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Welcome to the Aquarium Guys podcast.

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I'm constipated. Hi, Jimmy. How you doing?

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I pooped this morning, so I'm doing better than you. And you know what? When I did poop this morning, I looked downstairs at it and I went, hey. Hey, Robbie.

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Well, if that doesn't get you into this podcast, I don't know what is. But welcome. I'm your host, Rob Zolson.

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Hey, I'm Jim Colby.

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And I'm Adam Elnishar.

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And today we have a bit of live audience. Today welcome Derek Schumann from Deets Fish company.

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Hello. He's totally live.

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He's. He's. He's live.

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It sound like he's half dead.

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We did have someone in chat asking how long the beard is. Finally. Have you. Have you stretched it out? Because his little rather curly. So it's. It's what, almost to the belly button?

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Almost.

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Pretty close.

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Almost. All right.

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Does your back hair match?

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None whatsoever.

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None is your back, Harry.

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No, no, no. He's. He's actually like a bodman fragrance break. Commercial gone wrong.

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Really?

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Just hairless. It's amazing, you know, I don't even.

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Want to know how you know, there.

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Oh, my God. Too Many hotel trips. All right, and our. Our main guest this. This evening, we're here to talk about ram cichlids, and we have Anthony Armada from Daku Aquatics. Hi, Anthony.

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Hi, how are you?

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Now, I didn't butcher any of that last name because these guys make fun of me.

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No, you nailed it.

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Excellent. Thank you for coming back on the podcast. Generally, when you come on, people run the opposite direction, but it didn't take too much to bar you back in it. In fact, you even contacted us saying, hey, you said you wanted us back, you wanted me back on the podcast. When's that going to be?

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What's the deal?

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This Tuesday? This Tuesday.

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And then he blew us off.

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I. I begged. You're right. That's how it happened.

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I wouldn't say beg. You were just like, come on, what's up? I thought. I thought we were. I thought we're doing this. And we're like, yes, right now.

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Attention to the last people.

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What's that?

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No, the last guy that complained that we said so he got all mad.

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Oh, see, he hasn't heard any of that. That's not live.

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That's not out yet.

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That's not out yet. In fact, he's missing all of the harshest podcast before this. So we're sneaking him in before no one else ever wants to come on this podcast again. So thank you for coming.

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It is. It is not our goal to, you know, piss everybody off. We're getting there. We're getting there.

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So, Anthony, we just got to do a quick follow up on one of our last episodes. We had a question about koi. To fill everybody in, we had a listener that works for a big greenhouse in the northern part of the States. They had a detailed problem about koi blowing up. All different types of problems of gills becoming red, red lines down the body, barbels swelling up into balloons, eyes popping out of their sockets. All kinds of. I mean, just a laundry list of crazy things. I've seen each. Some of these happen individually or maybe two of the symptoms happen, but not like, widespread. Every single scenario happening across all of their koi. So from the last episode, we reached out. I reached out to quite a few different experts of carp, koi and other experts, and we. I even contacted this gentleman on the phone, and we did a couple hour video conversation at the greenhouse after hours and went through with a fine tooth comb. And what exactly was going on? So what's happening with the fish is talking with the fish experts I talked to. Professional fish farmers have been doing this. Their whole life. And they said that that is absolutely one of the most extreme that they've seen. But they have seen it where bacterial infections absolutely cause all of the above. But the severity that they have, where it spreads across the tank just shows the bacteria blooming in rampant order that they have, bar none, compared to what they've seen in other places. So I contacted the gentleman and we went over the laundry list on the prior podcast. You can listen to the prior episode.

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That was a long list of stuff.

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It was a long list. These guys are fish experts. They have aquariums, they have small ponds on their own. But the person that is taking over this department, hasn't been working in this department for a long time, is taking over someone else's pet project. Went through and I can confirm, I'm certain I figured out the issue. The pond systems that they have are all working off of cleaned atmosphere, so to speak. The guy that was doing it before was doing water changes so often and so aggressive and all this. There was no surface area to actually have a full, rugged, buffered cycle. These tanks that they have are completely clean sides, clean sided tanks, no gravel. And all of the filtration and media that you'd expect and maybe a sump, maybe some type of box system, anything are just old sand filters that are not holding much cycle at all. I went through a relay of many, many pond systems and all of them are again kind of cookie cutter in between. And they're. There's just not enough cycle, not enough nitro nitrifying bacteria to deal with what they're doing. So they can have a few fish and be fine, but when they stock up and load up, it'll crash. And they're trying to deal with it, but it's not it does it. It crashes so fast that they're not able to keep up with their testing to actually follow how fast the crash goes. Their filtration system, their old school sand filtration system does not have UV filters. The other ones that have old UV filters, the UV bulbs are burnt out and they have old piping on the bottom that is gummed up and filled up with all kinds of bacteria. So the moment the ammonia spikes, they create a super bacteria and make all the koi blow up like a balloon with their different barbel issues, Popeye blood streaks, all different types of bacterial infections. So he's going to be revamping, taking out these old filters, adding UV sterilizers in case there's anything in the water and putting in media boxes, either some sort of Bed where he can put in limestone, different gravels and then maybe put live plants in the top to help pull out some of the ammonia and help boost the cycle in the ponds. And of course it's a greenhouse, so that makes another display for some of their semi aquatic plants that they could sell and actually make a media bed. So the people that were wondering in the prior podcast, that was very mysterious but very rare because if someone's going to have a ammonia bloom, they would be able to see exactly where the bacteria is coming from, clean it out. These old systems hid the bacteria in the bottom pipes and there wasn't enough cycle to maintain the boost and drop for a storefront that they were trying to do in these gallon, gallon containers. So very rare and extremely sporadic. And then the second part of it is I contacted where their vendor for their koi was. I'm not going to give names because I'm not about to try to slander a wholesale vendor, but it's a known vendor that as of recent has come under some scrutiny for certain diseases and koi herpes. I recommended to change their different sources and even contacted some of the friends that we, we know even gave information of Mr. Greg Bickel from Bickel Koi Farms in Iowa to have something that specifically with him. He hasn't had new stock from Japan or anywhere else that would be affected from a disease platform since like 2004. So he's been clean for over 20 years. His stock has only been his and completely clean in the United States from being picked 20 years ago. So they're looking for health and for, you know, grandma and grandpa to put a fish into their, you know, backyard pond. They're not looking for championship koi stock, so they don't have to import. So get somewhere local. And not that Greg doesn't have, you know, championship stock, but most importantly, they're looking for clean stock, not the imports. And they can't seem to find anybody that doesn't import. That was a big thing for the, for their concern.

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Now, did you ask them? I obviously know where it's at and stuff, but I'm assuming they're only running this system four or five months a year.

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Yeah, it's definitely started in the spring and get it, get it going. They were also doing different ammonia treatments on purpose to clean out what they figured would clean out the system and prepare it for the end of the year. But when you have this old rotten piping that just sits with the ammonia in it and you can't flush it 100% out. You already have this rotten gross packed piping in the bottom. You're putting the ammonia treatments in there and you're not actually flushing that stuff out. So you're making like this super toxin in the bottom pipe. So they're already taking care of that. But then again they start up in the spring, they get it going, they, they test, they have a cycle. They see the cycle in their small, you know, filtration sand filters don't carry much of the cycle and they add fish and it crashes so fast they can't even test it.

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So they should update their system and put like a thing so that they can drain out all the bottom pipes.

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Yeah, they're actually going to be cutting out those bottom pipes and completely replacing them. They're going to be putting in beds where they can actually have bacteria again for media, whether it's live rock, pot scrubbies, gravel, actually a bed for media. And they're also going to be putting new UV sterilizers across them because any, I mean, Derek, can you own a fish store? You know exactly how it comes in that when you have an area because again you're a thousand foot store in the middle of central Minnesota, you can't expect that all of your tanks could work in the back room for quarantine. So especially something like koi. You have a 10 foot display pond in the center of your store. If you're importing koi, you have to have a UV sterilizer on there just to be able to handle any of the ick. Any of the other diseases that would possibly go in there. Because that isn't in and of itself the quarantine that you would have to do because you only get one, one spot. This greenhouse is much the same way. They only get so many spots. They don't have a quote back room they could quarantine their fish in before they bring the display. They sell too fast.

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You know, just one other suggestion I would have for them. If they are going to revamp their piping system, it might not be a bad idea to put an air compressor unit on there, you know, an attachment so you can blow the lines out like we do up here in northern Minnesota for like our lawn irrigation. We have to blow the lines dry and that might be, you know, something they could do at the end of the year. Just blow that line dry and just let it sit there completely dry in that sitter and ferment and make all kinds of bacteria.

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So these ponds, they, they're varying from 90 gallons all the way to like 300 gallons ish in that department, because again, there's splay tanks for smaller koi and goldfish. So on the bottom they have drains just like your kitchen sink. So I said, well, you could just plug those drains and put a pump in the bottom and have that be the place you can pump it right into your filtration. And you don't even have to touch that piping at all. You can just block it off, not touch it. And then you don't have to replace the piping or figure out a way to bypass the piping. You just put a plug on it. And now you suddenly have a new sort, a new location, I should say, for your water to flow from.

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So see what happens.

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Yeah, that one I figured was going to get a lot of response, so I got to get that one answered right away.

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I just had somebody from southern Minnesota contact me on Monday. And they've had the same koi for 15 years. And she called, she goes, do you know anything about koi herpes? That's the first thing. And I'm going, that's funny you should ask. I said, we just did a podcast on that, so I know she'll be listening and stuff, but she's had the same fish for 15 years, and all of a sudden just the tank went to shit after all these years.

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Now, we did post the pictures from this in our discord. So if you want to check it out, you can go to aquariumguyspodcast.com bottom of the website. You'll find our discord. Otherwise, it's in the show notes. Give it a click, you'll find the picture in there. But this. Diseases that are symptoms, I should say, from bacterial infection are just that. We don't see any koi herpes in the fish that they sent us. Koi herpes is shown by these, you know, kind of gross, blotchy open sores. There's a whole, you know, gamut of things that you would see for different herpes viruses that you see in koi. This did not display that, especially when I brought to the professionals. They validated that for us. So that that helped. But I said, it doesn't hurt to take one of your dead species and have it sent in for testing, especially if this is a continual issue. But this one, it's pretty, pretty cut and dry. There's. You can look up a lot of different YouTube channels. We had Greg Wittstock in the podcast before. He has a fantastic YouTube channel, but you'll see that he goes up to these big ponds, even bigger ponds than this. And he sees that the problem is they're trying to do too much with too little. So you'll see a pond that they just have, you know, a small inlet, they'll push something through, you know, a sand filter. And there's just not enough biological filtration to do it. So what he'll go in and do is redo what landscapers should have done, because they don't know about a cycle, because they want a chemical treat, a pond. They go in and they make a natural bog. They put in all of the media, they put in a whole aquatic bed. They put in so much surface area to grow all that nitro nitrifying bacteria that that bog, without any other filtration, can handle anything that throws at it. When you're doing this, you could skip filtration altogether. You don't have to remove all the particles as long as you're finding a way that you can skim them or do water changes. The bigger part is when those particles break down, where's that ammonia going to go? What are you going to do with the toxins? And having the media, the surface area to build that bacteria in your pond is no different than your aquarium. The bigger you have, your bioload capacity, the better off you're going to be. And especially in a tank that you have to overload because it's a sales tank. Starting off heavy, boys. Starting off heavy. Adam, you got any updates so we can get into this podcast?

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Yeah. How's beta fighting going?

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I don't beta fight.

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Oh, that's not what I.

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That's good to hear. Happy to hear.

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I. I'm not going to go on my rant about everybody needs to go on and talk to their pet people. Because I'm hoping that you listen to the last one where I went on a tirade and.

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Yeah. How is your blood?

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Huh?

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How is your blood pressure?

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It's a little better now. I haven't been on here for a while.

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I. I thought I was gonna have to give you cpr. Last time you got going so goddamn good about things.

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It was. It's important things, Jim. I know it's important. It's light bulbs. And if they take away light bulbs and they take away something else, you watch.

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I have.

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The government does they just take shit.

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Derek and I just went to a koi show in Minnesota here. And on the way, I'm like, you got to listen to this podcast. And I played the unedited version. And if you guys want to Listen to the unedited version of any podcast. Join our patreon or Discord for 299amonth. You can listen to all of those episodes because that's really the only way, besides, you know, Daku's help here, of getting the podcast paid for. But I had you listen to it, and I think you actually, like, laugh so hard that they're like Coca Cola snorting through your nose a little bit.

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It was. It was pretty good.

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It was pretty funny.

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In fact. You were concerned. You're like, maybe you shouldn't air that one. Yeah, yeah, no, that's.

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It's a bit much.

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Yeah. You. You enjoyed Adam's rants. So if you want to see that unedited version of Adam going in a full coronary, give it a check.

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You just wait until the Pissy Aquarius starts.

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We're going to get that going. Yeah.

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For those of you are wondering, we're going to give Adam, like, 15 minutes of uncensored ranting, and we're gonna call it the Pissy Aquarist. And I got somebody working on the music for that, actually.

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Awesome.

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And anyway, the.

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I got the hosting already done.

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It was either. Either pay Adam a huge amount of money to start taking some, you know, trips to the medical field and get himself.

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I don't go to doctors.

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Get some medicine or maybe some psychiatric help or something, or some gummies. I don't know what we need to do for you.

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There is a doctor in chat that mentioned that they would provide Xanax. So I don't know how legitimate that is or if they're in Canada.

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I would rather just shoot Adam with animal tranquilizer just to see what happens.

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Don't shoot your friends with tranquilizer.

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Oh, God. It would be fun, wouldn't it?

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So is Xanax like ADD meds?

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Oh, God, I wish my wife was here.

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That's the case. That doesn't really work. It has the opposite effect. The only thing that I found out that really worked to calm me down is if I drank, like, 10 or 12 cans of Mountain Dew.

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Don't give Adam benzos. All right.

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Jesus Christ.

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Thank you. Chat for that one. Thank you.

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So if you drink 10 or 12 Mountain Dews, you calm right down, huh?

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Yeah, I get focused.

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And then what do you do after that? A little. Couple Red Bull chasers, maybe?

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Well, usually, yeah.

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And then your heart.

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But it explodes enough of. It's enough of things that, like, I decided I probably shouldn't do, like, really hard drugs, because if bad things would probably.

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I Think it would be fun to see you on some mushrooms, actually. And I would. And I will be willing to sit there and watch you and film you and sell it online for just fun.

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Wow.

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See if you can do better than the octui girl.

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Well, I.

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The, ah, to me girl's awesome, isn't she?

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Can we. Can we just let that meme die, by the way? All right.

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No, I want to know who her.

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Dad is and how embarrassed he is.

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Apparently her dad's a pastor is what I read yesterday. That's about.

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Right?

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And then I read that she lost her job. And then I read she didn't lose her job, but the past person that brought it to the attention of the boss lost the jobs. I don't know. Anyway, it was hilarious.

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That said.

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Yeah.

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And.

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And the other one, she didn't. She didn't get enough attention for is they. They said, how do you get over an old boyfriend? She goes, well, you. You can't get over an old boyfriend till you get under a new one.

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I know.

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Okay. All right, let's get back on awesome.

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What? Oh, is that why we're here?

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Yeah, let's get off of old boyfriend.

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I thought it was just therapy.

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And let's get back on fish. All right. So, Anthony, God damn it, save me.

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Hi.

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Hi.

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Hi, friend. How you doing over there?

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Sleeping.

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Hi.

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Yeah, No, I regret everything so far. Let's get into it.

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Excellent, Excellent. Glad to hear it. So those of you that haven't heard the first podcast, go to episode 103. Anthony is. Has a fantastic podcast with us, telling us his secret and history of how he built his home breeding business. And how's that been going so far?

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Yeah, I mean, I think the last time I was on here, it was probably almost a year ago, and since then, business as usual. Working on a lot of cool projects with the rams, the rice fish, obviously the plants, and. Yeah, I'm just sticking to the plan. Things are going well.

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Wonderful. To start in the whole episode that we want to do with you is because the success that you have and the quality that you have of your rams, your ram cichlids. So I'd love to go on a deep dive, pick your brain and teach us beginners and advance on what we. What we should be doing and why we should be buying some of your German blue rams immediately.

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Okay, well, I'm far from the authority on this. There's been a lot of great people before me that have bred very nice rams and kind of paved the way. I like to consider myself the World's best copier. And that kind of goes into what I was saying in the last podcast about research, getting every all your ducks in a row before you dive in. But I'm breeding thousands of rams a year for the last five or so years. So I think I, I have it down now. And yeah, I'll gladly go into detail on however you guys want to start.

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Hey, just because someone else invented bread doesn't mean that yours isn't buttery, flaky, and delicious. All right? So.

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And I eat a lot of it.

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So you said thousands of rams, number one. What got you into ram cichlids?

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You know what? I think it was their personality. If you've ever bred rams or their cousin, quote unquote, apistos, their temperaments are totally different. If you stick a net into a ram tank, they pretty much swim right into it, or at the very least, they nip at it. If you do that with a, a pisto or another cave dweller, they're gone. You know, and so I think the temperament, you know, back in the horde collectoritis days, where you take in everything you think looks cool and then you kind of pick what you're interested in, that immediately jumped out at me. Just ram temperament and how cool they are and kind of interactive.

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So you found it at a store or you're buddy gave you a pair and said, bro, you got to try these out.

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You know, I can't. I can't remember my first pair of rams, where they came from. I probably ordered them online, you know, because I always wanted quality, even when I was just a hobbyist. So I think I probably saw a nice pair online on Aquabit or something and said, let me try them. I made sure my water parameters were right. We can go into that. You know, they're not super, super sensitive to water parameters, but there's a general rule where you want to keep them at. You know, it just dove in. It kind of went from there.

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Well, let's go with this walk. So you, you dive in and I love this from the, you know, a fish keeper's perspective. You dive in and you just say, hey, these look good. I. I know enough about aquariums where I can take at least a rep sheet and give this a go. I first get a tank ready, a cycle going. I'll Google, you know, a fact sheet, and I will trial and error from there. How did it go from your first pair?

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Yeah, it went well. I mean, because I knew, I knew what I was doing from the get go based off of the research that I have done, I rarely bring in anything that I don't know everything about already. So brought in the pair, had a 10 gallon planted, ready to go, set at 84 degrees. Made sure my PH wasn't super, super high. You know, by super high, I'm talking 8, 8 or over my TDS for my RAMs, I like to keep between 100 and 200. General rule, it can be plus or minus that too. But yeah, I brought them in, had a great time with them and I bred them with a, a medium sized breeder box. You know, pulled the eggs my first time and was successful. Don't know how because I still fail with eggs to this day.

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But we're gonna have questions. What do you mean breeder box? Explain that to some of the beginner Aquarius here.

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Yeah, so a hang on, breeder box for the people watching. You can see one in the top corner there. But basically it's a box that is attached to a air pump. The air pump blows bubbles through the uplift tube. So it continuously cycles the water on the outside of the aquarium. So you can keep baby fish away from the adults. Right. Or do other things with it. But that's generally the purpose. Once they laid the eggs for me, put it in the breeder box. Off to the races you go.

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Now, what did you have them lay eggs on? What's the best success that you have?

24:31.052 --> 25:03.854
You can use a lot of things. What I used originally were smooth stones, maybe 2 or 3 inches in diameter. Nowadays I use terracotta saucers, the 2 inch ones. And they're best purchased on either Amazon. I think you can get like a pack of 10 or hobby stores like Michael's or Hobby Lobby. They usually have the small ones. And the reason I go small, you can go as big as you want is because they fit in the breeder boxes. And eventually what I graduated to, which were my ram trays.

25:03.982 --> 25:06.910
Now what's a ram tray? What do you, what are you using for a ram tray?

25:06.990 --> 25:58.114
So my fry system is based off of master breeder Du Dean. His last name is Twidle Tweedle and he is routinely on YouTube on the aquarium co op page. He also speaks at a lot of clubs. I've seen one of his talks before and he actually does a talk on this fry system. So I, I use that as a blueprint. I made very few tweaks and it works really well. And it's essentially the same thing as a breeder box, but it's using a 20 gallon tank and fridge trays like what you would keep like produce in. It's a recirculating system. Kind of hard to explain in detail. But if you type in Master breeder Dean fry system on YouTube, there's a ton of tutorials that you can follow. If you're really interested in mass producing.

25:58.162 --> 26:08.644
Fish now, you're not using any type of, of chemicals like methane blue or anything to keep that you're just using. Are you just using the movement of the water to keep everything good or what are you doing?

26:08.732 --> 27:34.512
No, I. Yeah, no. A very little amount of methylene blue, usually a drop and a half a gallon. And that keeps the fungus away. That is a problem. Early on with the breeder boxes I didn't use it and I actually went in, I forgot what the tool was called, but it's a little tiny pick. It's like a hobby pick or something. And you can actually physically go in and, and scrape the fungus eggs away from the fertilized ones. And you can do it without methylene blue. But as I scaled getting in there every day and making sure that the fungus was gone and taking it out with a pipette, it's too much. So if you want a hands off approach with ram eggs or any fish eggs, for the most part angelfish, this works for too. Just a drop of methylene blue, a very light tinted blue water and you're. You have no fungus problems. And to remove it just as soon as they start wiggling off the tray, which is the first stage after laying the eggs, a couple days later they'll start wiggling and kind of releasing from where they were laid. You're just going to want to water change that out. And I see a lot of people do that slowly or over the course of a day or two, I just turn on the water and let it flush out right away. I mean so just for. I do and I don't have problems.

27:34.576 --> 28:43.614
Yeah. Just for people listening that haven't done a lot of the breeding before. The problems that people have with these fish eggs is they generally especially these egg layers that bunch all of their eggs together, one of those eggs die and then immediately when it goes, when it dies, it goes from opaque where you can almost see through it to almost like it was frosted. It's like a white egg. And that egg immediately starts growing a fungus on it as soon as it dies. And that fungus right away begins spreading to the good eggs next next door. And since they're all virtually sometimes even touching each other, it spreads and kills good eggs really quickly. So in a let's say angelfish. You have a great good pair of angelfish or a good pair of discus. They will pick off the dead eggs as they mature. That's how nature was supposed to intend to do it. But again, that's what Anthony was doing is taking like a dental pick, picking off the eggs. And it's very tedious process. So instead, if you have an egg that dies, that single drop or drop and a half, whatever measurement you use of methylene blue will prevent the dead eggs from fungusing up enough to spread to the good eggs before they hatch.

28:43.742 --> 28:45.790
So do you parent raise any of these or.

28:45.830 --> 28:46.174
No?

28:46.262 --> 29:00.894
Originally I tried and I had success with that, but I have a perpetual problem of being out of stock. So the more fish I raise, the more I have available. I never leave them in unless I miss a batch nowadays.

29:01.022 --> 29:12.858
Do you, Anthony, do you find that if you pull the eggs away from the parents that they will spawn again quicker? Because I know with my angelfish. Yeah, with my angelfish I can get.

29:12.914 --> 29:14.570
No, they will. Sorry, go ahead.

29:14.610 --> 29:25.950
Oh, I can go every 10 days Angelfish, you know, but if you leave them with the eggs, they'll spend so much time with the eggs, they won't. You know, I've actually had them lay eggs on the same slate with wigglers before, and that's frustrating as hell.

29:26.290 --> 30:08.178
Yeah. So I've had it go both ways. They will spawn quicker if they're in that zone where they're going every 10 days. That's about the same amount of time where you'll get two successful spawns back to back, you know, 10 to 14 days on rams. But I've also seen it go the other way where you pull the eggs too many times in a row and they're no longer interested in breeding. And there's. For me, there's no amount of conditioning with food temperature cycling that, That I can get them to go again. So when. When that happens, I'll separate them and pick new pairs. And I can always get the individual fish to breed again, but they won't do it in that tank when the eggs are constantly being removed.

30:08.274 --> 30:21.922
It makes sense. That makes sense because it's like they don't have that. They don't get to complete their cycle. So they just keep. They just. They either think that it's a tank or they think that it's this, the mate or something like that. So that actually makes total sense.

30:21.986 --> 30:22.370
Or the.

30:22.410 --> 30:39.258
You almost think about leaving one. Leaving them one batch in just so that they could re. You know, get that. And then if you have a really good producing pair. Instead of moving it, let them produce one batch. Even if you don't get the numbers that you want, you just, you know, I'm just saying that's what I would do. I would think about just because of the eggs.

30:39.354 --> 31:01.088
I've definitely had that thought. There's been times where I've, you know, this is the third batch in a month and a half and I'm thinking I'm going to leave that in. But I have an empty fry tray and I really want the babies. So I don't, I don't do it. And, and for me, you know, switching out the pairs is a lot easier than risking a hundred fish, you know, juvies, so.

31:01.144 --> 31:01.360
Right.

31:01.400 --> 31:02.272
I just don't.

31:02.416 --> 31:03.660
So have you.

31:04.280 --> 31:47.584
Sorry. Jim, tea time. One moment. So before we get too far, I just want to get a quick species guide on this and please jump in, Anthony, to correct me in any of this. So again, these are South American cichlids from the orange Orinoco river system river basin. They have a plethora of different colors but the originating color that they would be is a more of a gold blotches across the fins, black patterns with blue dots and maybe even red eyes for the traditional ram species that come native out of the waters. But that doesn't stop the gold, the blacks. And you'll explain more of the colorations later. These grow what, two, two and a half inches max that you see?

31:47.672 --> 31:48.944
Yeah, right around there.

31:49.032 --> 31:56.672
Two, two and a half inches max. And a pair works perfectly fine in a 10 gallon tank for its the majority of its life.

31:56.776 --> 32:02.976
Its whole life. Yeah, yeah. I mean I've done it in as small as fives but I wouldn't do that for their entire life.

32:03.048 --> 32:13.844
But yeah, they're omnivores and diet. But I'd still focus on doing protein especially if you're going to be, be breeding. But what do you feed specifically for yours for the best success.

32:14.012 --> 33:01.644
For success or long term care? I think it's pretty similar. I hatch baby brine shrimp every day. Even my adult rams get a little bit of baby brine every day. And then I kind of stick to high quality pellet food and some vibr bites too. So my, my favorite foods in rotation is the baby brine shrimp. Then I use extreme nano and then I use Fluval Bug bites, the light blue label, the smaller granule size and then vibrobites every so often. And you know, if I can get my hands on clean live food, I'll use that too. But not it doesn't, I don't need it. As long as you keep their, their diet diverse and you stay away from ultra high protein all the time, you're going to have, you know, good, good success with ram feeding at least.

33:01.732 --> 33:25.196
And then you said temperature that you keep yours 84 degrees. But on the opposite scale, if you're not breeding them and you want longevity, you can keep them at a comfortable 74. I've done it. But again, you're not going to get the full on breeding behaviors. You're not going to get the blast of colors unless you're doing water changes. If you want full behavior, heat is required. More heat is required.

33:25.308 --> 33:36.402
Yeah, that's right. I have, I have plenty of rams and display tanks. One in my living room. 80 or, sorry, 74 degrees. So, yeah, and they live a long, happy life.

33:36.506 --> 33:42.850
All right, so explain the breeding behavior for us actually, and then we'll get to Adam's question. Sound fair? Adam?

33:42.930 --> 33:43.970
I'm, I'm patient.

33:44.050 --> 33:44.978
Yes, you are.

33:45.114 --> 34:34.461
So breeding behavior is, is the male and the, the female really? It depends. Sometimes it's the male, sometimes it's the female. They'll start coming, congregating around that terracotta saucer, and you'll see them cleaning it, picking off gravel that they had moved or sand particles. And then the female's abdomen will start to noticeably swell. They'll start laying. The female will start laying the eggs on that terracotta saucer, you know, after a day or two, once you notice them really starting to heat up. And then the male will follow behind her, kind of in a, you know, like a train pattern, I guess. And soon as she lay the eggs, he comes right over top of them and fertilizes them. So, and then once that's done, you have a circle of, you know, up to 300 or so eggs on whatever surface they happen to breed on.

34:34.565 --> 34:46.864
Now let's say that you had company or maybe a second pair in the tank, and it was a bigger tank. How do they interact with each other? Are they territorial? Are they aggressive? When they start breeding, how do they interact with other fish that aren't their species?

34:46.912 --> 35:56.740
In this scenario, when they're breeding, they can be territorial to that specific area. You're going to get a lot of cons, specific aggression, which is ram on, ram aggression that's basically due, you know, if the tank isn't big enough and there isn't another area for another pair to kind of get away. My general rule of thumb for that is one pair per 10 gallons at in A heavily planted tank. Right. Or a lot of hardscape. You don't want these fish looking at each other while they're breeding. And then the only other fish you need to worry about in that scenario would be fish that like to hang out on the bottom, that are oblivious. Corydora are a great example. They'll just flop around all day on the bottom near the gravel and if they get close to the eggs, they're gonna, they don't attack but they'll, you know, they'll nudge and they'll pick. Rams do very little damage when they do target other fish, even when they target themselves. Even a ripped fin is extremely rare. Even in a fry tank, a grow out tank with all adults, they're nipping each other all day and there's really no damage. Occasionally, but not, not often.

35:56.860 --> 36:14.870
Now have you ever had the opportunity when you're breeding? I, I made this mistake one time with breeding angelfish and I had two females and a male cuz I was doing some water training stuff and you know what? He, both females laid at the same time and both were successful and he, he took care of both of them. Have you ever had two or three females and one male a tank and have him just take care of everybody?

36:14.950 --> 36:16.486
No, but that's a lucky guy.

36:16.598 --> 36:18.530
Yeah. Who wouldn't want to do that, right?

36:19.710 --> 36:22.054
Than it sounds according.

36:22.142 --> 36:23.286
Because Adam's done that.

36:23.358 --> 36:25.638
Adam, Adam, what was your question?

36:25.774 --> 36:29.030
No, I'm just, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna wait and listen. I'll, I'll chip in.

36:29.070 --> 36:34.126
I got, I don't know, I got a good one. Come on. I derailed you. Forgive me.

36:34.198 --> 36:40.430
No. So have you noticed that there's different clutch sizes with the different colors that you use?

36:40.550 --> 36:41.262
Different colors.

36:41.326 --> 36:45.690
This is where he leans in and goes. The black ones just have a big load, you know.

36:46.070 --> 37:04.422
No, no, I'm talking about like, like the egg. The, the amount of eggs is different for every like golds. I used to breed them and golds never seem to have as many as like the regular blue ones. Ones. The blacks, from what I've heard have, do not Reaper. Do not produce as much as like the regular blue ones.

37:04.486 --> 37:06.070
That is not what I would have guessed.

37:06.150 --> 37:06.550
Huh?

37:06.630 --> 37:15.126
That's not what I've guessed. I'm assuming like the albino would have like the worst success rate. One, because their DNA is terrible and two, when they actually do spawn, they're blind.

37:15.238 --> 37:22.454
No, the, from what I've understood, the black ones, they, they have like. I, I don't know. That's What I'm asking, I'm just wondering what it's like.

37:22.542 --> 37:59.174
Yeah, no, and, and I get your question. The only first of all, this is probably just me. Small sample size. The biggest spawn I've ever had was a pair of my black rams at about a year old. And the only time I see real differences in size of spawn, how many eggs is dependent on age. So a younger fish that is smaller, hasn't bred a lot, is going to produce a lot less than fish in its prime that's full size, fed well its entire life. I feed my rams three times a day.

37:59.262 --> 37:59.670
Wow.

37:59.750 --> 38:21.188
So they're big and they're ready to, ready to spawn when they do spawn. And yeah, I've had a black ram and I have videos of this from years ago on my, on my Instagram. It covered the entire 2 inch diameter terracotta saucer and the sides. It had to have been 500 eggs. I've never had anything close to that again.

38:21.324 --> 38:25.252
How's your success ratio on hatching of those on that?

38:25.356 --> 38:51.656
I had to split it between two fry trays and I've never done that before, ever. It was just a sea of black dots once they finally started free swimming. So yeah, I, I've never seen that. I've never heard of that. I've bred golds, powder blue, blue, black, German blue, different lines that I'm making myself and they're all pretty similar. They all breed about the same amount depending on their age and size.

38:51.768 --> 38:58.408
Did you save any of that black line that had that huge batch of eggs? Did you save any of the babies to try to get that again?

38:58.544 --> 39:16.210
Yeah, I mean I never, I never oversell. Right. I like to keep multiples of every batch just to see what I get and what I can produce later on down the line. I can't pinpoint which fish that came from, but they're definitely in here spawning still.

39:16.330 --> 39:41.898
So you should try to get like some marking tape and just mark the tanks and then try to keep your gene, your lines that way. I know some or even a glass marker and just like keep the lines that way, that way you know what the lines are and you know not to mix them with, you know what I mean? You can also keep track of it. Like, I know we all do it in our head like breeders do this stuff in their head. But sometimes it's best to just keep a, keep a track of something in case, you know, you get something really.

39:41.954 --> 39:43.450
Really cool if you.

39:43.490 --> 40:10.740
Yeah, no, I actually label everything very well. But that's not something I ever Thought to label for like large batch size in my mind, in my experience is how well conditioned they, they are and what size they are pre spawn. Right. So yeah, that might have been an anomaly and I should have made a note there. And maybe in the future, now that you bring it up, I will. So I appreciate that. So I don't think about that now.

40:10.780 --> 40:17.092
You're, you're a quality guy. You want to, you want to get the best, brightest and the best looking fish and the healthiest fish.

40:17.236 --> 40:26.972
Now Anthony, you're saying that you feed the fish three times a day. Now do you feed like pellets on Monday, something else on Tuesday, something Wednesday, or you give a variety every day?

40:27.076 --> 40:55.050
No, it's, it's power feeding. I do. I hatch and reset my brine shrimp system every morning. That's when I come through with the live food. And then when I get, you know, home in the middle of the day or I'm done working, I'll feed in the afternoon. Maybe, you know, 10 hours later, I'll feed a pellet food and then right before I go to bed, they'll get another prepared pellet food type deal. Or frozen food. Yeah.

40:55.390 --> 41:05.190
Now is there a certain hammer all day? Is there a certain time of the day where they will breed for you? Do they breed right away in the morning? I know with my angelfish they would always breed late evening.

41:05.270 --> 41:28.164
Yep. It's at night. And if I see a really swollen female, I'll skip that tank and I won't feed it. That's a good point because when you feed them, all they care about is the food. It doesn't matter how food full they are, rams will eat themselves to death. And that's a big problem with the fry we can get into later. But yeah, skip that tank. If you see a really swollen female ready to breed, let them do their thing. Just walk away.

41:28.332 --> 41:32.228
Now, looking at your room, do you have any windows in your room at all?

41:32.284 --> 41:36.052
Yeah, there's one behind this rack that I blacked out with a blackout curtain.

41:36.116 --> 41:37.844
So they don't really know what time of the day it is.

41:37.932 --> 41:39.972
No, but I don't want the algae problems.

41:40.036 --> 41:40.308
Right.

41:40.364 --> 41:46.872
Half of this room is full of plants. Right. I don't want, I don't want sunlight coming into tanks that I'm already lighting from above.

41:47.016 --> 42:13.074
Yeah. When I was raising angelfish in, in the basement, there was no lights except, you know, I turn them on in the morning and turn them off at night and it's just amazing how they, you know, 8:00 at night and the lights go off at 10. All of a sudden everybody's spawning like a son of a gun. And I also know, do you have any. Have you ever kept track of the heavy down pressures that come through your. Through your area, weather wise? Have you seen like you get a thunderstorm and you get, you get 10 spawns that night?

42:13.162 --> 42:35.178
I look for that all the time. I'm always trying to find out if the low or high pressure system is triggering fish and I never get conclusive proof. It just is happening all the time. Not all the time, but you know what I mean, right? There's nothing that I can pinpoint that it's like, oh, it's a thunderstorm, I'm going to have 50 spawns today or anything crazy like that, you know?

42:35.234 --> 42:55.162
Yeah, I actually had a barometer in my room that I actually kept track on a piece of paper. And you know, you. I was doing about 80 pairs of angelfish and you're getting three, four spawns a night and all of a sudden you'd have a heavy thunderstorm or a blizzard or something come through. And I think my biggest night was I had like 36 spawns. I was up till freaking 2 in the morning pulling, pulling eggs and I.

42:55.186 --> 42:58.470
Can take a 36 spawn right now. Yeah, I need it.

42:59.080 --> 43:09.072
So going over, we can go over colors as well, but we're gonna have questions if we don't already in the chat. I gotta review, but what's the difference between a German ram and a Bolivian ram?

43:09.136 --> 43:10.624
Bolivian rams are garbage.

43:10.752 --> 43:11.440
Hey.

43:11.600 --> 43:12.496
Yeah.

43:12.688 --> 43:13.660
Stop it.

43:15.080 --> 43:20.000
Yeah. You know, I, I actually never got too into Bolivian rams.

43:20.160 --> 43:20.672
Nobody.

43:20.736 --> 43:45.306
I always, I always looked at them as the less impressive ram version of German blue rams. I know that they're more comfortable in lower temperatures, but after doing it myself. So are German blue rams, if kept properly for the other, you know, parameter wise and feeding wise and stuff, you know, you can keep them lower without much issue. So I don't really know too much about Bolivian, so I'm not going to answer that.

43:45.378 --> 44:17.320
Well, since this is the podcast on rams altogether and I have less experience in German rams and more experience in and Bolivian rams, I'mma dive in. So for those of you that are listening and heard that the German rams, like the softer ph, Bolivian rams are the hardier version that like the harder. So if you have that rock, rock, liquid rock that De's fish company keeps talking about in their particular store, was what was your pH unmeasurable? 8.6.

44:17.360 --> 44:18.708
Averages 8.5.

44:18.764 --> 44:20.000
I think 8,5.

44:20.380 --> 44:23.188
It just said diamond this ram is for you.

44:23.324 --> 44:57.690
Now these rams grow a little bit bigger, slightly bigger than the German variety. So if you're going to get two, two and a half inches of the, the German, you're going to get two and a half, three inches out of the Bolivian. They have slightly more muted colors, but they again, if you get from a good breeder, you get a good line, you will get almost as equal to the German variety. And they have a lot more, more yellows and reds than the German rams do. But again, they typically a little bit more muted. They are more peaceful than the German ram. I wouldn't expect that being a larger species.

44:57.770 --> 44:59.322
Yeah, but Germans are mean.

44:59.506 --> 45:35.900
But again, when they're breeding, it doesn't matter. They're still going to defend their, their territory just the same as a German ram. They generally come from, from the Amazon river basin, which is again from the Brazil and Bolivia areas, which is why they get those names. Now. They're supposed to not be able to cross spawn. I have not seen them ever cross spawn. They said that they're safe to mix in a tank if you want to. However, does that mean they, they could. I don't know. Maybe. You'll be that one lucky guy, will you? You'll see it attempt. But even when artificially attempted. I'm sorry.

45:35.980 --> 45:38.044
And then throw all the hybrids in the garbage.

45:38.172 --> 45:51.004
Even when attempted. People have said that hybrids don't even, for lack of a better word, germinate if you will. The eggs don't even take. If you know of someone that's done this, love to know it because I've never seen it ever.

45:51.092 --> 45:59.884
Hey, hey. This actually fits into the whole IFIX science. If it doesn't breed and produce viable babies, it's not a species.

46:00.012 --> 46:07.630
Yeah, but again, that's where we get the ligers. The, the, the was it jackasses. The, the blended species.

46:07.790 --> 46:12.558
But species are mules. These won't even take again.

46:12.614 --> 47:08.576
I've never seen it take. I've heard people say try and it's, it's, it's dead eggs. So I don't, I don't know if you've seen otherwise. Again, I'm not a hardcore expert in these. I've had quite a few Bolivian rams because that's the ones I'm going to be ordering over the German rams because again, I, I deal with a lot of liquid rock water, so I know I can do it, but I'm gonna have to mix the ro and remineralize if I'm going to be doing these for the Best results. I can do it. Because again, the especially getting quality rams from a source like Daku Aquatics, I'm going to have a much better luck than if I go say like a shitty Petco and get whatever they got for the week and bring them home. And they just ended up being some wild species that was just dropped off and not really acclimated and then they crap out in two weeks. You know, having something that's handra hand farmed by an aquatics expert is going to be much better than if I have to order in wild specimens from anywhere else.

47:08.688 --> 47:21.024
Just so you know, actually paid Jim a ton of money for wild rams once and I got like a dozen of them. Jim, you remember that because you laughed at me as I gave you that. That big amount of money.

47:21.112 --> 47:23.134
Yeah, because they were not cheap at all.

47:23.302 --> 47:40.878
They were not cheap and they were the best rams that I've ever had. These wild ones, they bred in my hard water in northern Minnesota. Like I put 1 gallon of RO in a 10 gallon tank and they had babies. They were the best things ever.

47:41.014 --> 47:45.374
We've even had black rams spawning in the store. Even with our garbage water.

47:45.462 --> 47:46.046
Yep.

47:46.158 --> 47:46.734
Yeah.

47:46.862 --> 48:31.552
So again, I would not be so focused on parameters as I would be where the source would be coming from. Always. I have discus in my hard water. You know, that just shows that where they're from, where they're acclimated matters more than what some sort of Wikipedia page tells you. But again, rule of thumb is if you want to have specified colors, Bolivian slightly larger by a half inch on average. And if you want best blues, blues are the Germans. If you want the pinks or the reddish with a slightly more muted Bolivians I have to go through. Sorry, Anthony. I gotta make sure we're, we're getting some of these questions. And let me tell you, the, the chat here is getting really excited that we're going to be talking more about Apistos in the future. Apparently we brought a lot of Apisto fans this evening.

48:31.616 --> 48:32.960
I didn't know there was so many.

48:33.080 --> 48:38.928
I, I'm shocked as well. I definitely knew there was Ram fans, but I didn't know there was big Apisto fans.

48:39.024 --> 48:44.092
So people are kind of cultists. So they're, they're nice people people. They're just kind of cultists.

48:44.236 --> 48:45.884
They're the, they're like dedicated.

48:45.932 --> 48:47.836
They're almost as bad as killifish people.

48:47.908 --> 48:52.924
They're like wine sniffers that don't actually taste, you know, they're just, they creep me out, but I get their passion.

48:52.972 --> 48:55.068
Oh, they Just put in their mouth, swish it around and spit it out.

48:55.124 --> 48:56.480
No, that's even weirder.

48:57.460 --> 48:59.004
That's your ex wife, Jim.

48:59.132 --> 49:01.120
No. What do you put it in her mouth?

49:02.900 --> 49:06.332
All right, I'm sorry, I'm talking about wine.

49:06.396 --> 49:07.720
I don't know what you're talking about.

49:08.510 --> 49:17.302
Wow. Okay, I'm just gonna skip these. It says Kanye's new product, rock Water. All right, never mind. I thought you guys had better questions for me, so if you guys got.

49:17.326 --> 49:20.214
Better questions, I have some questions for Anthony.

49:20.342 --> 49:21.462
Let's, let's make it happen.

49:21.566 --> 49:31.910
The. One of my, my distributors from overseas always constantly selling the balloon variety of the rams. Have you ever dealt in those?

49:32.030 --> 49:48.008
Oh, shivers down my spirit. Fine. Those are in my opinion calls and I just hate them. I hate the way they look. I. It's just not my thing, man. I respect people, I like them. But dude, no, yeah, I mean, it's.

49:48.024 --> 50:11.310
Just the amazing amount of balloon fish. I mean, there's shorter version, bigger belly. I mean, even the dwarf gouramis are pretty funky looking and it all depends on what you like. But I mean, I know they have four varieties of colors now on these balloon rams and stuff. And some of the gold ones are absolutely freaking beautiful from the pictures and stuff. But of course you, you get them in and they don't look anything like that.

50:11.610 --> 50:34.130
You should look at some of the pictures. If you just give it a Google guys and just type in balloon German ram and look at the Google image results. It is dysmorphic and I mean, adorable. But you can definitely see why a, a breeder like Anthony, it makes him shiver. It takes a normal, good bodied specimen and turns it into like a, I don't know, obese 50 cent piece.

50:34.210 --> 51:08.332
Yeah, I think I'm really, I'm really partial to body shape because that's one of the biggest things that I breed for. I like a nice torpedo shape and that is above most things. Like one of the most important things I target for my rams. So seeing shortened bodies and, and stuff, and you get those occasionally just not quite as, you know, pronounced as the pictures you're posting here. Like those, that last picture kind of looks like a ram discus, but, but you know, it's just not something that I target and when I see it, I don't like it.

51:08.436 --> 51:25.904
Yeah, One of the first things I, I fell in love with for the short bodies is I used to order them and they, they're called angel rams and they're some sort of hybrid and basically we're kind of like the balloon ones. But they called them angel rams for some reason. And nobody would ever come across and say what they actually were. So they were hybrid.

51:25.952 --> 52:27.588
Actually those. Jimmy, those were rumored. No one's been confirmed because no one took the time because they came out in a burst. And I think they got in trouble. The rumor was. This is a conspiracy here, guys. That somebody in a laboratory literally crossed the species of taking a German blue ram and an angelfish and cross them. Much like they did the laboratory results of mason like Glofish. And they did it overseas to see what type of dysmorphia they could have. And since they were from similar bodies of water, they. They thought they could get lucky. They got them to breed true and then started shipping them out on wholesalers lists. Once the first batches got out, the people that did it got in big, big trouble for a while. The whole thing got nipped in the bud again because it's a subpar species. None of nobody really took it seriously to keep enough pairs going to keep the lineage going. But that is the rumor that somebody in a lab crossed them and got them breeding true enough to do at least a few batches wholesale out of a country.

52:27.644 --> 52:28.720
They're still available.

52:29.020 --> 52:36.180
The skew's available, but not necessarily the true batch. Now they're just shipping balloon rams and calling them angel rams.

52:36.340 --> 52:37.700
They're beautiful. I loved them.

52:37.740 --> 52:55.626
Right now, am I buying this? I don't know. The ones that you got in were damn convincing because they were much bigger than a normal ram. They were flatter bodied than a normal ram. I'd be damn convinced that. At least pushed to be convinced that that could be possible from seeing them in person like I did with you, Jimmy.

52:55.658 --> 53:01.658
Well, there's always some mad scientists somewhere developing something that's just gonna piss off people or make people go, ooh, that's cool.

53:01.754 --> 53:18.244
Now you did get a bunch of balloon rams in and I did get a few from you. And I actually had a quite a few balloon German rams live in my tanks for a very long time. But they had a shortened lifespan. I would have digestion problems and they would eventually die much quicker than a.

53:18.252 --> 53:20.680
Normal ram crammed into a tiny little spot.

53:21.180 --> 53:45.848
Yeah, just give people an idea that if you're gonna get these even when you're having in good conditions, they're just. They're gonna have a problem. Like you buy a dog with a crushed in face like a Pekingese or a puppy pug. You're going to have, you know, air issues. You're going to have other issues in Its lifespan. It's going to be a general shorter lifespan than you would, say, a golden retriever, you know, something that wasn't purposely morphed into cuteness.

53:45.944 --> 53:54.504
Have you taken wild caught ones and crossed them with any of your strains just to try to liven up the amount or anything like that?

53:54.592 --> 54:23.660
No, I've. I've been offered batches of wild German blue rams, but I never got my lines ever to a point where I felt like I needed them. I don't have a lot of, you know, issues with culling for body shape and. Or anything like disease or, you know, things that you would consider inbred traits. So I decided to never do that. And instead, what I do is I'll take mo. I have different lines of each fish branching out out here.

54:23.700 --> 54:24.044
Okay.

54:24.092 --> 54:45.500
And I'll take a German blue ram from this batch and cross it back to this batch. And that is enough for me to keep the quality high without a lot of deformities. And when you go all the way back to a wild fish, you have to build back all those colors, you know, and that's not something that I want to deal with.

54:45.620 --> 54:48.690
Question from the audience. How big do you let them get before you sell them?

54:48.780 --> 55:14.540
About an inch, Inch and a half. I. I like to be at an inch and a half. I have a lot of people that'll message me and just want small fish colored up as. As soon as they're sexable, I. I'll start selling them. They're safe to ship and, And. But, you know, really like the. When at an inch and a half is where I really like to say, okay, these are ready. But people just, you know, bang down my door and I just sell them because they. They ask for them younger.

55:14.670 --> 55:17.984
Well, how do you. How do you sex your rams? Cough twice?

55:18.112 --> 56:30.526
Yeah, exactly. No. So there's a lot of info about this online, and really, I don't follow any of it because it's so hit or miss. A lot of people say look for the dorsal extensions on the frays of the male rams. And I mean, I posted a video today with a female with ha that has higher dorsals than the male she's paired with with. Right. So, and then there's. And there's so many other traits that you can really misgender them with. The best way that I can sex rams is body shape. Like, the length of the body on a female will always be shorter than a male, as, you know, from nose to tail and a more round midsection on the female. Even, even not breeding you can just faintly see. It's really easy when you have 100 or 200 in a tank to pick out which one's different than the other one. Right. So body shape, body length and swollenness of the abdomen are the two guarantees that I can, you know, successful successfully sex for.

56:30.678 --> 56:36.212
And at what age are those at? Because, I mean, if you're feeding three times a day, they must be some pretty young fish at that point.

56:36.316 --> 56:49.396
Still, I'm looking now at the youngest sexable spawn behind me. They're literally to my right here, March, at about three months. I can reliably sex them at just under an inch.

56:49.508 --> 56:50.276
And so you could.

56:50.348 --> 56:51.460
That's also practice.

56:51.540 --> 57:18.256
Right. But you could purchase these from Anthony and still have a very long career with a pair of, of these cichlids. Because I know a lot of the times people like myself very impatient and I want to get fish, I want them breeding in three weeks. I don't want to sit there and grow them up and feed them and condition them and stuff. But then at that point, like where I buy the large angelfish, they're probably already a year and a half old, you know, and half their, you know, longevity of spawning has already been passed.

57:18.368 --> 57:33.588
Yeah, for sure. I, I love starting with younger fish. Even me, when I started. And when I do bring fish in, not rams, but other fish, let me grow them out, let me see the traits develop and then pick from there. That's always my preferred method.

57:33.684 --> 57:39.652
That's Adams, too. Adam always loved to buy the younger fish and let them grow up. I'm too.

57:39.756 --> 57:44.960
I do have a question and we can, we can edit this if we have to. No, no, it's not that bad.

57:45.820 --> 57:49.280
We're all sitting here holding our breath, going, do you fight Bettas on the side?

57:49.830 --> 57:50.570
No.

57:51.030 --> 58:02.014
Oh, somebody put a picture of Oblivion. That's Rob's. But the question is, is so out of your, out of your sexed ones. First of all, how many generations are you into with your lines?

58:02.142 --> 58:03.598
Six or seven, maybe.

58:03.694 --> 58:05.486
Okay, that's actually pretty good.

58:05.558 --> 58:05.790
So.

58:05.830 --> 58:13.770
And that's why I was wondering about the outcrossings and everything. If you've ever. And you haven't had to. So you have six or seven generations for every line? Just about.

58:14.070 --> 59:36.090
No, well, no, not every line because I brought branch off the, the original fish that I started with. It's six years. So let's try and do the math there, right? I can get fish spawning, really spawning in probably five or six months. So let's call it two spawns a year, right? Per two generational spawns a year, so maybe eight to ten. I would say on the. On the first gen of fish that I brought into the room, but there's been additions over time. Not many, but like, I brought in. What did I bring in? I brought in a different line of blacks probably four years ago. So those are only six maybe out. Right. So, okay. But you know, just to continue real quick with that, I'm also not super strict on keeping them separate because I'm breeding for my own lines and what I want. I don't subscribe to the marketing stuff. I don't breed Black Knight rams or, or this specific line I have. I breed rams for the colors that I want and the shape that I want. And if you. If you want fish from me, go on my social media and look at the fish that I make, right? That's. That's what I'm into. I'm not into keeping lines pure. And I want healthy fish and big batches. That's my goal.

59:36.170 --> 59:57.690
Like that. And then the other question I had was, out of your batches of babies, what. Have you noticed that the sexes are for the babies? Do you notice a more male female skew with the pH? Or have you tried messing with that at all to see if you can get more males and females? The reason why I hate all the Asian breeders. I don't hate Asian breeders, but I dislike Asian breeders.

59:57.770 --> 01:00:00.550
Holy crap, Here we go. Hold on.

01:00:01.500 --> 01:00:03.760
You can edit that to make that real bad.

01:00:04.860 --> 01:00:24.036
Yeah, okay, whatever. The reason why I don't like them is because they use hormones for everything. So you get these goddamn bleached out males and then they're like, yeah, they're really pretty for like a month and a half, and then, oh, then they're garbage for the rest of their life. That's why I wanted to make. I was just wondering if you tried messing with anything.

01:00:24.068 --> 01:00:27.000
Yeah. Are you juicing, Anthony? Are you juicing?

01:00:28.020 --> 01:00:52.212
None. None of that. And I mean absolutely zero. I have zero interest in juicing fish to get prettier fish. I. I'm all about breeding natural fish that look dope that I'm excited to work with. I. I don't even know how I would introduce hormones to change their colors or genders. That's crazy. Have you.

01:00:52.356 --> 01:01:07.892
Have you noticed, though, that what I'm. The other question I had was, have you noticed? Because I've. I've seen this in some. In some other South Americans, if you mess with the ph and the acidity of the water, you'll get either more Males or more females from that batch of eggs. Have you noticed that with yours?

01:01:08.036 --> 01:01:17.204
So I've actually noticed that before in Apistos I bred Pisto cockatoides and it was temperature based. I never.

01:01:17.292 --> 01:01:18.040
Interesting.

01:01:18.780 --> 01:01:55.730
Yeah. I never mess with my parameters, so you can consider that a constant here. But if you drop or raise the temperatures on the Cockatoidi species, you will vastly change the amount of sexes that come out. I stopped breeding Apistos for a number of reasons. One of them was my limited space in my fry system that I keep at 84 degrees. And if I spawned a batch of Apisto cockatoides and raise the fry artificially in my fry system at 84 degrees, the spawn is 100% male every single time.

01:01:56.910 --> 01:02:16.398
You don't even get like a hot female. I know in leopard geckos they get, they get what's called hot females where it's a female leopard gecko that is, that comes out at a, at a male's temperature and then she acts like a male, she looks like a male, but she's a female. Will not breed. But it is a, it is a female female leopard gecko that just beats the piss out of everything.

01:02:16.534 --> 01:02:34.382
Yeah, no, I've never seen that. I've. I've been so upset thinking I got this 2, 200 fish in a grow out tank. I'm gonna sell trios. It's gonna be great. All males. You know how hard it is to get rid of 200 male epistogramma?

01:02:34.526 --> 01:02:35.438
It's hard.

01:02:35.574 --> 01:02:36.930
It's just two flushes.

01:02:38.350 --> 01:03:31.762
I think I dropped off half the tank to one of my fish store friends and just said, here, I need the space. You can sell these as centerpiece fish. Because I. No, never again. And there's more reasons we can go into that. But I was texting earlier with some of the people in the discord. The number one reason I don't breed the majority of Apistos anymore and I've bred a lot of them is because once they reach a certain age and it's not very old cold, they beat hell out of each other. They rip each other's fins completely off. I mean, there's nothing but a body swimming around in the water. It is wild. It's wild to see. It doesn't matter what you do. There's a certain age with some types of Epistos McMasteri especially that. I've noticed it here. They are just deadly at once they reach that maturity, maturity, age and it's bad news. I will never breed those again.

01:03:31.866 --> 01:03:32.130
No.

01:03:32.170 --> 01:03:36.450
So You're. So you're. You're getting 50, 50 ratio, then about, I'm assuming.

01:03:36.530 --> 01:04:10.080
Yeah. Yep. 84 degrees. With my water, my exact parameters, which is my tap water, by the way. That's another reason why I picked rams. I've perfect city filtered tap water. 6.5 pH, 80 TDS when it comes out of the tap. Right. It sits about 120, 150 in my tanks. But at 6.5 pH, 100 TDS to 200 TDS and 84 degrees, 50, 50 almost every time, you know, plus or minus a couple. But you're getting plenty of males and plenty of females.

01:04:10.500 --> 01:04:26.410
Now, Anthony, what are people. When they contact you, are they saying, I want a pair or I want 20 little ones? What are people looking for? Because, I mean, this is. This is your business. You're making money doing this. Other people are listening, trying to figure out how to. How to duplicate what you do and run you out of business.

01:04:26.530 --> 01:04:27.706
So don't do it.

01:04:27.778 --> 01:04:30.442
Don't do it, people. But there is no.

01:04:30.546 --> 01:05:06.538
This is why he's brave enough to come on the podcast is because he knows how much work this is. Just a little hints that you get. Every morning I wake up and I restart all of my brine shrimp hatcheries. And then every day, I feed three times a day, each one of my tanks. And then I used to pick with a dental. With a dental pick of all the eggs of my stones, of all the eggs laid on guys. The reason that he charges the small amount that he charges is because it's a lot of damn work. All right? There's. There's no secret here. He's just telling him what it was, his success. The secret is he put in a lot of damn work, time, effort, and trial and error here. If you want to do the same, good luck.

01:05:06.634 --> 01:05:10.762
So what do you got? What are you guys doing? Are you selling individuals? You selling pairs? A little bit of everything.

01:05:10.866 --> 01:06:09.966
I sell my rams two ways, in a pair or in a five pack, and the five packs go away the second I get down to lower stock numbers. I don't have an exact, you know, number, but basically, I'll sell you a pair, two pairs, three pairs, four pairs, whatever you want. Or I'll sell you a five pack and a five pack. You're guaranteed two of each sex, and I always send one of what I have more of at that specific time. That's the only way I'll sell my rams. And like I said, the five packs are only very early when they're young. I've got 2, 300 in that batch ready to go. You want to buy five? I'll sell you five. If you ask me for three females, two males, and I have 300 of them, I'll always try to accommodate. Right. A lot of people think extra females is going to give you more chance of success. Sure, I'll definitely try. But it's, it's on my website. I tell you straight up, I'm extremely transparent with everybody that comes comes to me. Two fish, one extra of the one I have more of.

01:06:10.038 --> 01:06:33.090
That just makes total. That's just total business sense right there. Because if you've got some people will call and say, I want 30 females or, you know, I mean, like when I, when I do it, when I purchase guppies and stuff, if I can get extra females. Because sometimes when they're selling those pairs and one or two die here or there and they have extra females, that's what I'm always looking for. I know. That's what Derek's looking for too.

01:06:33.270 --> 01:06:57.626
Yeah, no, I, I just, I can't do that and then not be able to sell the 30 males. Right. As a pair. Because people mainly want to buy two fish a pair to spawn or, you know, when a male and a female are in a tank together with rams or most fish, you get the most vivid colors and you get the breeding action and it's more entertaining to have both sexes together. Right.

01:06:57.698 --> 01:07:03.190
So what is your number one color seller? Is it the German blues or people looking for the more exotic blacks?

01:07:03.270 --> 01:08:05.794
Yeah, I'm probably an anomaly because so my social media has gotten so big over the years that people come to me for very specific things. And my black rams are, are pretty different than the majority of what you get out there. So when those are available, they're gone really fast. Right. But I would say it's a pretty even mix overall. What the worst sellers are the golds. I will say that the goal and, and that's crazy to me. And I think it's kind of, you have to see it in person type of fish because the pictures just don't do them justice. I think if more people saw them in person, like when I do a convention, for instance. Golds. Golds are really hot sellers. They're a little bit cheaper. People feel like they can kind of get their feet wet with them. But when you're, when you have a beautiful, beautiful German blue ram, a black ram, a powder blue ram, and then you have a gold ram and you don't have the beautiful orange head yet on the mail, it's kind of a harder sell online, so. But they all sell pretty good. I mean, there's no. I can't say besides the golds, that there's any one outlier.

01:08:05.922 --> 01:08:16.344
So are there any new colors on the horizon? I mean, I know people always looking for new colors. I know I've talked to you off the air, and I know you're got a couple things going on. Do you want to talk about any that?

01:08:16.432 --> 01:09:45.686
Sure, yeah. I mean, so what's really interesting here right now, and I've been posting a lot about it on my Instagram at Daku Aquatics, if you're interested, is my blue. I'm calling them Blue Black Ram. I don't go by the marketing terms. I really have just work on my own lines. And when I find something that I like and I breed a lot of them, I tell you, I put them on my site, is what color they are and what I think is cool. Right. So these are my new blue black rams. I don't know how I got them this iridescent blue on the sides. I. I did not cross it with an electric blue ram. This is the same line of my black rams that I've been breeding for maximum black, maximum blue for five, six years now. And they are just insane. The females especially are. Are iridescent blue on the sides. And I just got a spawn that hatched. I'm looking at the label 1118, so last November, that I've been just now pairing off and spawning that are insane. I mean, they are the most exciting thing in my fish room for me right now. And I'm hoping to be able to get those out to people. Probably early 2025, if you're looking. I have a lot of people in the DMS already, you know, hitting me up pretty hard. And everyone gets the same answer. 2025, best case scenario, early 2025. Right. So, yeah.

01:09:45.718 --> 01:09:52.342
So that's probably your first tank. When you walk into your fish room, what is the first tank you look at? I mean, I've got my favorite tank that I always go look at. What?

01:09:52.446 --> 01:09:53.718
Jim said a bad word.

01:09:53.814 --> 01:09:54.950
What you got to check.

01:09:55.030 --> 01:10:02.632
Oh, favorite. I shouldn't say every morning. Yeah, I know, but I mean, what's the first one you go to them? Do you have a favorite pair that's. That's really personable?

01:10:02.776 --> 01:10:06.088
You're making him break the rules here, bud.

01:10:06.144 --> 01:10:12.660
Do you have a. Do you have a tank? Do you have a tank that's full of glass dildos that Robbie put in?

01:10:12.960 --> 01:10:33.390
Yeah, yeah, that's the tank I go to every morning. No, really, there's so much going on here. I, I do it methodically. I bring in the brine shrimp after it's hatched. I check for eggs. I pull the eggs if they, if there are any. And I have space at my fry system. And then I just go about my day. I'm really methodical with it.

01:10:33.770 --> 01:10:37.590
So people don't believe me that we sent you an aquarium dildo. Where is it, buddy?

01:10:40.650 --> 01:10:43.618
I'm not going to show it, but I think. No spot.

01:10:43.714 --> 01:10:44.990
No need to show it.

01:10:45.290 --> 01:10:48.482
Yeah, you don't need to go into your bedroom and show it. It's a magic drawer.

01:10:48.546 --> 01:10:49.938
It's a, It's a low tank.

01:10:50.034 --> 01:11:06.412
I had to hide it. I had to hide it. My mom. Remember in the last episode I told you guys about cleaning my fish room closet and we found the dried up still hidden. And, and that. Yeah, that, that was bad. That was a weird conversation with my mother and my family.

01:11:06.596 --> 01:11:07.404
Fantastic.

01:11:07.452 --> 01:11:09.580
It's not something I wanted to go into.

01:11:09.700 --> 01:11:11.868
You, you are welcome for that.

01:11:11.924 --> 01:11:12.780
You're welcome.

01:11:12.940 --> 01:11:15.276
Thank you. I appreciate it. All three of you.

01:11:15.348 --> 01:11:28.908
Excellent. We'll. We'll send you the latest lineup I did in the last podcast of how we're doing the dill tope. So I'll send you the dill tope package. It comes with a new glass butt plug. So you'll have to do an entire 10 or 20 gallon tank just for us.

01:11:29.044 --> 01:11:30.476
We're having a serious conversation.

01:11:30.508 --> 01:11:32.492
And then, Robbie, I'm just saying how.

01:11:32.516 --> 01:11:36.492
Great I'm actually being ha for once. And you go, and you go right to dildos.

01:11:36.556 --> 01:11:38.652
How great would it be being positive.

01:11:38.716 --> 01:11:42.780
And going on rants and here you are. I'm bored.

01:11:42.860 --> 01:11:49.354
How great would it be to see one of his, you know, a blue black line lay some eggs on one of them bad boys, you know what I'm saying?

01:11:49.442 --> 01:11:50.390
There you go.

01:11:51.010 --> 01:12:08.310
Anyways, going through the, going through the questions. We had one above here saying, do you ship to Canada? I, I can't tell you how many times this has been posted all day. I can tell you that if you use promo code Oilers, he'll block you from ordering ever again. So I can confirm that.

01:12:09.570 --> 01:12:15.538
Let's go. Let's go. No, I can't ship to Canada. There's a couple of reasons. One, it's illegal.

01:12:15.634 --> 01:12:16.510
It's Canada.

01:12:16.890 --> 01:12:32.338
Yeah. You would need permits. I would need permits. It doesn't make sense. I'm sorry. It just doesn't work. Not at the, not at the scale that I'M at huge. Corporations can get around it, but not. It just. You're not gonna find small breeders doing it.

01:12:32.474 --> 01:12:39.202
Now, here's how you do it. You have a friend in the States order them for you, and you go visit your friend in the States, I.

01:12:39.226 --> 01:12:39.858
Was about to say.

01:12:39.914 --> 01:12:47.010
And then you. And then you bring them back through border patrol. And if you're white, they'll just go and wave you through.

01:12:47.130 --> 01:12:53.298
If you're in the Winnipeg area, you let us know and Chris Biggs and I will see what we can do for you.

01:12:53.354 --> 01:13:30.494
Yeah, no, actually, that's funny you mentioned that, because last week somebody messaged me, said, hey, I'm from Canada. I'm close to the border. Will you ship it to a post office for pickup so I can drive over the border, pick them up and drive them back? And I didn't know what to say. Yeah, it tells me that sounds like I'm implicit. And so I told him, no, I can't do that. It was very sketchy, but I thought it was awesome that somebody's willing to drive into the US for my fish. I, I was flattered and if I could have helped them, I would have. But usually that's the Fed. Yeah, I'm not going to go into that gray area to get somebody some fish. I. I'm sorry. To that person.

01:13:30.582 --> 01:14:04.020
So I delivered up on the Canadian border, six miles from the Canadian border, and half their customers, because I was wholesaling to the pet store up there in Warroad, Minnesota, and they are right on the border and half their customers from Canada and they had no problem coming across, grabbing something and going back. Unless it was like, produce. If they bought strawberries or something, and it's over, then it's over. But they bring back fish that aren't gonna live up in their water. They don't care. And so I have heard a lot of people that have done that. And the pass. I'm not saying to do it, but I'm saying I have heard of people doing it. I've, I've done it. No problems.

01:14:04.100 --> 01:14:04.836
You smuggler?

01:14:04.868 --> 01:14:06.548
No, I'm not smuggling. I'm just selling it to the U.S.

01:14:06.604 --> 01:14:12.580
You know what I'll do when I go every time? I'll smuggle back kinders. That's about as bad as I get those kinder eggs. They're illegal in the United States.

01:14:12.620 --> 01:14:14.240
They have kinder eggs in the States?

01:14:14.540 --> 01:14:23.844
No, no, no, bro. They're not kinder eggs in the United States are, are a variant that are. Make them illegal in the United States. They're not the real kinders. So to get real kinders, I got to go to Canada.

01:14:23.932 --> 01:14:27.012
What is a kinder? That. That's those little egg candy things.

01:14:27.116 --> 01:14:28.276
Yeah. With the toy inside.

01:14:28.308 --> 01:14:54.976
So the idea in the United States, right. Is that if you put anything inside of food that isn't edible, that's illegal. But the idea with, like, a Kinder, like a wonder egg, this wonder ball, that whole thing is all banned, so. Because you had a toy inside of chocolate. So the United States is the only country that does this. So if you want the real. A chocolate egg with a toy inside. So what the United States has to do is that they put it in a plastic thing where the. Technically, the two pieces are separated so it's not really inside of. Of the egg.

01:14:55.088 --> 01:14:55.824
So over here.

01:14:55.912 --> 01:14:56.304
Around.

01:14:56.392 --> 01:15:01.040
Around it in Canada. So it was like, is it actually in the egg? And you chew on this thing and swallow.

01:15:01.120 --> 01:15:05.664
You have to break the egg and bite the egg open to get the candy or to get the toy on the inside.

01:15:05.712 --> 01:15:07.152
That sounds like a problem.

01:15:07.336 --> 01:15:19.668
I mean, the toys are big. I mean, there's no way you could choke on it. But. Yeah, like. Yeah, anybody that remember, like, the Nestle Wonder ball, that was the coolest. And the wonder Balls just with candy instead of candy. And that got banned. Like, damn Americans.

01:15:19.844 --> 01:15:24.964
This government overreach always ruins everything.

01:15:25.132 --> 01:15:38.692
It's over. All right, all right. Back to the. Back to the point on hand. So, no, he won't ship to Canada. No, he won't. If you tell him you're shipping to the address, keep the fact out that you live in Canada, and then he'll ship to you. All right. Wink, wink.

01:15:38.836 --> 01:16:06.392
That reminds me of those. Those guys that stole all the gold from the Canadian airport. And you know how they got busted? They got busted because they came across the United States and bought hunting rifles. The stupid. They didn't even buy anything illegal. They just bought hunting rifles enough to raise. And they paid for gold bars. And. And they went and they talked to a fed, and I'm like, sell. Steal 40 some million dollars worth of gold, and you dip shits get cast over a hunting rifle they could have got.

01:16:06.576 --> 01:16:14.160
Now, now we're ranting. So I did see a question here. I think we can wrap the. Wrap this up a little bit. Unless. Anthony, do you have. Oh, I got anything.

01:16:14.240 --> 01:16:14.640
Questions.

01:16:14.720 --> 01:16:18.304
Oh, Jimmy, Jimmy, get into your questions. First of all, let's go.

01:16:18.392 --> 01:16:26.000
Anthony's got beautiful plants. I'm just sitting here looking at them. They're gorgeous. You offer plants. Do you sell ship plants? With, with your, with your fish. Correct?

01:16:26.080 --> 01:17:12.172
Yeah. I mean, plant sales are one of my biggest parts of the business. I have a wide variety of plants. I tailor my stock to easy to grow plants that are going to do well for you. I used to be into the whole CO2 injection and high tech rare stuff. But you know, I have such a wide customer base and audience and especially rams where people buy rams and they want, you know, warmer temperature plants. I like to stick with the tried and true stuff. Java, ferns, you know, a, anubias, sword plants, different types of swords, crypticorns. And I have some other, you know, stem plants and stuff too. But yeah, plants are my hobby, man. That's a huge part of what keeps me going.

01:17:12.356 --> 01:17:26.308
So I've brought plants in from overseas and stuff and I have to take them and soak them in a five gallon pail for two, three days doing water changes. Now these plants that you're selling are in your tank and they're ready to go. You don't have to do any of that bs, correct?

01:17:26.444 --> 01:18:08.806
Yeah. When I, when I bring plants in, if I don't grow it myself, I sink them right away. I take the loss if there's any issues. That's another reason why I stock easy plants. When I first started importing and buying from distributors, I stuck with the plants that did well for me converting in my tanks. Right. Because I don't want to sell you something that is gonna die when you put it underwater. So you know, that goes into the customer experience aspect of what I try and do. And plants are huge. For me, it's probably 50% of my revenue is plants. You know, this is a ram talk today, so I don't want to dive too deep into that. But plants are a huge part of my business and hobby and it keeps me going, truly.

01:18:08.918 --> 01:18:31.838
I mean a lot of people don't realize that a lot of these aquarium plants are grown above the water and have not been in the water. So a lot of times you'll, you'll bring them in and you put them in the, in the tanks and they just, just shred and melt and crap out. So I mean if you, if you need some plants out there, Anthony's, they're, they're already submerged, they're already growing. His tanks are ready to go. You're not going to have any issues. So I'd highly recommend getting some, some plants.

01:18:31.934 --> 01:18:32.190
Now.

01:18:32.230 --> 01:18:35.262
What else are you working other than rams? What do you got going on outside?

01:18:35.446 --> 01:19:46.588
So I've got a rice fish factory, medaka, Japanese Medaka, Rice fish. I've been working on them for probably three years now. I've got four, four or five different lines. And I just got some crazy eggs from importer that imported them from Japan and they are gonna be the next big thing. They are like guppies if the guppy females also look like the males. There are so many crazy morphs coming out of Japan. They are 10 years ahead of us as far as what they're producing versus what we're producing over here. Here. But there is no hardier fish in the aquarium hobby. I breed them year round. Outside in South Florida the water temperature fluctuates from high 40s in the winter when we get those cold snaps all the way up to right now when it's 92, 93 degree. And they are just an egg factory when it's that hot it is insane. Insane. They are such a fun fish too because they're easy to breed. I have a lot of content on my social media about the rice fish and they are flying off the shelves too, which is awesome.

01:19:46.684 --> 01:19:54.444
Now looking at pictures of your little factory you've got it looks to be like how do they. 100 gallon tanks, stock tanks. 100, 110 gallons.

01:19:54.492 --> 01:21:25.772
Yeah. I use 150 gallon stock tanks outside and it's just air driven sponge filters. Kind of like the whole fish room inside. And green water. Because down here in South Florida there's no escaping green water. I don't do anything for it. The sun does it for me. And that's magic sauce that really helps the, the fry have microorganisms to eat constantly. I go out there, I only feed those systems once a day. I do baby brine shrimp when I have extra. But it's not like I'm out there like I, you know, baby the rams, those fish are just hands off and they do great unless you get a green heron come in and wipe out a whole tub. So that was the most brutal experience and I documented it on, on my Instagram and social medias. I'm on, you know, Instagram and Facebook and I thought it was the funniest thing. It was right around Christmas. And this little bird, if you google a green heron, it looks like a pigeon until that 2 foot long neck comes out of its body. I saw it eat a couple of fish. But what I didn't realize and why I didn't act sooner to cover the ponds is that it was eating a couple of fish every five seconds until there were almost none left. That's the one and only predator I've ever had and it wiped out a whole pond before I was able to get out there and take care of. I covered the ponds for a couple of days and it gave up and flew away. But that was a nightmare.

01:21:25.836 --> 01:21:31.880
Yeah, we have blue herons up north and they are the bigger cousin of that and they mow just as bad.

01:21:32.500 --> 01:21:46.272
So now recently you guys have had 3, 4 inches of rain an hour and stuff and do your tanks naturally overflow or do you have them drilled at a certain point so when God fills them up full of rain that it goes out on its own? Or how's that working for you?

01:21:46.376 --> 01:22:00.560
Yeah, just a 1 inch hole saw directly under the rim of the, of the stock tank. I drill right through it. When I set it up, I stuff that hole with sponge. Water goes out, fish stay in, never overflows over the rim.

01:22:00.640 --> 01:22:06.832
And you've had some tremendous storms down here just recently too. And you're saying you're getting like three or four inches an hour?

01:22:06.936 --> 01:22:33.370
Yeah, I mean I had empty ponds that I haven't set up yet that are full now that the world set up for me. So I'll need to add mineral into that because I, I keep them in my tap water like I do my rams. But rainwater, as you know, has virtually no mineral content. So I'm sure the PH is rock bottom. And so that's a project for another day. But I'll figure that out when I have some time to get out there and work on the new ponds.

01:22:33.450 --> 01:22:34.634
Great. What's that?

01:22:34.722 --> 01:22:42.280
I'm sorry, I just got a notification and I thought it was related to the, the podcast. Apparently Alibaba wanted to send me something anyways.

01:22:42.360 --> 01:22:45.112
Was that thong underwear? That's what it looked like from here, literally.

01:22:45.176 --> 01:23:02.488
So I, I shop on Alibaba for a lot of different things and I just popped up with like, oh, you, you're into fish things. How about butt enhancement cream? Anyways, moving on, we got some follow up questions. How do you package the rams up for shipping?

01:23:02.584 --> 01:24:18.810
Pretty simple. Them in a double bag. I make sure there's plenty of air. If there's any delays, I use about a solo cup full of water per fish. The boxes can get a little heavy that way. Less temperature fluctuation the better. There's not much in, in my experience in a lot of people use like styrofoam insulation which isn't sealed and it's just like boards kind of mashed together in the box. And I've tested it down here and I use 8th of an inch foam Insulation sheets that I encapsulate the fish in. And it does virtually the same temperature, you know, fluctuation as a styrofoam box does. So I do limit the times of year or the temperatures that I. I'll ship the fish to you slowly, and the slowest I'll go is two day air, so. And of course, he packs are free, Right? Right. I'm not nickel and diamond people. And. And that's pretty much it. It's not rocket science, but shipping speed and being sure to not ship to the frozen tundra in the middle of winter with one heat pack. You know, you got to be careful with rams. The rice fish, though, are. Are indestructible. Forget everything. Throw them in a bag and send them on their way. Snail mail. You got beautiful fish in a week. It's crazy nice.

01:24:18.890 --> 01:24:21.524
I think that was directed towards us about being cold.

01:24:21.652 --> 01:24:26.052
Yeah, yeah. He's trying to set the expectation with you, Jimmy, because he's sick of your.

01:24:26.156 --> 01:24:27.572
Oh, no, he likes me.

01:24:27.676 --> 01:24:28.692
All right, next.

01:24:28.796 --> 01:24:47.726
It's crazy. I was gonna say I said it in the last podcast. Every winter, the second you guys in the northern states get locked in, right. Snowed in, the. The ram orders and the plant orders, they start flying in. I'm like, guys, buy them like a month before it's negative two, and then we're fine. Right. Like, come on.

01:24:47.798 --> 01:25:03.006
Okay. There's only three things you do up here in Minnesota when it gets cold. Well, four, there's drinking fish tanks, the other f thing and tanks.

01:25:03.198 --> 01:25:12.478
All right, that's the problem is that nobody. Nobody pays attention to their tanks during the summer because we get Summer for 16 minutes up here. We're all outside, just going. It's nice out. Yeah.

01:25:12.494 --> 01:25:14.208
Derek, how's the slow season treating you?

01:25:14.264 --> 01:25:17.616
Actually, this year hasn't been too bad. Been keeping fairly busy.

01:25:17.728 --> 01:25:32.448
Good deal. I'll take it. Here's a good note. A solo cup of water. Now, that's a scientific measurement I've never heard of, and I got to say that that is my favorite scientific measurements, and I'm going to keep that, as in my arsenal, in my fish room.

01:25:32.504 --> 01:25:51.600
Hold on. Trade secret, real quick. The reason why I measure in solo cups is because if you use an inch under the rim of a red solo cup for. For. Because I do shrimp and stuff, too. Right? But anything. If you do one bag of shrimp, you can get it the whole box. Weight under a pound, and it ships cheaper.

01:25:51.760 --> 01:25:53.552
Oh, that makes total sense right there.

01:25:53.576 --> 01:26:10.004
My one inch under the rim of a solo cup and you're at like 15.9 ounces. And honestly, another trade secret. They really don't weigh your boxes, so you can get away with a couple ounces here or there if you go over.

01:26:10.172 --> 01:26:15.188
All right, next one is what temps are your rice fit sitting at right this moment?

01:26:15.284 --> 01:26:22.660
I'm not going to go outside because it's probably raining or 100% humidity, but I checked earlier this week, and they're in the 90s right now.

01:26:22.700 --> 01:26:35.286
All right, follow up question. How does your tank water taste right now? Go, oh, oh, oh, yes. With a straw. All right. So very mineralist, you know.

01:26:35.428 --> 01:26:45.890
So when you, when you ship your shrimp, how many shrimp can you get in a bag? Because that's gonna be one of the questions. We're gonna have somebody say, can you, can you get 100 shrimp in there? You get 50, get 25.

01:26:46.010 --> 01:27:29.866
No, I don't, I don't push it. And I also don't aim for under a pound to save money on shipping either. That's just something that I notice. But it also fits my 6x10 bags the best without popping the seams by having too much water and the water pressure and inside, there's a lot of reasons for it. Right. So. But I do, I'll do. When I sell my shrimp, I sell 10 packs, and you get two extras. So 12 shrimp per bag. I've pushed it up to double if you order two, but I, I generally go up a bag size in that case. But yeah, the. The red solo cup, in my experience, in a breather bag for shrimp is about 12 is ideal. So. And I only do neocaridina, so they're a little bit hardier in shipping as well.

01:27:29.938 --> 01:27:46.266
Now explain to people, most people that send shrimp, I'm sure you're probably the same way. Do you put something in the bag, like a little piece of mesh or something so they got something to hold on to? Because the shrimp are. When they're in there getting sloshed around, they're pretty weak when it comes to being able to keep up with the sloshing.

01:27:46.378 --> 01:28:33.852
Yeah, you always have something in the bag. The dollar store loofahs are a great thing to unravel and cut into. Do two, three inch sections. I tend to still ship with a little bit of moss. A lot of breeders suggest that it deteriorates in shipping, but for me, my shipments are the slowest. It takes for a shipment to get there is about four to five days. And moss doesn't die in four to five days. So, you know, if it was delayed for two weeks. It's also a source of food for them to graze on, which I've had shrimp delayed in the mail for especially back during COVID up to three weeks. And they all survive. You know, I always do moss because it's not artificial and there's something in there for them to graze on for a joke.

01:28:33.916 --> 01:29:14.944
I actually saw this, I think it was on a Internet forum I think might be some deep piece of Reddit. And I saw that people were stripping, shipping shrimp and they were out of the loofah out of some of the pieces, the moss. They were shipping in a lot of different place pieces, like even like a, a leaf that people put in a lot of different things that people put in. And then one guy's like, hey, I got this order, I got to ship out. I'm out. What am I gonna do? So he went up to his local Walgreens, bought some extra small lacy panties. He shipped them with his shrimp and apparently he got rave reviews. So make sure that if you're purchasing your. Your lacy panties that they are non toxic and the dyes won't bleed in the bag.

01:29:14.992 --> 01:29:16.384
Are they clean or they're dirty?

01:29:16.512 --> 01:29:17.248
They're brand new.

01:29:17.304 --> 01:29:18.000
Oh, brand new.

01:29:18.040 --> 01:29:18.432
Brand new.

01:29:18.456 --> 01:29:21.808
I'm not interested in brand new underwear. Not even a little?

01:29:21.864 --> 01:29:24.336
Well, I mean think about it. They're used in tank water.

01:29:24.408 --> 01:29:28.960
That's right. So how do you ship? You shipping UPS, FedEx? Are you shooting it through the mail?

01:29:29.040 --> 01:30:06.034
Yeah, plants and shrimp and botanicals, stuff like that, they all go UPS or USPS provide priority. And then the. And rice fish too. They are, they're very good in the mail. And then for rams. Exclusively rams. If you order on my website, it defaults to 2 day air via UPS with an option to upgrade. All packages have an option to upgrade to overnight. Right. So a lot of people want to get their stuff sooner if it's a bigger order, you know, so that's cool. I always offer that but you know, I don't ship with the intention of killing your stuff. So I wouldn't offer it if it wasn't okay to ship that way.

01:30:06.122 --> 01:30:09.442
Oh, it's good to hear. Any. Any other questions or. Jimmy Jimothy?

01:30:09.506 --> 01:30:16.098
I've just always got questions, but we should let him talk a little bit more about botanicals cuz we haven't touched on that today.

01:30:16.234 --> 01:30:19.282
Well, this was the RAM podcast. We're going to have him back on. He's got a.

01:30:19.306 --> 01:30:22.370
But I'm adding. This is all about add on sales, Robbie.

01:30:22.450 --> 01:30:23.026
Add on sales.

01:30:23.058 --> 01:30:30.746
This he's selling rams now. He's selling botanicals. He's selling rice fish. He's. You're selling him. You're selling him underwear, Robbie.

01:30:30.778 --> 01:30:35.990
It's like he's a sponsor of the podcast. And you should use aquarium guys promo code at checkout for 10% off.

01:30:37.250 --> 01:30:38.618
Let's talk about that then.

01:30:38.674 --> 01:30:39.050
Appreciate.

01:30:39.130 --> 01:30:41.418
I appreciate the shill, boys. I really.

01:30:41.554 --> 01:30:42.090
There you go.

01:30:42.130 --> 01:30:48.666
Totally not necessary. I came here to hang out with you guys. All three of you rock. We can do whatever you want to talk about.

01:30:48.738 --> 01:30:50.110
Let's talk about underwear.

01:30:52.050 --> 01:30:53.454
Anything but that.

01:30:53.602 --> 01:30:58.198
So is there any glaring things that you think we missed in the topic of rams?

01:30:58.294 --> 01:31:47.374
I think there's a lot that we can touch on, but, you know, it's hard to fit it all into a podcast. I would say if you have any further questions, you can always hit me up on my social media. If you answer me with a high. I don't have time to get into a combo like that because a lot of it leads nowhere. But if you drop me your question 99 of the time, I will get to it. So feel free to ask me if you have any specific questions, but also go on YouTube and learn from the other professionals out there that are producing the content. There's a lot of great info. I didn't make all this up myself. Like I said in the beginning of this podcast, I started as the world's best copier. You can too dedication and love what you do, and you will get it done.

01:31:47.542 --> 01:32:26.648
Yeah, check it out. Daku Aquatics. That's D A K U aquatics dot com. And you can also find them at that same tag on Instagram. And you actually answer on our Discord all the time. So just mention him. Daku Aquatics, right here on our Discord as well. To follow up. One of the questions I had highlighted here, which I thought was pretty fantastic, is how do I get started with a quality pair of my own? And go right to your website, buddy. Right now you have German rams on hand and they are beautiful. So check them out right on the website. You'll find our link right in the description. And as we're looking at this again, the podcast will be coming out later. You can get that five pack right now. Wink, wink.

01:32:26.744 --> 01:32:31.320
Yeah, you can. I've got a lot of. A lot of German rams right now ready to go.

01:32:31.440 --> 01:32:46.200
So we definitely have to. I think you have to come on next for a. For a boost pot a podcast we've had. I've ignored six questions directed just at boost because, yeah, definitely gonna have you Back on for, for that one.

01:32:47.060 --> 01:32:55.772
That's still my favorite plant, man. I, I import it. I got another shipment on the way. I can't get enough of it. I'm an addict for boost.

01:32:55.916 --> 01:33:03.000
Can't get enough boost. Adam, what is it? Explain it to, to people like Adam and myself who don't know what the hell you're talking about. About.

01:33:03.460 --> 01:33:06.160
I think that's the next podcast, gentlemen.

01:33:06.820 --> 01:33:08.668
He just invited himself on a third one.

01:33:08.724 --> 01:33:11.440
Okay, I gotta leave you German blue balled, y'all.

01:33:13.300 --> 01:33:50.018
Real quick. It's an epiphyte. Epiphyte plant, just like java, fern or anubius. Really easy to care for. Don't put it in an established tank, don't start a cycle and put ammonia or something crazy in there with it. Right? It's temperament is pretty chill if you just give it some love. So really easy plant. Attach it to a piece of driftwood or a rock or. What I do in my shrimp tanks is take those plant weights that come on stem plants. I'll cut a little piece, I'll attach it to a root, let it sink and let my shrimp keep it nice, clean and pretty.

01:33:50.114 --> 01:33:51.666
It's not like the plant, right?

01:33:51.738 --> 01:33:52.610
What do you mean?

01:33:52.730 --> 01:33:55.894
It's not like my plant where it just takes over everything.

01:33:55.982 --> 01:33:59.410
It's not where you can freeze it in a freezer and then rehydrate it? No.

01:34:00.190 --> 01:34:45.790
Okay, yeah, yeah, no, it's, it's, it's a slow growing epiphyte, but produces the best coloration you can get. I grow it all low tech. I grow everything low tech nowadays I don't have time for all that. So yeah, awesome plant. Definitely dive in if you, if you haven't. I have a nice selection on the website if you're interested, interested in it. And I also. One of my best sellers nowadays is actually my mixed boost pack, which I'll do three or four varieties per pack. You know, action of boosts and send that out and people love that. They, you know, get a nice variety for their tank. They don't have to buy a lot of money in one type and they don't like it. So I just send those out all day long. People. A mix pack.

01:34:46.460 --> 01:34:47.044
Awesome.

01:34:47.092 --> 01:34:49.108
Now what days do you ship nowadays?

01:34:49.204 --> 01:35:10.004
Almost every day. I limit fish to Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, depending on my, my schedule and you know, order volume. Plants, shrimp, other things on the website virtually every day but Thursday. I don't see a reason to put something in the mail on a Thursday and have it sit on Sunday 99 of the time almost every day.

01:35:10.092 --> 01:35:17.640
So if a customer gets a. Let's say they put an order in on. On a Sunday night, you'll probably send it out Monday or Tuesday. They'll have it by Thursday. Friday.

01:35:17.760 --> 01:35:29.848
Every time. Nothing sits here. That's customer service. Making sure orders go out is my number one goal with this business, and I follow it like a religion.

01:35:29.944 --> 01:35:50.872
Anthony, buddy, thank you. Hate on the Oilers. Go Panthers. We'll catch you on the the next podcast. Derek, it was a pleasure seeing you as well. Just the shout outs. Daku Aquatics D A K U aquatics.com Ds fish company, which we've had in the podcast before. Jimmys scrotumdiscus.com. i think it just got shut down. Sorry, Jimmy.

01:35:50.936 --> 01:35:52.968
I thought I owned that. I thought you bought that for me.

01:35:53.024 --> 01:35:55.780
I think I finally stopped paying for it for all these years.

01:35:57.760 --> 01:36:04.018
So if you're out there and you're looking for something to sell like Scrotum Disc, go ahead and buy it up.

01:36:04.074 --> 01:36:09.986
That's an old meme. And drink some tank water for me listeners. And Adam, you got any last notes?

01:36:10.098 --> 01:36:10.754
No.

01:36:10.922 --> 01:36:25.442
Excellent. Bye, y'all. Thanks guys for listening to the 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 to your phone so you don't miss great content like this.

01:36:25.546 --> 01:36:28.370
Yeah, no, I regret everything so far. Let's get into it.

01:36:28.410 --> 01:36:32.930
And then what do you do after that? A little. Couple red bull chasers. Oh, they just put in their mouth, swish it around and spit it out.

01:36:32.970 --> 01:36:34.110
I eat a lot of it.

01:36:34.250 --> 01:36:35.690
No, that's even weirder.

01:36:36.670 --> 01:36:37.606
That's your ex wife.

01:36:37.638 --> 01:36:40.330
Jim. No, won't even put it in her mouth.

01:36:42.110 --> 01:36:46.490
Come on, slurp. Damn.

01:36:48.270 --> 01:36:48.510
Ah.