Robbz: Alright, guys, welcome to the podcast. We always start with our charity of choice, ohio Fish Rescue. So we're going to have these guys in the podcast soon enough. Last time I called them for an interview, they were sick on the phone. So now more than ever, they need your support. When you're sick and feeling down, you still have to take care of a massive warehouse of fish. They need motivation, so call them 216-773-0407. And just again, like I always say, tell them you love them, but go on their website, Ohiofishrescues.com, they have T shirts and multiple ways to donate using paypal Go Fund, me and patreon, ohio Fish rescues, the place to rescue your fish.
Jimmy: That is correct. And send them some love, send them some money, send them some cold medicine because obviously they're not feeling well. But we wish them the best and we'll talk to them soon.
Robbz: All right, let's kick that podcast. Welcome to the Aquarium, guys. Podcast with your hosts, Jim colby and Rob golson.
Jimmy: Good evening, everybody. It's a Crime podcast here at you, talking to you live from Studio B stands for Basement. We're coming from the basement live in perm, Minnesota. And today we've got a very special guest, actually a friend of mine, Julie Filto, who is a person that has been with Secrets Farms her entire life. Darnier. Hi, Julie. how's it going?
Julie: It's going pretty good.
Robbz: We appreciate you having on, Julie. We're going to do an interview with you and again, utilizing your background, but how many years have you been in the industry?
Julie: In the industry?
Robbz: In the industry?
Jimmy: In the industry.
Robbz: Professionally, we'll get into personally later.
Julie: Okay. professionally, 35 years.
Jimmy: Holy crap.
Robbz: You're lying to me because you can't be that old.
Julie: I'm unfortunately 51 years old.
Jimmy: Holy crap. Wow.
Robbz: Talk about a great internship.
Jimmy: Four years younger than me, man, I feel like I Rob in the cradle here.
Robbz: There you go. There you go. So, again, I'm your host, Rob Z olson. This is Jim colby.
Jimmy: Hey, everybody.
Robbz: And we have Adam nashar. I hope I pronounced that right.
Jimmy: Elnashar.
Robbz: El nashar.
Adam: El nashar.
Robbz: Yeah, I got it. Right. We're going to do a little clean up again, we've been getting a lot more of your feedback and the podcasts are blowing up.
Jimmy: Blowing up.
Robbz: Thank you guys for your support. Please keep telling your friends if one of these podcasts, we try to do podcasts that are more or less evergreen. They're not really news based, so they can use any time. So if you're looking for some after the fact facts, we try to keep this informational so it's topic based. Last week we did a podcast that's getting a lot of feedback. It's how to start your Tank for a beginner. So certainly check that out. It's a great resource. And we did get an update. Mr. pickles so far is doing well at the tank. He tried sand, but he got some bad sand so he's going to go get some better sand.
Jimmy: Some better sand for Mr. pickles. But Mr pickles is a gentleman that got a hold of us. He's from Canada, 16 years old. He's brand new in the aquarium trade. And we are here to help people. We want people to succeed, because if they don't succeed, then our hobby is going to be gone.
Robbz: So there's a couple of ways of going about that. You can go to our website, Aquarium Guys podcast, and on the bottom of the website, you'll see a Contact Us link or call us with your questions. Contact us will have the email address, or again, the telephone number is 218-214-9214. Call us, leave us a message and we'll probably even play you right on the show.
Jimmy: Exactly. If you leave your message on the show, that usually gives us permission to put it on. But we will verify with you before we do that.
Robbz: Now, let's say there's something that's terrible going on, like, oh, I don't know what's happening. My fish is sick. I need help. Now, we're also having a link at the bottom of the website for our discord. discord is an application you can use to chat us directly and it pops up on our phones or even communicate us via voice. This is actually where we record our podcast, is right on discord. So come and join the fun links in the bottom of the website aquariumguyspodcast.com. All right, so let's just start into the interview. Julie, let's understand a little bit more about yourself. So you live in Florida, you're an avid fish enthusiast, and clearly you have massive amounts of experience and you currently work as, correct me on this, one of the leads of the sales in Seagris. Is that correct?
Julie: Yes.
Robbz: Fantastic. So when did you start in the hobby altogether? Was it just part of the job or were you doing aquariums before that?
Julie: Like most people in the hobby, when I was a kid, it was zebra daniels and Pink kissers. But I really got into it when my mother married my stepfather and he owned a fish farm when I was about 1213 years old, and that really kicked off.
Robbz: So what was your first aquarium, if you can remember?
Julie: Actually, my brother and I had an aquarium where we used to go through the canals and ditches where we lived, and we clicked gambooja and crawfish and any other little things swimming around and see if we could get it to live.
Robbz: Fantastic. So just where we have a theme of the podcast, our goal of interviewing you is not just learn a bit more about you, but also the topic of the podcast is learning about distribution. We gave them a podcast of a high level overview of the industry, but we really want to talk about how really big distribution happens. And who better to talk to than one of the most senior people at Sea grass farms? Which is it the largest in North America distribution of tropical fish, as far as I know.
Julie: Yes, it is. It's the largest under one roof.
Jimmy: Awesome.
Julie: Because I think there's a couple of larger saltwater facilities, but altogether under one roof, I think we got it perfect.
Robbz: So you started at age twelve to 13. You caught fish out of Florida. You still live in Florida and work at seagrass. So what does a day in your life look like?
Julie: Pretty busy, actually. I actually for a few years, lived in North Alabama, went to high school and college. I have a degree as a paralegal, but I moved back to Florida and have been doing fish ever since. And the one thing that keeps me in it is you always learn something new. Like every day there's a new fish or new something, or helping somebody, a pet store, get further along in the business, or like you were saying in your intro, helping hobbyists be successful.
Robbz: Awesome. Again, being ahead of sales at seacrest Secrets is wholesale only. So they're actually distributors to either other people, like wholesalers directly to middlemen that, say, take fish, make sure they're properly taken care of after the plant leaves, and distribution to the pet stores or direct to pet stores. So how many customers do you deal with on a regular basis?
Julie: Well, on average I take about 85, 95 orders a week, and most of my customers don't order every week. So I've got a customer base, just me personally of over 300. We have five salespeople in the office. I've been there the longest. I've been with Segres for 30 years. Two other salespeople have been there over ten years, and then we've got three, what I call newbies. They've been there two of them two years and one of them three years now.
Robbz: Just to give a little background for the listeners, I had the opportunity to go with Jimmy to Florida and get a tour of seagrass Farms. And you guys have a massive facility that handles all types of different fish in different circumstances. You guys have state of the art filtration systems and just the diversity, because you assume that all these different farms, they only handle a few different types. The sheer diversity that you guys have in one building blew me away. So you can just you walk in it's. It's not about how many different varieties of fish, it's about, you know, how many subspecies of the same fish. Just your plato list alone is extremely impressive. I think one of the more unique things that you guys do is anybody can wholesale or try to work with the harms directly, but it's so much volume. So if you're a store and you're only looking for a dozen fish, there's not a lot of options out there for you to do that, much less is it cost effective to get that shipped. So you guys really adapt to essentially fill a box for a pet store of a bunch of different varieties and put six or twelve in a bag of each type of variety and ship that out to stores making it more feasible to have a larger selection without having to take care of the bulk.
Julie: Right.
Robbz: In doing that seasonally what types of fish do you see going through? I know you have a massive selection of different discus. In fact I think you have an entire discus wall so how many varieties would you have? Just a discus as an example I.
Julie: Think right now we've got 25.
Jimmy: And how many different suppliers does that come from Julie? I mean I know you have so many different suppliers from all over the world.
Julie: Yes, we have one main supplier that does pretty much what I call the bread and butter ones like your red marbles, your pigeon bloods. Then we have three vendors that supply us with wild discus and we also get a German strain. So we've got about five vendors.
Jimmy: And that's just discus alone?
Julie: That's just discus alone.
Jimmy: I've spent a lot of time at cprs farms over the years and probably been there a dozen times. You got to be careful to get run over by Ups trucks and delivery trucks. Constant motion in that place. 24/7. How many boxes of fish are shipped out of that facility on a given day?
Julie: I'm not sure about like a box count right now it's our slow season and our day crew is doing 7000 bags of fish. Our night crew is doing about 2500.
Jimmy: Holy cow that is a lot of fish. And it's a fish factory. Fish factory? Yeah.
Julie: Yes it moves kind of like a factory.
Jimmy: And explain to people like I've been buying from you for over 20 years and I've sat and watched my own shipment being picked when I've been there and actually it beat me home by about 4 hours one time. But explain to people like the different colors of buckets to keep all the different customers straight.
Julie: Well the way the ordering works is of course you place your order with a salesperson we put it into computers, the computer spit out what's called picking tickets and the picking tickets are organized by packouts. Pack outs are either organized by Ups, ups saver Airlines or our delivery trucks depending upon which crew packs them and then what order. Then they're also color coded. So when the pickers pick the order they have to use a certain color bucket like white, red, blue, yellow. We actually have eight colors now and when they get the picking ticket they actually have to sign on it to say which fish they're picking. They get a label, put it on their arm, they go to the aquarium, pick the fish, put it in the bucket with the buckets actually have a medicated and tranquilized water to help the fish during shipping and then they put the fish on our conveyor belts, which take them to our bagging crew. The bagging crew actually has been there the longest period of time. Most of those girls have been there over five years. They can look at the fish, make sure they're good and healthy, put them in the bag, they put them in oxygen, and then they tip or tie them shut and put that label on the bag. They then go down another set of rollers to our checkers, who have detailed sheets of the orders so they can check the order with the bags of fish to make sure the right fish go in the right boxes before they're sealed up.
Jimmy: And I can say that they're really darn accurate, because for over 20 years, I've been buying from Secrets Farms, and I can count on one hand how many times that the count has been off by one or two fish, and they are very accurate in what they do, and they do a great job.
Robbz: Yeah, you always cross your fingers when you get fisher and like, Come on. Did I get a couple of extra?
Jimmy: Yeah, a couple of extra, please.
Robbz: Come on. But no, they're pretty accurate. So going through sorry. Now we're going to get extra fish.
Jimmy: We're going to get dog dude in a bag.
Robbz: Thanks, guys.
Julie: Now, we have been known to send rosie Reds out with our puffers.
Robbz: There you go.
Jimmy: I was just talking to Adam last week when we were off podcast, and I used to get a lot of feeder guppies from you guys and still do. And every once in a while, there'd be freshwater pipe fish in there. How does that end up in there?
Julie: It's kind of weird because they usually come in with a ghost shrimp, and our ghost shrimp and guppies are kept kind of in the same system, so that's how the pipe fish usually pop over to the guppy tanks. But when they collect go shrimp, those are not always collected from ponds because it's a feeder item. Nobody wants to spend the money raising it when they can use a pond to make money off of. So they'll go out to estuaries, where it's like brackish water that's mostly fresh and they'll sane for the ghost shrimp. And you'll get the pipe fish, you'll get gobies. You'll get all kinds of cool little things in there.
Jimmy: Yeah, I've grabbed those out of there every time and kept them as long as I could. I just love them.
Julie: Yeah, they're cool.
Adam: You should put them on the list because I'd buy more.
Robbz: You have to have Julie go back there and hand grab you some pipe fish.
Adam: Yeah, I doubt that she'll do that.
Robbz: Julie?
Jimmy: Yeah, Julie does a lot of that for me, actually, on a weekly basis, almost. If I see something out of the ordinary, something that I want to try to breed, and she will go back there and grab me for two months. I had her back to her grabbing rams for another month, I headed back to grabbing different goldfish from my wife's tank. And, yes, Julie does that stuff.
Adam: Well, that's good.
Julie: What's the fun part of it?
Robbz: We'll get you some pipe fish. We promise.
Jimmy: Okay.
Julie: There you go.
Robbz: What I like to do is, in old cartoons, they were trying to get kids more engaged, and they have this thing called the bouncing ball. So there's a sing along song, and the kids didn't know the words. The ball would show the rhythm of the song. So what I want to do is show the bouncing ball of fish in Seagris. So, number one, cyrus is located directly in the heart of fish farm central in Florida.
Jimmy: They're all around her.
Robbz: So you have all these collective farms. You have co ops of farms, and they farm and bring in two Seagris to sell directly to Cyrus and mass quantity. So Cyrus has to divvy up. I mean, what is that process when you guys ingest fish in?
Julie: It's actually kind of funny. I don't know if I've ever showed you Jim, but in our building, there's a ups door, and that's where all the boxes go out of. On the exact opposite side of the building is where everything comes in, and it's also a conveyor belt. And we have farmers just bring bags of fish with their invoices through that door, and they come in buckets. And then we have what's called an r and D crew, and they take those fish from the bags and take them to the aquariums they're supposed to go into and float them and medicate them, do whatever needs to be done for us to sell them.
Jimmy: And I've noticed many times when I've been in there, you've got little. Also, if you look online, cigarettes farms has a lot of great videos on there. I think shelby is the one that's usually out there trying to show stuff around. On julie's personal Facebook, she has stuff, but you'll see where it says use first? And so those fish that come in last will stay there a couple of days and stabilize because it's tough on the fish to keep moving them through so quickly and stuff. So, actually, when you're looking at the fish, there might be 15 tanks of plecos, but they'll have a little plastic strip that says use first. And so that's something that they always have been really good about, making sure these fish are the best shape they possibly can before they ship them out.
Julie: They're actually also color coded, like the orders going out, orders coming in. Every week, we have a different color. So you can look at a glance to see which fish are the oldest and need to go first and which ones are newer and need to hang out and relax for a while.
Robbz: When you get these fish in again, it's not just coming from farms in Florida. Most of them do, because that's where the mass quantity of fish do come from, but they also come internationally all over the world from different farms. And some that we cannot really get elsewhere do come from other wild locations. So overall, what's your most common areas besides Florida that you get fishing from?
Julie: Right now, I'd have to say it's probably Taiwan or Asia. Those are probably our two biggest areas that they're getting stuff out of.
Robbz: So there was another project that we saw. I'm going to butcher the name Project paiba. Is that correct?
Julie: Project yeah, piaba.
Robbz: Piaba. And this project was actually featured in Amazon's Magazine. For those that don't know about it, amazon's Magazine is the premier freshwater fish magazine and it's produced bi monthly. Certainly. Check it out. It's worth an investment. Jimmy Cole has been collecting them for years.
Jimmy: I've got everyone that they've done here.
Robbz: Again, I'm paraphrasing on this, but you guys have working with locals in the Amazon to correctly farm and harvest species such as cardinals, rummy, nose, tetras, I believe whiptail, catfish, maybe some placos and more ethically find a better way than just destroying habitats to get fish or.
Julie: To find other wildfires part of a sustainability project that they're doing with farmers. And I believe Project piaba is the first one they're doing. And there are two or three other ones in the works.
Robbz: So any details on the other ones?
Jimmy: Can you talk about those yet or not?
Julie: Or is that under that they haven't really given me a whole lot of information on it yet, other than to say that there are more of them in the works? Because Project piaba took off really well, a lot better than we expected. And unfortunately, they didn't quite have all the kinks worked out of the transportation part of it. So that's why they're looking into other areas to do the same thing.
Jimmy: Because a lot of these people are from Third World nations. Correct. That you're getting stuff from and stuff. So transportation is an issue when you are out in the rainforest.
Julie: Yes, it's a big issue, especially a lot of these countries, like clown lunches are very seasonal. You know that and some of the other fish. And it's not like a breeding season. It's a rainy season and they flood and you just can't collect these fish at that time.
Jimmy: Once the rivers go over the banks, it's impossible to try to get these fish and they just swim out into the trees, basically, don't they?
Robbz: So it was certainly a great project. Remember, I believe when it first came out, jimmy and I both bought a bunch of selection. It was great stock, beautiful colors. But then again, the supply and demand happened and there wasn't a whole lot of stock left. So I'm happy to hear that that's not only doing better where it's at, but expanding different locations.
Jimmy: And I think that was something similar to when you guys kicked off glowfish and I want to point out that you guys spent the money on bringing glowfish to the nation. Basically.
Robbz: What's the story in glowfish.
Julie: I'm not really sure about all the details on glowfish. I know that the Glowfishglow.com, or however they are, they actually hold the licensing for the glowfish. And our farms and other wholesalers farms are the only two that are licensed to sell them and they've been bought out. So I know that we are working on new licensing with them.
Jimmy: And I know you and I have had the conversations. Julie, each one of the colors I mean, there's glow daniels, glow tetras, now glow barbs and didn't you say that each color of each variety has to have their own paperwork to go through.
Julie: The yes, each color of each variety has to be usda approved before we could sell them.
Jimmy: And so just because the green ones you're selling the green ones right now doesn't mean you can start selling the red ones until they give you the okay and the licensing.
Julie: Right.
Robbz: Fascinating. So again, trying to follow the track of fish. So now we've gotten fish again from farms all over Florida, all over the world, and other wildcat and other from projects. So they all come in through your shipping area and they unload them again. You guys have crazy systems, separate systems for different species. Like for instance, your discus system is completely independent. It sounds like you had some of your feeder guppies on the same system as Go Shrimp. And explain a little bit about seagrasses systems and processes. So they come in jimmy was mentioning that they're quarantined for a few days and they have marks of which to use first as they come in. What other processes do they check when fish come in?
Julie: We actually have an ic theologist on staff that goes through and checks not only the water parameters for each of our systems. And we have, I'm not sure, I think it's 23 systems in just the freshwater building. But he checks all the parameters. He looks at all the fish coming in and like those used 1st, 2nd, 3rd stickers. We have holt stickers. If he puts a hole sticker on a fish, nobody's allowed to touch those fish until he releases them. And he will scope them, he'll do necropsy on them, he'll do all kinds of stuff and then he'll medicate them as needed.
Jimmy: And you have a lab right on the site, correct?
Julie: Yes, we have a lab on the property.
Robbz: So essentially it's an echoes just working there full time or is there more staff than that just for the treating?
Julie: Now there is one ichthyologist, but he has three assistants.
Robbz: So you have a lab of four dedicated just to making sure the product is clean and clear as they come in.
Julie: Yes.
Jimmy: That says a lot. Really does.
Robbz: That's a huge deal. Well, you got to take that. It's one building. Sure. It has separate systems. But if you're getting stuff from all over the world, you have to do your diligence that you're not importing some 1960s guppy disease.
Jimmy: Don't get me started.
Julie: Just don't go there.
Robbz: Okay. So the fish come in, they're acclimated, they're treated. And generally speaking, how long do fish stay at the facility?
Julie: Four days, usually, our systems, because we run preventative medication through all of them, we don't like for fish to stay any longer than ten days.
Jimmy: And so at that point, you'd like to try to get them going. And if you're long on them, you probably run them on special or have a blowout sale.
Julie: Yeah, that's part of the blowout. We do blow out specials on Wednesday and Thursday, and that's part of it. To get these fish moved out before our system start breaking them down.
Jimmy: Yeah. And that's understandable because you want to make sure that they are going out as healthy as can be.
Julie: Yes.
Robbz: So now we get to the next part where Jimmy calls in, he has his fish order. You guys send out certain lists, and you send us a fish order to the system. And we got a little bit about the picking, but just to paint a picture, you guys, when we were there, had massive conveyor belts and that color tagging system. So literally, they have to go through 26 different systems just to make a potential one mixed random box for somebody. They use, again, colored buckets in a tray. Is that how they put them on the conveyor belt? How does the system exactly get to the end point?
Julie: The buckets actually fit right on the conveyor belt. There's little rails, so they stay on there and don't fall off. Some of the fish like sore tails and plateaus, the ones that love to jump and try and commit suicide, they actually use shower caps over the top of them so they can't jump out. There is a tranquilizer, a mild tranquilizer in the water to help calm them down a little bit, to help with the stress of the shipping and handling. And if you go through the building, you'll see seven, what we call boards or podiums, and each board is for two systems of fish or more. And there's one person or one picker attached to each board, and they go down that and just pull fish off that board all day long. That's all they do.
Jimmy: And the thing is, what people need to know, too, is that you also have a saltwater building room. You also have a cold water where you keep the feeder fish. You have another area where you keep the fancy goldfish. And so stuff may be coming from many different buildings, and it's quite a task to try to keep them all straight, I'm sure.
Julie: Yeah. And there's a plant room also.
Jimmy: Oh, I forgot about the plant room. And for years, you guys had reptiles, too, but now you've gotten reptiles off the premises in a different location. But you still offer reptiles.
Julie: Yes.
Robbz: So on your plant selection, because I think we covered at least the fish and how they get bagged. So your plants come in, and they come in again from local farmers or where do the plants come in from?
Julie: Yeah, we have three vendors for plants, and they're all local. They're all in Florida. So, yeah, they come in. All of our plants, except for palm plants, are actually kept in a cooler, but they're not there for a week. They're gone and usually three or four days.
Jimmy: And that's just because of the extreme heat there that you keep moving cooler.
Julie: Yeah, because 95 deg and new plants moving around, that doesn't work very well. So that's why they're cutting the cooler.
Jimmy: Just to give people an idea. We're in northern Minnesota, and right now, it's like, 35 degrees above zero. What's the temperature there?
Julie: 87.
Jimmy: Bite me. God, I hope you sweat tomorrow when you go to work.
Robbz: It's all right. We're going to go down and visit Julie again soon.
Jimmy: We will be down there soon again, and we'll have to take her out for dinner.
Robbz: Indeed.
Jimmy: We'll let you super size it if you're extra specially good. Through the drive through.
Julie: The drive through.
Robbz: Hey, here we go. No.
Jimmy: We're going to Florida.
Robbz: We got to get grits again.
Jimmy: Oh, yes.
Adam: Wait, what are grits?
Robbz: Oh, God.
Jimmy: Explain it to Adam. I'm not even going to go there. Julie every week, we had to explain something to somebody. I have to explain to Robbie what a phone booth was because he's so young.
Robbz: Hey, it's where superman came out of. That's all I know.
Jimmy: And then you got to explain to Adam now what grits are. Go ahead.
Robbz: It's a Southern malta meal that just tastes better.
Julie: There you go. Exactly.
Robbz: That's what I got. Seriously, I said this in other podcasts, but I go to a waffle House, you sit down, they give you was it lemonade you didn't ask for? And you order food, and they give you grits you didn't ask for.
Jimmy: Right.
Julie: I'm pretty sure that's because in the south, everything has to have grits with it.
Jimmy: Grits, Southern Comfort and sweet tea. Also. Right. I mean, every time I go somewhere, I end up with sweet tea in front of me, which I don't really like, but I drink it because I'm scared of the people working there at the waffle House, especially if it's late at night.
Robbz: All right, we got to put that on their bucket list. Now, I have a lot of customers at pet stores that are looking for different plant options, and generally when I talk to anybody, you always have the risk of snails, no matter where you're going to get your plants from. But there's a special variety that I can get from you guys that are essentially free of snails. What was that variety called?
Julie: It's a tissue culture plant.
Robbz: So just for the viewers, can you describe what makes those different?
Julie: They're actually grown in, like, laboratories, and they're grown in a gel. They're not grown in soil, so they're never around anything that can give them a disease. Give them snails, give them anything. They're pretty much clean.
Jimmy: Are they grown underwater or are they grown just in that gel?
Julie: No, they're grown just in that gel.
Robbz: Okay, so when I get these but.
Julie: They do better than your potted plants that are also not grown totally underwater. A lot of those everybody knows melt back as soon as you put them in the aquarium. The tissue culture plants tend to just keep growing.
Jimmy: And how are they compared and priced to the other plants?
Julie: Are they a little bit more money, but there's a lot more in them? They look smaller, but if you take and spread them out because I have a 40 gallon planted tank that it took three packages of tissue culture plants to do, where it would have taken about 15 potato plants.
Jimmy: So you got bang for your buck, for your money. Tissue seems to be the way to go.
Julie: Yes, it is.
Robbz: I've ordered both varieties of plants from seagrass in the past. And these tissue cultures, they come in even their own independent packaging. They are much cleaner. And again, people that are preparing the snails, I always recommend getting those. Any unique things that are particularly your personal favorite, because we always grab aquarium enthusiast favorite fish. But it's really hard to get a picture when you don't haven't tried everything. You're one of the few aquarius out there that literally get to see pretty much everything that hits the hobby. Sometimes you're one of the first that gets to see a new fish introduce or a new species. So after all these years, what are your favorite species?
Julie: Julie, that is a tough question. I got her species, my favorite species just because I'm always bringing home fish, of course, and trying them out and seeing how they do. But the polyptra seals, I actually trained to eat out of my hand, so I just had the best experience with them. They were just cool.
Jimmy: What was that? One more time?
Robbz: Palipto seals.
Julie: Palipta seals or biker eels? Dinosaur eels.
Jimmy: Oh, those crazy things. They're pretty.
Adam: You know, the ones that look like giant they call them, like, dinosaur Birchers and stuff like that.
Julie: Yeah. Blake reels.
Jimmy: Little prehistoric.
Julie: Yeah, they're kind of like rope fish, except shorter, stubbier, and live a lot better.
Jimmy: Really?
Robbz: Yes, they definitely get pretty.
Julie: Green albino and delete, tree eye, ornate penis. There's a congeekus. There's like, 14 different varieties of them. And these are all they range anywhere from six inches to I think the congeekus is the biggest at three foot.
Jimmy: And so where are those bread at? Are they bred in the Us. Or are they overseas?
Julie: No, those are bred overseas.
Jimmy: Okay.
Robbz: I've gotten a few in and I had a customer ask what happened to my fish? Like, what do you have? And I have a dinosaur biker. And oh, that's what happened. My other fish are twice the size. Well, no, they ate them whole. I guarantee it. So he didn't believe me. He got a couple of extra fish that were bigger than the bikers and put a webcam up to it, and sure enough, engulf hole. People don't understand how big those mouths go open.
Jimmy: Kind of like Red Tail catfish drops.
Adam: That's what I was wondering.
Jimmy: Yeah. Let's talk about your Red Tail catfish at eight year.
Robbz: I think this is where I insert the bite me statement.
Jimmy: So did you ever hear this earlier about remember that really nice. I want to that Rob bought from you?
Robbz: Oh, God, no.
Jimmy: Really nice. Yeah. And it was cheap, too, as well. How much was it, Rob?
Robbz: I don't want to talk about $300. No, north is a lot more than that.
Jimmy: Like $500?
Robbz: It was more than that.
Jimmy: More than $500.
Robbz: I think there was 675 a piece.
Jimmy: So Rob buys this fish, Arowana, which he's in love with, and he put Julie loves me.
Robbz: She cashed in.
Jimmy: She cashed my favors because she knew he had a Red Tail catfish in the same damn tank.
Robbz: The Red Tail. Catfish was a rescue. I got him after the fact. He was literally half the size.
Jimmy: He swallowed him whole, swallowed his arowana hole.
Robbz: And I've gotten a lot of fish from Jim and Julie over the years, and one of them that was fun, I got to work directly with Julie. With was trying to find a white pearl stingray. So for those that haven't tried stingrays or research before, most species of freshwater stingray are venomous, so they're very docile. They're relatively safe. But still, for your own safety, keep your hands on the tank, do your homework. They're not an easy fish to take care of, but I have the worst luck, right? I'll spend a bunch of money and time and effort finding the sweet piece that no one can find. julie's very good at that. So if you're a pet store and you're looking for that one fish for your customer, she'll take some time hunt for that one particular fish. I bought this, paid a lot of money for it, got it home, and it was doing well. I had it going all over the tank. I always try to do research on different species, so I take a 24 inch tongues. I had to buy these special on Amazon. And I would take food pieces, whether it's shrimp or I actually even use tubaflex worms because it was a smaller stingray. And I would push the food in the substrate, and the stingray would dig them out just like they do in nature, because, again, they're always bottom feeders looking for crustaceans or something under the sand. And it was super fun because it would dig, find the food and move on. Of course we feed it above the sand, but this was, you could say, stimulus for the creature itself.
Jimmy: And one day, what happened to rob's?
Robbz: It choked on a piece of food and died.
Jimmy: He called me crying.
Robbz: I watched it choke. But you can't sit there and get the food out of its mouth because I'm scared. It's venomous.
Jimmy: He was feeding some large pieces of shrimp, big pieces of shrimp.
Robbz: No, it got a piece of wood that it was trying to grab and was stuck in its mouth. And I tried to grab the tongs and try to help it out, but no, she croaked.
Jimmy: You couldn't give them why didn't she.
Adam: Go through the gill plate on the bottom and try to pull it up, push it up?
Robbz: Because those are very small slits on a blonde pearl stingray, and it's very sharp barb. So I wasn't about to say, be the national news guy. Be like, oh, death by stingray in Minnesota?
Jimmy: Yeah, in Minnesota.
Robbz: No, it wasn't about to happen. As I just died inside, my roommate decided to come behind me and say, oh, what happened? Oh, my fish just died on a piece of food. Like how I expected you to go someday.
Jimmy: Rob'S a big guy.
Robbz: Oh, I was almost in tears. And that's his pep talk for me. So there's the story. For those that haven't got it before.
Jimmy: There'S another story of failure on our part. Please learn from this and don't do that.
Adam: I have a question. You're talking about tranquilizers in the bags. How do they know what level of tranquilizer to put in the bags? Because I've gotten, like, golden piranhas or black piranhas, and their bags are just, like, bright neon red. What do you do for does your ichthyologist know the difference of how much to put per bag for, say, a stingray? Because aren't they more sensitive to this stuff?
Julie: Yeah, actually, our stingrays, we do not use the tranquilizer on. They can't handle it. And the tranquilizer has basically been a learning curve over the last 30 years. We've had to learn what fish can handle it, what fish can't, what fish get half a dose, things along that line. But all of our aquariums that need different than the packing water are all labeled for the pickers to know which ones get different amounts, what type of tranquillars you use.
Robbz: The most common I've seen is clove oils. Is that a lot of the topic?
Julie: I don't know. They don't give us that, like, the medications I couldn't tell you what kind of medications they use in our systems.
Jimmy: A lot of that is kind of a closely guarded secret, isn't it?
Julie: Elwin used to call it what was it? His super shit. And I could tell you it had nitrophere zone and salt in it, but I could not tell you what else it had in it to save my life.
Jimmy: And and if he did tell us he'd he'd kill you. elwood would. And when she said elwood, she talks.
Julie: Tired now, and he's out on these jots somewhere, so I'm not too awful worried about it.
Jimmy: He knows his way back to the office. elwood secret.
Julie: Yeah, his desk is still there. So yes.
Jimmy: Nobody'S going home alive. The secrets get out.
Julie: Exactly.
Robbz: To try to keep following this process. So you got the fish ordered. Now it's bagged. Let's talk about the shipping process there's a little bit more. So you beg the fish and I've seen a lot of different ways you guys beg the fish. Number one, you try to do one species per bag. That's a common sense thing. You only put so many per bag. But like discus, they usually get stressed. So you guys have special bags with, you could say, black liners to cover up so they don't get a lot of light and they calm down. What other methods do you guys use for shipping?
Julie: Well, in the boxes they go in, it's a styrofoam box inside a cardboard box to help with temperature. And Jim knows this. We also use thick wall boxes, especially coming into the winter, because they're double insulated. And I think I've shipped to Jim in, what, negative ten degrees, and the fish are still coming fine.
Jimmy: Negative 36. Is the coldest I've ever picked them up. Negative 36.
Adam: Wow.
Jimmy: Because you guys call them Alaska boxes. But I remember back a few years ago when you guys first came up with them, we were talking and you said, hey, can we try these boxes on you? And you give us some feedback and temperatures of these boxes when they come in and stuff. Because we're 200 miles south of the Canadian border. And you also ship to Canada, correct?
Julie: Right.
Jimmy: And you guys were wanted to ship up to Canada and Alaska with these boxes and stuff. And I will say they're probably about two to two and a half inches thick. And they are big boxes and they hold a lot of fish. And of course, when you have that much water in there, plus the heat packs and that large box, they come in pretty toasty warm. Negative 36. I came home last winter with three or four of those boxes in my.
Robbz: Vehicle, and to give you a little more background of what the conditions we deal with. So how that works, from Florida, they have the special company I won't give their names, rhymes with schmelta. And they fly to Minneapolis. Minneapolis does not have an indoor freight. So they get to sit in either just an open ended warehouse or outside.
Jimmy: Yeah, or they get picked up and.
Robbz: Then flown to fargo. So there are exceptions where, of course, they've sat outside for overnight and heat packs aren't going to cover it. But for just the drop off, they'll sit outside, get picked up, flown to fargo right away, and we have no issues, and that's in these really cool.
Jimmy: Experience, it's a real tough because when they're going from 80 degrees at julie's place in January to us, where it's 30 below, I mean, they have to pack them. They have to get them out quick and get them on the airplane quicker. Also overheat from the heat packs. So it's a whole lot of every time we talk and do an order, one of the first questions Julie says, is it cold up there? And I just laugh at her and go, yeah, it's always cold up here.
Julie: We have to know these things because, yeah, the spring and the fall are the hardest times to ship because it's 90 degrees here and 35 everywhere else.
Jimmy: And talking about the fall and spring, I personally really like getting a lot of my fish in the fall because that seems to when I get the much brighter, larger tetras barbs and things. Because after they've had a nice season of sitting in the ponds in Florida, that's when you guys usually get I'll order a medium tiger barb and I'll actually get like a large tiger barb because their mediums are that big.
Julie: Yeah, they're running really big right now.
Jimmy: Are they? Again, yes. May I have to order some next week?
Robbz: There we go. So just to give a little more clarity on the box itself, the heat packs, after a lot of trial and error in practice, you guys have this. I thought it was an ingenious way and really low cost way for shipping is you take a heat pack and they actually layer them on paper plates. So number one, it's not a direct heat pad against a bag. And two, it can space out the heat better in the box. You can stick it on top with a paper plate or layer it between the bags if it's that cold.
Julie: We've actually gotten a little bit better. And they actually have one side that is sticky, so we actually affix them to the lid so they hang from the lids.
Jimmy: Yeah, because the problem with heat packs is if they get wet, and there's always a bag that has one pinhole in it, if those heat packs get wet, they don't work.
Julie: No.
Jimmy: And so you got to keep them up on top. And of course, the airline that rhymes with smelter, they basically just drop kick these things off the airplane and spin them around. I've had boxes come off that have been so damaged, I'm thinking everything in here is going to be dead. But yet they're still alive.
Robbz: So we should do a bonus podcast just for the sake of therapy. Just crap talking airlines, because we all collectively have so many stories of customer service, what they've done to fish, what they've done to people online, it's mind boggling of what's happened.
Julie: Oh, yeah.
Robbz: We're going to have a smelt a.
Jimmy: Day, a schmalt today. I want to say something really quick. Julie let's go back quite a few years ago when 911 happened. Let's talk about that for a second. When 911 happened, this is something that unprecedented never happened before. All the airlines got grounded that day on 911 and I had probably about $1,200 shipment of fish that got I think ended up in davenport, iowa, or some darn place, but everything got sent down. Why don't you talk a little bit about that nightmare?
Julie: It was a nightmare. Yeah. They pretty much grounded all the planes, wherever they were. They were sold to land and we were struggling to find out where our shipments were and if we couldn't get them to their final destination to see if we could find customers willing to go and pick them up. And thankfully we actually did get most of them situated.
Jimmy: Yeah, I was going to say mine was one that it was nowhere near me that I could drive to go get them and I think you guys were able to get them picked back up and brought back to seacrest. But there again, it's just people always go, oh, I want to start a pet store, and it's going to be easy. It's not easy, folks. It's not easy at all.
Julie: I tell new stores that if you can make it two years, you've got a chance.
Jimmy: Exactly.
Julie: Those first two years, they're the hardest two years you'll ever face.
Jimmy: I've wasted more time sitting at the airport. I call the tricked down effect. Just because the weather here is beautiful doesn't mean that between here and florida, there wasn't a huge storm in colorado. There wasn't a thunderstorm that grounded an airplane. There wasn't a mechanical issue. There wasn't some psycho on the airplane that yelled something that they had grounded.
Robbz: And so every grandma didn't have indigestion.
Jimmy: Right. You never know what's going to happen. And just when you think that those.
Julie: 911, the pilots can decide how much freight they carry, if they don't want to carry freight, they don't have to.
Jimmy: Are you serious?
Adam: Really?
Julie: I'm serious.
Jimmy: I did not know that.
Julie: Yeah, because we have most of our transfers go through atlanta and we've actually had problems with, I believe it is a schmelta airline pilot every thursday morning. So yes, we've had that problem.
Robbz: Yeah.
Jimmy: It's just never ending, the amount of things that can happen. And just when you think you got it figured out, somebody changes the rules every single time. The only thing melta can move quickly, and I've said this before on different podcasts is deceased bodies, human remains. They call them hrs. And when grandpa passes away in arizona, needs to be flown back to minnesota. Nobody wants a dead body in their back room and so they can move those quickly. But your fish can sit in atlanta for hours on end or maybe even overnight.
Julie: And they're third in line.
Jimmy: Yeah, third in line.
Julie: Dead bodies, flowers and then fish.
Jimmy: Yeah, pretty much. And that's before passenger luggage. And what's amazing that those airlines also when I go to the airport, there's always somebody there dropping off organs like a heart or something that's going to go and they'll come rushing in. And that's the only people that they'll actually help out quickly because they'll get those on the airplane and get them sent somewhere for when somebody passes away and they donate their heart or their kidneys or whatever, maybe.
Robbz: And it's not that we're complaining about their priorities because it seems like an organ would be top of the list, but there's some ridiculous ones. So bonus podcast coming.
Jimmy: Yeah. Thank you.
Robbz: Right.
Jimmy: Thank you.
Robbz: Thank you.
Jimmy: Schmelta and Abidui Airlines. Which one?
Robbz: Northeast.
Jimmy: Northeast.
Robbz: Northeast.
Jimmy: Although there you go, watch.
Robbz: There's going to be actually one called Northeast.
Jimmy: They are.
Robbz: So a couple more things about segres. So again, you guys are really unique. You can ship out to different pet stores doing smaller orders so they don't have to get 500 or 100 of this. And your day to day basis is dealing with, again, direct to the pet stores wholesalers like Jimmy. And really what makes you guys besides those points and your sheer selection, what makes cyrus different?
Julie: I think it's mostly the customer service now because we're still required to talk to all of our customers at least once a month, where some places I'm hearing now, they don't even have like real live salespeople. You do your orders online and that's it. And then we do the special request, like they were saying. Of course, we're always trying to find new and different fish and just we go the extra mile.
Robbz: So I've had a couple of questions that have came in when we were talking about the industry. And a lot of them had to do with because either people were had a basement full of fish and they're trying to either see if they want to open a store, doing the research to see what it would take. And a lot of them was what's the guarantee on fish? So from seacrest's point of view, how do you guys handle bad shipments? What would be your guarantee?
Julie: Well, guarantee is not really written in stone. We guarantee live arrival on paperwork. So anything that comes in dead, they actually do a cash credit. But it is minus the value of free fish that we send out on orders. So every order that you place is freshwater, we actually send you a free bag of fish. Usually these are something new, different, something you never ordered, something really cool and interesting for you to try out to see if your customer base likes it, something you can sell, something you can move and make money off of.
Robbz: Now that's definitely a unique piece because I've talked to some other smaller farmers. I don't see a whole lot of just random stuff coming in that they'll give you a free bag of. Here, try this. Let us know how you like it.
Julie: Yeah. So if you get a shipment and you're going to have a few losses, I mean, this is livestock. It happens. And usually the free fish will cover those losses, so nobody worries about anything. But in those instances where schmelto leaves it on the tarmac for a day and a half and your shipment comes in and most of it is dead, we will usually work with you to get those taken care of, because we don't want to see anybody get hurt. And to lose a whole entire shipment of fish is not good. So as long as you let us know what's going on, you let us know what happened, we'll work with you on pretty much anything.
Jimmy: And you've always worked with me. I don't want to say many times, but a few times I've gotten in some larger plecos, and those darn things will put their fins through the bag, and you'll have a flat bag. I've called Julie and say, I had a flat bag. And she goes, no problem. It's that simple.
Julie: We're actually shipping those large plecos and plastic boxes inside the bags now.
Jimmy: No, I did not know that.
Julie: To keep them from doing that, yes, we are.
Adam: Now I need to get more plecos.
Jimmy: That's right. Now, innovation wise, I know we've talked about this before. You guys, for a long time, tried to figure out a way to reuse fish boxes. Have you ever come across anything that would work? Because when people don't realize that, yeah, the cost of the fish might be $0.50, it's going to cost you another quarter to get that particular fish here, and then you're going to have a box charge, you're going to have heat pack charge, you might have a cold pack charge. I'm not kidding you when I say I probably had 300, 400 boxes at $4 a piece in my warehouse. And we've always talked about, geez, I wish I could get these, reuse these and get them back to you. And I know one time you guys were working on something like that. Have you ever come across anything that anybody's getting that to work?
Julie: No, we haven't really figured out anything. We try and get our customers to actually reuse them with their customers, because what a lot of the bottom line customer doesn't realize is when you put that, you go and you get your fish, you put them in the bag, you put them in the car. If it's sunny out. And it doesn't matter if it's 35 degrees or 90 degrees, but if it's sunny out, that bag actually acts like a greenhouse and can cook that fish before you get home. So if you reuse the styrofoam boxes at the store level for your customers, that's one less opportunity for a bad outcome.
Jimmy: Yeah, and those boxes are great for storage and whatnot also. But I just recently, big ones are good for coolers.
Julie: I use them for coolers.
Jimmy: You put what, you put beer in there?
Julie: Of course.
Jimmy: All right.
Robbz: I say I use them for tubing because they float really nice.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Robbz: And I think, Jimmy, what we got to do, because we have a collection of these things next year, we have one of the largest country music festivals in the nation called We fest Close by Us. Right. With thousands of people coming. That's what we should do.
Jimmy: Let's go over there and sell them.
Robbz: We should just box it up. Just coolers of ice. That's what we need to clean these things out. Put ice in them.
Jimmy: There you go, Julie.
Robbz: Winning.
Jimmy: Exactly. Winning. Julie was just saying about the fish overheating in the bag sitting on the seat as you're driving your 10 miles home or your 20 miles home. Twice this summer, one of the stores that I own, we sold somebody 100 crickets, and they put the 100 crickets in a bag and put the bag on, and they were dead within two blocks, because when it's 90 degrees out and the sun comes through, it just fry those little things, so yep. And so, you know, we try to educate people. We try to say, you know, put them in a bag, put them on the floor, and we every once in a while, we get somebody coming back saying, yeah, they're all dead. I don't know what happened. Very frustrating.
Julie: Yes, it is.
Robbz: So, Julie, other than just fish, we talked about plants a little bit in saltwater species. What other stuff do you guys offer? Secrets.
Julie: We are starting to offer natural decorations, like spiderwood, different routes, some of the rocks. So we are, since I'm sure you guys know, central bodies a couple of years ago, so they're giving us more of an opportunity to expand and broaden our horizons. So we're hoping to be able to carry even more stuff in the future because we're looking at a food line, a tropical fish food line, and I think there might even be a medication line that we're going to start carrying.
Jimmy: That would be interesting because I don't know if you ever remember chem aqua? That used to be around and I used to get all my meds for my fish there. And they had a catalog, which we just found from 1996 the other night. It's hard to treat a fish if you don't have the knowledge or maybe some paperwork to look at. It's just impossible. But it is hard to find decent medicine that's not for ten gallons in a capsule at Walmart.
Robbz: Right. We can actually get bulk supply because if you have 80 tanks plus, what are you going to do? You're going to get $10 bottle that will supply four of your tanks. That's probably not going to work for you. You want a gallon of the stuff.
Jimmy: And you also have some don't you do like, PH meters and stuff like that, too.
Julie: Yeah, we have PH and TDs meters, because we're really big on the TDs and freshwater, because that's another thing with our fish. You've seen how stock those tanks are.
Jimmy: They are full.
Julie: We actually run chillers on our aquarium, so it helps slow the metabolism down for the fish because it's cold water, they're cold blooded, but we also keep them at a higher level of salt than what they would naturally be at. So we recommend to people to keep the salt level up a little bit higher when these fish first come in or the TDs up a little bit higher just to help them with the stress from the shipping and the handling.
Jimmy: And that is so true with the guppies that I get from you. And once I started listening to you, I had so much great success with your guppies before without keeping a little extra salt in that tank. And what do you recommend, like, one or two teaspoons per gallon?
Julie: No, it's actually a cup of salt per ten gallon.
Jimmy: Holy cow.
Julie: It's a lot of salt, but it's only initial. As you do your water changes and stuff. You don't add the salt back.
Jimmy: So if I got a ten gallon tank, I throw in a cup of salt, and as I do, water changes. The salinity just slowly goes down.
Robbz: So you start with gatorade and you work your way to pirell.
Jimmy: There we go.
Julie: There you go. Perfect.
Adam: Do you use just regular water, softener salt, or do you use, like, saltwater salt? Because for brackish water, I'd always use saltwater salt to mix my brackish water.
Julie: Yeah, that's usually what I recommend is for brackish water to use a marine salt for freshwater. Any aquarium salt is fine.
Robbz: So some of the other products that you offer, again, because your guys'whole market is to help either wholesalers or fish stores. So you guys have the whole pack I'm looking through. You guys have a certain size of beta cups. You guys have bag supplies, you guys have rubber bands, all the little things that you think of for your fish store. You really guys do do well in bulk that I can find even your own biological bacteria in a bottle.
Jimmy: Oh, I love that stuff.
Julie: Oh, yes. That is actually the same bacteria that our fish farmers use. And if you buy it by the gallon, I think it's over, like, $200. So we offer it to our customers at a discount just to help them out with their systems or new systems or if they're redoing systems, and it works really, really well.
Robbz: So out of all the biological bacteria that I've used, besides just using, like, an old filter, because that's always a great method, this stuff is really condensed. You get it in, and it's dark, dark green. The requirements that you guys send with them is keep it in your fridge.
Julie: Right?
Jimmy: How long does that last in the fridge? Is it the 30 day or so or. How long is that? Julie? I know there's several different cranes that you have. How many different varieties do you have with that?
Julie: It's actually all the same variety. They just have it at different strengths.
Jimmy: Oh, okay. I didn't know that.
Julie: Yeah, they just do that mainly to help stores out, to try and figure out what they want to do. If they want to set up new systems, that's the strongest dose. If they want to just do a big water change and they just need some to help boost it, that's like a middle dose. And then there's just like a regular maintenance dose.
Jimmy: Because I just recently bought some from you here about a month ago again. And I've got shrimp tanks, and I keep about 200 shrimp per 20 gallon tank. It's pretty crowded. Have a matin filter on the back. And that helped me out tremendously. My water cleared up and the shrimp are doing well, and I've got tons and tons of little babies right now.
Julie: Cool.
Robbz: The other items that we can remember off the top of our head is also, you guys have a lot of educational material. So one of the things that Pet stores use is the comparison compatibility chart, compatibility posters. So when I'm talking to you guys in the past, you guys made certain recommendations, but where does that compatibility chart come from, assuming you're Ethiologist.
Julie: Actually, it was upper senior management and our theologist. We all worked on it together. It took them, like, six months to get that together.
Jimmy: I've got one of those on display at my store.
Julie: Yes, it is very good. In fact, I think that's one of the few posters that we're going to keep in stock because they're talking about getting rid of a lot of the books that we carry and stuff, because everybody's going to computer and digital.
Jimmy: See, I'm old and I still like books. I like to have it, hold them in my hand. Rob gives me some crap about I love amazon's magazine, and I get it digitally also, and I give it to him digitally, and he goes, well, why wouldn't you want it digitally? I said, I like holding that in my hand, just like I like buying music and holding that album in my hand so I can look at the liner notes and things like that. Because I'm a big music fan, as everybody knows and stuff. And so I think it's because of my age that I like that. I like having the books. I know Adam likes having the books.
Adam: Too, so I'm not that old, and I like the books. I collect the old books especially because that has all kinds of stuff in them that you don't know about, right?
Julie: Yeah.
Robbz: So just to pinch you guys a picture just for the listeners, adam and Jimmy both have these hip holster phone things. So just to give you an idea of what a luddite thing I do.
Adam: Not have a hip holster phone.
Jimmy: I do, and my kids call it my old man holster. And then I punch him in the throat. But they're adults. They can take it.
Robbz: I just wonder, what situation do you need that you have to have it on your side, like, well, I was.
Jimmy: Kind of hoping that it would help. When I go to rock concerts, I'd like to drink beer, and I always like to think that this radiation on my hip will help my kidneys function better. So when I'm drinking beer, or maybe when I go to the bathroom, I glows in the dark. I don't know.
Robbz: Uncle Jimmy, is that your pacemaker?
Jimmy: Yeah. So many people give me crud about my holster, but I broke one phone in my entire life.
Robbz: How did you break that?
Jimmy: It came on my holster.
Robbz: Did your giant catfish eat it?
Jimmy: No, my giant catfish did not eat it. But my kids, my wife have all dropped phones. My wife, I think I can say this, she has kind of a Jennifer Lopez butt and she puts her phone in her back pocket. Yeah. As she walks away, her phone just swings back and forth her little behind, and it just pops out of her back pocket and lands on the floor. And I go, Why don't you put it in a holster? She goes, because I'm not old. Like you see, I just invited an.
Adam: Outerbox and that works awesome. I've dropped it.
Julie: I was going to say my otterbox works great for mine.
Robbz: When you say Podcast is now sponsored by otterbox, I was going to say.
Jimmy: It and just when you said otterbox, it just sounds dirty. I don't even want one of those. It just sounds filthy. You pigs. I tell you.
Robbz: I'm joking. It's not sponsored. But otterbox call us. We'd love the sponsorship.
Julie: There you go.
Jimmy: And you know what? We also use a sponsorship from Dairy Queen, just because I like Dairy Queen and ice cream.
Robbz: So, Julie, I think we got a nice picture of what you guys offer at Segriss. We got a little picture of really what goes on and at what scale, the boxes, the amount of fish. And we appreciate the time you had. But before we begin to wrap this up, there's dying questions I have. So what are some of the most popular selling fish besides the bread and butter stock? I want to say bread and butter. Like guppies, platy, stuff like that.
Julie: It usually comes and goes in stages. Like right now, the biggest sellers are anything nano, like tucan tetras and ember tetras. And we have dwarf crawfish, the fancy dwarf shrimp. All those are really big sellers right now, but in a couple of months, it could be cyclists again. It comes and goes in waves.
Robbz: So during this wave, what's in the more unique pieces, just to name a couple off the top of your head that you just normally don't see that you guys have them right now.
Julie: Well, I had them in last week. We had red stripe comedian tetras. Those were really cool.
Robbz: I have never heard of them.
Julie: Yeah, there's a red spot splash tetra. And Splash Tetras actually got their name because they laid their eggs on leaves above the water and they'll take turns splashing them. It's really cool.
Robbz: Now that's a YouTube video that's happening.
Julie: Those were in last week. And we got in some wild black neon tetras last week. Those were really sweet. One of our local farms is raising black German rams, which are coming in. Phenomenal. Let's see what else. Oh, we got in the parrot COVID. sicklers. I talked to you guys in the buying.
Jimmy: Yes.
Julie: We actually have a snow white version.
Jimmy: Oh, pretty.
Julie: Yeah, it just came in this week.
Jimmy: And my wife often makes you get her hyphen 511s. Correct. That's what yes, genuinely makes you get. And how often do you guys get those in? Those are beautiful fish.
Julie: Actually, the problem with those was a few of our farms got wiped out from the two cold snaps we had last year.
Jimmy: Did it get down to 70 degrees?
Julie: Yeah, it got actually down to freezing. Can you believe that?
Jimmy: You realize freezing is 32 degrees, right?
Robbz: Hell froze over.
Julie: Yes. How did freeze over? Well, see, the problem is here in Florida, we don't have freezing weather every winter, and our farmers did not prepare for it and did not cover the ponds. So a couple of them got hit pretty hard. But he is back up and running. And we've had the hy Five Eleven s now for two months. Oh, you have they should stay in stock.
Jimmy: Time to get Gen Jen some more.
Robbz: Some of the more unique pieces that I've seen you have that I really can't find anywhere else are wild green neon tetris.
Julie: Oh, I love those.
Robbz: So you guys still have those, right?
Julie: Yes.
Robbz: Excellent. That and do you guys ever get in panda loaches?
Julie: Yes, I have one on my tank in my desk right now.
Robbz: Perfect. So the reason I bring that up is, number one, they're hard to find and they were recently discovered in 2007. I'm trying to remember the top of my head. They were brought to the aquarium trade around 2011, and I think you guys were able to get them in pretty much right away during that time. And the reason I say this is because that nanospike, they complement shrimp so well. They're beautiful black and white color. So those are listening, especially with this nano craze that you're talking about. Certainly look into those and convince your pet store to get some.
Julie: Any of the Longfend cory cats, let's say small, like the longfend green ineos there's a Long Fen Panda. There's a long fen Julia panda hybrid. Those are really awesome.
Jimmy: Now, are those the pandas and stuff? Are those raised locally or are those an import item.
Julie: The Aneus and the paleotis are local. The other ones are import.
Robbz: So a long time ago, Jimmy told me a story, right, about some playgos, and he said that you guys had this monster show playco at some blue phantom plato, because I was looking at trying to purchase myself some phantom blue eyed plea. That's what it was.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Robbz: And the reason I say this is because most of your stock, again, has that ten day cycle. But when we were there, we were visiting, and we saw this again, it was really a show quality. This thing was huge in one of your tanks. And apparently you guys use that for educational purposes. I was told in the past they bring it to different shows. And you guys still have that one giant awesome old blue placo?
Julie: No, we have found him a home.
Robbz: Darn.
Julie: He actually went into one of the.
Jimmy: Aquariums, if I remember right. Blue eyed plecos. I was able to get blue eyed plecos not 15 years ago. They're very hard to get there.
Julie: Yeah, they were very easy to get about 1517 years ago. I have been told, and I do not know this for sure, but the river they came from was contaminated, and they actually thought they were extinct. It wasn't until about five, seven years ago that they started coming back. And they're still not back in a commercial quantity. We only get them maybe two or three times a year.
Jimmy: But they are so freaking gorgeous. They have this robin egg blue eye, and they are just gorgeous. And I used to sell the snot out of them when I was able to get them. I mean, that was back in the day, too, when I could get a zebra pleco for $40.
Adam: Oh, I miss Zebra pleco.
Julie: We have, like, 50 of them right now.
Jimmy: On sale.
Robbz: So I won't talk about prices for the next question, because, again, prices change all the time. But what are your either most expensive or a couple of most expensive fish that you guys offer at seagris?
Adam: Robbie'S red Tail catfish is hungry.
Robbz: No. Bite me.
Julie: Let's see. Taking fresh water or saltwater. Let's see freshwater right now.
Robbz: One of both.
Julie: Probably zebra pikes that we're bringing in. What the heck are the albino arijuana? No. The Black Guard. I have black gar in right now. Those are pretty pricey.
Robbz: Wow.
Jimmy: And you're talking hundreds of dollars for Black Guard?
Julie: Yes.
Jimmy: What size are they?
Julie: 1012 inches.
Jimmy: So they're a large fish?
Julie: Yes, big fish.
Robbz: I've only seen one Black Guard, and that was actually in a I think it was the no, it wasn't. Boston Aquarium. I can't remember now. I was traveling, and one of the aquariums I went to had one, and I've only seen them on YouTube ever since. So that's pretty astounding. But what about saltwater?
Julie: Saltwater is probably like the gym. tangs achilles tanks have gone through the roof with all the rules in Hawaii. Oh, I've got a black and white licensed grouper that's looking for a home, but his price tag is keeping him there.
Robbz: A grouper?
Julie: Yes. I have a black and white leucistic bumblebee grouper.
Jimmy: What's leucistic?
Julie: To explain that to people lacking all but black pigment. It's like almost an albino, except it has black in it.
Robbz: So none of the pink piebald?
Julie: Yeah, like a piebald.
Jimmy: Okay. And when you guys are talking piebald, you're talking snakes. Correct?
Julie: Yes.
Jimmy: Reptile people. I hate you.
Adam: Yeah.
Robbz: All right.
Julie: I worked for a red hotel company for four years, too. Okay, guys.
Jimmy: I know. That's why I was hammering on you.
Robbz: So, last two questions. Number one, it's not really a question I have a favor to ask of you. Next time Jim orders, can you just do me a favor and slip a tarantula in the box for us?
Julie: Except that the reptiles are a state away, dear.
Robbz: A state away?
Julie: Yes. We're actually shipping those out of our sister company.
Robbz: I'm so sad. No, we'll talk offline.
Jimmy: I know where they come from. Yeah, I just got a shipment of reptiles in last week. Yes, I know where they come from.
Robbz: Well, we'll have to work out what we can prank Jimmy with, but is there any other things that you felt we missed with the topics and interview? I think we got at least an overview. I know we're going to get a lot of questions after this, and we'll certainly follow up with you, but just.
Julie: One thing I wanted to finish up with, because you were talking about the balloon in the chain of how everything leaves.
Jimmy: Yes.
Julie: Ups actually parks one of their semi trucks at our back door every day, and it gets filled up. And depending upon the time of year, we either have another semi truck pull up or we have two or three of the little brown trucks pull up. And then we have two box trucks that do airports out of Tampa and Orlando. And then we have two delivery trucks that run weekly or every day of the week, tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.
Jimmy: If I remember right, you guys are one of the largest shippers of Ups in the state of Florida. Correct.
Julie: We are their largest 100 weight shipper, I believe, in the southeast.
Jimmy: In the southeast. I was there one time right before Christmas when everybody was trying to get in their last shipment, and there was two full size, 53 foot trailers that Ups had backed up, and people were scrambling like there was a tornado coming. And like you said, those other Ups trucks were backing up, too. And I'm just going, how is this controlled chaos even work? But it works. And seekers will ship it to you. Ups to your door. Which, I tell you what, if you don't want to deal with smelter, that is the way to go. It's a little bit more money, but the Ups is reliable, they'll get it to your door.
Julie: It is a guaranteed service.
Jimmy: Guaranteed service. And you don't have to run to the airport. And I don't know about you, but if your time is free, your gas is free, and you want to go spend 3 hours driving to the airport, waiting at the airport and getting back with smash boxes with Ups. My boxes have always come in really good shape. So you guys ship locally? How far do you guys go locally with your trucks? jewel, I know you go up to Georgia.
Julie: We go up to Georgia and down to Miami.
Jimmy: So that's a pretty good squad because you are located near Tampa in a small town called Gibson, correct?
Julie: Yes, carney town. Where the carnival people live.
Jimmy: Okay, that explains a lot. Now, up here, I don't know if Rob, if you ever played this game. I heard it on the radio the other day, have not done it, but they said that every time you see the news and something crazy has happened, like some clown is riding a bicycle naked through an old folk's home or something, every time something crazy like that happens, it's from Florida. So now I understand that you can type in any date like your birthday and just put in Florida and it'll bring up some crazy thing.
Robbz: I got to give that a go.
Jimmy: Yeah, because in Florida, a lot of people stand out in the sun too long and I think it goes right to their head. I'm not sure.
Robbz: Well, I blame the cocaine.
Jimmy: Cocaine.
Robbz: So one off track story before we go.
Jimmy: Yes.
Robbz: The best Florida story I've ever heard. And I don't know how close this was to juliet, I hope not. I'm pretty sure it was Miami. Yeah, it was the Miami zombies. So apparently during the Bassalt craze, because people figured out that they could actually use bass salts as drugs, they had a few people that got super high out of their mind and were chasing people down streets. And apparently one guy passed out and they caught someone ripping apart someone's skull. And I remember that trying to eat their brains.
Jimmy: Yes, it was a horrible, horrible story.
Robbz: They tried to talk to the person, make him stop immediately to try to save the person. He was quote unquote, attacking and he wasn't responding. They had to straight shoot him. So ever since then, that summer, at least people were freaked out that there was actual zombies, but all they tested for was baskets. So they had some kid that had a terrible sense of humor and decided that he was going to dress himself up with movie theater quality people and dress himself up as a zombie and chase people around Miami. Only in Florida. Only in Florida.
Jimmy: Then what happened to him?
Robbz: He almost got shot. He did? They have it on video. Like the guy pulled out a gun on him. Like just crazed people reaction because they actually believe. Zombie.
Jimmy: What's?
Julie: That Orlando had the clown person.
Jimmy: Oh, I've not heard.
Julie: Tell me about that. There was some guy dressing up as a clown that would just stand in certain areas and then disappear.
Adam: No, he didn't do anything.
Julie: But he was like just scare people.
Jimmy: No. Dead adam. He's got a clown. phobia.
Robbz: Well, see, that's why they shoot movies in Georgia, because they can't do it in Florida. Because people think it's real.
Julie: Exactly.
Jimmy: I've driven a lot in Florida, and most people there are on drugs. I swear to God. Something jen and I just recently went down there a couple of years ago, and we drove from Tampa down to Key largo. And Key West. We did the whole thing. And we were driving in our I cannot tell you this crazy car was called a yari. It was about the size of a box, and it was the most horrible car I've ever rented in my life. And I'm driving this thing at 88 miles an hour going through Miami, and people were mad at me because I was going too slow at 86 miles an hour. But the yari, that's the fast it would go. It's floored, and every time I hit a bump, the back window would roll down about half an inch. But actually, the car was so small I could reach back and roll up the window. And we went down there and stayed in Key largo. And stuff. And my only hope was I was hoping somebody would steal this car so I could get a different one. But, yeah, the people drive like their nuts down there. And I thought Minneapolis was bad, but that was wrong.
Robbz: Well, Julie, I appreciate you coming on the podcast. And for those that are listening that either own a pet store or some other distribution wholesalers, how can they get a hold of you?
Julie: They can either go to our website, seegrassforms.com, click on where it says pet shops only and fill that form in if they're not already a customer, or they can just call us. It's 180-237-9317. Of course, you could email me at.
Jimmy: Julie atseyquisfarms.com and what's your number at your desk there? Is that 1249?
Julie: My extension is 1249.
Jimmy: There we go. So call Julie directly. Tell her hi. Give her some love.
Julie: Tell me hi.
Robbz: Oh, boy. Now we started it. Everybody's going to get some love.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Robbz: Why?
Jimmy: I harassed Julie on a twice weekly basis, even though I'm not buying fish every week, but she goes out and gets me a lot of cool stuff. I had some of the coolest guppies here about a year ago that looked like a dalmatian, and I'm still waiting for to get me some more. But we're the Black cobras.
Julie: Those were beautiful.
Jimmy: Yeah. And we were pulling up the other day. We pulled up on the Internet, rarest guppies. And that was the first one that popped up. And I'm going, I still need more of those.
Julie: You know what the problem with them is? They can't get him to breed. True.
Jimmy: Really? They are the most gorgeous guppies.
Robbz: Well, I got some feeder guppies from Adam. We can make sure they are not feeder guppies.
Jimmy: Adam raises these feeder guppies and he calls them what's he called?
Robbz: Endlers. Something like that.
Julie: Endlers. And actually there is a lot of people that love those endlers.
Jimmy: Are they all in southern Minnesota?
Julie: No, they're like all over the place. Miami. I'm not sure about that.
Robbz: See, it's a contagious disease called window licking.
Jimmy: Oh God. So do you really sell those? And is there any difference between feeder guppies and these things?
Julie: No, there is, there actually is. There's several different varieties and if you get into the really colorful ones, they are awesome.
Jimmy: Yeah, Adam just loves these things. We make fun of them and rightly so because they look like feeder guppies.
Robbz: Well, perfect.
Adam: Okay. Minor is pure of the strain as you're ever going to find. Everybody likes them and I never give them away to anybody except for like two people. And now you guys just make fun of me constantly.
Robbz: Hey, it's the meme of the show, sir.
Julie: Okay, I know what jim's next three free fish will be is some type of oh God.
Jimmy: Adam, I'm going to take the fish out and put them in an envelope and mail them to you down there.
Robbz: So make sure when you call Julie to let you know that you heard about her from the Aquarium Guys podcast and she'll send a free feeder guppy in your order.
Julie: There you go.
Jimmy: I hate you so much.
Robbz: Awesome. So you heard it here first. Well again. Thank you, Julie. Hopefully we'll have you on again. I know we're going to have a lot of responses from our listeners. We get a lot of different questions in and hopefully we can address those. We'll be in touch. But before we go, Adam, what is this episodes fisher of the show?
Adam: Okay, this farewella. Yeah, farewellas are farewella. Farewellas. They're also known as like.
Robbz: Adam sick.
Jimmy: Adam is going to feed them to a Red Tail catfish. Start over, Adam.
Robbz: Yeah, we're haggling him. I'm so sorry.
Jimmy: I'm sorry.
Julie: Okay.
Jimmy: It's unprofessional of. Julie.
Adam: Julie okay, this episode's fish is farewellas and there's 29 different kinds. They're also known as the twig or whiptail catfish. There's a variant known as like the King Farewella or farewella the lart. They're really big. They get like eight to twelve inches most of the time. If you ask for them, they'll get you the kind that gets like six to eight inches. Try to order like six to eight of them at a time all at the same time because there's so many different kinds and they will actually breed in captivity. One of my friends bred them and then I've also bred them. And the way that you can sex them is the males have a longer nose and it's a little bit wider, and it's really covered with hairy bristles. And they're good for community tanks, but they like the driftwood. They like rocks to attach to. They like the water a little bit cleaner and a little clearer. But they will go good with discus and angel fish if you're okay with them attaching and sucking the slime off the bodies.
Jimmy: Not good.
Adam: Not good. But they will. I mean, you can do it, but it's probably not recommended. They eat pretty much anything. I've had them eat algae, frozen bloodworms, live glassworms, brine, shrimp, cucumber, zucchini, kind of all that stuff. And what's really cool is the male actually takes care. So the male and the female, when they lay their eggs at night, usually around dusk time, and you have to set your light to a certain wavelength. I set mine to the natural Minnesota weather or the night schedule.
Jimmy: Eternal, eternal darkness, we call that.
Adam: Well, I gave them like ten and 12 hours, or ten to 12 hours of light and then some darkness. And I did a big water change and they laid eggs right around dusk. And what's really cool is that when the eggs hatch after like six to twelve days, six to 14 days, they look like the parents. They look like miniature little farewellas. And the male guards the eggs. He fans them, keeps the water moving. He defends them from anything that wants to come and take care, attack them. But they're just a really cool fish that you don't really see, but you can kind of see. But they have a lot of neat little behaviors that are really cool to look at. So that's the fish of the week.
Robbz: A couple of pieces to add to this. Like Adam said, again, they love clean water, but not to be mistaken with tannins. They love wood, so certainly encourage that. tannin doesn't necessarily dirty up the water, it just adds a slight tinge of brown to it. So certainly add that to them. I've had the same deal with food. They do hit algae wafers really well. And I believe, Adam, you were telling me that you had really good success breeding them, playing exclusive Boys to Men 2ft from the Tank.
Adam: Yeah, that's a definite, definite love to you is their favorite song.
Robbz: Yes.
Jimmy: So, Julie, what do you guys sell in the farewella market?
Julie: We got a lot. We got the whiptoe, we got the parlor. Right now I've got a green dwarf floricaria. I've got a giant black and white. I think it's a pseudo floricaria, though. I'm not sure.
Robbz: Also, isn't this part of the project, piaba?
Julie: Yeah, I believe so, because I believe that's where the green dwarf ones came from.
Robbz: Perfect. Even ethical pick.
Jimmy: Are those a hybrid or those are.
Julie: Something that is I would have to check into it because this is the first time we've had them, so I haven't had a chance to research them yet.
Jimmy: And do you guys do the Royal Farewella? Yes, that's one of my favorites.
Julie: I got antenna Laura carrie and I've got circular Laura Carrier right now. So, yeah, I've got quite a few of them right now.
Jimmy: So if you want to give these a try, give Julia a call tomorrow or the next day. She's there. Monday through Friday.
Robbz: Yes. Here's the hours we need to hound her.
Julie: Thursday through Friday. Friday I am there, but Friday is usually paperwork paperwork day.
Jimmy: And you are on Eastern time.
Julie: Yes.
Jimmy: So, like, from Minnesota here, you're always 1 hour ahead of us. So I always have to remember that when I'm talking and calling, you don't answer the phone if you're not there. I phoned that out.
Julie: Actually, they have figured out a way for me to forward my phone to my cell phone now. You always have to answer the phone.
Jimmy: I have your cell phone. And right now, I'll give it out to everybody. Hold on.
Robbz: And that's where we cut the episode. Thank you so much, Julie, for joining the show. Guys, share this podcast with a friend. At least two this week. Your responses have been overwhelming. You need help? Go to our website aquariumgyspodcast.com. Got ways to contact you, discord, call us, email, whatever's comfortable for you. Thanks again, and let's kick that outro.
Adam: Thanks, guys, for listening to this podcast. Please visit us@aquariumguyspodcast.com and listen to us on spotify, iHeartRadio itunes and anywhere you can listen to podcasts.
Robbz: We're practically everywhere. We're on Google. I mean, just go to your favorite place, pocket casts subscribe to make sure it gets push notifications directly to your phone. Otherwise Jim will be crying in his sleep.
Jimmy: Can I listen to it in my treehouse?
Robbz: In your tree house? In your fish room. Even alone at work.
Jimmy: What about my man cave?
Robbz: Especially your man cave.
Jimmy: Yeah.
Robbz: Only if adam's there no with feeder guppies.
Adam: No, they're nurtis you.
Jimmy: Imagine loving frank's like a mother Frank.
Robbz: Well, I guess we'll see you next time. Later.