So Jimmy.
Yeah.
I've been talking to Robbie.
Yes.
And I just feel like you need to hang up some better pictures in your garage.
In my garage?
In your garage. So on Blue Chronic Products website right now, they have limited edition sexy calendars, right?
Like Robbie in a G string or what?
I wish. I mean, we've been trying that for years, but frankly, no one wants to see that one comes March.
So nobody wants to see you in a crop top either, right.
So get these limited edition calendars. They're on his website, $18 apiece. That is shipping included. They're going fast. Once they're sold, they're sold. And of course, they have the most prestigious shrimp you have ever seen.
Sexy shrimp.
Sexy, sexy shrimp. See these shrimp model out like sunny day on the beach. And get that calendar in your home, blueprone Aquatics.com. And while you're at it, use our promo code, aquarium guys, for free shipping on all your other orders because shipping is included on the calendar. But shrimp still costs a ton of shrimp to ship.
He's still giving us free shrimp or shipping.
He is.
Does he know this?
He does. He was on the podcast we talked about.
I was here.
I want to reiterate for people on the podcast that when you order shrimp, the shipping for next day shipping is 45 around forty five dollars to sixty five dollars, right. So you're saving an estimated of like 43, $45 minimum by using our promo code. You don't want to lose money on this deal. Blue Chronicquatics.com.
Take that $43 to $65 and buy more shrimp.
Right. Double down. Your wife gave you a budget. Don't blow it. Just make sure it spreads thinner.
And remember, sometimes it's easier to apologize than to get permission.
That should be a slogan. Just say you're sorry. Don't ask for permission. blueprint Aquatics.com.
Yeah, girl pair.
Also, don't forget about our friends at Ohio Fish Rescue. Go to their website, ohiofishrescue.com. Check out what they have to offer these sweet t shirts and find them on Facebook and YouTube. Because again, they're amazing content creators. Who else has 88,000 gallons plus sitting in their house just waiting for you to explore on YouTube? Go check them out. And like we tell you every week, go to their website, ohiofishrescue.com. Their numbers on the top of the website, 216-773-0407. And just call Rich and tell him you love him.
Oh, he likes that.
He does.
Ask about his hair care products. Also, he's coming out with a bunch of hair care products, I hear.
I hope he does, just for your sake.
I do, too. If not, I'm going to be in a world of hurt when I meet him. He does that or you whip up on me.
Got to work out a merch deal.
Perfect. Perfect. And you gave out riches number once. You give out our number correctly this time, you dumb dumb.
If you insist. So if you go to our website, aquariumgeyspodcast.com. On the bottom of the website, it'll say, Call us with your questions. That's 218-214-9241. And the way you know you got it right is when you hear Jim and i's voice.
That's kind of cool, because the first six or seven weeks or ten weeks, robbie giving out the wrong number.
I was, and it was hilarious. Whoever had that number, I apologize. You got a lot of fish questions bombarded your way, but we got it fixed. Call us on the correct number.
Yes. Next time we screw up, give us a call if you have the right number, please.
All right, let's kick that podcast. Welcome to the Aquarium, guys. Podcast with your hosts, Jim colby and Rob golson.
What's up, fish people? Welcome to the current Guys fishpodcast.com something or another like that.
You've been drinking again.
I have not. I'm still a little drunk from Thanksgiving. A little bit.
Thanksgiving was great. I got to hang out at your place.
You were at my house. And you know what? My wife did not ban you from the house again.
She didn't. And I kept my pants on.
Everybody was happy.
Yeah, it was a win win.
But we did that annual tradition of Thanksgiving, of watching Dave chappelle and eating.
Those amazing turkey sausage. Wontons.
Well, whatever.
I don't think are wontons like in a wonton shell.
They're delicious.
They're like scoopers of heaven.
Yes, we like that.
Well, I am your host, Rob Zulson.
And I'm Jim colby.
And today we have a special guest with us, joe from joe's Shrimp shack. How are you doing, buddy?
I'm doing quite well. And yourself?
Wonderful. So I have a question. Are you actually somehow related to Adam thielen?
It's actually tyson.
Is it? Did I not look at the you got it. The spelling damn me all the way.
Up here, and he gets my name wrong.
That's okay.
Your last name is tyson?
Yes.
Can we get some free chicken?
I even sent him everybody gets free chicken.
You heard it here first.
Chicken. I even sent him a picture of me wearing Adam thiel in Jersey.
And he still didn't correct you?
He didn't get it. He didn't get it.
He didn't correct it because I was like, he must be drinking. I have no idea why he said that's.
Why I call him dumb dumps.
To be fair. I'm watching his YouTube videos. It's Joe. On my messenger, all it says is, Joe, forgive me.
It's okay. I forgive you.
We have to thank you. We got these amazing bit of swag. I got this sweet, sweet swag. You got a tumbler?
I got a whiskey tumbler because I'm only one of those. I run it.
So I'm assuming these are on your website, right?
Yes, they are.
Awesome. So what is your website?
Www.joeshrimscheck.com.
So certainly give that a peek. He's got fantastic YouTube content. But we've invited you to the podcast today to talk a bit more about building your premiere fish room. Jimmy was mentioning it before on Tips and Tricks podcast, and it's been requested by plenty of people to see how do you guys do it on a budget? What's the diy? So who better to bring on than someone that's clearly made plenty of fish rooms?
Yes.
I just did my big expansion then now, too, for my store. So my biggest thing is I tell people, if you're going to do it, don't ever dwindle it down to I'll settle at this because my first one I built, and I was like, God, I wish I would have done this instead. And I always thought about it and always thought about it. So now I do it way I want to do it now. And I stay in budget.
In budget.
I tried to see he's got one of those things. Oh, he hasn't talked about a wife thing before. He's got a budget. He keeps himself where he's not going to lose money. Unlike you, Jimmy, I don't have a budget.
It's like, heck, let's go leads.
I had an envelope full of cash with cash in there, and I said, this is all I'm going to spend for expanding my shrimp room. And my buddy that helped me after I bought all my parts, I opened it up and I'm like, oh, I got, like, $250 left. I'm like I said, this is what you're going to get paid for helping me. And the lady at the checkout said, he will never work for you again.
Smooth.
See, I just bought him beer. I wouldn't even gain cash that works for you.
You get pickled jars from rednecks just by giving them, like, denny's Pizza. I remember.
That is some of the smartest thing I ever did. And I've told the story before. I went to our local recycling place, and I said, do you guys ever get pickle jars? And they went, yeah, how many do you want? I said, I'll just save them for a week. And he got me about 250 gallon glass pickle jars. And if you go online to try to buy four glass pickle jars in a case, you're looking at about $18. They are not cheap. I mean, you're better off going to Walmart buying the pickle jars and throwing the damn pickles in the garbage.
Well, then and you don't want the, you know, the semitics in the in your area yelling at you for throwing out good kosher dill pickles.
We got a lot of lakes around here in Minnesota. They just pickles float down the river. I don't know. Okay. I said, you can throw pickles in the river, but don't throw your fish in the river.
Right? That should be a new slogan. Don't throw your pickles away. They go on discord hashtag. Mr. Pickles.
Yeah. There we go. That made no sense. Like most of this.
Like most of this. All right, so we're going to talk about a couple of things before we get into this sweet. Topic number one, we have a question from one of our listeners. And again, you can go to aquariumguyspodcast.com, email us, call us, message us on Facebook. We have a Facebook group or we have Discord. And if you've never tried Discord, it's this fun chat client that you can use on your phone wherever. And it's really exploding. Just this morning from the time like, was it like six or 07:00 a.m. To the time I woke up, which was like 930, there was like 100 messages plus, and I couldn't keep up. Certainly join the chaos and fun.
It starts early and it goes late. I've been up at 04:00 a.m. Going to work, and I go on there, there's people talking already or else they haven't gone to bed. I don't know what the deal is.
It's the Irish. They go on rotation, right? So when we go to bed, they wake up and keep the party going.
Those guys are nuts.
So we have a question here from britney from Las Vegas, Nevada. So, hey, guys, I got a community tank and another small tank I would like to spawn pacific blue eyed rainbow fish in. Could you tell me more about rainbow fish and how to spawn and raise them? fry I have some experience in this. I have not had Pacific blue eye rainbow fish, but I've had their close relative, which is a fricato rainbow. It's another blue eyed variety rainbow fish. They're the small nano rainbows. I got to say, they're decently, easy to breed. So some tricks. Let's start off with you having a community tank. Anytime that you have other fish in your tank of any creatures at all and they spawn, expect the eggs are just going to be some giant treat for them and they'll disappear virtually instantly. So if you want to really breed them lunchtime, you're not going to have a great time in the community tank. So having that additional tank you talked about, great idea.
And so now you have another reason to buy another tank, right.
So the tips that I would give you is, again, they're spawners. So have a mop, and you can easily create a mop using red heart yarn. What you do is you take red heart yarn, you wrap it over a piece of styrofoam and let the threads dangle. But this time you would do it all the way to the bottom of the tank. A lot of these blue eye rainbow species spawn toward the lower half. They like peat moss. Otherwise, a mop that goes all the way to the bottom is really crucial.
And having a spare, too. So you can take one out and put a new one in there because.
You think they're done, then they'll just keep on going.
That's correct.
You should get on average of 25 30 eggs per batch out of these. So you can use that as an estimate. But you may have more, you may have less. You don't know. So, again, like Joe said, two, and.
They'Re hard to see, but also encourage.
Live foods, or at least frozen foods. That really does help encourage up breeding. And, of course, good water parameters for any fish encourages breeding. But if you're still having that issue, trying to prompt them into breeding, don't be afraid. Do a hefty water change, because all rainbow fish love water changes. They'll brighten up in color. They'll get rambunctious. And then after that water change, turn your tank heat up two degrees, just a small change.
And don't forget about Berry White.
Berry White.
You got to put Berry White on.
I expect the boys to men, but yeah, Barry white's very fine.
So just for the listeners, here's a sample of Berry White right here. See that? That you're you're you're on you're on point with that music right there. That was some good stuff.
That's right.
That put me in a romantic mood.
That's going to be on jimmy's new breeding playlist. You know what I mean?
Yeah, very wise.
But those are some tips. Give it a go. Spawn, baby, spawn, spawn, baby spawn. Know that these aren't aggressive fish. They're really a peaceful, placid fish, but they will get nippy when they breed. Just ignore the behavior. They're just a social fish. So hopefully that answer your question. If not, email us back. brittany from Las Vegas, Nevada.
So that was Frank sinatra rainbow fish from Las Vegas, Nevada. Am I correct?
I'm just I'm gonna let that one soak in. That was that was an old joke, and I didn't even have to say it.
Frank sinatra, you know, old blue eyes.
Old blue eyes.
God, you are so young and so stupid. Do you stand in front of the microwave with a door open going, I can't understand why I can't remember my name.
No, I haven't done that since I licked the tanks at Walmart.
Yeah, there you go, you're doofus.
All right, so just a couple of the things. Here is again, we mentioned Facebook, we mentioned discord, we mentioned the email, but we have some news, right? Our merch store has some sweet new swag in it. What? So go to our merch store again, aquariumgistpodcast.com bottom click, merch store, and on it you will see some sweet new designs. So on it, we have one of our community members. I always refer to her as Miss W. I think it's pronounced Miss wyvern decided to make some art for us. And she based it off of my wife making a comment that she loves her dojo loach, otherwise known as penis fish. So she made an excellent cartoon rendition of a penis fish. So get that on a hat, shirt, crop top, whatever you're looking for. And the second one, of course, is a Beta being angry at a snail. Because what better things dotas had to do than get angry at the one thing in their tank.
A snail. Right.
So go check it out. And we also have our other logo to Merch.
I'm just surprised there's only one snail, right?
Yeah. If it was trumpet snails, the beta would be dead laying on the bottom.
We made sure it's clear that it wasn't a trumpet snail, otherwise it wouldn't have made it to a tshirt.
I hate trumpet snails because it would.
Take over your entire closet in 15 seconds. You put out a paper plate with some zucchini in your closet, and you'll see all the cloth shrimp.
Do you remember watching Mad Max under home? tina Turner had trumpet snails on her ears.
They I need to watch some old movies.
No, I do remember that. Welcome to another edition of Santa Now. Wow. It's nice to have somebody in here who ain't 25, 30 years old.
I watched the new Mad Max, if that's any was it a cartoon?
It was the milk.
It was not a cartoon, but just a big thank you to our fans. We've been overwhelmed this week. We've had people donate directly to us. People have requested patreon for a while. We don't use patreon. They take way too much percent from it. So we use another tool called tip char, and it's actually at the bottom of our website, and that allows you to do one time donation or a subscription donation. So it's every month. And we just want to thank some of the individuals that have been beginning to pledge to us. We've started to get those in. And again, thank you for this. This has been a fantastic ride. We have been tipping on the podcast charts as the number one aquarium podcast out there. Again, there's other pet ones above us, but hopefully we'll make it the number one aquarium podcast of all time. We should be on track for that in two more weeks.
Two more weeks.
Yeah. I think I'll take a look back. I think our first podcast was back September.
End of September, actually.
End of September. And I figured by mid December, we'd be at about three months, and I was hoping for 500 listens, to be honest with you. And last Thursday on Thanksgiving, rob and I were together for Thanksgiving, and we went over 5000 listens. And what are we at today, Rob's?
We're expected to have over 10,000 listens by the beginning of the year.
Yeah. If we stay at what we're at going right now, about 1300 1400 listens. A day or I'm sorry, a week.
A week, yeah.
And it's just been overwhelming. And from the bottom of our hearts, we want to thank you for listening and putting up with us. And the tip jar is kind of cool. That Rob. I thought he was putting up the tip jar so people would pay us to go off the air.
But no, they want to keep us on I did not realize that.
And then it makes me feel kind of good. I'm all warm and fuzzy and woozy inside.
That's the rum.
That's the booze.
That's the booze. It could be. It makes me feel generous. I got a giveaway that I'm going to tell you about it here a little bit.
Hit me right now. You want to know what I want to know? Take the suspense.
Really? Anyway, Robbie Chan, who we love so much, he was so gracious to give out $25 gift certificates, four of them. And so people like that. People like free stuff.
Free stuff is great.
And so anyway, I was talking to one of my friends up at the tropical fish shop in West fargo, North Dakota. We were talking about plants, and we've always talked about these plant bulbs, and we've heard a lot of people say, I can't get them. I can't get them. So I ordered a whole bunch of plant bulbs. They'll be in next week. And I'm going to give away five. I'm going to one up Robbie ooh. I'm going to give away 510 packs of bulbs, and we're going to send them to you in a padded envelope. I checked into it, and we don't have to worry about temperature or anything. We should be able to ship it to your house.
Safe to freeze.
Safe to freeze, from what I understand.
Excellent.
And so those will be in next week, and I think we'll set up a drawing of some sort. We'll figure out what to do. Maybe we'll have some sort of contest, like whoever can give me the most money.
No, you can't do that. No, that's wrong.
Anyway, try, though. Yeah. Order bunch of plant bulbs. And I'm going to throw ten plant bulbs in a padded envelope, and we're going to send it to you with a little thank you card, and we're going to start doing that here next week.
Fantastic. So do I get some?
No, because you suck, dad, come on. Now, who gave you plant bulbs on Thanksgiving?
You did. And they're already sprouting. They look good.
They look real good. That's good, because the warranty just went off just when I walked.
You wouldn't tell me what they were, and mine turned out to be purple, so I'm happy they are.
Just don't smoke them, all right?
And warning to our listeners, if you do win the pack of ten bulbs, do not chop them up and put them in your salad, all right? This is not some sort of keto treatment.
Radishes.
No, that's right.
For consumption.
And if the local authorities show up at your house they didn't come from me. I'm just saying what came from Robbie. Exactly. We'll throw Robbie Chan under the bus.
Oh, you know you're talking about the free shipping.
Yeah.
You know, robbie's a good friend of mine, too, and I host I retail his product out there.
Awesome.
I actually tried to get that free shipping on my big order from him.
How'D that work? Yeah, not so much. You told me aquarium guy's promo code. And he's like, man, I said, hey.
Can I use a code? And he's like, what? I said, can I use a code for free shipping? And my shipping was $185, I think it was. And he's like, no.
Well, see, that's why he loves the other customers more. You got to work that way up. You got to give him one of these mugs. These things are sweet.
I will give him a mug. I will say Robbie is a great guy. If anybody has an opportunity to see him at some of the shows, they should go meet him. He's a good friend of mine. He flew all the way out to aqua Shell because I was dealing with some personal stuff all the way from California to aqua Shell in Chicago just to talk to me for 2 hours. And then he went right back out there.
Holy cow. That's a good guy.
So that and the fun fact, because he's a chiropractor, if you are in good favor with him, he might even put your neck back in when you.
See him or he'll break your neck and kill you.
We did that at ae. I have pictures of Eric Lucas getting set by him and everybody else. He's like, I'll do this right now in the lobby of the Holiday Inn adjusting people's backs.
He's going to come visit us. We're going to meet up at your shack. And then he'll put my neck in because I still can't turn right all the way. So everything in time.
I told you to close the door to the microwave when you're running it, and you'll have a lot of these.
Problems, but there's lights inside and stuff spinning. Very distracting.
It's like a carousel.
It is.
Yeah, it is.
And I can't ride it because I'm too fat.
Or is it because you're bending over, looking in your refrigerator, looking at the orange juice, and it says 100% concentrate.
And you stand there and just stare.
I feel like you put a camera in my kitchen. It's creepy, but I appreciate it.
I'm everywhere.
All right, well, let's get on subject here before we dive into the topic, just to touch more on Joe. So your shrimp shack, tell us more about that. Where are you located, man?
I'm located in Plymouth, Minnesota.
Plymouth, Minnesota. For those that don't know. That's pretty, like in the metro, right.
Across from chevrolet, Minnesota.
Chevrolet, Minnesota.
Down right by Lake, Minnesota.
Perfect.
So if you're in northern cities, it's.
On the western side.
Western side, certainly. Check it out. When did you open?
I've been doing this for four years. I literally had the shop for about a year, but it wasn't until, I'd say October 26 when I just made it official of a retail store. Normally I just had it as my breeding facility. And that was it.
Nice. Well, certainly. Check it out. And from the pictures that you sent and from the YouTube videos and seen, it's like an amazing shrimp lounge.
Really. It's going to be a glorified man cave.
I'm so excited. We got to go down there. You're like, three and a half. You drove all the way up here. You're live in our studio. Studio. And thanks for the drive, buddy.
Not a problem. We were talking last night and you're.
Like, it would be better if you were here.
And I'm like, well, wait a second. I have nothing really going on besides an order coming in. I could come up there and I.
Don'T have to count shrimp. Somebody else can do it. And that's why he wears glasses for inches thick. No, he doesn't.
But I tell you what, that's me.
Yeah. If you've ever counted shrimp, that sucks.
Easiest thing to do, you take a picture with your phone.
I've done that. yep, that works pretty well.
Or you just trust the person that's sending them to you. Because when I order hundreds of them, I'm just like, they're all there.
That's why you order them, Robbie, so you don't have to count that often.
You know, I just I just got an order in from one of my suppliers, and there was supposed to be 200 shrimp in each one. Counted them. 175, 176. I get to my red crystal shrimp. I counted them. 67. There's not there's not one dead body in there. I'm short 130 at a lot of money. I call up and say, hey, I'm a little short here. And they go, yeah. I go well, do I get credit? I suppose it was a burden deal. Yeah.
You're saying this because you know they're listening and now they're going to get nervous and send you shrimp.
Just give me the right amount. That's all I ask. I mean, even if you send me the right amount and there's ten dead ones, I'm still happy for those that are listening.
Jimmy is the type of person that will go to McDonald's and complain because they gave him an extra nugget.
That's right.
They put three pickles on it versus.
Two much overdoing it.
My favorite is like, we have a local wholesaler, Minneapolis, and I was going to try their shrimp one time, and he went on to his manager and he says, make sure you grab the best shrimp because they're going to Joe, and they weren't that good anyway.
Give me your best. I think that's frosting on it.
I did offer them. I said, I can wholesale to you. Just let you know.
Yeah. If you want to buy some good shrimp, I'll hook you up.
Well, excellent. Well, I appreciate that. And before we dive in again, check out your YouTube videos.
What's?
Your YouTube channel?
George Frameshack.
Perfect. And hopefully after this podcast, we're going to do a quick shooting here. We have a new green screen set up that we're setting for our live streams. So hopefully we can get some content for you as well.
Yeah, I feel like I'm in the hulk's belly right now, because it's all.
You'Re even wearing a green headset. We got you all primed and ready.
I like it.
We did our homework.
We ordered up some green screen and.
Some cameras, thanks to people's donations.
Thank you. Thank you guys very much.
And Robbie Chan.
And so last night, Rob's I was in bed about 10:00 last night, rob's sending me pictures of him and some hunk on the beach. And I'm going, that's a little weird, dude. I go, you got anything else? He sends me another picture of him and the same dude on the beach. And then finally, he sent me a picture of him and some koi.
Well, I had to clean it up. I was just in testing to see how realistic those ABS were in the background.
Yeah, his ABS look great.
Yes. Mine are buried deep within.
Yes, right. Deep within.
All right, so today's subject, again, is making your own fish room. So when I say fish room, this is not like I'm thinking of making two tanks. This is I need a rack system for 40 tanks, minimum. I'm trying to see how I can do this for breeding stations, my own personal collection. Your man cave room. Right. For those that are just trying to like I'm doing one or two. This is not your podcast. Listen to others. And if this is where you're starting.
Did you just kick people off the podcast?
I did. Go back to episode one. Listen up. If this is your first podcast, by the way, because this is not simply for the beginner, go back and listen.
To the podcast about the Minnesota dnr and find out where bigfoot really comes from.
They still haven't given us any information.
I know.
We messaged mandy. I said, the podcast is up. No info about bigfoot.
Yeah, we did a podcast with Minnesota dnr a few weeks ago, and it went wonderful, and we canned it for a little bit because we were doing a bunch of other stuff. And so we finally just put it out last week, and mandy loved her to death. She was so good, so knowledgeable.
She had a sweet voice.
Yes, very sweet. And the thing she told me and Rob's off the air was, don't get me fired. And so we behaved ourselves. We didn't cuss much. I didn't remember.
No, it was quite clean.
Quite clean for clean. And anyway, so we get to the very end. I finally said, mandy, I've got a question. And the look on her face was like, oh, my God, I'm going to lose my job. Oh, no. And I asked her, I said, where do you guys keep bigfoot? I said, I know you let them out once in a while because people see them. Around here, and she didn't have an answer for me.
Everything in time.
I thought it was funny.
All right, so back onto rack. Let's talk about I have a space, maybe it's my basement, maybe I have a heated garage. Let's talk about the ingredients that we need for a good man cave fish room, right?
Yeah.
All right, so number one, we're going to need racks. So I think that's the best place to start is how to put tanks. So number one, what tanks do you guys recommend?
Well, what I would say for the very first one is figure out what you want to do with your fish room first. If you want to do breeding, if you just want to have big, massive tanks. So it depends on the size of the tanks for your racks.
So I think a fair analogy would be if you're doing shrimp, you're going to want that 1020 long. Right. If you're doing a cichlid environment, you're probably going to want those as 125 longs just for the schooling properties and then have small tanks for your batches.
Correct.
If you're doing discus, you're probably going to want 40 talls to have more space. They're going to be breeding on cones. So identify what you're going to be going after. And most people, maybe they don't want to know what they want to do when they grow up. We have a solution for you as well.
Don't grow up.
That's right.
But what are some options for the shelving units for the tanks to start off with? So we have let's talk about budget first. What's the cheapest method you can go about this?
The very first one that I did is I went to Mills Fleet Farm and they had for $65, a five level rack system.
So for those that don't know, Mills Fleet Farm is like an equivalent to a redneck version of a Home depot.
Correct.
They have guns, they have a lot of hunting selection, but they also have the stuff to do your home improvement.
That's correct. So the only thing I would suggest if you do that, that route, is they have particle board that it comes with. Get rid of the particle board and then go with at least a half inch plywood.
The particle board, as soon as it gets wet, it just swells up like a big zit. Correct.
No nose.
And I'm pretty cheap. Guess what? Go to Home depot, go to the scratch and dent section and go buy a scratched up or dented piece of plywood. And they'll cut it four times for you, and it's the perfect amount of cuts to make all your shelving on there.
So I'm the perfect person to start spitballing questions at you guys. So I've helped many people build fish rooms, but I am handicapped. I cannot put two pieces of wood together to save my life.
That is true.
In high school, I had to put a birdhouse together. I watched the bottom fall out and kill the babies, and that was it, I was done. No more wood for me. So when you're talking about this, the shelving unit again, explain what it looks like.
So the shelving unit that they have there, it's got the metal legs on there and it's got the metal braces. It comes with the particle board. It's like a quarter inch particle board. I take care of that. I just throw it away and I go get the half inch plywood.
So how tall generally are these things?
I think it ends up standing like seven, maybe 8ft tall. If you put the two stacked on top of each other, they come in two sections. It's roughly about three and a half 4ft. So you can stack them on top of each other.
Yeah. You'd be surprised how many tanks you can put on. If you've got a small room like the size of the studio, I could put in 150 ten gallon tanks in here without a problem.
Oh, yeah. The measurements are 36 x 20, I do believe, or 36 x 18. Those racks are so you can fit if you're doing the lengthwise, you can fit three tens on them. You can fit four, fives, or five 2.5s on there.
So I've also seen other I don't mean to call it hobo, but that's essentially what it is. It's really trying to pinch your pennies on making a rack. And I see them use cinder blocks with essentially two x fours, two by something.
You see that in Florida a lot, right.
And that stacks up. You also see I'm trying to remember some youtubers that have done it, but what's the pros and cons for that? I've always worried that the wood is going to bow.
Well, you space up the cinder cinder blocks so they don't bowl.
So what's the spacing between cinder blocks, if you're going to use that method? Well, it kind of depends on the size of the tank that you end.
Up putting on there and stuff. I've seen people go like every 4ft to put the cinder blocks on there.
I've got friends that have said that if you can take 125 gallon tank and you can support all four corners that the tank should hold, because as long as you support the edges of the tanks, you don't really have to worry about it. So when I do like the different wooden tanks, sometimes with a two by four rack, as long as the front and the back is supported, you don't even need a bottom sometimes. Correct.
I've seen a lot of people do that with the senior block method.
Yeah, that works great. And then when you were using the plywood, if you've got the extra money, buy the exterior plywood and that will save you in the long run. It all depends on how long you want this. Forever. But if you use a particle board, you're good for about three months or your first water spill over the top.
And you'll be like, oh, it's just on the wood, it'll be fine. And you'll come back like a week later, mold, your tank will be on the ground.
Yeah, it swells up and falls apart. It's sawdust held together by glue is what particle board is. So, yeah, with the plywood, if you can afford the exterior plywood, which is a green tree of plywood, that's the way to go. But half inch plywood also works great, too. It means because it doesn't get that wet if you're paying attention to what you're doing.
Correct.
So I've heard people have concerns that there's chemicals on the green tree of plywood. And what happens if I have a rack system? Water spills, touches the wood, gets in the tank. Is that the chemical worry or is it treated dry?
I think when they treat it, isn't it kind of like stained in there, too?
Yeah, it's actually absorbed. I mean, I think they actually soak them a little bit in something. It's just like railroad ties. If you ever touch a railroad tie, it's greasy on the outside. But a half inch plywood, I mean, you grab it, you don't really get any residue on your hands.
Pretty safe for an aquarium, I would think. So don't put it in your aquarium.
I've never had issues, and I've had tanks leak. I've had spill water and stuff. I have rack systems and I've never had issues with that.
Yeah, I've never had any issues either.
So what rack system do you use, Joe, at your place right now?
I currently use the two x four method. At home, I ended up doing the whole fleet farm metal racks, and I always looked at him and it looked great. I had 55 tanks in there, and then I was like, God, it just never got what I wanted on there. So when I decided to build my rack system, I was like, you know what I'm going to do, how I want to do it. I got a hold of my friend Tyler and I said, Tyler, I want to build a new rack system. I want to have it mobile if I want to end up moving my stuff. And we came up with an idea of coming up with a bunch of 36 inch two x fours with plywood sitting on top, and it actually worked out quite well.
So I also noticed, because you have this, again, you show a lot of details on your YouTube channel, but you also paint it. So what paint do you use? I'm assuming something that soaks in the wood. Anti chip.
I use a medium grade black paint.
Medium grade? So is it like a spray can? Oh, no, I'm illiterate on this. I'm asking all the questions tonight.
It was a roller. So if you look at it, if you went to a cheaper version of paint, you might have to put two or three coats on there. This was just one coat on there. It cost me, like $35 a can. So for those seven racks that were there, I think it was a gallon and a half is what it took. So it cost me roughly about $50.
And when you paint them, of course, they look really good, and they'll having black is my favorite color, too. But what else it does, too, is if you do spill water on it, it actually repels the water to a point. I mean, you wouldn't want to stick it in a lake, but it does a pretty good job of repelling the water.
So if you are worried that the wood is going to get soaked in, the best thing is to treat it with a paint. Do you ever use, like, a stain for any of these?
I've never used a stain, no.
Yeah. Everybody that I've ever seen, they usually use the black paint and try to keep the room as black as possible and then light the tanks.
That makes it better for pictures early pops.
So I think the picture you're looking at, I put black backdrops on there now, too.
Okay.
I don't know if it actually shows that on there.
It really does.
Does it show it on that picture?
Yes, it does.
Scape the one thing I want to point out that he did right, which I didn't do right the first time, he made enough room between the tanks to actually get a specimen cup in there and be able to get in there.
Net that was my biggest thing on my first one, is I'm like, oh, I can do this. I can function it well. When I moved to this spot here, I bought a big Gladiator rack from Home depot. It's the big 90 inch metal rack and put £2000 on each one. I put the smaller racks in the ground. Well, my buddy would help me do water changes here and there, and he'd be like, Joe, this kind of sucks, doing water changes. I just can't do this. I'm like, you know what? I'm going to build a rack system. And that was my one thing I did it for my buddy Jeff, is we have to have him off far enough that he can do a water change. But my biggest thing that I wanted is I want to be able to have access to it, because I'm always scooping out tramp and putting plants in there. I move things around. It works out great.
Yeah. And I use a lot of those long handled nets, and I get in those tanks and I come up with it, and I kept catching the top row, so you've got plenty of room on yours. And that was my biggest problem, too. My first rack I made, I thought, well, I'm going to tighten these as tight as I can. I had four and a half inches between the rack and the next one going up.
This is not enough room.
And my specimen cup barely fitted in there. I could scoop up. And I was catching at that time, 600 bags of fish in one night and then go out and sell them the next day. And man, it was frustrating. So frustrating.
So when you're doing these, you can either have your tanks in there long ways or face horizontal.
Correct.
So if you do horizontal, you just automatically assume that the lid is only going to be half the size of the tank. So you're doing the measurements. Oh, well, it only needs to be so many inches. That net issue is a real issue. So you have to sit there and bend the net corners trying to get in there, trying to scoop out. So don't just dot the lids. Do it from the size of your nets.
Correct.
And then you also have to account, like, I use a python siphon, so you got to figure the siphon, too.
And the lights above it.
So to remind people about the python siphon, you can get it. It's like $9 on Amazon. I think we had it on our list for tips and tricks episode. So it's on the bottom of our website. Just go ahead and click that link. According to podcast.com, you'll find it on there, and it's the best things in slight spread. You hook it up to your faucet and you turn the water on. And you can either vacuum out the water or you can put fresh in. So no more buckets, no more hassle. And when you're doing this to 40, 8120 tanks, so much faster, you're not going to want even if you have a floor drain, it's sometimes easier for those bottom level racks to use the python siphon.
I just want to start giggling right now because we talk about a python. It reminds me of a customer that didn't know what this was, and she decided to call it something completely different. So every time she'd come into the store, we would just call it that. So you can probably think what we were calling it was it the love.
Python, the super serpent.
It had to do something with a certain word and a pump, because that's what she called it. She was like, hey, do you have any more of those pumps? And I'm like, we got them right over here. And everybody would look at us.
And I was just like, Wang pumps. There you go.
Wang chung Pumps.
So it's funny because it's like little things like that always bring back good memories and stuff. Like customers. Yeah, I love that customer.
It's right just so you know, inside a joke. I'm going to take a pause here. So Robbie informed us, right, that he's going to be trying to get biological bacteria in a bottle. He's working on that, right? So we've been trying to come up with a name and Poop Juice. We're pretty reluctant on poop juice. Poop, you got to help us out. hashtag Poop juice on social media.
Hashtag poop juice.
Yes.
And he's liking it, not going to lie. He's trying to see if we can lock it that down.
Robbie'S squirts.
Oh, Lord.
Robbie, if you end up doing that, I want credit for it.
Mainly credit. On his next order of shrimp. Yeah, sent him a bottle of Poop juice. Poop Juice.
Poop runs liquid.
Poop juice.
Right. All right. So, Jim, what do you use for your racks in your fish room?
Right now? What I've been using is I went over to our local menards and I bought Pallet racking because another Home depot like place. Yeah. What I like about Pallet racking is I change my mind every six months and want to redo something. And those are adjustable and I like those, but they're, again, like Joe was saying, a lot of wasted space. But I've downsized from 600 tanks down to, like, 40 tanks, and I'm happy with that. And I'm trying to breed some shrimp and I'm trying to do some other things. This afternoon, we started putting in acrylic system in my, in my house that we're going to use for imports and some discus and whatnot. And I personally like the pallet racking. If you can't stay on task, like, I can't. I just completely changed my mind every half hour and want to redo it. And so those you can easily snap and move them and adjust them and you can take a whole rack and put it in the trunk of your car, basically, which is six foot long.
I've done this.
Yeah. I have two dodge avengers, and we've actually done this. And they're six foot long racks and you can take them apart and put them in there. And they are four shelves high, which go about six and a half foot high.
I think you can add more to them as well.
Right. And you can just keep adding them. And we actually use them in our garage for just garage stuff, tires and dead bodies and things like that that we keep around the house.
So let's talk about pros and cons. Right. We have the Pallet racking system. We have the build your own with us. Wooden two x fours.
Correct.
So, of course, wooden two x four is going to be slightly cheaper. But you're set in, you're locked in. That is the size of shelf you're going to use. So if you want I really want to switch to cichlids. You're not going to be able to fit a big tank in those slots, but actually, you can, you can build.
Instead of doing a 36 inch rack, you can just build it 4ft long where you can build put different sized tanks in there.
Right.
But say you did that 36 inch rack, it's still permanent. You got to do another rack correct this you can change on the fly and if you're completely wood handicapped like myself this is essentially pop and play. You snap them together there is no real screwing or nailing that you need to do. They're made to snap and change on the fly. So that's the big one for me. I can't do unless I call up Joe and say hey man, please help me with this sweet rack. I'm pretty much helpless and need to do the pallet rack.
Yeah the one thing I really love about the wood racks is they don't rust.
This does rust.
Yeah, my metal does rust. This morning I took out 150 neons, six large discus, a bunch of female bettas and I begged fish for about an hour and a half 2 hours this morning and I had to wipe down the rack when I got done. Now if you have wood you just go walk away from it, who cares?
Yeah because I have the what is it? The gladiator which is like a pallet rack and everything, the 90 inch one and it fits twelve 2.5 so I had twelve on one side, twelve on the other side and I had half inch plywood and actually started Boeing.
Yeah it was still a lot of weight.
That was, that was the big reason why I'm like you know what, I love the Gladiator because I can fit all my tanks on a one rack but the same sense was starting to bow and I'm like you know what? I just don't want water all over the place.
Yeah it all depends on if you're doing it in a warehouse situation like Joe or if you're doing it in your finished basement like myself I've done all of them at one time or another and I just find it slightly easier to take care of 20 tanks and 600.
So let's talk about two more designs. So if you're in the United States we know that walmarts across the nation no longer carry fish so if you go to different swapping shops you go to craigslists you'll see what's called a Mars unit. That is those multitank units that you saw at the walmarts across the country they're all closed down as of this July. So you're seeing them hit the market and you'll see a lot of these used tanks. So if you're considering using this instead of a replacement rack know the pros and cons number one they're extraordinarily expensive to run. These were made many years ago. The plumbing is not made for your best energy efficiency in mind and again you're getting a used product you don't know the cracks, the issues and from a person that used to work at Walmart and work with these tanks let me tell you there's a ton of leak issues especially on the bottom of the Mars units. So if you're willing to purchase one for a cheap good price on craigslist know that you're probably going to do some plumbing to it, and you're going to have to rip out that pump. Otherwise you're going to be paying a truckload of money towards your electric bill.
And they are extremely heavy. And here's the one thing that I don't like about the Mars units, because I've bought in four in the past, and I've helped set them up at people's shops like ty and heidi's, our friends, they had a wooden floor. They've only got four pegs on some of those Mars units, and it punched a hole through the wooden floor and was sitting on the base. And we went and it kind of tipped. And we're like, Holy cow, that is a lot of freaking weight. First of all, the entire rack system, the ones that we did anyway, weighed about £700. It was all the two of us could do with some dollies to get them to even move before we brought him home. Just incredibly heavy. And then, like I said, the bottom legs punched right through a wooden floor.
They actually, at Walmart, break right through the tile and they don't move. So how are they cracking through the tile? It's that much weight on a very tiny, tiny surface. You're going to have to take the feet right off.
Yeah.
You get anything?
That's what we ended up doing. We ended up taking the feet off. Jack ended up taking the feet off and making a wooden frame to go all the way around the bottom and stuff. And it's a lot of weight, folks. And so you do not want to be putting this especially actually, in a finished home that's nice in your corner, because it's going to punch holes in your carpet or in your wooden floor.
Another con is it all shares the same water column, too.
Yes, it does.
There's really no way around that, because the amount of space they put in those Mars units there's nil. So if you're going to want to try to individually put filters in each one of those tanks, you're not going to have it. Good luck.
You're not going to have that. The most you can possibly do on those Mars systems is the top rack, you can go to a separate sump, and then the middle rack, you can go to a separate sump, so you can at least have three tanks and one sump. But theoretically, I meant if you have a disease breakout, all your fish are going to get that disease.
So we're not saying don't do it. Just know what you're going to be purchasing. If you're getting it for $50, great. Just bring friends.
Yeah. And it's going to cost you $125 a month to run it. ty and heidi saw their electricity bill just spiked terribly, and he actually did replace the pumps right away because it was so much money. And the other thing that I really don't like about them is that I think the place where they really belong is in a bait store, to be honest.
That would be an excellent place.
That was my only thought. This would be great for a bait store.
Well, think about it. If you had it in a bait store, let's just talk about that for a minute. You take the stump out of the bottom and just go right to a floor drain. So all you do is push water through it. And that would be a great way to use those Mars units, right? So the last one I want to talk about is to pick on you a little bit, Jimmy. So this one blew my mind. I didn't know people do this, but it's an option. You can of course, instead of doing these do it yourself racks, purchasing a Mars unit, buying a pallet kit, you can pay someone good money to build yourself a custom rack. And there are plenty of experts out there to do it. But you're probably going to pay four to five digits for something custom built, framed the system, put in it. There are experts to do this that are out there, but you can also pay yourself. Go to a blacksmith and get yourself iron racks. And this blew my mind. What did you do, Jimmy? Tell us about your adventure.
I did exactly that. I got a guy. I got a guy and he was a welder and he would work for beer. I'm not kidding.
I got to find these people, right?
And anyway, I got angle iron and I told him exactly what I wanted done and he was able to make me angle iron racks. But the problem with them is that there's no adjusting them, there's no knocking them down. So you better hope you can get them in the room. My first rack that he did was twelve foot long, and I had to take it into my warehouse. I had another rack that held 50 ten gallon tanks, ten long, five high.
And they rust like a mother rust.
And you can paint them and scrape them and do that yearly. And they were just terrible garbage, but they never fell apart. I mean, they were rock solid, but they looked like a turd. They really did. So I mean, if you're trying to show people these beautiful fish in your turd looking thing, it's just terrible.
So you had a massive warehouse with these covering. How many square foot was that?
That was about 2000 square foot.
So every, every inch, these racks all over the place. And these iron, would you say angle iron rack?
They're angle iron racks.
I got a couple from you and one of them was a ten gallon rack. So you can either put ten gallons or something like 30 longs you could put on there is how it fit. So I got one of these from you and it fit 1210 gallon tanks. It was so rusty, and it came out in giant flakes. So basically, I brought my house, and it crapped all over the floor, right? But it would rust forever and never.
Break the rock solid.
So I took two days with the wire brushes scraping this thing, just blowing it off where to wear a mask because the rust dust outside.
And I'd go by and laugh at you and continue driving.
Yes, you were laughing hard. I painted it, and sure, shit, they're already bubbling up through the paint. Did not treat at all.
Yeah, and keep in mind, too, if you do salt water and you have corals, that much worse, that rust falling in there, too, can just kill off your corals. That happened at our store.
Yeah.
So right now we actually have a local thrift store using this ten gallon rack. I painted it, got it in better shape after so much work, and it works really well. They have lids in the tanks, and the paint is holding, but again, they're still going to have rust issues over time, and there's not a lot of people that you can pay beer to do that for you.
Yeah, I had those two racks when I was doing angel fish. I had 110 gallon tanks of angel fish. And I know people are going to say, ten gallon tanks are too small for angel fish. Well, that's what I did.
They did not stay there that long. They rotated 100 tanks out within probably, what, two weeks?
Yeah, I mean, I had a lot of spawns, a lot of pears. And like I said, I had them five high. So in my warehouse, which the ceiling was almost eight foot high, they were three inches from the ceiling. And when the weather came through, I would get 75 spawns in a day. Sometimes because of the weather of a heavy down, pressure came through. But I averaged about twelve spawns a day. And that's why I needed all those pickle jars.
Pickles.
But that that metal rack that held 50 ten gallon tanks, I think cost me like $72 an angle.
Damn, that's pretty cheap.
Yeah.
All right, so quick minute. Let's talk about light options. So you can buy the aquarium lights anywhere, the full spectrum, whatever you're looking for on Amazon, just for normal hoods. But this is a rack. Let's not spend that much money. So what lights do you guys use? What do you use in your rack?
I use fenix Led lights on mine.
And what did that set you back?
Probably $1,200.
Hot damn.
But it was one of those things where I got introduced. I'm a big planet tank guy, too, so I got introduced to the Planet Plus on a different tank, and I'm like, I really like this. Well, I have a bit of ocd. So my friend Tyler had helped me build the racks. He's like, Joe, we could just do these t five bulbs and everything else. And I'm like, Why? I said, I already have all these fenix lights, why don't I just keep these going and stuff? So I was able to do that, but yeah, it set me back a pretty penny on there. But the tanks look beautiful.
So what do you do, Jimmy?
Cheap as hell. I go to Harbor Freight and I buy four foot Led. I won't do fluorescent eights anymore, or twelve s. The bulbs are expensive, the ballast burn out, they suck. I started going to Harbor Freight and they have 5000 loom, four foot Led lights for $20.
And these are called utility lights. If you're trying to find them online, they're just a simple bar, there's nothing to them. They have a metal casing on the back, plastic on the top, and I.
Think they're 50,000 hours. And so when they burn out, you toss them, you buy another one. Not very user friendly and not real pretty. But there again, I'm just trying to light the tanks so I can catch the darn fish.
Yeah, they make a nice light. I probably wouldn't recommend them for hard plant use, but you do grow plants in your rack.
Yeah, I have a lot of guppy grass. I know you love guppy grass much. I got guppy grass today, too.
So what I did is, for the lighting systems that I've been making, I've either made hoods or candles, made some for some racks, is go on Ebay, go on Amazon. And you'll find Led light strips. And these do have close to full spectrum, but you have to use a lot of the Led light strips. You can daisy chain them together, they cost like five to $10 a small reel. And you can go on the King of diy's, YouTube, joey YouTube channel.
And he joey's got a lot of good stuff.
He shows you how you can make a light hood with, what was it?
Rain gutter.
Rain gutter. And then use a dowel and wrap the lights around. Well, you don't really need a rain gutter for your tank racks. So you just simply put a pvc pipe, wrap the lights around them, and it shines quite enough. And I've done mad amounts of plants on this device system, extremely cheap. And the benefit of this is the Led light strips are waterproof, they're completely sealed, so if you splash something on them, you're really not having to worry about it because they're frankly clear, rubber coated. So certainly check those out. But what else are we missing in the recipe?
I think Filtration definitely got to do Filtration. I use the dual sponge filters. I buy them off ebay for like $2.32 a piece.
So Jimmy does it where he steals his family's cadillac cushions out of their cars, cuts them in squares, make my.
Own four inch square.
We had a discussion about this on our tips and tricks. And sponge filters are essentially the way to go when you're doing mass amount of tanks you can't afford. Purchasing individual hang the bag filters, canister filters, and you don't want to do the if you can help. It a whole cycle where all the tanks are connected, because if you have a disease, then everything gets it. So using sponge filters in each tank, great. You can find any different type of sponge filters, but the way to pump all the air to the tanks are done through pvc pipe. And what do you guys use for pumps?
I use a AP 100 right now, which is a Pond Master.
That's a good one. I bought on Steve Rubiki's website a while back. And what is it called again?
We put the pump on the Tips and Tricks website. So I'm trying to remember it as.
An altru or something like that.
I believe that is the name, sir. We'll look it up later in the show.
It's about a couple of $100. But you know what? Go out and buy yourself four or five filters and you'll have $200 tied up in a quick hurry. And that filter, that particular pump that I bought from Steve sits on the floor and I have pvc pipe that runs up all the way around my room, up on the ceiling, and I just use stainless steel valves to bring down the air down to the tanks.
So when you do this on the pvc, do you actually have to glue the pvc ends to make sure it's pressure sealed?
No, I just do a pressure fit.
And that's it?
Yeah, I want the pressure fit. I'm illiterate. Come on now.
So it's pvc and you got the joints on there, you just push them together. So if you ever want to move your rack system or you want to add on to it, you can just pull them apart and just keep on building on.
Yes, and I've done that before, too, and once upon a time, I had one pop, so now I glue mine because I did have one pop when I was gone. Every story has been told on this podcast. It only happens on the day you take off. And I left in one of my hangers that I had hanging, holding it up on the ceiling that actually broke. And when it broke, the pvc pipe came out. It was still pumping air, but not into my tanks, because air goes directly to the weakest point to find escape. So, yeah, the one pump and the sponge filters are the best way to go because sponge filters don't cost you any money to run.
They don't.
Where if you're going to have a back behind filter or that sort of thing, it's all going to be plugged into the wall and it all comes out of your pocket. So bottom line is going to cost you a fortune.
Yeah, look at all the power strips. You got to run to it, too, right? If you have ocd it's going to bug you because you're going to see all these cords.
Yeah. And you're talking about ocd, airline tubing. I've got so many different brands of airline tubing. And the one thing I found that I really like, and I don't know if you like it at all, Joe, I like the silicone for the fact that once I get the silicone airline tubing and I open it up, I get high for about a week. I like that smell. It's like pumping gas.
Well, see, you have gas, silicone and then prime and prime, prime. That's what I do.
Got to do the prime.
Yeah. And what I like about silicone is that I've been doing this for so many years that the airline tubing will get so goddamn hard you could kill somebody with it. I mean, it's actually, like, hard. That's correct.
And if you use like a pond master of the bigger pumps and everything, too. I've actually had the first couple airlines actually start turning brown from what's ever going through the air pump. So it's airline tubing that has like.
The slight bluish color, and you can find that pretty cheap. I know they sell it in 250 foot rolls, 500 foot rolls, and you can find a fairly decent price on Amazon and that sort of place.
So what not to do on these airline pumps? We had our own warehouse together, Jimmy, here in perm, Minnesota, and was trying to find a cheaper method because the pumps that you guys recommended were not that expensive. But still they were like $150 for a decent pump to pump all the pvc because they're made to go through these lines.
Oh, is this a story about when you bought Screaming betty?
Screaming betty.
Oh, God.
So I went to air pump that.
You can shut like seven doors down. You can still hear it.
Yes, you can hear it. And then it gets so damn hot that you actually can brand cattle with it.
So I'm a pond guy, right? I'm still learning about the warehouses and the trips and tips and tricks, trying to get all of that all set. And I'm like, hey, Jimmy, we got to try this, right? These are killer pumps.
What did I say?
We got this industrial pump and I sort of got it was like 6000 gallons an hour as I want to push some crazy air pressure. And it came in with this industrial handlebar of valves on it. And the idea it's made to pump air like 20, 30ft down in a giant man made or lake pond, right? So you can just drop a giant airstone for a koi pond and not worry about it and do multiple koi ponds across a small lake.
I think they use it to pump air down to the miners. They take 600ft down on the ground.
To keep them breathing oxygen going. Yeah, but we got one of these. And the thing was, I don't know what. Massive foot and a half, two foot feet long, stood about eight inches, ten inches tall, and just looked like this solid block, like a block engine. And it had this giant gold piston coming out of the front. It was a giant piston pump. We had to clamp it with what was it? Pipe clamps. Yeah, hose clamps.
Hose clamps.
Crank it down with the hose clamps, and we got it working to one rack, and we left, came back, and it blew up the hose that was connected to it. And again, it was this too much back pressure. It was way too much back pressure. It was this lined hose with, like, nylon. So it's like blowing up a garden hose.
Yeah, it was heavier than a garden hose.
So, yeah, it got super hot. It burnt up cords that touched it.
It kept people up at night.
Kept people up at night. Yeah, it shook.
Yeah. it'd be a great sander. it'd been a really good sander. You got to put a piece of sandpaper on it. Sand on the floor.
Do your homework. Get the pumps that are made to be pushed through ppc. Don't get these giant industrial do not buy screaming betties. No screaming betty.
You can save money, too. When I got into the hobby, Ebay was, like, my favorite thing. I could buy a four bladder air pump for $20. I could run eight sponges off it. There's awesome deals on Ebay, too.
If you want to get even deeper, go to alibaba.com and wait two months, and you'll pay half price.
All you got to do is just go to and say, I'm looking to carry this in my store. You'll get tons of product. They'll try and get you for the, but you pay for shipping and just say, just give me a sample, and you'll get tons of product.
We need to do this, Jimmy. We got to get on that.
Yeah, I need more stuff.
Absolutely. All right, so I think we've covered the racks. We got lighting. We got filtration and air. We have the different ways you can do it. We have the aquariums themselves. So what else do we need in the room?
TV.
You got to have a TV to watch YouTube.
So I think I love your idea. You actually put a what is it? Ceiling mounted TV pole. So you can turn it in any direction, so no matter where you're at and what corner of the thing, you can just flip the TV towards you. You lazy, lazy bastard.
Yeah, my wife found that. I don't know where she found it on Amazon, but the pole comes from the ceiling, and you can spin it 360 degrees. It's made for a bar.
Be sure it's not a dancing pole.
She would do that for you at no charge.
No charge.
Because she is crazy.
Wow.
Purple hair and all.
Yes.
All right, so we need a utility sink. We can just have this bathroom kitchen sink. So recommend going to your local Home depot or menard or Fleet Farm and finding the utility sink that's nice and deep. So you can put a whole bucket in there. You can have an industrial drain because the drain catches going to matter. You're going to get sand down it, or heaven forbid, you actually use terrible gravel and get the actual pea gravel down there.
Or clown puke.
Clown puke.
Tell us what that is, Joe.
Clown puke is the multicolored gravel. I hate the stuff. If you ever want to get even with a buddy, grab a handful of clown puke gravel, walk by his tank, and just sprinkle a few into his tank. He will never get it out, ever.
So I'm doing that to rob's tank tonight.
Glitter is the herpes of craft supplies. You're saying clown puke gravel is the herpes of fish supplies?
That's correct.
All right, you now know you've heard it here first.
And so if you like clown puke, call Joe at a shop.
I do not carry clone puke.
He will kick you out if you do this to his tanks. The Joe shrimp shack.
Oh, gosh. I'd be like, what did this shrimp do?
They turn them pink and then someone just takes their finger grease and writes it in the tank.
That's right.
Aquarium guys were here.
Yeah, exactly. Clown puke.
Clown pink.
Clown puke.
All right. So the other things that people don't really think of is other racks. So beta racks are the most common things, but you can also make a separate shrimp rack if you're using non conventional aquariums. So I think one of the best examples, I believe the youtuber is simply beta. Is that correct, Jimmy?
I think so, yeah. There's a lot of cool racks out there, man. Everybody does a great job coming up with something new all the time.
So they use like plastic gallon containers, and they just use a drip system. Again, it is one uniform system, which we don't necessarily encourage, but if you're using it just for betas that you're either growing out or breeding, it's not as occurrence because you can simply shut one off if they have an issue. So you can quickly stop that whole unit. And what they do is they push water through the pvc pipe, use the same spigot you use for air, and then just use airline tubing to drip water into these systems. It's very cheap method. You can search a bunch of different ones on YouTube. But also, what do you do just for the betas that you have only for a couple of days? You have a cup rack?
I have a cup rack, yeah. And when I retail them over at my store, I actually have 16 ounce cup racks that I bought from the local Target. And the Mike rack holds 42 bettas over there. And they usually are there for a week or two. I was over there today and I've got hellboy bettas, I've got the Koi bettas, we've got, of course, the regular bedas, the crown tail bettas, and the half moon bedtas. And each cup I can put a nice little sticker on her saying, this is what this is, this is the price. And my sales have quadrupled over there. And I used to always carry like 25 bedas, but once I decided I'm going to carry some high end betas, I'm just going to run it up the flagpole, see if anybody salutes. And I got people going, oh, my God. And they don't think twice about spending $1215 for a beta.
They look beautiful. It's a big shoal fish for them.
Yeah. And they love it. And the people that like betas, they don't have one, they've got ten or they've got twelve. So that works well for me. I made that rack over there in my store and I backlit it so I have two four foot fluorescent lights led behind it. So the back of the back panel of my rack is backlit. And the only thing I'm seeing now is I'm getting some algae problems on there a little bit. And so now I'm just going to take and try different lights on here. But over in my home, where I keep all the bed is I took one by four inch boards and I have enough room over there on the one wall. I think it can carry about 150 bedas over there on the wall.
And these are set to use beta cups. So when you get from some wholesalers, you'll get where you can order beta with cup. And these are what, two inches high?
I'd say they're three and a half inches high.
Probably they're similar to like the beta cups you'll see at any pet store or the walmarts that you used to see petsmart. And they have a hole in the top. So you made them specially for those because, again, betas don't sit at your house but three or four days anyway.
Yeah. And then out the door they go.
Right. So the thing I thought was cool is you not only mounted that rack to the wall, but you also went to ikea and bought yourself some boom lights.
I did, I bought some boom lights, and I like those a lot. And when people come over, or else like today, now, I knew what kind of beds I needed to take over to my store. I was able to bring that boom light over there and take a look at everybody. And I grabbed the best ones to take to my store and well, it makes it easy.
So if you have someone coming or yourself, you can just grab that light and spot check and go across so you don't have to pay for strip lighting across each one of these shelves.
Yeah, and it's really nice, too, when I'm feeding, because the older I get, the worse my eyesight is. And for feeding, once you start feeding 100 cups, you kind of go, did I feed that cup or not? And you're able to see in there a lot easier.
So some of the other things that you'd be missing is a counter. So generally when I think of a counter, just put plywood and some two x fours. But not having that kitchen, like, surface sucks. So what do you find for, like, countertops? What's the tricks there?
So what you can do is if you want to get a decent countertop and you kind of want to save money, go to menards, go get one of those on display one half the time they'll sell them to you dirt cheap.
Yeah, they'll have one with maybe a chip in it here's.
What a chip?
Yeah, it's not perfect, or else it's a weird color that they can't sell. But yeah, the last four foot, when I bought that clown puke cart avocado avocado Purple. Yeah. The last one I bought, I think I paid like and it was a six foot rack. I paid like, $21 for it. And it has actually the backsplash on it. And I think for like $6 I made a base for it. And it's a great working surface, especially, like yourself. And you're counting shrimp all the time. You're dripping water all over the place. It's just nice. It wipes up nice and clean.
So one of the few things that people don't think about is drains. So if you're doing this again, you can use the python with your utility sink, but if you can find a floor drain, you're going to love yourself later. If you have no carpet on the floor to cement, you can use squeegees in case you have some sort of spill. You can just take simple tubing and put it right to your floor drain without much concern and just put, like, a grate so it catches any bits of gravel you happen to suck up. But floor drains saved so much time. So if you can find a spot in your garage, in your basement where you can find a floor drain access, even if you have to purchase, like, a 30 foot garden hose and string that garden hose across the entire house to get to that floor drain, encourage you to really abuse that floor drain.
I'd rather spend 5 seconds unrolling a 30 foot hose than carrying five gallon bucks of water over to the sink. It's just so goddamn much worse.
I currently do it the bucket method in the toilet.
You're a monster.
Hey, I'm expanding still. I'm making my place into a glorified band cave. This is what I always wanted, so I'm doing it right. I don't want to second guess myself, so I'm taking it one step at a time. Of course, I just got my TV and everything else.
He's a man.
Well, here's another thing that.
You guys. How big a TV did you put in there?
I only put a 43 inch because I don't want people coming in there and just saying, I just want to watch your TV.
It's a nice start. Yeah, 43 inch, nice start.
But here's another thing that works out really great. Get an alexa. So I walk in my place, and I'm like, alexa, turn my lights on. And all my tank lights come on. alexa, shut my lights off. It's nice because I do a lot of videos over there, and I'll have certain lights that I want to do a video. Like, I just did a current light, and I'm just like, alexa, shut my lights off. And she goes, okay.
Click.
And you can also set series of lights. So if you have, say, eight racks, alexa, turn rack two on, boom. She'll have that pre programmed for you.
And the most important thing you can teach alexa alexa, make me a pizza.
That's happened, man.
Yeah, I don't know. As soon as that comes out, I'm gonna get myself one of them. alexis.
Also coffee makers. I need to get you out more. I know it's been a while since you've seen you gotta watch og.
You gotta watch out for the people that actually know the little goose eggs for the alexa, I had this little girl I hate, probably like nine years old. Yes, alexa, I'm your father. No, it's just like and she kept on saying it over and over and over and over. And I don't have a problem with it. I bring donuts and cookies and stuff for the kids to come in. But once you heard it like 15 times, it's to a point. Now it's just like alexa, shut up.
Here here's a here's a tip for me as a father of two. They can't scream when the head's underwater. I'm just telling you, they what? Nothing. I've just banged out up.
Yes.
You're welcome.
God, that's horrible.
Just for you, Joe.
Yeah, I guess I'm not getting any babysitting jobs anytime soon, am I?
No.
The other important thing that we forgot to talk about in your man cave, and this is one thing that I found not man cave, fish cave.
Excuse thank you.
Fish cave. I'm sorry. What I found out for me, especially when I had my warehouse, if I had a small refrigerator in there and a pizza oven and here's why. So you're in the middle of doing a big job, and how many times have you been working on your stuff? And then you go up to get a burger, you go across the street to get something to eat, and all of a sudden, you've wasted 2 hours, and you come back and you don't finish that project, and then water is.
All over the floor.
Exactly. But I put a small refrigerator in there. And what was nice about I bought a used refrigerator for like $50 and it was a full size one. But I was able to keep all my frozen food in there because I don't know about you, but if you have a whole bunch of frozen brine shrimp or bloodworms next to your wife's casserole or ribeye steaks that's why I'm not still married to my first wife.
She doesn't take you as food as often.
No, because brine shrimp and blood worms, if you have enough of them, I mean, I buy them by the case, you know, which is like I'm buying the eight ounce bags and I'm buying 50 of them in a crack. They actually I need to talk to.
You, by the way.
They have a they have a scent to them, you know? And so if you have a small fridge in there, and you can keep your six pack of your favorite beverage, you can keep a frozen pizza in there, you can keep your frozen fish food, you can keep your poop in a bottle, which is bacteria in a bottle. That's usually poop juice.
Poop juice.
I mean, the stuff that I buy from seacrest Farms needs to be refrigerated, right? And so you have all that right there, and you're less apt to have add and walk away from what you're doing.
What I use on mine is I use a wine rack because you can actually turn it down to 54 degrees and has a built in light. So what I end up using is I get a lot of in vitro plants, and I put my in vitro plants in there, turn my light on, turn it down to 54 degrees, and they actually last for three or four months versus them dying out in a month.
That is a great idea.
That and if someone goes in your wine cooler, chiller, they'll be like, oh, can I have ooh? There's plants in there.
What is that?
They suddenly think you're like the pot guy. Like no shrimp guy. Get it right.
I swear it's storefarest. That's all it is. I swear it's monte carlo, man.
Is there any wine in there?
No, I don't drink. I've been sober for seven years.
Well, good for you.
See, I'm not the only one.
You know what?
I've been sober for? I don't know, years.
Yeah, you're the goofiest guy I know.
So I know it's terrible, but people don't believe me.
I go to all these shows and everybody else drinks around there, and you're the dd. I get more information that tells them the next day exactly what happened. So they kind of like that.
Oh, you hear that, friend?
Yeah, Robbie Chan just put my neck in place and I just feel so much better.
Yeah, Rob is a great guy. I got to pick on Robbie, right?
We should call him.
So one other point for that mini fridge conversation.
Yes.
I mentioned before in our tips and tricks chiller. If you find that, I'm going to just repeat this one more time. If you find that used minifridge on craigslist, don't be afraid to turn it to an aquarium. chiller if you need one. So you take a 100 foot garden hose, you drill holes in the side, two holes, one for and one for out. And you just leave that garden hose coiled, and you just put the two ends outside. You can connect any of your sump pumps, two of them. And depending on how cold you want it, you can, of course, just the fridge knob, but also how fast it goes through the fridge. The faster the warmer it will be, the slower the colder it will get. Then you can still put your fish food in there. You can put your beers, your pizza, just right alongside your garden house.
A good idea, right?
I don't have thought of that.
Just make sure to do the left or right side side walls of the minifridge. Because if you do the top or back, you're going to hit the freon and all the equipment. So don't do that. It does not smell right or taste right. I don't think it's a good high.
You don't know that you've got tried that.
I haven't tried it. I've only tried prime.
And if you want to check out on discord, there's some memes on discord. And Robbie just showed me some this weekend. And there's actually who is that? Once more prime? Dave chappelle.
Dave chappelle. Got any more of that prime?
Yeah, it looks like he's been starting.
Coke, so certainly join us. Share some memes.
Check that out on discord.
There's been some poked me. Some poked you?
Yeah. People are cruel, right?
Mainly me, because I put a big bunch in.
Yeah, I'm going to say you did most of it.
Just the ones or towards you anymore.
Yeah, you're kind of a jerk.
Love you. Yeah, love you a long time. No. All right, so the last thing is the mysterious begging. So, Joe, please tell me, how do you beg? Have a begging system in your man cave?
So I end up my shrimp cave.
Thank you. Shrimp shack.
Shrimp shack. That's what it is.
Love shack, baby.
That's right. So I ended up using one of when I converted over and I did these new racks. I just use one of my old Fleet Farm racks. I take those little specimen cups, hang them off the side, and I put my bags in there. So I have my normal four X twelve S, and I have my breather bags in there for shipping.
Are you a rubber band man?
I am a rubber band man.
All right. Jimmy, tell them how to spend a ton of money for no useless purpose.
Hey, I've got a story for you.
All right. Story time.
Storytime stories. So, today I was in fargo. Our friend that owns the fish store there is going into the doctor today because her thumb no longer. Works because she put all the rubber bands on the thumb for so many years. Her thumb.
That's what I do, too.
Her thumb will bend, but then she actually has to physically push the thumb back. It goes click.
Like a gun hammer.
Yeah, like a gun hammer.
Yeah.
And I just recently saw something on YouTube. I'm a big rock and roll fan, as a lot of you know, but following Motley crue, vince Neil, the lead singer for Motley crue, just had surgery on his hand this week, last week, and it's called viking Thumb, or viking hand. And this is where your thumb quits working. So Nancy has run so many river bands in her viking thumb. It's what it's called, man. Look it up.
All right?
And she has done so many rubber bands. She's been doing this her whole adult life, and probably 40, 35, 40 years she's been doing it. And she finally thinks that maybe this is from the rubber bands. So I hate rubber bands more than anything. When I was doing 600 bags in a night, my fingers were bleeding where all the hangnails used to be because you did so many rubber bands. And so I'm not kidding you back probably 15 or 20 years ago already, I bought a Tipper Tie machine, and it's basically a glorified, stainless steel little metal clip that you just clip on the bag, and you're done.
To explain this better, have you ever purchased Jimmy John's breakfast sausage frozen in the pound container?
Yes, exactly.
They have those metal clips at the end that seal that for food safe ceiling.
And that's what Tipper Tie does.
That's what it is.
Tipper Tie is a group out of Germany, I believe, and I spent $800.20 years ago on this thing, and it's not Pneumatic. It's just you have to hand crank it every time. And a box of staples cost about $150, and there's 10,000 staples in there, so it lasts a long time. But, I mean, everybody has come over to my house, goes, I want that when you're dead. And I'm going, no, they're going to bury me with this thing.
No, it's in the will. Kyle and I have to fight for it. The Battle royale style.
Yeah. No, nobody's getting it. I'm being buried with it. I'll tell you what, it's the best thing you ever spent money on. Cigarettes. Farms robbed. I had taken you to Florida, and we watched them. They have pneumatic ones. When I say Pneumatic, they have the air drive. They're motorized air driven. And when they do a bag there, it actually takes and puts a clip on and also cuts the end of the bag off. And so if you're not careful, your.
Finger will go in.
Your finger will go in it, and you'll lose a finger.
Well, it doesn't work anyway. It clearly is already broken by rubber bands, right?
And so, I mean, I love my tipper tie machine. And they are not cheap. But if you're going to be in it for the long haul, it's the best money I've ever spent, to be honest. And that's the one piece of equipment that I would not go without.
It's as simple as just taking the bag, adding oxygen or no oxygen, just at least a little air so it floats when you go in the tank, twisting it, and then taking the part where it's twisted and just pushing up to the machine, pushing the handle, and instantly it's clipped.
Yes. And if you got lots of money to blow the pneumatic ones, when you actually put it into the little slip, it automatically just does it for you. It just snaps it. And it's a wonderful product. It's called tipper tie. You can go online, look it up. The last time I bought Staples, I had to call the company, and like I said, it was a two week ordeal getting them from Germany, but it was well worth it.
So, yeah, the other ingredients for the fish room, again, just comes down to what you have. You're going to have decorations, you're going to collect of food, clown puke. You're going to have clown puke and bags. You're going to have all your accessories on shelving and any Shelving works you can find. cupboards, you can build your own with plywood, but just make sure to have fun with it. Put your accents on it. Jimmy, you may have a TV, but you also have a sound system that's bowing down in your room. You're going to spend a lot of time, and above all else, make it that place where you want to bring friends. Even if they not don't enjoy fish, they're going to be impressed by going in that space, like, whoa, what do you do down here? And you're going to enjoy that time.
It's your happy place, man.
It's kind of like a show off thing, because down where I'm from, we have a lot of fish tank tours. Local nonprofit comes out, and you just want to have one of those best looking fish rooms. Like, oh, you guys have this. Come look at mine. Remember the video arcade game gauntlet? I'm looking for that to put in my man cave, my shrimp shack, because I want to get four people and play gauntlet on there all night long.
Give my wife your credit card, and she'll have one at your door tomorrow. Now, the Queen of Amazon.
Yes. So did we miss anything? Guys, think about your rooms. Now they're all looking up in the.
Air, like supplies, spare stuff, spare lights, a spare pump. Got to have a spare pump.
Medications, am, quill, declar, breeding cones, breeding caves. I've got all that stuff just kind of stacked up in a corner. And my wife loves it when I keep all these tupperware containers. When I talk tupperware, I'm talking, like, butter containers, which are great for little pieces of valves and stems and things that you have.
I think the best thing that I could mention from experiencing many people's fish rooms is the collection of ice cream buckets.
Oh, lots and lots of ice cream buckets.
They're white. You can see the fish or samples, even clear, crystal shrimp. You're going to catch it all. It's just going to be that one go to specimen container you're going to use in Mad Supply.
Yeah.
And I use a lot of, like, markers, like sharpie markers, kind of just right on my tanks. What's in the tank? And then it's easy to take some rubbing alcohol and just wipe them right off.
There's actually even glass markers that we use for some of the smaller stores.
And clamp color on.
Yeah, they're pretty they wipe off with a towel or water.
But the problem you have is when you do a water change, and if you get messy like I do, sometimes.
You got to quit doing the buckets. Man running down.
It looks like tammy faye Baker. Remember her?
Yes.
She was like a train wreck.
I want to point out here that you're not in the studio with us listeners, but Joe is significantly more fit than us, and clearly that's why he does the bucket removal, just to stay in. That nice.
Thank you. I appreciate that.
You're welcome. Now, I'll take another one of these glasses, but no. Nothing else you can think of?
I don't know. I'm just trying to think of all the different things I have in my room. I have a decent stereo system, which to me is everything.
Oh, you're short. So you also have a step ladder.
I do have a step ladder, too.
Do you have a step ladder?
Yes.
I love it.
Yeah, it's comfortable. What's really nice, too, is, like, for the filling buckets or filling up the tanks and stuff. If you have a lower tank, you set your step stool right there, and you put your bucket on top and just use your you can use the python in there if you want to do it that way, because I use Ro. So that's another thing, too, is like, if you do do shrimp, a lot of people use the ro systems, rodi systems.
Thank you for covering me, because he had death in his eyes there for a minute.
I have a little folding step ladder, which I like to use for, like, all star wrestling, and just smash him over the head when he comes over, because he's usually got some real smart ass thing to say that's after he.
Punches me in the throat.
Right in the throat. Yeah. We're kind of a violent group.
That's okay.
But no, I always tell people to.
Have spare of everything, spare food, spare leaves, spare rocks, because you could have a friend that comes over and they'll say, well, where did you get that from? You just have it right here.
These goons. Robbie and his goonie friends love them to death. They come over and go, hey, you've got a lot of moss balls. I go, yeah, they're for my shrimp.
$3 apiece. I'm like, all right. We just throw money at him.
He goes, I don't have any moss balls. And I go, yeah, I've got lots of them. How much? They're not for sale. I'll give you $3 apiece. How many you want?
Yeah, you want 200? I got them here.
Yeah, yeah.
So he he supplies the nerds in the area.
Yeah. So I got I got the almond leaves, which I buy in the 100 lot.
200 lot I'll hook you up with.
I get them by the kilo.
Oh.
So that's the thing, is I always go over and I'll be like I'll be like, hey, I just bought two kilos, guys.
Yeah.
And everybody's like, really?
What did you get?
And I'm like, we leave with gallon baggies.
Yeah.
So this last time, it actually got held up in customs for two weeks.
Hashtag schmeltz.
I was looking at the tracking, and I'm like, why is this held up this long? So I'm going to my postmaster. I'm like, why is it held up? And she's like, I don't know. What do you have in there? I said, I just got two kilos in there.
That's it.
And she's like, really, Joe?
Don't get me wrong.
I love my postmaster. Whenever I get shrimp that come in there, she calls me up and she's like, Joe, you got more shrimp? Can we see him this time?
We just have to deal with schmelta. He gets the good stuff.
Oh, Us. Postal service.
Yes.
Oh, they're wonderful people.
I love them. She loves me and I love her. And even when they're closed, I just knock on the door and she's like, yes.
Joe, you got a package.
1 second. I'll be right out.
Wow, I'm so jealous.
You know what? It pays to be fit and good looking.
It does.
We go to schmelt and they go, what do you guys want?
At least know you by name.
Now there's an airline. Schmelta.
Schmelta.
They don't like us. We don't like them. And we're still waiting for a restraining order.
The wonderful relationship.
You know how they do the random checks? They say it's supposed to be a random spot check. Every time I use smelter, I get pat searched.
Do you?
Every single time you pay extra for that?
Is it because you're bold?
It could be.
Or just kidding. You're kind of cute.
They just want to touch you. I know.
Here's a story about aquatic experience. So Chris Luke Up is a personal friend. I got him a hand. It was like Clay hand because he does the whole rock on thing.
Yeah.
So I had that in my carry on, but I also had all my YouTube audio equipment. So I was walking through and I'm like, crap. And I was like, I am so going to get frisked on this one. To put it down for an X ray. Goes through, they stop it backs up. They call supervisor over. They said, Is this your bag? I'm like, yes, it's possible.
It's possible.
We're going to have to take a random look. I'm like, you guys always look at all my stuff. You guys can be pat down.
And then they swab it for no reason.
And I said, I want to go reach just a point at it. And they said, don't touch it. And I'm like, hey, it's all it is. It's my recording equipment. They said, It doesn't look like that. So you got to figure a blob, that's a hand out of clay with wires next to it and little audio equipment there.
Can you say bomb?
Yeah.
I used to travel three, four times a year, and I bring two items that would get me frisked every time. One, I brought a big battery backup for all my technology equipment. I worked for an Internet service provider for years. And the other one would be my block of magic cards because I'd bring them decks and go do competitions while I'm traveling for business. And both look like kilos of coke on the scanner. So immediately I got the third degree. They're filling up my crotch. They're swabbing everything, and then they open it up like, what is this? It's cards, man. And then they have to go through each individual.
Bring shrimp one time coming back. Is that how it goes coming back from the contest? I'm at norwalk, and of course you're in line for an hour. And you come up there and you say, hey, just let you know I got some live fish here. And they're like, what do you mean live fish? Aquatic experiences right here. There's like 4000 people, so you're going to probably get a lot of this going on. And they're like, I have to call my supervisor.
Yeah, because they don't know if they can read.
Mom, this dude's got creatures.
So the lady went over and she opens up because I don't have like, one or two eggs. I got a cooler full of shrimp. And she opens them up. She goes, what is this?
How long has this been here?
They're shrimp.
And she's like to eat. I'm like, no, you look at them. She's like, what? I said, Those are super expensive because I buy some high end ones and stuff. She's like and they'll hold them up and they'll call everybody over, and it's like, you know, I have a flight to catch. And they're like, I have to get this approved by my supervisor. I'm like here's the tsa guideline rules. Nothing can live in explosive devices that's living. So these are all living. If you want to take a sample of the water, you can take a sample, but I need to get going. Well, we need to swab you now, too. I'm like, oh, man, here we go again. Buy me dinner next time.
Bye. Dinner. I've actually I got in trouble for the last time. I was at frist. Did you mow off? No, I told them so. steak at your place at six. And they just got pissed.
They did.
I do not appreciate that. It was right at the groin moment.
Yeah. I will tell you a quick story. This was before all right, last one.
And we have to let these poor listeners go. We've been going too long.
They're still driving down the road. They're fine.
I guess it is Monday morning for them.
Yes. So anyway, this is all nice.
Oh, boy.
This was before 911. My buddy Mark and I went down to the big pet expo in Orlando, Florida. And at that particular time, they ran the reptile Show at the same time, but over at the Tampa State fairgrounds. So we went and spent a morning at the Tampa State fairgrounds, bought a whole bunch of reptiles because my friend Mark owned a pet store. And then we went back to the pet expo, and so we kept all these pets that came in half, or all these reptiles came in half pint containers. And we had bearded dragons, corn, snakes, scorpions, all kinds of stuff that we bought at the reptile Show. And we went to I can't remember the name of the street in Orlando, but it's got all the cheap luggage and stuff, and all the different T shirts that are three for $10 went down there. He bought another carry on suitcase, and we had literally 75 half pint containers stacked up in there. Now, this is before 911 when they had a little bit of sense of humor. And we probably had about $1,500 each into this reptiles. And we had them all sold before we even got home. I had them sold to my other pet stores. He had them sold. We had a shopping list of stuff that we came with. And so Mark goes, there's no way I'm going to check this luggage. Because if you're familiar with they'll throw it well, that and it's not pressurized underneath, it's only pressurized in certain areas where they put the dogs and cats and stuff.
You'll come back with all these frogs with their eyes popping out of the bag.
That's right. And so we're carrying them and they said, you have to put your bag through the scanner, through the X ray. And Mark looks at me and goes, Here we go. And he put it through there and he walked through and stuff and and the gale stopped it and it backed back into the X ray machine. And she goes, what in God's green earth do you have in there? And he goes, Just some snakes and stuff. And she goes, you can't have snakes in there. And he looks at her and goes, really? And he opens up the bag and shows her. And she is deathly afraid of snakes. You can just see it in her eyes. And she goes, you can't take them on board. And he goes, well, then you can keep him. We got to catch a flight. And he walks away and she goes, do you know him? I go, it's like a trick question. Yeah. She goes, take your damn snakes. Get on the airplane. And we got on the airplane plan and brought them home. And we paid for our trip with that one little carry on of reptiles. We both doubled our money on those things and had them all sold within a week when we got home.
Fantastic. Well, that concludes our podcast, guys. Thanks again for listening in. And thank you Joe, for joining us. Driving like all the way up here, three and a half hours.
Three and a half hours just to.
Sit and bs with us.
I thought I was going to get.
Some Dairy Queen, but I went to Dairy Queen. Right now it's like 1030. They close, man. I came ice cream.
Three and a half hours.
We'll make some homemade maybe. I don't know, maybe.
I got a cupcake. You can eat a damn cupcake.
Yeah, we got cupcakes.
Cupcake.
I got a cupcake. All right, well, thanks again, guys. And again, let's kick that outro. 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 casts subscribe to make sure it gets push notifications directly to your phone. Otherwise Jim will be crying in to sleep.
Can I listen to it in my treehouse?
In your tree house? In your fish room. Even alone at work.
What about at my man cave?
Especially your man cave. Yeah, only if adam's there no with feeder guppy.
No, they're endless. You imagine loving Frank. fucking mother Frank.
Well, I guess we'll see you next time. Later.