Ladies and gentlemen, November is right around the corner. It is our patriotic duty that once every four years we get to select a candidate that is not only qualified, but resonates the American spirit. And in the running, I give you Joe 2020. No, not that, joe. Joe tyson. Yes. Go to Joe Shrimpshack.com and show your patriotic pride by using Aquarium Guys promo code at checkout. 15 whole percent off. What's more American than saving some money? Show your patriotic pride. Pick either blue shrimp, red shrimp, or if you're weird, green shrimp. I mean, those are candidate as well, so I've been told. It's your American duty. Joe shrimpchack.com. Show your pride. I'm Joe tyson, and I approve this message. Welcome to the Aquarium, guys. Podcast with your hosts, Jim colby and Rob dolsen. Oh, man, didn't I can't leave that. That was you, Jimmy. Guys, welcome to the podcast. I am your host, Rob dolsen.
I'm Jim colby.
And Adam isn't here because we're doing.
This on a Friday, friday afternoon.
And Adam has a real job.
He and the rest of us do.
Not not on Friday afternoons.
No. So this is our little Friday afternoon delight. We've got a very big star that we're going to be interviewing here shortly.
We'd like to welcome Josh pickett. Am I saying that correctly?
Yeah. Yeah.
Josh, welcome to the podcast. We're happy to have you on. Are you ready to get beaten up?
Oh, yeah. Far away.
So, for those that are listening, this episode is going to be about Bashirs. I hope I pronounced that correctly. Let's just start with that. What's the pronunciation exactly? Did I hit it?
Yeah. Bashirs. Not birches or bikers or anything.
Yeah, Bashirs or bitches. Not that either.
Bitch and bikers. That's not it.
Bitch and bikers.
We've heard it all. We really have. So it's a wonderful fish. If you guys have not heard of it or pronounce it in some other way, it is a wonderful kind of low bottom dwelling fish in your tank. That's more of a predatory fish. It looks like half between a snake and a dinosaur. It's a fantastic fish. There is not a ton of detailed media about it. And Josh happens to be making the handbook for the bashir. Before we get into news, tell us more about it.
Yeah, that bashir is an absolutely brilliant fish. They're really not really understood. You go on Google, go anywhere. I mean, there's so much misinformation about them. I mean, you just go to Google type in polytheris Weeksy and, like, peasy pop up. Same with peepalmas. polly pops up. These are all other species, but absolutely brilliant fish. And I sort of feel a book is really needed. I mean, I'm by far not the expert on them. There's plenty of experts out there that cover this. But I've got a graphic design and editorial background, and I just enjoy keeping the fish. So I kind of want to bring the science and the art together and create a nice little book that will keep the care of them on it.
So for those that are wondering, it's the bashirhandbook.com. And again, we'll have that link in the show notes description. It is not yet out. It is just being finished. Is that correct?
Yeah, probably about a month, maybe a month and a half before it's done.
Excellent. Well, maybe if we pull our cards right and open our wallet, we can even put an aquarium guys advert in there.
There we go.
Jimmy. Well, thanks again for coming on the show. Again we'll go more in depth topic and we just got to make sure we're reviewing questions here. Jimmy, how was your week?
My week has been wonderful. My pond leaked. I have a tore apart and I haven't got to put back together yet.
Did you figure out what happened?
Not yet. Not yet. I got it drained and that's as far as I got.
So kids didn't drop mad in it?
We don't think so, but a crack. But the neighborhood kids are pretty rambunctious, right?
You are in front of a park for a reason.
Yes. We found a few new golf balls in the yard over the weekend. Kids were golfing across the street and so I saw who it was, so I thought I'm going to keep them. I didn't give the golf balls back.
I mean, who gives a golf ball back anyway?
No, that's my yards that's just waiting.
To get hit by the lawn mower.
Exactly.
So this week I have finally decided that especially since we did our low cost podcast.
Yes.
I'm going full forward with the sump idea. I have two aquariums next to each other, a 75 gallon and a 125 tall. I'm going to put a trickle tower wet dry sump filter combo and I'm going to run both of them off of it.
You need some help putting that together?
I do because I'm inept.
I will see if Adam will come up and help you because I ain't doing it.
Wonderful. You're on vacation next week?
I'm on vacation next week. We are going to be going out and about for a little bit and then we'll be back the following week.
Secure camping because that's really all we can do during coveted.
Yeah, pretty accurate. We got a couple of things planned, but I'll tell you about them later.
No licking doorknobs. You can only lick pine trees.
That's correct.
Excellent. Well, as far as questions go, since we're doing this on an off day, we answered a good chunk of them already. But we do want to do a follow up for one of our questions that we had Peter that was messaging in about his aquarium and having different issues with brown algae. He says that he is going to.
Follow up with us.
He is feeding a lot. He's going to move to one type of food per feeding and then rotate the food and go on a normal schedule. Reduce light exposure.
Yeah.
Peter had sent us a message and we thought several different things were not quite right, so we gave him some advice. And so it looks like he's going to take most of the advice and see what happens. So if it's still full of brown algae in a couple of months, then it'd be back on us.
Yeah.
And again, the main thing to reduce is because he has a cold water tank, he did take the heater out. He has sunfish is primarily the fish in the tank. So cold water fish don't need to be fed as often every other day. Cold water fish, unless you're raising the temperature goldfish, for instance, at 55 degrees, shouldn't even be fed. They should be fed probably once a month, lightly, and even then they'll pick at it. So cold water fish, if the temperature is low enough, you don't have to feed off, and I do every other day. If you have it above, say, 76 degrees, treat it more like a tropical fish where you feed every day. But I'd still pick one day a week, just feeding. In general, if you have seven days, one day should be a fast day for fish. You shouldn't feed every day of the week. And even so, the amount you feed or what you feed matters. So if it's something that's going to be like a tubaflex square, that's going to last a couple of hours. I love lasting food like that. But if you're doing pellets or flake at the top, do what they consume. Don't over feed. Don't let it get stuck in the filter and causing more bacteria in the tank.
Sometimes less is better.
Less is more.
Unless it involves alcohol or hookers or.
You'Re at Taco Bell. Like rob's.
That's right, taco Bell.
Taco Bell. All right, so that finishes up the questions. Adam, we miss you. How could you have a job?
I know. Anyway, everybody loves Adam so much, and now we're going to get a lot of crap because he's not on this podcast.
We are. It's amazing. That the fandom that we have for Adam yes. where's my fandom, right?
None.
None. Instead, this last week, I had submitted by one of the listeners a wonderful picture. They made me look like the smurf Man. I don't know, the blue hair, blue beard. They put Nike logos for my eyebrows, so thank you for that. While Adam instead gets called sexy.
Yeah, exactly.
I'm just saying that this podcast is hella biased. All right, well, let's get right into the topic. I know it's late for you. It's about almost 09:00 your time, correct, Josh?
Yeah. Ten to nine. We'll get that.
Let's make this easy on you, buddy. Let's dive. Dive right into the topic. So we ask everybody, what got you into the passion of aquariums?
I have a very obsessive personality. I liked fish, and that sort of just happened. I don't know. I love fish. I used to go on riverwalks all the time when I was in school. I was like a member of this gay little rspb club. It was great fun. But usually river walks all the time, spot fish netfish, watch birds. And in the end, I sort of just really wanted to set up my own my own tank, my own native tank. Must have been about ten or eleven years old. Went ahead, set up the tank, and got hooked from there on and ended up delving into African fish and all sorts of oddballs.
And where did you grow up?
Salisbury, in Wuksha, near where that poisoning was. The cathedral.
I'm not familiar.
There's a story he's from out of town, I'm out of town.
There was that skripal poisoning. The Russian poisoning wasn't there yesterday. No, you don't know this. God knows a year or so ago.
Okay.
My hometown. Yeah, this Russian ex spy was poisoned. That she a few blocks away from my hometown.
I did hear a little bit about that.
Was that him and his daughter? Is that the one?
It's him and his daughter. I think they both survived, but there was residue of the poison from one of the local people as well, so it was one of my friends. It was more someone at my babysitter when I was a kid.
Hold on. Don't divulge all the information of your secret agent status.
Unfortunately, his mum was one of the victims, actually came into contact with it and passed away. That was their Nova chop poison.
Wow. What a terrible small world.
Who was poisoned yesterday? It was putin's main.
Oh, yeah, that was his opposition, wasn't it?
His opposition yesterday? Yeah, he got poisoned yesterday, and he is in a coma, in serious condition. I saw a video of him being taken off the airplane. He was on a commercial flight from siberia to Moscow, I believe. I could be wrong. And they took him off that airplane. He was screaming, he was in so much pain. And they figured he got poisoned in siberia. And last night on our local news, by our national news, they showed the last six or seven people that had kind of had an outing with Putin, and they showed how all six of them have died from poisoning. But Putin has got nothing to do with it.
Something sketchy got on.
Well, sketch.
I want to put it out there that thanks for having the international crew. We're not on a list. I mean, we're already on our own government's list. Now we're on multiple governments lists.
I'm repeating what I saw on TV. This is not my own theory.
I don't want to die. I love this podcast so much. We asked what brought him into aquariums, and now we're talking about the Russian government.
That's right.
I love it. It doesn't get better than this, ladies and gentlemen, what got you into loving Bashir so much?
Sounds weird, but they're really elongated, eel like fish. There's something phallic about them that really more something about me, really, than anyway, it's great fish. Just so happens that they're phallic. It's got nothing to do with the phallus at all. They happen to be phallic, but they're great fit. I don't know. I love them. I was drawn to them. I think I've started off with senegale and a Lepredy Bashir. Named it bas. The senegale. And then next thing, I woke up one day and I had every single Bashir species, and I was like, Fuck, where did that come from?
That's wonderful. So, I mean, I can relate with the fallac deal, right? Me and my wife, we absolutely adore weather loaches, so we have the Golden dojo loaches, and trust me, they are hard penis size. We call them the penis fish. It's comical. And they're one of the few species where you put your hand in and you interact with them. They come up, they swim right in your hand looking for food. It's a very weird thing having that type of species. So I can totally relate with the cartoony looks of a species.
It's the only time that Rob gets something large in his hand like that when he grabs his golden dojo load.
This is why we don't do podcasts on Friday. That's right, because there's just too much booze involved.
Little squirrel.
Right?
But yeah, I'm sitting right next to rob's 75 gallon tank, and he's got at least three or four, and they're all about nine to ten inches long, and they're absolutely huge. Can you see him in there? Probably not.
Probably not.
We'll have to show you here after the podcast. But anyway, rob's beautiful wife calls him her penis fish, which I don't understand.
But ten inch penis fish. I'll give you credit there.
Yeah, I was going to say I'm just a short, little fat white guy, and I'm impressed.
Moving on. So, number one, we went over pronunciations. I figured that was like the biggest thing to hit right away.
Bitch and bikers.
Honestly, pronunciation doesn't really matter. I mean, language evolves and changes all the time. I mean, it came originally from an arabic name for spiny fish that live in the river nile. And then, of course, one of napoleon's naturalists, during the French conquest of Egypt, just spied it in the narrow river, named it Bashir after Christ. What was it called now?
Probably his ugly mother.
Yeah, no, it was a native arabian word called Abu shir, and he thought it was two words, abu shir, so he just called it Bashir. Really? It was just Abu shir. And then he sort of changed the name, retained the pronunciation, the pronunciation Bashir. And yeah, it's been spelled B-I-S-H-I-R. On occasion, you can go back on a few studies and see that, but it changed the ch pronunciation, so I'm assuming.
There'S a lot of these left in the wild. It's not something that's come at risk, especially in the nile River.
There's an abundance of them, although in Egypt, I don't think any have been caught in Egypt since their discovery, so they may be not extinct, but probably approaching extinction in Egypt, like every animal.
Out there, habitat is always an issue, so you may not find them everywhere they used to be, but there's still plenty of existence. Whereas other aquarium species, there are species that are completely extinct and only found commonly in the aquarium trade. So it's nice to hear that there's still quite a few out there. But now, as far as care, I just want to dive into that because I'm going through the list on your website and there's a few do's and don'ts that I want to go over on this particular species, it's a predatory fish, so immediately people are trying to worry about aggression. Will stuff fit in its mouth? That's pretty common. Its mouth happens when I see them. It's as big around as his body. So what tank mates can you have with Abyssir?
It completely depends on species. I'd avoid small little pelagic fish, even medium sized pelagic fish, because they like to ambush their prey. They'll come right up underneath and then open its mouth using inertial suction sucks the prey in completely or if it's too big, it death rolls pieces off of them like crocodiles.
Really?
Yeah. There's some videos on you should put bashir, death roll, and it's ridiculous. I saw one circulating of what was it called? An arapima, a young Arabima getting death rolled by some Bashirs, some muppet just put like 100 Bashirs in a tank with an arrow.
Pima jeez. I've had Bashirs about twice. One was a donation, someone got it, they said it ate there. I think it was a loach hole and they just didn't want it anymore. And the other one I purchased and sold to someone, so I always had them alone. I've never had them with a lot of tank mates because I didn't even want to play the game if I didn't have the knowledge and background, I just didn't want to risk it, so I kept them alone. They're a pretty large size and it's literally like having a sea serpent in your tank with sizable teeth. It's quite the mean looking individual.
They've even got like conical toothpatches right on the roof of their mouth as well. So when they grip down on the prey, there's no way that prey is going to get out of its mouth, not unless it pulls out all of those teeth, which is those teeth are like a velcro like grip, so that is horrible. But they won't bite you there. I want to see you wiggle your finger right in front of me. I mean, probably won't bite you. I've not tested that theory, but I think you could be all right. Yeah.
I was about to ask you if they've ever bit your hand or finger.
But I know one guy that was bitten. It wasn't so much himself that was bit, but I think he dipped something in the tank and his weak, so he just grabbed onto it. But I've not seen that as the norm. Normally they just panic and dart away. They don't have very good eyesight as well, so they'll feel the vibration. Fuck, that's probably a predator away.
I was going to ask that every time I've had issues with Bashirs, with people, customers, people messaging us, is they have it where they're skittish. And I always thought that it could be vision, but it always seems like loud noises. You drop something in the house or vibrations or you play music and I hear people with issues of them shooting out of their tank like a rocket.
Yeah, that's pretty common then. Quite a lot in the wild caught as well. There's a fair few that most of them have been bred in captivity and I think winks is the only one that's not been bred in captivity. And I found they have been the shyest, especially mock Length. That's another one. That's a great one. That's named after like a mythical sora pod like creature, the mock len bembe. Yeah, they can be super shy. There's probably a few like P Sengales and Peepody that happily dart around from around the tank. But yeah, they're very sensitive to noise. They don't have the best eyesight, although they do have good night vision. They have these tapedom crystals in the back of their eye, reflects available light, increasing their vision, but blurs their vision a little bit slightly as well. You see, it like deep sea animals and a fair few nocturnal predators, but that means sort of any movement you do, you got like a bright white top on and a dark background. They'll see that movement and they'll think, fuck that thing's big start away.
So, again, they hunt by vibrations or scent, I'm assuming.
Yeah, they use all sorts of scents.
I'm assuming you use a pellet base. Most people don't use a lot of live food just for the fact that most of the time when you get live food, there could be a lot of parasites, a lot of issues. So how do you feed your vishears?
I don't think live food is needed. I normally feed a mixture between insects, fresh fish and quality carnival pellets. I'll probably feed about a quarter, maybe a fifth of a tub like that every feet. I mean, I've got like 40 of them, so just dump loads of that in. I feed every other day. They do something called stomach packing, where they'll eat as much food as they can and that will keep them well fed for about two or three days and they won't need to eat. Obviously, you got to be careful, really balance out the protein and what's called the fat content as well just to make sure they don't get fat. Liver disease really? Yeah they really suffer fatty liver disease especially when people feed them a lot of beef and bird like chicken so beef and chicken are probably some of the worst things to feed them.
See I know some species like Arabima, they need the fat, some catfish absolutely need the fat. I know other species, oscars, do not need the fat so as far as predatory species trying to learn that their balanced diet is much more than just giving them a massive or pellet it's definitely a learning curve. Did not know that Bashirs need to be lean.
I like the term stomach packing and reminds me when robins and I, we go to the Golden corral here stomach.
Packing, stomach packing, we're good for at least four to 5 hours.
That's right. We go to the local buffet and eat all the chicken and beef we can get our hands on also fatty liver disease.
See that?
We're very in common with these things.
Yeah we're just like these things.
I wouldn't say that they probably need it. They wouldn't need as much fat as a fair few other fish. Like, say, the African marijuana, which is constantly using up its fat reserves, right, because it's constantly swimming, grinding up its food. Whereas a bashir, I mean, not too fatty, but I can't see much more than put up with fats. It's not a ridiculous amount of fat they need.
Well if you're going to do a protein like fish, extremely lean, just doing any white fish you mentioned chicken and beef, people do beef for discus, beef heart, I don't really know where that started but it does clearly works. It is certainly a high fat concentrate when you use like beef heart.
I could butcher the explanation.
Butcher it please.
Yes, I worked in a fish store and of course my male boss used to travel around all the time and find out diets. You get like Japanese koi collect as well. But when it came to discus I think it's something to do with it was a lot of the things that the breeders started using because they wanted to pack on the size a lot faster and they obviously supplemented that with a lot of cartonoids to help increase colors. But it's not something you really want to do in the long term because fish don't have this type of enzyme called collagenase. I think that's how you pronounce it and because of that they're unable to break down the collagen in the bonds of mammalian and navy and meat. So and that's that's what can cause fatty liver disease, organ degeneration and fat deposits.
I mean any time you feed any fish you have to ask yourself what are you trying to do with the fish? Are you trying to change its color? Are you trying to get size in a quicker fashion. Maybe you're trying to sell the fish. Are you trying to keep a long lifespan? If you're doing a lifespan, even if it's just a normal flake, say like a rainbow fish, every other day is completely fine. That's what I do with most of my tanks, depending on what I have in there. Even betas? Especially betas, because they seem to carry a lot of their mass and then have issues and shorten their lifespan. So if you're keeping a fish just for the sake of having a long lifespan, lower the temperature slightly, don't feed as often. And that goes for any fish, in my opinion, but beef heart of hurting color properties as well.
And I've also heard, too, to get your pears into breeding condition and stuff, I've heard that also do the bickers how am I pronouncing it wrong?
He's doing it on purpose.
Do you feed any, like, frozen blood worms or frozen brine shrimp? Will they take that?
Oh, yeah, they eat pretty much anything. They're so opportunistic. You can give them a fucking hamburger and they'll eat it.
Really?
And yeah, they wouldn't leave any. I mean, I've not tried it, but they will. I mean, they eat like spirulina pellet.
Yeah, kind of a scavenger by nature. Pretty much eat whatever you throw at them.
Yeah, I mean, they'll scavenge, they'll hunt. As long as something they think is fairly edible, they'll go for it.
I'm kind of the same way.
Do you have any problems after when breeding and just having freshly hatched Bashirs? Do you have any problems feeding with arijuana, for instance? You get an arijuana, it hatches out of the egg. It still has a yolk. You cannot feed them or should not feed them until the yolk is fully dissolved. Right. Then afterwards, the only thing I can do for arijuana is feed them crickets because it has to move. They have an instinctive nature that they have to have it moved, so you have to almost acclimate them into normal food. So you use crickets, you essentially wean them out of cricket. You try to use krill, small freeze dried krill. And I always use it like either on a piece of string or a tweezer, a long tweezer, and try to acclimate the movement motion so they hit it. But is there any difficulties with small Bashirs?
Yeah, there's huge difficulties with it. I've not even bred Bashirs myself, but I know a fair few people that have it. It's not something I really attempted yet, but yeah, I've always been told that you just feed small micro crustaceans, small inverts, really, and they will take it. But there's a mistake. One of my friends, he fed brine shrimp. Of course he made the mistake. He didn't even take out the brine. So as he put it in, he ended up killing quite a lot of them. But they didn't breed in all the bloody time. He gets like hundreds of them per batch. They are quite difficult to raise. I think it was Dr. Ralph britt and his partner, I think it's rita. They bred rope fish in the they had trouble rearing them, I don't think no fryers has lift past a year old, possibly even no more than eight months old for rope fish. So they're all still commercially well caught at the moment.
Really?
Yeah. What a challenge.
No wonder the price is so high.
That's something a lot of people are trying to breed at the moment but I mean there's successful breeding and successful spawning but not really successful rearing of the fry yet.
So how big are fry? Are they quite tiny when they're hatched or is it something like arijuana are pretty sizable when they're just hatched they're.
Tiny, the sheets are tiny millimeters daphne.
Feeding I'm assuming, would be an idea like live cultures.
Daphne is perfect.
And how many babies do they have at a crack? What can you tell us about the breeding aspect of them? Are they laying eggs?
That and what music gets them in the mood exactly?
Well, I don't know about music, it's going to be Chris what's his name now guy done the music for tarzan. Phil Collins.
Phil Collins from Phil Collins music right here.
Right here.
Play Phil Collins and they'll just start breathing for it. Breeding with them is fairly easy. I mean, you get a male most males will become sexually mature in about a year, maybe two, and they'll start doing something with their anal fin called cupping. And they literally do that. That's sort of what stimulates them. And they end up releasing their sperm, milk their fucking sperm into this little cup out of their anl fin. And what they do is they wrap that round the female's anal fin, and if she's willing, she will release the eggs into that anal fin. Into his anal fin. He will fertilize them and then he will scatter the eggs into some plants and they normally catch within a fair few days.
Wow.
What a process. It's like a pass off.
It's kind of like trail animate, isn't it?
Yeah. They won't even look after them and if they find them, a lot of the time they will just eat the fry.
They're not the best parents, bad parents.
How long does it take for the fry to hatch and develop?
On average?
I think it's barely under a week. I'll have to check I can't remember off my heart I've got a documented breeding record of them. I'll have to check that.
But yeah, he'll have to check his hands up.
There is something really cool about that though by the way, when it comes to the eggs. Something that was, I think, only published in 2017. So robert cerny. Professor Robert cerny from what's it called? Sorry about I've been drinking too much than that. From this really good university. I'll just say that.
Really good university.
Yeah, really good university. What's it called? It's really bugging me. Now at the top of the email I have the email 2000 years later. Okay, now the email is not loading.
We put them on the spot. How dare we?
We can edit stuff. Don't worry about it.
This is editable, right? Scrap.
We edit stuff all the time. I shouldn't say we we're going to.
Put this in roar, I know it. You bastard.
We might play the theme from jeopardy right here too.
Oh, please, Doug.
We do that to Adam all the time. It's kind of fun for us.
It is fun, yes. Well, while you're looking that up, I know there's in the common fish market, we see what, like four species on fish lists. We only go by common names. Ornate dinosaur, I think there's like, albino we see in the list. I'm trying to think of the last one, my mind is gone.
Oh, barney.
The snake skin one, I think, is just the ornate and they just give it the terrible name. What's some of the other species you see commonly?
Oh, Christ. I found the university, by the way, university in frag, looking to it. There we go. Right, anyway, about the species currently, I mean, they're always changing. There's 13 species. Christ, I'm good with my heart now. There's the senegale Bashir, which is the one you probably call the dinosaur bashir, like albino variations, platinums a lot. Right? You've got Tagalsi, which is like the ornament bashir gets around 30 inches, very colorful, absolute cut. It will bite pretty much any other tag bashir you've got in there. There's the ornate, there's the end of cherry mocha and bembe retro pinus, delhisi palmas, which did used to have a subspecies.
Is that one fish that you just named right there?
Which one?
You just listed off a bunch of stuff. I don't want to know if that's like one full scientific name.
Multiple ones. Okay.
Including the retro penis.
Yeah, you made me everyone calls it.
Retro penis, retro pen, hear it, can't unhear it. But now they're they're like six. I say small one, but I mean, there's still like 16 inch. I mean, come on. A retro penis size, fair size. But the girth on it isn't really anything to be proud of. It's not so much.
The girth is the length of so much fun today.
That's the main thing. Hold on about those eggs. Quick, before I bloody forget.
Yes, get that. And then I have more immature questions, don't worry.
Right, so these eggs, they got a sheet of prevertebrate features. This is something exclusive for you now, really, it's going in the book. But they got these pre vertebrate features in their eggs, which they sort of develop these things called where is it? It's bloody annoying. Cement glands. That's it. These adhesive organs. And it's just the way these cement glands form, which this helps them sort of stick to the plants, and it's the way these cement glands form, which is something that shows that they're very comparable to other well, pre verbiage, really.
So it's not a scanner, it's a sticky scanner.
It's an adhesive scanner, pretty much, right?
Yeah, pretty much that, yeah.
So in breeding these, do you want to have, like, for instance, angel fish discus. You want to have, like, a slate or something, or a leafy plant so they can go on. So these, again, are bottom dwelling of fish. So do you want to have caves? Do you want to have objects? What would you need for them to encourage the scatter eggs?
Honestly, all you need is something like astroturf silicone, a bit of astroturf plastic astroturf, really, to some slate and put it in the sank. Yeah, that seems to be the most successful.
Just kind of grippy, kind of like a grassy mess.
Do the eggs fall down into the astroturf?
So they fall right in, and you can pick it up, take the eggs out, put them in a separate breeding tank, and then just grow them out.
If you guys are looking to purchase a piece of astroturf, there is coded and uncoated. So make sure to do your homework if you're going to buy astroturf. I know this because of other projects I've tried to do. So check your astroturf, but that's fascinating.
It's your aquarium safe astroturf.
The dinos that look like fallacies are football fans and like to dump eggs in astroturf.
Totally makes sense.
I'm fascinated. I'm fascinated. So what is, like, the rarest, hardest to find species or most expensive species? Because we're going to have questions on this for sure.
Oh, right. There's one called P Bashir. Polyteris bashir. Yeah. Digital pbb, which is the niall Bashir that was the first one that was discovered. The most expensive one of them was from Lake takana, and I think it's sold for around $8,000, something along the lines of that. You pay that much for them at the moment, but yeah, a lot of them have these beautiful spoon head shapes. takana pbb. It was probably a lot more than I actually think about it. I can't remember how much it was off by heart, but it was a lot. It was sold to I think it was some guy in Japan. This yeah, just big wig in Japan.
So so these things are not readily available. This is kind of like a one time deal.
Oh, yeah. One's from Lexicona. It's fairly hard to come by. It's getting better at the moment, but it's just very dangerous to collect from Lexicona at the moment. I mean, I know some people have gone there with armed guards just to.
Get fish, I'm assuming. Is it because of hippos? Is it because of crocs?
No, I think it's an ongoing civil war in Kenya around there, and because of that, there's a lot of conflict around there. You got pirates on the lake. I mean, it's only a shallow lake, but yeah, unfortunately, it's exploited quite a lot. Wow.
You figured that would change as decades roll on. So how long ago was this that it was that popularized or actually sold and collected? Because I'm assuming that this war hasn't lasted forever.
I wouldn't know if my heart was that one.
Interesting. I got to look that up to see if there's a coming end to the war or how long that war has gone on, because that will certainly raise the price and then maybe see, like, was it 90s when it was available? Interesting.
Yeah. I mean, you can still go there now. I think it's been put on the legs, been put on the World Heritage Danger list at the moment. So we're not sure how many more exports we're going to get out of Lake takana at the moment, but I've seen a fair few come out fairly recently. There's, like, the senegale beachier in Lake takana. So, you know, senegale Bashir, people tend to think they're the smallest ones. The dinosaur bushir, they get, like, eight or nine inch. Now that they can get, like, 15 or so inch wild caught and captive bread. But the ones from Lake tacana, the sunnygale ones, they can get over 20 inch. And they have, like, a really beautiful flat head, too, just like the pbb. So it's really nice.
I even looked it up, and there's not even hardly any photos of this. I think they have a drawing of a sunny gill, so there's just not a lot of information on this.
Tell you what, if you put in Senegal, senegal Bashir, Lake takana, and I'll point out which image it is, because there is one, there's a huge one in a display display late display tank. Sorry.
Most of these fish that we're talking about aren't even available to the general public unless you've got connections with private collectors and that sort of thing.
Or you ask Josh really nicely.
Yeah. And he's got an arm guard and goes over there.
Exactly. His beard of knowledge, by the way, for those that are listening, this dude has, like, the Oak Ridge Boys beard. We're very proud of it. We're jealous, frankly.
It's coming on. Julie there I want a proper gandalf beard. I mean, right down to my belly butt.
It is literally gandalf style. Yeah.
Little zz Top going on.
Zz Top. There you go.
I always get that. Honestly, I walk down plenty falmer for wherever in Corbyn where I am, and there's always people shouting out zz Top all the time.
You have to wear the sunglasses. And whatnot I do we should put.
Some easy top in right here.
Just jam it. So we went through feeding. We went through some of the specialty care, but I feel like there's a lot of specialty care that goes on with this particular species, mainly because I'm looking over your lists on the website so just to go over a few of these, it says best not to kept on gravel. Why is that?
Right, well, they're borrowers, they can end up damaging the two billionaires that more or less little nostrils. They can damage them quite a lot. Also they feed using something called inertial suction. So whenever they open their food, they suck in food like a vacuum and they often suck in the stones as well with them. Most of the time they'll just spit out those stones, it's not a problem. But every now and then, because you know how opportunistic Bashirs can be, they end up swallowing that stone and that can cause things like fatal impaction. You get it a lot with catfish in African clawed frogs and things like that, which is why you're supposed to keep them on sand or bear one. But obviously Bashirs, they have their ganoid scales are quite locked in place. They got fairly inflexible scales, so because of that they can only poo things at a limited size. So they can't really excrete out large stones just because of how locked in place their scales are. So that causes fatal blockages, things like that. They don't exactly rare, but they don't.
Exactly do constipation surgery on bashir.
You probably would have to do that to be fair, but I don't know many cases where they have died from that. I know enough, but it's not something that happens that often. So you can get away with having for years on gravel for a fairly long time because they spit it out for the most part, but where you can help it definitely put them on sand. And I probably won't even go bare bottom if you can help that as well either, because the substrate almost acts like attraction to slow them down because they dart across. Don't forget they like to burrow a lot as well. And they dig for snails too. They like to wait for snails, burrowing the gravel and all sorts of that substrate sand is always the best. I know some people use cat litter as well. Cat litter substrate, watch us. Another? Yeah, it's really popular. The most popular, yeah, honestly, join up bashir groups. There's people that got fucking cat litter, tidy cats, great.
Needs to call us. We need to work out a special cat litter just for Bashirs.
I'm thinking they might have a little bit different type of cat litter in the UK than we do, apparently.
I need to know what's up there. Our cat litter has crystals and shit.
I think it's more like Southeast Asia, really. I know so many people that feed cat food too, like the fish cat food Oryon I think it's called. And that's really popular because apparently it's a similar quality to some. Apparently a better quality than aquarium predatory pellets. But I've not fed it myself, so I can't read.
Very weird.
Probably a lot cheaper.
I think that was the main thing why people feed them as well.
Moving on to some of your list. This is what you guys list as the essentials to know before you buy, and I find this fascinating. You already mentioned don't feed fatty foods if you can help it. But also it lists oily foods. Why?
Right. Well, the main reason for that was because it just leaves an oily slick on the surface. That video is completely dated. I say, fuck it, feed all the foods. Just have a surface skimmer or make sure it dissipates because when they go up for air, they breathe with their sphericals. The oil could end up causing issues lining their lungs or whatever. I'm not a vet, so it does cause issues.
They're closer to a beta that actually breathe from the surface from time to time.
Yeah, they have proper lungs. So their lungs have been adapted almost like a swim bladder. They've got like one longer lung. A lot of people make comparisons with them with lobe thin fish. I think one of the vets that's been helping out with the book, Dr. Godstadeyisman, he's been putting forward the argument that the shears aren't actually ray thin fish, that they're rather lobe thin fish. And he's compiled this huge amount of data and it's a really convincing argument. But that's not the consensus at the moment. It's not the scientific consensus. But yeah, it's really interesting. Even Emily standon as well has been helping out with the book. She sort of uses them as a comparison for lobe thin fish, but she says, no, they are really a basal ray fin fish. Talk about food with me. Food. Yeah. Oily foods is good. It's fine. That video is super dated in the comments section on that video, I've sort of put like updates and changes since that video.
Well, keeping going on the list. They also list don't have placos for tank mates. Now you put on here, they get addicted. What's going on?
Right, so I've been working with plenty of people with this. It's so weird. It's so weird. So Bashirs have ganoid scales, which is like a type of inorganic bone salt, which apparently I haven't been able to verify this, but, you know, the people who've been having it with the book sort of say, you know, act with caution anyway because it may make their slime coat slightly salty. And anything that has anything that suckers, flag, tails, cyanodontists as well, they tend to feed on that slime coat quite a lot. And because of that, you end up losing quite a lot of Bashirs. I mean, plex are great fish, but they're one of the things that toothless plex especially, you kind of want to act with caution. You don't want to always put them with them.
That's fascinating to me. Now, I've had issues with certain placo varieties go after certain species of fish, and this maybe could explain that. But I know that the placo varieties have a very varying diet, so I would like to have some trial and error. I know it sounds inhumane, taking a bashir and putting it with a plato just for research, but I suspect that some breeds are going to do this where others won't. For instance, I believe that clown placos will not do that. Clown placos are a vivacious wood burrowing species. I have a clown placo on hand. I've had them for a long time and they won't eat certain algae's, they will not eat certain pellets, but if you have a piece of wood on it, they will tear it up into pieces. So find a placo that has a different diet if you're going to try it. Otherwise, be warned that this is addicted to the scales of the slime coat.
Yeah, it's one of those things where I said it's trial and error. You get it a lot on the Facebook groups I see almost every week where a bashir ends up having its slime coat just stripped by someplex large plex, even small plex, but it's a lot of the toothless ones that do the most damage. And sinodontists, I'd probably say a worse than plex completely. But again, it all varies on species. I don't know enough about individual species of plex or individual species of sinos. I can only sort of report what I've seen with it. So it's one of those things where trial and error depends on the species. If you're fully aware of what species of plant you've got foamy for the most part, it probably won't happen.
I used to have a ton of angel fish pears, and one time I threw in like three Chinese algae eaters in Per tank. And when I came back after the weekend, they had stripped the slime coating off my angel fish and had killed at least one of each fish in each pair. And I was just devastated and just watching them. They went right after the body slime and they sat there and sucked on the side of these fish until they killed them.
Yeah, Chinese algae eaters known for that and also fake siamese algae eaters, they get very aggressive finnipping and then they'll start sucking slime coats off of anything. So when you get sae, make sure you're getting the real ones.
Yes.
So, going down to your list again, we mentioned that when we first started the podcast, Tank Mates and whatnot and how I was leery about it. There's one specific one on the list that I found very fascinating. It says, Take care when mixing stingrays. So what's happening there?
It's one of those things again where sometimes it works, a lot of the times it doesn't.
That's an expensive trial right there.
Oh, yeah. There's some people that swear by it, it's perfectly fine, but from what I've seen, the most part can go quite horribly wrong. Bashir is big, small. I mean, one of my friends I won't name at the moment, but he got a small little Senegal bashir to go in with his stingray and ended up death rolling the skin completely off of one part of his back. And the ray, unfortunately, died. There's another video that's surfacing round at the moment where a stingray completely pounced on top of a bashir. I'll send you that one, actually. It's horrible, but yeah, stingray jumps on top of it, pins it down, pretty much drowns it and tries to wheat it. There's other ones. There's another one where a bashir was chewing chunks off of stingray. Yeah, it can be hit or miss or my friend hampers hertzman on his YouTube channel, he's got one where the stingray just tagged the bashir, went right through its armor. The bashir died. It's one of those things where it's going to be a risk putting them together. I mean, probably more of a risk than mixing other types of predatory fish together. So it's one of those ones where you want to go with caution, if possible. Try not to do it if you've gotten multiple.
I'm thinking this should be like a species only tank. Are they predatory towards each other?
Yeah, they can be very predatory. So when they're around about seven or so, it depends. Species reach maturity at different sizes, but they produce this type of growth hormone that released into the water after checking notes to find out what exactly that hormone is called. But sort of alerts the other tank mates that this is a juvenile. I mean, it's juvenile hormones. So because of that, the Bashirs in the captive environment end up thinking, oh, fuck, this is potential competition. And they eat the juveniles. And it happens a lot, which is why you can keep the sheets together and there's not a huge risk. But the moment you put one juvenile in with some adults, the adults will very likely eat the juvenile. And when you're keeping juveniles together, the juveniles will likely eat the other juveniles cannibalizing. But you can keep, you know, I mean, you can keep some, you know, eight or nine inch with like two and a half foot long, you know, perhaps. And there's barely much. I mean, it's still some risk, but it's a lot lower risk than, say, keeping a five inch per share with an eight inch per share just because of the juvenile hormones.
That's fascinating.
Well, before we continue, I'm just going to go over questions because we're doing this podcast live on our discord Channel. If you'd like to join the podcast live, go to aquarium guidespodcast.com. On the bottom of the website you will find a link to discord. It's an easy to use chat clients where all our fans are, where you can get your questions answered about your own fish hobby. Again, we're doing this live. So questions that we have, number one is pure cat litter is sold in the Us. And it's very cheap. So it's pure cat litter. Not with all the crystals and other garbage in it. Imagine that's. What they mean. When did they start saying by shears where the extra R came in? It doesn't make sense to me. I'm so angry. He spells it B-I-R-C-H-I-R-S-I just feel that's people being lazy, unless you know where the extra R always comes in when people try to butcher the name.
No idea what that happens a lot in the UK. For some reason. The UK, people get around saying butcher a lot, but I just feel like, where did the other R come from?
As far as the visual? Like, I quickly glanced the word without taking a minute. It's not a word I recognize. It's very close to, like, a birch tree. I'm just used to having that. Are there bich? Oh, that's definitely a tree. But next question is, do Bashirs require heaters? And are there any small Bashirs out there?
Yeah, it completely depends on what part of the world you're in. I mean, they prefer anywhere between 24 to 29, sometimes 30. I mean, when it comes to keeping Bashirs, they're super easy. So despite all those fancy bloody rules, I mean, they're not fussy at all.
You said 24 celsius. Because I have to do the conversion.
Here, because I'm meant to be 29, 30 celsius.
So you're looking at 75 degrees all the way up to like 80, 84, 85. So you got to keep them decently warm.
And the the smallest species is Poly Terrace Murklen Bembe, so it's that Mockle and beyond here, they reach between nine to 14 inch.
What's the common name for that species?
Say again?
What's the common name for that species?
It's just called Mockle and bembe. There's not really a common name for it, but it's more or less named after that mythical soropod creature. Just mockley. Ben bay. But, yeah, nine to 14 inch they'll get, which is just an inch shy of what most Senegal beaches will get into 15 inch. But, yeah, they're very slow growing, really shy, don't really add up a lot. They're primarily insectivores, but they also act like pisa laws as well. It depends on where in the Congo you found.
Now, most of the ones that we can get here in the Us come to us about, I want to say, somewhere between the three to four inch range. How long does it take them to get into adulthood? Do they grow very quickly or is it all about how much you feed them?
Again, it depends on diet, but they can grow very fast. I mean, some of them can grow from a quarter of an inch a month to three inch a month, up until a certain twelve to 14 inch or so. And it just gets progressively slower each year. They can live in excess 40 years. 40, yeah. 40 years, yeah. I think the oldest on record, official record. I think was 38 years old, but I heard someone really fairly recently in the group claimed to have one about 39 years old. Obviously, we're taking much better care of them now. I mean, they've only recently grown in popularity in the hobby, I think in the last, what, 20 or years, something like that. So now a lot more people are having bigger tanks. They're understanding how to care for them better. So I think that lifespan is going to go beyond what we've seen so far. So over 40.
That's incredible. That's like goldfish level right there.
Yeah, absolutely. They can get stupidly big sizes as well. Some of them say the two largest species, and sargi bashir and the kangi bushir, the giant bashir. They can get about, I think the largest reported size, I've heard is just over a meter long for both of them.
So 3ft long. Holy crap.
So the next question we have from one of our listeners is what is the species you recommend for someone that's beginning for the first time?
Poly 100% poli. poli is lovely, very active, eats a lot, fairly interactive as well. Don't get very big again, around about 15 or so inch, but that is best case scenario. I mean, you could probably expect them to get around a foot long. On the lower end of the size scale, care is again, relatively easy. PH is neutral, but they'll have anywhere between six. I know some Bashirs can go up to PH of ten.
What's the common name?
A common name for polar bashir, poles bashir or marbled bashir. Got you. You put them on red sand, they come up with this beautiful green shimmer and black sand as well. Red sand really brings out everything on. Colors are fantastic. I'd say retro pinnis is another good one. They can be a little bit sensitive, but they don't get very big. They like to be in groups. Delhisi is another great one. In fact, that's probably a lot of people's favorites. I mean, there's so much variation in Delhisi. senegale is another one, but most people know Senegal anyway. mclaren Ben Bay is a great one. They're shy, but small, easy to keep.
What's the one that you caution people that they just probably should never touch, or only the experts should go? The most difficult species, I mean, none really.
They're all as long as you got a big tap, they're all easy to keep. I'd say. In fact, the hardest poly terror to keep, I'd say, is the rope fish. And they're not really that hard to keep. I mean, they can be quite sensitive and mostly because how they're caught, I know a lot of them are caught while caught through soap pumping, and unfortunately, a lot of them end up dying, but other than that, fairly easy group of fish to keep.
So what type of pumping do you collect these fish yet? You said some pumping again, sorry, no.
When some of them are collected, especially the rope fish. Some of them, there's, like, soap that's pumped into the water to force them to surface up and that obviously strips a lot of their gills. And unfortunately, a lot of them struggle to breathe and die. They get it with cyanide as well. Yeah, horrible. Yeah.
I've always heard of cyanide with saltwater fish and stuff, but I've never heard of the soap.
Yeah, soap was really horrible. For fresh water, order some. awhile back, there used to be a website in the UK called Discountfish Code at UK. No idea what it's called now, but yeah, I emailed them saying, I've got your rope fishing stock and they said, We've stopped trading them now because we found out that our suppliers used to pump soap and water to catch them, to get them from the surface. Because of that, we don't sell them anymore. I was like, oh, fair play. cheers for let me know. That's all I know about that. I've never been able to find any more information on it, but that's just something that discount fish have said.
More secrets you won't hear in other hobby places.
I've had a lot of people, too, that have bought saltwater fish. They've been fined for a week or two and all of a sudden they'll be swimming and just float to the top and die. And that's just the cyanide that they're collected with has finally got if 90%.
I think 90% of all aquarium fish caught with cyanide will die. Yeah.
And and it can happen immediately. It could happen a month from now.
Yeah.
Well, maybe that explains this issue. So we have one more listener, a family member called me about bringing a bashir home and it died. 30 minutes of getting it in the tank. Does it need certain acclimation process or are they sensitive to certain water parameters? In general, it looks like hemorrhaging under the skin.
That is tricky. Or it could just be how it was caught, really. But, yeah, if there was hemorrhaging under the skin. I know a lot of Bashirs can suffer from things like septiceme and things like that, but that normally happens in extremely overcrowded conditions. But then again, it could have got that because I know a lot of Indonesian bred species, or some that are kept in vats in Nigeria, they are kept in such cramped conditions right before they're shipped. So it could have possibly developed septicemia before, and then when it arrived, it wasn't in the best condition, it could have died. But again, I'm a vet, so I don't trust any of my diagnosis.
It's very hard.
That's just my opinion.
Anybody that sends us information about, hey, what do you think happened, my fish? It's all just us giving a best guess. We don't know until we get there. And most of the time, if a hobbyist walks in, looks at your tank and goes, oh, well, that's why so don't. Take any of the information that we're saying to heart. It may be many different reasons that we can't go, but these are some of them and didn't know the cyanide thing. Cyanide does cause hemorrhaging. That's a weird, weird coincidence that we're talking about it.
Are you Russian or what? What are you saying?
Shut up.
Right. I've recently got in contact with a fisherman called in Gandhi and garda. He's this cameroonian fisherman that has been sending me a lot of information about how he catches bashir in the wild. And one of the methods he uses, this type of potato like plan, I can't remember the name escapes me now, but he turns it into this thing called fufu, which is like a staple food for cameroonians. And what they do is normally when you turn this potato like thing into foofu, it gets rid of a lot of the cyanide. But there's still some degree of cyanide in there. So they take this mashed foo foo and they whisk it through the water, especially not they do it mostly in like the flood lake. So when, say, like the lakes over spill, a lot of the Bashirs will end up the larger Bashirs and some of the smaller beaches will end up leaving the lake and traveling down river. And then when they start to return, the larger ones are the main ones that return. So as they're returning back to the lake, what they do is they set up barrier traps. The barrier trap name, because of the name or something like that, but the barrier traps all the way around the lake, and to encourage them to go in the lake right away, to be able to catch them through those barrier traps, they start washing this fufu in the water. Obviously the fish rarely comes a proper contact with it, but they end up swimming away from it directly into the barrier traps. So it's just a way of guiding them in there. But there is a degree of cyanide in there, but I don't think the levels are high enough for them to suffer anything they can't recover from shortly after. But again, when it comes to sustainable and ethical fishing in places like cameroon, obviously being sustainable isn't the highest concern at the moment. Again, there's an ongoing civil war there as well. So a lot of people lost their lives and people are being butchered on the streets. It's not the nicest thing, it's horrible. But they do try their best, though, to make sure that they can always return to that spot the following season. I know in gandhi says he doesn't collect anything over 80, anything under, I think 15 CM. Something along the lines of that I can't really figures. But it's to make sure he respects the largest in the lake and allows time for the youngest to grow.
Man after we do this podcast for a while, Jimmy, I think that we should have a podcast where we just list off what we've learned on where these fish come from. Having knowledge of how your fish are harvested, bread or captively raised, any information is gold. I mean, the stories that we told people, we had a podcast that we did, it was called sucks the Podcast. It's just an episode we did, and it was just us saying the things that people won't on YouTube or other content creators won't because it creates controversy or maybe enrage as a PETA enthusiast. And we talked about real issues of the hobby and practical ways to help people get around them. And one of them was the betas. I mean, for many years you told me this, Jimmy. I definitely confirmed that betas were shipped because, again, betas have been bred for a long time. Betas are shipped in wet paper towels.
Layers of wet paper towel.
You just stack a bunch of moist paper towels, and because they could technically breathe maybe through the paper towel, that's how they would ship them efficiently. So since then, people discovered this animal rights groups, whatever else. And now they're shipped in plastic bags like any other fish. They're smaller. They're intended to have an air pocket made for the beta. They rebag them every three days if there's any issues. And it's a much more humane process. But just like you said, the rope fish and the cyanide, you know, identifying that more people know about it means we can find better ways to change it.
You know, and in this day and age with cyanide, I mean, first of all, it's not good for people and it's not good for your water, it's not good for your fish, but yet they're still using it. And there's been some stories about the aborigines and stuff who've used different berries and stuff, which have a very high toxicity to fish. And it's just different things that they've come up with over the years that works for them because they're in third world countries and they're just trying to make a living. And to that point, you can kind of understand it. But to keep putting sign aid in the water, I mean, that water is going downstream and eventually somebody's going to drink it and it's not good for anybody.
That's not the best, is it? I think that's bad as well. In Indonesia again, obviously, I'm hearing a sort of second hand from my boss who used to travel there on the beaches in Indonesia, they got these like aquarium stools markets. And because they've got right at the bottom of the beach, they have these little areas sectioned off where they're growing corals. So what they would do is they would go down to the beach, pick up all of the corals that they've raised, they'd bring them up to the stool and sell them there out of the water on these stools. And because of this, they can't be asked, we will not walk back down to the beach at the end of the day to put them back in them, back in the water. They end up throwing them over the fence. And my boss said he saw this huge, like, pile of just dead corals, coral skeletons, loads of them, because they couldn't be asked to walk down to the end of the beach.
What the heck that's?
I'm so confused.
It's awful.
Well, let's get on a happier note. We fund that down to a very dark place. So let's get on a happy note and talk about diseases.
Highlight of my day.
What's common health issues that you see generally when I've had Bashirs in the past and help other people, they're extremely hearty. I don't want to use the word bulletproof, but I mean, these things are chunky dinosaurs at the bottom of your tank. It takes quite a bit, in my experience, to kill these things. But what are some of the common illnesses or issues that you see with.
These types of fish? Well, I think due to the nature of where you find them and how competitive is they have to do their best to hide disease well. So normally when you start to see symptoms on a bashir, it normally may be too late to treat. It's always worth treating anyway. But you can end up losing the fish once you start to see symptoms. Yeah, like I said, they're not bulletproof things will affect them. Probably one of the most common diseases. One more parasite, really is Macro Gyrodactylus solitary, which is this type of worm, type of parasitic worm that will attach themselves to the gills, to the eyes, will spread all over them and it ends up causing all sorts of scarring. The parasite itself won't fuel the fish, but it's the scarring that invites pathogens and the disease that it also brings about. And yeah, they're absolute kunk to kill. It's so hard. Most people that have been keeping pollies for at least two, three, four years, they've probably been hit by it. They look like these tiny little fine hairs that have a little black gut. Horrible little things. But yeah, they're a pain to kill. So that's fairly common. What else is there? I mean, they get cloudy eye a lot, but that's because every now and then they might bite each other, scratch the eye, pathogens, all that lot. But yeah, the main one really is probably Macro jarodactylus genus of parasitic worm. I've only heard this multiple species, but it only affects Polyterids.
I've only heard this once before and I thought it was for rope fish, but that makes sense.
What do you treat with that? Is there anything malachite green, which is.
A ban now in the Us?
No, I don't use malacca, to be honest. Salt can kill them. Yes. Not soap, salt. Salt.
I'm putting don dishwashing salt.
We'll kill them.
We have a meme around here. If anything's wrong, the flowchart is start with salt, and then if it doesn't cure, it go from there.
My friend earl, who's been helping out with the well, she passed away last year, but he used to say they put enough salt in them, it would literally fucking blow them up, probably explode the fucking parasites, but not something I've tried. I don't want to put a fuck load of salt in there because I've got sunfish that are sensitive to it.
I'll pay $10 to see that. Oh, you have sunfish with these guys, you said?
Yeah, sunfish. There's some fish that will be sensitive to it.
I thought you said you had sunfish. Never mind. I got excited because we got a lot of sunfish, apparently. We were finding out. Maybe you can help us. This is tangent, but we've had that's.
A treatment pricey quantale. That's it.
What the hell is that?
It's ingredient that kills worms and flukes and things like that. But it seems to be most effective for macro jaradaka.
Christ, I thought you just make this stuff up now.
He tried his best. So maybe you can tell us. Being in UK, we have one listener that messages quite a bit, but I've gotten a lot of feedback from people in the UK that love sunfish. Is that a normal thing to keep or a popular thing to keep? We don't understand it because we have them native here and they're tasty. That's about all we do with them.
I don't know of a single person that keeps sunfish. Yeah, I got really confused then, because I thought you're talking about ocean sunfish. You actually talk about you're not talking about ocean sunfish?
No, freshwater sunfish.
Freshwater.
Freshwater. I was going to fucking say they're huge.
They get the biggest, like having a.
Client when it comes to fish. Really? Odd bulls. I know, odd bulls. Anything else I'm like? What? oddballs freshwater? I don't know. Just probably phallic. phallic fish. Really? Yeah. No, I see.
Yeah. To Google it.
I had to google it. I recognize it now. But, no, I don't remember ever importing them.
They're delicious.
They're delicious. Wonderful white fish. Great with shore lunch and a fry pan.
There we go.
Right.
So, yeah, I don't think it's a thing over here. Another question we have from me.
I'm sorry, say that again?
Yeah, I don't think they're a thing over here. They might be, but I'm pretty sure.
It'S just a handful of people. We were lucky enough to interact with them. But we have a question. How do you sex Bashirs anal finn?
Anal finn in the shape of the tail fin, although the tail fin is less definitive, so it's going to be the analfin. Males have large, muscular, wide anal fins. Females have a lot more thinner, trowel shaped anal fins. The reason why the males are so wide is because obviously they have to cut to catch the eggs.
Right.
It's as simple as the anal fin. You can sex them very early on. Some people say you got to wait till they're a certain age sometimes. Yeah. But it's fairly easy to sex them when they're like four or five inch up, but it's a lot easier when they're a bit bigger.
Is aggression different between male and female?
If the male hasn't had the opportunity to breed when it's sexually immature, it might be a little bit more bitty, yeah. But I did have a senegal that was proper agro when I didn't have a sexually immature female in the tank. And he did kill one of my librades, which is bizarre because I hadn't heard of a senegale doing that before, but I'm hearing it a little bit more now. But it's not a huge problem, really, as long as you females in the tank.
He was just looking for love in all the wrong places.
You mean his music references?
That's right.
What Phil Collins playing?
What information have we starkly missed in our review of Bashirs?
I think he covered it a lot, really. There's some species that used to live in South America in the fossil record. The fossils are bloody love them. I mean, there's Bashirs, there's one called Bowitius bartelli, or maybe Barcelli, I can't remember, but they could reach over 9ft long, bloody huge things. spinosaurus supposedly would eat them. They live in the same area in Egypt. Back then, the ceremonial age, when there was a big diversity of Bashirs, I think it was the second boom in diversity. There was all sorts of different types. There was one as well called Ceremony ixes chemcomsis, which was found in the kempen beds in morocco, and it was only like three and a half centimeters, or two and a half centimeters long. And I think we could tell it was fairly mature at that point. And it wasn't a juvenile because it had branched finras. Normally when a rafan fisher has got branched finrays and we tell it's either maturing or it's mature already, so it's probably safe to say that it was a mature specimen. Maybe not quite full grain, but maybe full grain. And yeah, I think three, maybe two fossils have been found, or it's probably the most complete fossil that was found, except for Polyteris farrow, which was a more recent Bashir that was discovered, which, funnily enough, is identical in almost every way to Polyteris bashir, which is one of the more popular and sought after bashir species. Obviously you can't see it markings or anything like that, but that was found completely whole. Serenoxes was found completely whole, but the first time was found it had no head, and then the next fossil that was found, it had the head. But for the book, we've reconstructed about four species, including buets serenoixthes, one from South America, and one that was a close relation between the Rope fish and Polytras bashir. Obviously, those smaller ones were those lesser known ones were only found by small skull fragments or scales. So there's a lot of creative lies into reconstructing them.
Must be a lot of work, much less artists renditions.
It was good fun. We had two paleontologists who are helping out with it as well, and a Paleo artist on it. So I think he's done a pretty good job. He finished doing them about a month or two ago now.
I love how you have it listed on the website, paleo Artist. Like, that is a cool job right there.
Oh, yeah. I love honestly when it comes to Paleo art and speculative zoology. Fucking love it. It's just one of those things where it's illustration prehistoric life and it just comes together. And yes, we could finally see what they look like because that Ceremoythes and there's three other species as well that was talking about except for Boutius, none of them were reconstructed before, so no one really knows completely what they look like except for the fossil specimens. So we've ended up adding certain colors. And when it comes to bashir's markings as well, they have a very limited set of genes which only allows limited sets of markings, which is why almost in fact, every bashir you see, their markings are a combination of dosilateral bars, lateral bars, and some form of speckling. You won't see any cooler, unique features on there like ocelli or anything like that just because it's not really a marking that they've been able to produce, we don't think, just because of their limited sets of genes.
I can't wait for the book he's got me sold. I'm like, Keep going, don't stop.
So you got any interesting stories while writing this book?
Yeah, not just stories about writing the book. I think he said before the podcast started that he had this wonderful off topic story about a certain person named David.
It's horrible, but it's funny. I look back on this and laugh now, but I do feel a sense of dread. Well, I'm glad.
Let's make this uncomfortable some more. Yes, that's what we're here for.
Okay. There was a quote that I wanted to use that a certain famous conservationist, you know, said, and this is what I really wanted to use in the book. And I found I had to get permission. So obviously this person is David attenborough.
For those that don't know, if you've listened to any, like, you know, nature documentary like Blue Planet, Planet Earth, he's that amazingly sultry British voice that you hear narrating every bit of it.
So I used to be part of a university magazine years back called Life Magazine, and we contacted him a while before we wrote him a letter. I defined it if he wanted to help out, but he was busy filming Blue Planet, so we couldn't get him involved. But he wrote back to us. So I emailed the editor of that magazine saying, oh, have you got the contacts from again? He said, oh, no. She said, his email is just online. You can just pick it up and just send them an email or an address. So I was like, okay, I'll do that. So I ended up going on this website somewhere. It looked official, David attenborough Productions or something like that. And I found a phone number on there so far. Okay, well, I'll give this a ring before I send a letter out, and I go to ring it. And obviously this is like during the height of the pandemic. I thought that maybe no one will answer, or if someone does answer, it will be christ, it will be a receptionist or something like that. The man himself answers. And me being a bit gobsmacked, I sort of freeze up and I just sort of hear this old man say hello. And I say hello. I'm looking to get in contact with David attenborough. And he says, yes, speaking. And I thought he said, yes, it's me speaking. So I go, oh, wow. Amazing to be able to talk to you. But no, he said, no. I said, who is speaking? Start, like, explaining who I am. I end up you could probably tell I'm waffling a little bit already, but I started waffling even more to David attenborough, and he got a little bit agitated. So I said, oh, you've encountered Bashirs before in your program or your TV series Africa. So it was episode three, Africa. It was Africa. Episode three, the Congo, where there was a Congo bashir hunting, hunting another fish. And and I said that to him and he said, I've never got a series in Africa. And that really got me off guard. And I was like I corrected him.
No, you could have just let a go, bro.
I should have fucking didn't expect anyway, I corrected him and he said, well, if you send me a letter, then perhaps I'll look at it. Okay? So I'm in the middle of writing a letter, writing a letter to him, like a letter of apology, sort of saying sorry for correcting. And I'm still really confused that he said he didn't do a series in Africa. But then maybe I'm thinking he just got a little bit pedantic and called me out because I said maybe it was a TV series and not a program or a documentary maybe, but it's all a blur, what I said. So I may not have said TV series or I may have said it, I don't know.
Okay. You're a David attenborough fan.
I'm just saying, not only did I piss him off, but I corrected him, my idol. And I sort of feel a bit like a guy.
That was it. I thought I was going to be sold more.
No, that was it. I wish it was more. Have you written me a bit? I've not written a letter yet, but that was it. I mean, to me, that was a big deal.
Well, David attenborough, if you're listening to this podcast.
He is not.
Number one, we are huge fans. There's many a Saturday afternoon that I've spent. I listen to your salary voice. And two, Josh is very sorry and he just wants your autograph already.
I'm just assuming that they probably just hand him a script sometimes and he just probably reads it and doesn't even know what the hell he's talking about.
But he doesn't have to. He's just that, you know, essentially the white Morgan freeman.
That's.
Corino what I mean.
Yes. Get that beautiful voice.
He's super he's super clued up. The most traveled man on the planet was something that was posted fairly.
Oh, it has to be.
Yeah. So I'm sort of thinking he knows his shit. So I was thinking that he probably remembers Bashirs. I thought maybe he doesn't. Just to be on the safe side, I'll explain what they are. And yeah, he turns out maybe it's old age kicking and they didn't really remember going to Africa, but I'm hoping that's not the case.
So for those that are listening, david attenborough's personal numbers posted somewhere out there, we're not going to share it with you. I swear to God, if you email us, we're not going to give it to you.
It's his office number. But apparently he does answer the office number every now and then because it said on the website somewhere. Don't be upset if he doesn't answer the phone. And I'm thinking there's a chance he'll answer the phone okay.
And I can piss him off.
Yeah, they should have underlined it may answer.
Kelly, that was a great story. I think you should write him a letter and we should revisit this here in a few months and see if he's answered you. I reckon he will, yeah. What's interesting about him, he's been involved in so many projects over so many years, he probably doesn't have a clue what happened yesterday.
I just looked up he's 94.
That's what I'm saying. He probably doesn't know what happened yesterday.
Like he may have been on a date with betty White. We don't know.
I hope he knows. betty White.
Betty White. I love betty White. Lake placid.
Welcome to Lake placid is one of.
The best films she's ever did.
Welcome to the podcast. betty White is the true gem in this podcast.
My favorite quote by her, if I had a dick, this is where I tell you to suck it.
There you go.
That's one. All right.
I don't think the podcast can get better than that. So, Josh, do you have any last minute comments?
I think I've covered it all really well.
For those that are listening, you can find again the bashirhandbook.com. It has more information on the upcoming book. The cost again, it is in the looks like the British pound euro. I'm not exactly sure that price symbol.
I'm not educated, forgive me, british pound. Worth mentioning on there as well. When it comes to shipping. Shipping might be expensive, so shipping could be around 20 pound. But I am trying to secure some of this company called Logical Choice Group. I'm sort of trying to secure shipping costs and things like that, so they'll do it worldwide. So hopefully that will reduce shipping costs because they'll do all sorts of fulfillment there. But if it's just me shipping them out myself, shipping could cost then, depending where you are in the world, up to 2024. quiz at pretty much the same price as a book, which no one likes, really, which is why I've tried to keep the price as low as fucking possible.
Maybe we can get a hold of the quid, get a hold of David attenborough, because he travels the world. You could give him like 100 copies. He could just drop them off in your neighborhood.
I wanted him to play forward for the book as well. No chance of that, I don't think.
So when you contacted him, were you hoping just to get some insider information or what was the reason why the quote?
He wanted the quote.
Yeah, I just wanted that quote. It was something about conservation. You can't preserve something. No, that was Mccollg's quote. It was something similar to if you can't preserve something, if you don't know something, you can't preserve it. Along the lines of that that's Mccollgy's quote. That one. But attempted on a similar quote, too. Mccollgy's, I think is better.
So it's kind of his thing. And you wanted to get permission to use it?
Yeah.
Did you ever ask.
I'm looking to get permission for a quote, and then that was when I sort of fucked up the conversation.
So what he's saying is it's not in the book. And instead he'll have the quotes from the Aquarium Guys podcast. That's right here's where you suck it.
Definitely have that betty White quote in there.
Thank you. betty White. No, but for those that are looking for the book, that's the website. There are certainly is there still opportunity for people to advertise or help support it in any way? Is there a kickstarter fund that people can throw money at you?
I was thinking about doing that. I was going to do pre ordering at some point, but honestly, I don't have the time to set anything like that up at the moment. Do you know ivan makoji?
I cannot say I do.
The legendary river explorer in Venezuela. I'm doing his graphic design for his book at the moment, about 300, 400 pages. And that sort of took up all my time at the moment, spending after work evenings and then plenty of weekends working on it. So I haven't had much time for mine at the moment. But my book is pretty much done, so there's still time. If anyone wants to advertise in there, just ping me an email, the bashirhandbook@gmail.com, and I can send out a media pack. So if you want to advertise, just ping me a message.
Wonderful.
When it comes to right before print, I've got plenty of time. I could just slap in an advert in the back or front, wherever.
Well, maybe luck. We can slap some aquarium guy in the back. You never know.
I think we should put betty White in the back. I'd sell.
Absolutely. She's open royalty, right? We don't have to pay her for that.
None.
Excellent. Well, thanks again for coming on. Excited for the book. Hopefully in the future we can talk to you because clearly you do help with a lot of different books and projects. We are wanting to talk to you and see before you leave that if you do the handbook on feeder guppies, I mean, endless. So let us know, contact us, but our people will talk to your people.
And we'll do lunch.
We'll do lunch. But again, appreciate you staying up so late with us.
Only going past my bedtime by half hour, you folks.
Well, you know, it's like 04:00 430 here and we're just going to start drinking now. So you go to betty By and we'll talk shit about you.
I will be.
Boston Texas roadhouse.
Here we go.
All right. Well, thanks, Josh. And guys, if you like what you hear in the aquarium, guys podcast, go to the website aquariumguyspodcast.com. On the website, there's a link to Donate By. merge, send us feedback or just a text message to Jimmy saying that he is the Arnold. So we'll see you next week.
Hey, thanks a lot again, Josh.
We really appreciate it.
Thanks for having me.
Thanks, guys, for listening to podcast. Please go to your favorite place where podcasts are found, whether it be spotify, itunes, stitcher, wherever they can be found, like subscribe. And make sure you get push notifications directly your phone so you don't miss great content like this.
I never knew that a Minnesota accent could be so sexy until I heard adam's voice. Go frank yourself.
Don't you know that's my boy don't you know.