as a minimal guideline. Every tank is different, every fish is different. The higher the temperature, the less oxygen in the water. But for a normal 72 degree tank, you're looking at the 32 max to as low as 12 hours. But again, if it's overstocked, there's no plants and you're really concerned. We do have a few recommendations for oxygen. Number one, just like we do for travel, the bubble box. The bubble boxes have one on hand, 24 hours to add oxygen to the tank works the same way as it does in a bucket as your tank. I've had my pump burnt out. I use the bubble box just to keep oxygen running in the tank anyway as a backup, just to have for my equipment. Other than that, there are some older methods, like the bucket method. You know more about this, Jimmy.
That's because I know how to run a bucket, right?
They're mysterious objects.
I've told the story before on this podcast. When they used to ship goldfish on the railroad, they would actually put ice on top of the milk, what do you call it? Milk carton? Milk crate. What is that thing? That milk.
It's been a while since I've seen like a 1930s movie.
So yeah, but but that whole thing is with the water dripping down because they put ice on top of it and it would continually drip down, creating oxygen, and that's how they ship it on the railroad cars. So something very similar to that is if you're having problems with your tank and let's say you for some reason tornado ripped through your town, you're not going to have power for two or three days. Your best bet would be to get the battery operated one. But you could take ice cream pail and just lift up five quarts of water and continuously dump it in for a few minutes just to build up some oxygen in that tank if it gets to be a long extended time.
And it's nice to take that ice cream pell and pour it over something. Like if you have a small grate or an object, that way it kind of ripples across it. Because the idea the more surface area you're getting for the oxygen onto the waters, the better. So dumping into a single stream won't do near as much as taking, say, a flat plate or a Great departure.
Even a colander works really good.
There you go. More than just a hat when you're drunk.
Yeah, exactly.
When you think about it, when you go down to what's the purpose of a bubbler? You got these bubbles coming up. Not that much dissolved oxygen or gas exchange is happening in those bubbles in the 2 seconds it's floating from the bottom of your tank to the top of your tank, it's about when it hits the surface and creates that agitation on the surface, that's where your gas exchange is really happening.
Yeah, you don't see bubblers in Minnesota lakes, that's for sure.
Very seldom.
Unless earl got in and threw a rock in there. You just don't know.
Yeah, I mean, there's some of the smaller lakes in Minnesota where they'll throw a bubbler out there to try to keep the fish alive. Especially if it's a dnr, where they're stocking young fish and whatnot.
No wind, algae blooms, super shallow. They're very few and far between. You'll ever hear that? So some other methods is this one I got from a friend of mine that had a joke. There's an old device that they used to use, or maybe still use, I'm not really sure. I don't have a fireplace anymore. I have a fake fireplace upstairs. But a bellow, it's like an accordion that shoots wind. So if you have water on your house, slowly use a bellow, bubble, some water in your tank. It's just the same agitation you do with an ice cream bucket. So the other thing you can do for the small power outages that you were talking about, where you just come home and oh, the clock is not right and you're worried about stuff kicking out. You can also have a battery backup. It's not just like a battery backup like you'd use for, say like a house. It's a smaller one that you'd use in an office setting. Generally these battery backups are intended for, number one, surge protection, and two, so your computer doesn't shut off during what they call a brown out. When the power gets so low, it just about cuts out, but it will kill your computer. In a lot of office settings, they'll spend money on these. These are about 60, $70 on Amazon. You can certainly look them up. They're called the ups. If you have short power outages continually, and you live in an area where that continually happens in a lot of cities, after disasters. When they're cleaning up or even small upgrades in the city, they'll have continual brownouts. This is a great thing to make sure your pumps don't stop running.
In the past in some of these larger cities, they've had rolling blackouts to try to save electricity. Like when Australia just recently, when they had their problems with all the fires and whatnot, they actually were doing rolling blackouts because they were so worried about wires starting fires because of the different things that were going on over there, because of the high winds and the wires would touch together and spark out. So they're doing rolling blackouts. So there is where you can run into a problem if you've got something like that going on in your city or your area. We always think of things in our area, but when you look at it worldwide and see all these problems that people have, it's just amazing that you can keep things going if you really plan ahead.
I just make sure if you're going to use one of those battery backups, keep your heater off of that. Otherwise it's not going to be backing up too much for long. I mean, the power draw on a pump, you talk at a couple of watts, maybe 1015 watts. You get one of your 300 watt heaters kicking on for 15 minutes or an hour. I bet that backup isn't going to last very long.
And you can check ratings because some of these battery backups are made for gaming pcs that hit 1000 watts easy. So certainly check it. That's a great point because I see crappy power supplies burn out. Check the rating. They do make power supplies that can take it, but if not, I mean, get the cheaper one. You don't have to do your heater. You're mainly making sure that filters and pumps are still working. That's the main priority. Heaters aren't as much of a priority, so save a couple of bucks. Don't get the big one, but check your rating to make sure that it's fitting for your equipment. Adam had a great idea. We talked about cold. If it gets cold, try to get a traveling blanket. Wrap your aquarium if you're really concerned about it for a long time. But heat, we're in Minnesota, we don't deal with this a lot. So Adam, what was your suggestion?
Oh, you take bags of ice, float them on the top or inside your aquarium, and then the cool water keeps your tank cooler. So then it'll also make more oxygen in the water.
Cold water holds more oxygen by default than hot water. A lot of the pond issues that I've seen, people come to me, all my goldfish are gasping, I lost a couple of goldfish. There's algae spiking. Your pond is in direct sun. Even if you're in Minnesota, no shade. All your fish are getting hit. I mean, your fish are showing skin cancer issues. Suddenly it gets to. 99 degrees all day long, all the oxygen has gone out of the water. That's why you have to really essentially fizz every pond during peak summer seasons, no matter what. Because sure, there's two fish in 1000 gallons, but it doesn't matter if all oxygen depletes when it hits 90 degrees in that pond.
That's a good point, Adam.
I try to help.
It also works to keep your beer cold.
If you're in Florida, keep the ice on top. Put a beer on top. Beer floats in the aquarium most of the time.
I told you the story just before we came on is that we were at the original hooters in Florida where they first opened up and they came with a pitcher of beer for us and our wings. There is a bread bag kind of hanging out at the top of the beer. And I said, what is this about? He goes, well, keep your beer cold and then your beer doesn't get watered down. And then it also gives them a third less beer to sell to you, but make more profit.
Next time I see a bag in your cup, I'm not going to assume it's tea.
No, it's ice. To keep my beer cold, you're hitting one at noon.
That's what's happening.
Crazy things that people come up with.
Well, Dan, do you have any other tips for listeners during disasters?
I don't think anything else other than what we covered. Short term, things are probably going to be just fine. The biggest danger to fish is when you get a sudden change. So if things are stable, even if you're down south and it's hot in the summer and your tank starts rising in temperature until you're getting really hot, then you got to worry about it. But for most of the time, fish will adjust to moderate changes. They can hold there for a while. It's not good for their long term health. Like you're not going to keep certain fish at 60 degrees ongoing, but if you keep them there for a little while and as long as they're not shocking hot cold, hot cold, hot cold or shocking th by dropping a whole bunch of water in there or whatever the case may be, they're probably going to be justified.
So anything gradual, you're probably going to be okay.
Well, perfect. I don't think there's much else, people. What do you do during an earthquake? Well, you watch your aquarium shatter and your hopes and dreams. I don't live through earthquakes. I live in Minnesota. That's my recommendation to move.
Actually, we have a fault line in Minnesota.
Is it up by the Iron Range? I don't want to be near it.
No, it's built right under the nuclear power plant.
Lovely.
All great.
I feel like a lot of this thing going on through my head right now.
Hey, as long as we got dan. Dan, we just did a podcast here. We're talking about jellyfish in minnesota fresh water jellyfish. Have you heard of such a thing?
I did hear of such a thing and I saw some photos of somebody who collected it in I don't know, was it like Cross Lake or something like that?
Clear Lake, I heard, actually.
Or Clear Lake. Yeah. Freshwater jellyfish.
What do you know about these things? Anything? We're not being able to find anything really concrete. We're just hearing about it, that it's out there, like bigfoot. We're just wondering, have you heard of what they're called or where they come from or how they're here?
I got nothing for you on this one, guys. It's a newer thing to me, too, and I think I'm equally as amazed, but I'm sure somebody's probably got an explanation for it.
I did more investigation work from the last population.
Oh, did you again?
I have the full name. It's something I absolutely cannot pronounce. They're simply called freshwater jellies. I cannot find anything else that is a freshwater jelly. So why have a different name? These things apparently are spread across the country. They have been going from lake to lake, and because there's no damage to any ecological setting, they're not taking plankton out of the lakes, killing ecosystems. They're just there. They're not harming anything else. No harm, no foul. The dnr doesn't even have information on their website. I contacted mandy, the guy we had on the show, confirmed that absolutely, they're seeing them. There's dnr reports of them, but there's no articles because they're really not a pest. They're not considering them. They're invasive, but they're not really invasive to anything. When we are in West Virginia, we talk with dabby and there's lakes there that they seem they're pretty common. Their cycles last a lot longer, so they seem around the October time frame, because they bloom like all jellyfish do across the world. They have certain seasons where they're more prolific. Yeah, they're here. They're in a lot of different lakes. I'm hearing reports on you can certainly Google. There's some sightings, but I've heard nothing about people keeping an aquariums. They're like, as you said, the bigfoot of this whole thing. And apparently they've been here for a decade.
Bigfoot'S real, by the way.
If they're invasive, how the heck do they get moved from lake to lake? Must be in their marvel stages.
Like, everything crazy. It came from China.
Really?
That doesn't surprise me.
We're going to keep blaming China for everything.
They don't really know how it's spread, but it's not harming anything. And when you're seeing people in Minnesota, there's a chain around different Minnesota lakes called zorbas. And as to that pizza Mexican joint and you're seeing people scoop these things out of lakes and zorbas cups, big plastic cups, so you know they're real. They're not photoshopping something onto a zorbus cup. They're definitely there. But again, if you have more information, go to aquariumguyspodcast.com at the bottom of the website, you'll find our contact info or email or phone, whatever you like to contact us with. We want to know more information if you got it, have some that you've kept or found. We want that information, and we love to broadcast it on here.
That'D be cool. Then maybe we can name it ourselves.
Yeah, but I wonder if zorba has already got the naming rights. They stuck a Z in there somewhere.
Probably.
Jellyfish.
Jelly'S fish.
Jellies.
I'll ask my son my son's work for zorba since he was 13 years old. He's now 26 years old. So I'll ask him if he knows anything about that.
I want to keep him in a tank. I want to see him. I want to know about him. Well, guys, if you like what you hear in the podcast, you want to support it. Certainly support our sponsors, first of all. But you can also support us directly. Instead of a patreon, we have a separate link. It's a much easier you're more friendly. It doesn't spam you. It's on the bottom of the website. Aquariumgistpodcast.com support the site and you can donate once, donate monthly. Certainly I need support. And your feedback and questions. We had the entire last episode of Nothing but your questions. We love answering them. Every episode. This whole podcast was driven off multiple questions we got from people and decided to make an entire podcast out of it.
That's fantastic. So anything you guys have out there that you want to talk about? You want us to do some investigation, give us a holler. I don't know how you get a hold of us. Rob can tell you about that.
You can't get a hold of Jim it's specifically through a filter. He has his people. He'll answer the question through.
If you're to get hold of me, you need to go and do some smoke signals out in the yard and stuff. And if I'm out in the backyard drinking beer, I'll probably see it or.
Just have a big bucket of donut frosting for you.
Donut frosting? Yeah. More so picked on because I'm the old guy in the podcast.
No, you picked on because you're the old fat end podcast.
Jesus Christ. And so stay tuned to hear what I do to rob's house next week, which will probably be involved fire or a payloader.
Is it bad enough when I wipe? I see glitter?
Yeah, exactly.
It's all your fault, dan, you got anything else for us before we leave?
We hope we see as many people as can make it out on Saturday, March 21, to our Expo, open to the public, free to get in, take some great prizes home. I don't know how many of you guys are coming down, but get a chance to meet at least some of you guys in person.
And where are you going to have this at? Where is it located?
So it's at Oxford University, real close to the downtown area, right off 94.
And it's all day long. Correct.
It is 09:00 A.m to 06:00 P.m..
So free beer and pizza all day.
Long after party at Jimmy Johnson until the bread is gone.
Until the bread is gone.
Yeah, the bread will probably be gone before 06:00 p.m..
There we go.
No, they prep this year. All right, well, thanks again, Dan. Again, the core mexbow. March 21. We'll see you there. If you're wearing an aquarium guy's t shirt, we may even buy you Jimmy junk.
I doubt it nicely.
It's not in the budget.
Well, I appreciate you guys having me on.
We appreciate you taking the time to hang out with us, and we will see you on March 21.
Podcast out.
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.
We're practically everywhere. We're on Google. I mean, just go to your favorite place, pocket cast subscribed. Make sure it gets push notifications directly to your phone. Otherwise Jim will be crying into sleep.
Can I listen to it in my treehouse.
In your tree house, in your fish room. Even alone at work.
What about my man cave?
Especially your man cave. Yeah, only if Adam is there.
No.
With feeder guppy?
No, they're endless.
You imagine loving flank? fucking mother flank.
Well, I guess we'll see you next time. Later.