This episode of the podcast is sponsored by Shrimpnv.com, if you're curious, and not just a shrimp guy, still go to shrimpnv.com. They have an amazing selection of mosses and plants. Go on there. You'll find different cultures of all different types of mosses. Honestly, I'm extremely impressed by the selection they have. They also have accessories like Moss ledges to grow them on. It's not just Shrimp, but you can still get 10% off the entire store by using promo code Aquarium Guys at checkout. Certainly check it out. The list is quite long. Even some of that weeping moss we've talked about on the podcast. Again, shrimp envy.com. Top of the website, you'll find plants and mosses 10% off with promo code Aquarium Guys at checkout. Thank you. Also, the shoutout of the week. I flew to California this last week and I like to shout out shillington aquariums. I drove all over my centerpoint with redlands, and I drove everywhere I possibly could. And Calanessa, California has a gem of a aquarium shop. shillington aquariums. You'll find them. shillington Aquariums.com. Check them out. Tell John hi from the aquarium, guys. If you want your own shoutout, go to the Aquariumgyspodcast.com bob the website. You'll find our contact info and more importantly, the discord link. Send us a message, we'll get you a shout out. Let's kick that podcast. Welcome to the aquarium, guys. Podcast. So did you ever get that stuff out of your belly button? Adam oh, wait, the podcast is live. Jimmy, how are you?

What the? Well, I just woke up from a long winter snap and here I am.

Cold opens are hard.

Yes.

I'm your host, Rob dolson.

I'm Jim colby.

And I'm Adam El nashar.

So he seemed like he wasn't sure of it for a minute. I'm Adam El nashar. Question mark.

Yeah, he's questioning life. Absolutely.

After that clip. Yes, you have to.

We just recorded a nice clip for our patreon subscribers.

Yeah, it's kind of like A Christmas Carol. Yeah.

Check us out on patreon. Find us on our website, aquamgeyspodcast.com. Join the debauchery and discord the links in the bottom of the page. We've gathered together today to talk about tentacle monsters.

Jimmy I'm sorry.

Specifically, tentacle not hentai. Tentacle six. Rob tentacle nose playcos.

Excuse me?

I have never once heard them called that.

Well, I don't want to call them bristle nose, because that makes me feel like I bought a toothbrush that's swimming. So we're here to change the name and establish dominance?

No.

What's wrong with Tentacle nose play codes?

Do we really need to start? You could listen to the patreon thing and start from there.

We had nothing to do with tentacles on the patreon page.

For Christmas this year, I'm going to get you about six gallons of bleach just so you can drink them, put them in your eyes and stuff.

Well, fine. We're finally here to do our deep dive dive on bristle Nose platos that need to be called tentacle nose platos.

No.

Well, before we get into those particular critters, any news, gentlemen?

And silence fell upon the earth.

All critters. Well, fine, I'll get to a bit of a rant. People don't know species deep dives because they haven't practiced it. When you open aquarium book, you're getting the knowledge from that consortium of writers that are going to edit that page based upon their experiences. So when you open a book and you see temperaments, for instance, if you get something like a bucktooth tetra a bucktooth tetra is known as a scale ripper. That's a commonly experienced thing that that particular species does. Well, I'm here to add one to that book. Paradise Garamis. Paradise cichlids. Which am I thinking?

Pardon me?

That's the only thing that I know of paradise Garamis. I'm pulling up the picture just in case, making sure here. So every time I've had paradise Gurami's, they're a beautiful species, right? They come in different colors. Normally you see the blues mixed with the reds, yellows and browns. I've also had albino versions, which still have the red, but they're white. Every time I've had this species, they have ripped eyeballs out of sockets on their tank mates, not of each other.

Convicts.

A convicts that I haven't had that experience with. Really?

Guys ripped the eyes out of everything.

Because I've seen aggression. These guys aren't aggressive. They'll just swim up to a perfectly normal fish and then whoop, suddenly its eyeball is gone.

And you know why?

Because it's tasty.

Delicious.

It's delicious.

What are you keeping the paradise scrummies with?

Okay, so the stuff I've kept them with, they've ripped eyeballs off any tetra species. Even if it's a big Congo tetra, it doesn't matter, it'll just swim up. I've had different mollies guppies, I've had barbs. They've ripped eyeballs out of normal community tank species, which these guys aren't supposed to be so aggressive. I'm sick of it. I had it and I've just gave up on Paradise grammys. They're beautiful, but I just don't want to have them because of this issue. Now fast forward to my buddy Derek at d's Fish Co. And he has had Paradise grammys, but only by themselves. So now he's putting them into a display tank with these beautiful bosami rainbow pairs. He comes in in the morning and suddenly a bunch of them are missing eyeballs. I'm like, I told you so. whoever's listening, if you're writing a fish book, ad that Paradise Guramis are eyes sucking.

So you're saying Derek is having a half price sale?

He is.

On some eyeless fish.

Well, 25% off for each eye missing.

Doesn'T seem like enough.

Well, yeah, then you could get for a blind fish, it's half off. You know what I'm saying?

So I do have a question here.

Yes.

How many Paradise groundies are you putting in a tank?

Sometimes I'll put a pear, sometimes I'll put eight.

Well, that's your problem right there.

What's the problem.

You want to put them in a pair in there.

And then you said you were putting a group of eight in a tank with other fish.

Yeah, big gang tank.

When you put the eight in the tank right. Do you have anything else in there with them?

It's a whole community tank.

Did you give them a firm talking to and say, no eyeball sucking?

Okay. Oh, don't worry. We had words.

But what I'm trying to say is that is your problem. You're not giving them ditherfish. You're putting them in with community fish guppies and that guppies and mollies and all that is pants. Put them in with something that is semi aggressive. Every time I've had Paradise grammys, I put them in the semi aggressive section with barbs.

Three examples. Hit me.

What do you mean?

I need three fish examples that would dither properly. Really? We're going to go there?

Okay. I need it.

Help me. This helps our audience. They're listening in.

So you're saying tiger barbs.

Tiger Barbs would be perfect, especially a large school of Tiger Barbs cherry barbs. I've usually put them in with other grammys tea time. And whenever I've had them in tee.

Time, tiger barbs and cherry Barbs both had their eyes ripped out. Continue.

What about daniels?

The only thing I would try is giant daniels.

I haven't tried it because they move fast enough.

Well, that's it. They're like the ninjas of the sea.

That's fair.

And actually, giant daniels are pretty aggressive for a quote unquote Daniel species.

Remember the time that I bought, like, 300 rummy nose tetras and put them in one tank?

Jimmy yeah. What happened?

Guess what?

They all died.

There was four paradise scrumies in there, and they started literally the next day. I'm like, why do I have 30 rummy nose that are blind? That's what happened.

I have never had this problem. I would throw one paradise gurami by itself in with other garamis or tiger Barbs, like 15, 2030 tiger barbs, cherry barbs, even some South American cichlids, like some convicts or any of the other stuff, and they don't rip the eyes out. I don't understand how you're having this problem.

Why don't you just start out with blind cave tetras?

That's literally I was about to make the joke.

Blind cave.

The other fish I know that'll work is a blind cave tetra.

And they still have little tiny ice.

Slots, but they have the sockets, but they have no eyes. There's nothing in the socket.

Little tiny ice.

I got a big batch at these fish go right now. Ones we have don't I haven't seen any with eyes.

I've seen them with, like, little tiny, tiny slits.

I wonder if they cross with the actual not blind cave tetras.

Oh, the non, the none. Like, maybe the regular I mean, that's the whole thing.

I've never heard of a nonblind cave tetra.

The blind cave tetra is based off of another tetra. I think they call it the Mexican tetra. I don't know the actual name of the one that isn't blind, but the idea is that this is some sort of evolutionary species where one is exclusively in caves and is hypersensitive to scent vibrations across this lateral line like that. And then the other one has eyes, and there's a normal tetra.

I've only ever seen blind cave tetras, and they're always albino.

Yes. Mexican. Mexican tetra also know the blind cave tetra is from a family of hold on, I'm getting that's different.

You said family, so there's no I'm.

Not reading this in order. I'm paraphrasing going through these.

Did they get misclassified by some needled scientist again?

Yeah, this is another needle thing God messing with. It shows here that there is a version with eyes. However, they does not have the name because they're not traded commonly in the aquarium trade. So there you go.

Okay, so in order for the those.

Are called the far sided.

The far sided tetris. Yeah, also known as the basic brush tetra.

You know, what's amazing about the blind cave tetra is I used to deliver to a store, and I've never seen them so freaking big in all my life. They get huge, those blind cape tetras.

Yes, they do.

If you feed them yeah.

They get four inches.

Yeah. And that's normally you see them at about a half inch, three quarters of an inch, and people think that's as big as they get, but they get huge. But I think that's probably because they ate their seeing eye dog. Just guessing more than likely.

Well, any other tangents before we get in? No, this is what I found out. Like, doing some surveys, our audience loves these, like, on point tangents of things that we experienced in our hobby. There's got to be something you got, Jimmy? I mean, you're reinsulating your basement.

Oh, man. It has been a bear cat. First of all, the house that we purchased a few years ago, we bought it from a doctor, and she had added on a sunroom, and underneath the sunroom was just a basement, three walls. I think it's like, 14 and a half feet by 14 and a half feet. And we've been down there, and during the winter here gets so goddamn cold. And we super insulated the basement. We put in a vapor barrier on the block wall. Then we put in studs, then we put in serapham insulation, then we put in fiberglass insulation, and then, of course, covered it with wood paneling and then had some stuff done from our furnace over to the fish room to heat up the fish room. And right now, our thermostat in our house is set at 68 degrees, but our room is about 73 right now. It keeps getting better every day. It takes so long for water to warm up. So once you have water warmed up, it will hold very very well. And of course now as it's getting colder, the furnace runs more often and it warms up. But the tangents that I'm seeing is all of a sudden fish that have been kind of like for instance, I've got some guppies, some fancy guppies that have not been doing very well for breeding. But I've seen the gestation period becoming a lot quicker. It used to be taking 45 days because it's so cool down there. And now we're down to about 32 days for the guppies to be giving birth and stuff. And just because of the hatching. Library shrimp, every day we're doing three gallons of library shrimp and we're seeing some incredible growth. And I did a little experiment. I was doing brine shrimp twice a day and I went from twice a day to three times a day plus flake. And the growth is just incredible and the colors are so much better. It's just amazing these things that that you hear about that you never really practice because, yeah, it sucks to have to go down, you know, constantly and feed fish and stuff. But once it becomes a pattern, it becomes a habit, then it's not a big deal every time you think your plate is full and if you add one more thing and after you do it for two or three weeks, it just becomes natural. So we're learning a lot now with getting this room warmed up and stuff. Our angel fish are starting to breed some more. That was the only tanks that we were heating was the angel fish tanks. And now we're hoping that they'll start breeding. So we just heat up that room to about 80 degrees is what we're shooting for.

What people don't realize is that we are the warm blooded species, right? We can ingest food and then our body regulates its own temperature. So if we're in a cooler environment, our body is supposed to do its best it can to maintain a 98.6 temperature. Fish do not maintain that they are cold blooded species.

So they are they did fight warm blooded fish.

Well, thank you for that, astros. Almost all species of fish are cold blooded.

What about dolphins?

Those are mammals.

I know, right? Just say it.

No, save it for the patriots.

Okay, all right.

You can't give it all away again. Their body temperatures are regulated by the water that they're in. That's why it's so important to keep different temperatures for different fish when you turn up the heat. sodas are metabolism, right?

So now as a segue, what we're going to get into I've got a beautiful group of 15 long thin bristols plecos and today I watched several videos when I got home on YouTube. And there's a gentleman over in Colorado that is talking about how he spent the last two years trying to figure out what colors they like, what material they like, and what type of cave they've liked and he spent two years in that and stuff. Now they're developing their own caves, and he's doing a ceramic cave made out of clay. But the outside is light blue, the inside is kind of a natural cave. And he was talking about that has to come to a pinched end. He really feels that that's the important part, is that the end is pinched, whereas the opening is open. You see so many of these caves where it's just like a tube. When he did his research, he never did get any. You talked to people who tried to put in, like, pieces of pvc pipe for their bristols to breed in. Yeah. And he's never had any luck with that because of the color. He went to a darker color. He had he had better earth tones. Yeah. So, I mean, it's just what you can make of it. Learn from other people's mistakes and let them do all the work.

It sounds like we need to get him on the podcast so he can talk about his new gucci style playco caves.

Oh, they're very nice. The guy's been there for he's in Colorado. He's been doing it for the last ten or 15 years. He does have some association with the aquarium co op guys, very knowledgeable.

And that right there is going to tell me he's not allowed on it.

Continue, Jimmy.

So anyway, he's a professional musician and he travels a lot, and he's got four or five people to come and take care of his fish room. But his big thing is he's breeding rare stuff. He's breeding rare live bears, and that's his big thing. And he's selling them relatively cheap. He has one of the only production of one particular. I think it's Lima, peru. And it's the only one in the world because they're extinct out in the wild. Now. What's this?

From Lima, peru.

Yeah, I'd have to look it up.

Why are you doing that? What's the name? What am I looking up? While you're going to tell people more.

All right, you have to go to your cellulicular device. Well, I don't have what I have. I didn't know we're talking about this.

Well, this is what we got. I called jimmy's Fish folder on his phone. That's where he saves all the good content.

And here's the thing is I'm wearing glasses.

At least I can't read password protected. Well, while you go in, I did find out that there is a nice wikipedia page talking about the Bristol Nose Plato, also called bushy Nose Plato. And there's this wonderful edit button where you can make a suggestion so Tentacle knows pleco will be submitted to wikipedia. So in your faces.

That's so wrong.

I think adam's opinion don't you think Tentacle knows pleco would be so much better?

No.

Why not?

Did you guys happen to read today about the guy that was taking a selfie with the blue ring octopus dude.

Buying some brand blue rings that's been.

Trending, and I looked at it. Is this adam? No, it's not Adam.

It's not Adam.

Not Adam.

You'll hook me up, though, right?

Oh, yeah, definitely. I still don't think I can get blurring octopus.

This guy's website looks like it was made in 1994 and it was updated in 95. Right. Where am I going to find out this species? Right here.

Right there.

Oh, roll, roll. We must know.

Great. Stop.

This one?

No, the one above. Right there.

Right here, I believe.

Yes.

These are the last of this population and have been bred out for distribution to the hobby. These are possible.

What is it?

I'm getting there. Most beautiful population of P-E-R-U-G-I-A.

Perugia levia. perugia boka DA kachar.

How do you spell it?

P-E-R-U-G-I-A. These are three and a half to four inches and were first collected 1999. Incredibly special and rare fresh. Please maintain the species only in tanks, breed it and distribute out to others so that it does not disappear. If these disappear exceptionally yes. This exceptionally attractive fish may be gone forever. He's selling a group of six unsexed for $50.

Okay, so these are just like a live bear.

Yeah, they're not a place.

That's all this guy does. He said there's, like, 110, 111 live bear species, and this is one that he's been working with for ten years, and he has sold them to other people to try to keep him going. And he just recently got a hold of a whole bunch of people that he sold them to, and nobody has kept him going as long as he has. And as far as he knows, he's the only one in the world that has this particular fish.

Well, I'm buying some. Jimmy, you want in on this?

We need to get out on this.

Well, I'm just telling you what I read today.

Let's do $50 ahead, right? I'll do $50, you do $50. And we'll all get each other for Christmas. The batch of batch of six.

A batch of six down. Yeah, yeah. So it's very interesting because, I mean, I know that that seagrass farms had some of these, like, lima tigers and different things. Yeah, those are decently common, and so those are in high demand. They're not the most beautiful fish in the world, I don't think, but the man is trying to save them from extinction, and he's having some pretty good luck with it.

And $50 is really fair.

You know, if you look at his other prices too, I mean, he's selling, you know, adult adult sword tails, the green wild bears for, like, $15. He's not out of he's not out of the question. He and he he sends out fish once or twice a week, and you just contact him, and he checks your zip code every day to make sure that weather is between 35 degrees and 95 degrees.

Well, spring, apparently. We're out until spring, apparently.

We probably are up here in Minnesota, but he's in Colorado, and hey, I watched him on being interviewed today, and his fish room is is pretty simple, but pretty genius. I mean, he has automatic water changes that happen every day, 15% at a certain time and stuff. It's just kind of a cool guy. He's also got some great stuff for he went to work with an aquaponics company, and they figured out the best thing to use for plants, and he sells a container that covers 40,000 gallons of water for plants for $30. And he's I figured out why. Why what?

Why nobody's having luck with them.

Why is that?

They're not they're not treating them like brackish.

Oh, yeah. You got you got to do that with a lot of these wild mexicans.

That's what these are. Yeah. This is the brackish fish.

Yeah.

He got them out of the wildly keeping us freshwater.

97, 98, he says 99. 99. He got them out of the wild, and he's working with them ever since. So? Yeah. I don't know. He's having good luck with them now and stuff. You basically kind of breed that out of them, I think, don't you?

I don't know if you can. That's a good question.

Well, that's a good question for some of our listeners. I mean, can you breed the brackish out of I mean, because we know you can make a molly.

I feel like you got a cross species to do it, and then it's more of just an individual acclamation.

I don't think you can breed the brackishness out of a fish.

I know you can't breed a stupid out of people.

Okay, here's how they do it. Monos, right? Monos are mono brackish. They're commonly used in some saltwater. Right?

I use them to acclimate saltwater tank.

Right.

So monos are really hard to go work in freshwater, but it happens. It's just this long, drawn out water change and delusion of going from salt and then finally weaning them into it and then getting them established and healthy long enough. But the problem is these libraries species have short lifespans.

What's interesting is that one of my first fish was mono seabays. When I bought them, I thought they're angel fish. I was probably twelve years old, and I swear to God, I swear all these are much better looking angel fish.

Than those coolest angel fish of all time.

And I I had them for years. I had them for years and never catch them with salt. Right.

So can be done. It's just these guys have shorter lifespans, so it's more difficult.

Okay, so here's the thing. If you could do it, there's some species that I doubt you could bumblebee gobies peacock gunjeans. I think you can. I don't think any of the brackish water more eels. I don't think you can.

I feel like at the point that you want to sit there and like, I wonder how many species I could get this to work is more of a cruel conversation than just doing brackish in the first damn place. I wonder if I could get this one. I've killed about 50. Now I think I should finally give up and just put him in the bracket.

Just put them in the bracket, let him go.

Well, regardless, you gave a shout out and a huge tangent off topic.

I just thought it was very interesting. Today I saw him on YouTube being interviewed by a young gal, and he was just a knowledge. I had a lot of knowledge. And I thought back to the Plea King Jim, when we talked to him, and he was talking about how he finally found the correct cave for his plea to and the reason I say this is because I personally suck at breeding bristol's plecos.

You do? But before we go into detail on.

How you suck, I suck big time.

Shout out. Greg sage of select aquatics. At select Aquatics.com. It's his home operation, and it didn't mean it on your website. It's more retro chic. So go check it out. Give him a shout out. Tell him the aquarium guys love him very much. You need to get him in the podcast.

He's got a lot of great information, too, on the breeding. He's got his own brine shrimp hatcheries. He's got some tips and tricks on different things that he's learned and stuff and he shares with him. And I know for a fact that he is kind of one of these guys that's open to sharing secrets with people because he wants people to succeed just the way he was talking.

And he's got my favorite books listed on his website. All right, enough of this. Let's get back on track.

So, Jimmy favorite book?

You have sucked at Bristol Nose Plato. So before we get into that, quick little note for the people that haven't tried them. bristlenose Platos are a very common popular series of playgoes that all have the distinctive tendrils or spikes on their noses. They can be short, they can be almost nonexistent on females, and they can be very long and tentacle like on bulls and big males. Commonly, there's a whole lineup of different variations and subspecies, but they commonly only grow to about four inches long.

Yes, and that's why people love them, right?

They live about ten years. In my experience, since that's as long as I've ever had one is it 1011 years?

I've never had one that long.

You also keep a much warmer room.

Well, right now I've got my long fins all summer long. I had them on the bottom shelf with no heater, and I brought them up to temperature now, and they're really making googly eyes at each other, but nothing's happening.

So, Jimmy, let's talk about, like, when did you first actually try to breed Bush in those playoffs?

I have tried and tried and tried for probably five, six years. Just solid, solid. And once they get going, they're fine, but then they'll decide to take a break and then not come back online.

Well, I'm glad that I've been a part of this entire experience, because let me tell you, when I first saw you getting tubs in and saying, we're going to do this, I was excited. And never did I see one batch.

And then depression sat in.

So to breed a bristol's plato, it's relatively easy for most people, jimmy's. cursed. Flat cursed. I don't think you've gotten, what, five batches in your lifetime?

I've probably gotten maybe five, maybe five. I probably raised about 150 of them total. And it was the same one over and over and over and over and over. And then she burnt out.

Well, I mean, that's bound to happen. So to breed a brazil's plato, you have to have an established tank. I would recommend having shade cover in your tank and then having what we call a plato tube. The tube varies in sizes depending on your platos. But you can go to your common local fish store and just walk in and say, I need pleico caves. They'll ask you if they're good at their job, saying, what placo do you have? And all you say is, bristle knows. And they have them on hand at all times because it's, in my opinion, the most common, appropriate placo species you can get. You'll see that walmarts and big box stores that used to deal in fish and then still at the Petcos and pet smarts of the world, they will have what they call the common plato or Florida plato. That is not a Bristolnose plato. These particular platos called the Florida placo are huge in the wild where the wild in the rivers in Florida where they have made themselves invasive. These things get as long as my.

Arm, at least, easy.

They burrow holes and banks across the river bottom, and they have huge clutches of young. And what was the story, Jimmy? You were in Florida, you saw someone getting paid to go yes, brave the waters.

And this is just like what Robbie was saying, the Florida pleco, the regular pleco. Myself and my buddy Mark from Minnesota, we were down there doing an actual Florida fish farm tour.

So this isn't where you ate crickets?

Yes, it was. Okay, good.

Same trip?

Same trip. We went down to the Florida Fish Co Op extravaganza Show that they have at the Orlando coliseum. They bring in 2300 vendors, including tanks and other pet related items and stuff. And so we went over to somebody I had done business with a long time, and his name is Paul norton. And Paul has sold out. I think he's retired now, but he was a really good friend of ellwood seagris seagris Farms. And so ellwood made me an introduction into him, stuff I. Bought a lot of fish from Paul over the years. So we went there to actually see an actual fish farm, which is fascinating, and I know we've done that before when Robbie and I've been to Florida funeral.

The most redneck you've ever seen.

Yeah. I mean, these people that are farming fish in Florida, they're not throwing high end crazy amounts of money on equipment. I mean, they're breeding fish in tanks that are still stainless steel rim tanks. We went over to that's. What they raised their Tiger barbs, and they had five gallon stainless steel rim tanks from the said to him, I said, why don't you use something else? He goes, because they hold water. What they would do when they're raising Tiger barbs, they'd go down to the creek and they'd get the soft water put in the tanks. They put in all the males and females, and they gave them two days to spawn. Day three on Wednesday, they pulled the Tiger barbs, the adults, and then let the babies hatch. And they were producing tens of thousands every week. But back to going over to Paul norton's, which was at that time called norton Tampa Bay fishery. We went over there and Paul walked us around the farm, showed us everything that he had to show, and he said, hey, you guys want to stick around for a little bit? I got some guys bringing in pleco eggs. And we go, oh, that'd be kind of cool. And so these two young guys, who are probably their brothers, and I'd say they're probably like 16 and 18, came up in two S Ten pickups, brand new.

Well, we're going to assume that they were legally of age to work and do risky, risky choices, but I will say 18 at least.

Sure, we'll see that here. 18 years old, two young guys. And Paul, when they came up, these two matching pickup trucks. I went, oh, matching pickup trucks, that's cute. He goes, well, they're brothers. He goes, and I paid for those trucks. They go, oh, you bought them from him? He goes, oh, no. He said, the amount of money these kids get from me. And so at the time they came up and of course, they hit the brakes and stuff and, and the water kind of runs out of the back of the, of the truck and and in the back of these little S Ten trucks, it's probably 15 or 25 gallon pails in each truck. And he says, here's what we're going to do. We're going to take each pail, he says, and then we're going to sort them. And it was, I believe, if I remember right, it was ping pong size, tennis ball size, and softball size. That was the egg cluster size, small, medium, large. And Paul says, you grab one out, he goes, here's what I want you to compare it to. He says that if you got two smalls go, too, small, and he was just writing them down. Two smalls, three large, four of this like that.

Tada.

Yep. And we went through this in about an hour. And anyway, he gets all done, and he's paying these kids at that time, I think it was 1525 and $40 for these clusters of eggs. And then he just took them, and he hatched these eggs, and he didn't have to have any breeding stock, and he was selling plecos by the thousands every week. And these guys were making good money. And how they went and got these eggs is they went and waited in the local crick river with waiters on, and they had kind of, like, these sticks. They poked the sides, and they said once you kind of know where they're at, he said, they love the overhang where it's kind of dark, and they poke until they find a hole in the bank of the river. And then they reach in or take their stick and kind of swirl around so that fish swims out, and then they reach in and grab the egg clusters and put them in the pails and float the pails to the edge of the river.

So what you're not realizing is this is a very Florida man news article waiting to happen is that there is, I don't know, gators in those holes.

Water moccasins.

Yeah. All kinds of things that will bite you and make you for a very bad day. But the money is so good that why not risk it?

Yeah. Well, I tell you what. When we went walking down to the river, the one thing that Paul said, he said, be careful not to walk into spider webs because they have the what's, the red hourglass on the black widows? Adam yes.

Black the red hourglass.

Yeah. So the black widow spiders, they like the edge of the river because it says that's the main thing you got to watch out for. He said, you don't want to walk into a spider web full of the spider. And he said but he said, all the gators will get out of your way. I'm like, I don't believe you. Right.

So those particular playcos were hatched out, sold, and pushed out to every pet store because they're extremely inexpensive when we say extremely expensive cents a piece, and they're sold for relatively nice amounts of money at pet stores. But you get that, and that plato does not stop growing. So you eventually end up with this monstrosity plato that you either have to watch die because it's the small tank, or you have to give away to a friend that puts them in a pond and watch them freeze in in the the winter. It's just not a good thing. So if you have a normal aquarium, when I say normal 20 gallons, let's say 75 gallons, you want a normal plato to go in there or a normal set of placoes that only grow four to four and a half inches. So the bristol's placo is for you. They have great appetites when it comes to cleaning algae and other substances on your tank. They are detritivores. They're not just, you know, plant eaters. You're going to want to make sure that they have a mixed diet. So when you do the algae wafers, they're also going to be eating the flake and other pellets that you put on the tank. They're there to clean up breeding these placo caves. So you go to your local fish store, ask for it my preference, because again, I have a ton of luck. In fact, probably right now I'm sitting on three batches in my handful of tanks I have going, I hate you, you hate me. I breed these things in chains.

What you have to realize is the water quality is so much different because I'm two blocks over from you.

Two blocks. The water quality is so different.

It is much different, much different.

In my tanks, they're heavily planted and I use the diameter of the hole for the cave is one and a half inches and the length of the cave generally is six inches. I try to do clay based caves. When you said that the guy didn't bunch of investigation pinched in the end, that was the only ones I happen to use, is where they have the pinched close ends. And mine are all varied earth tones, different browns and tans. And I can't put enough placo caves in my tanks and I just get batches and batches in there.

Or maybe if you wait long enough, I'll show you my blue caves because.

You'Ll just give up. You'll give me placo caves, I'll give you babies.

There you go.

We'll trade.

Okay, here's the other thing. So Robbie, do you have driftwood in your tanks and Jim doesn't have them in his?

No, Jimmy has much more driftwood than I ever have.

Much more.

I do have a tank.

Robbie'S got like a whole tree, a.

Whole tree log in it. They breed well in there. I have plants, tanks with no driftwood at all and they breed well. But the thing is I have all dirted tanks, all different sands, different gravels. Jimmy generally has bear tanks. So Jimmy tried to give up. He tried to put sand in the bottom of his tanks. He tried to put different gravels, he's put them in tubs. Anything that he can get is a recommendation from people to breed placoes he's thrown at but somehow has no luck.

Go ahead, Rod.

Him.

Well, no, I want to hear what Jim, you're going to say first.

I'm just going to say that I've talked to professional placo breeders over in Arkansas in different places and stuff and they have told me that we get them going so well and then all of a sudden he said they just stop and we don't know why. We don't know if we get a bad batch of food in if the water quality changes, if the weather changes, bare magic pressure. And he said, we'll have 3400 pair, and we won't have anything for two months, three months.

Nothing.

Nothing.

I don't have that problem.

And I'm just like, I have that all day long.

I've never had that problem. My tanks I the only thing I think I do differently that we've never tried. Jimmy and I've sat there and thought about this before. This podcast is I almost never do water changes, and I mean ever. I'm looking at a tank right across the room from us. It's 60 gallons. It's been sitting there for three years. Not once have I done a single water change on this tank.

Top it off.

It's just evaporation. That's all I've done. But it's very well planted, over planted at all times.

Well, I tell you, that's where I've had success now with breeding guppies is having the tanks with live plants. And I've got a 30 gallon tank with probably 300 guppies in it right now, and I haven't lost one in a year.

There you go.

Because I think the live plants really, really go a long, long ways. When I was watching all the I'm really getting into high end guppies right now. Robbie kind of started me in on a trio of half black yellows, and I started putting in the duckweed, and the duckweed just takes over the tank, and it's kind of like leprosy. I mean, you put your arm and air and you pull out all this stuff.

It's the herpes.

Yeah.

You need the gym.

I need a what?

You need the plant.

Not your plant, dude.

Oh, I have more information on that later. Adam. Right.

Yeah.

Oh, okay.

Right. They're going to burn it.

More information, indeed.

So, anyway, with the the high end guppies and stuff, with all the duckweed and all the different plants, right now I'm doing a whole lot of troll of wood with Anubias on it and stuff. And now tons of babies. Tons of babies. And just because of that duckweed, they all hide up there at the very top until they're big enough and they will come out. The other day, the half black yellows that Robbie bought me for my birthday, I fed the other night, and 35, 40 little ones came out of the duckweed. And if you looked at it, you swear there was not one fish in there.

Just poof.

Yep. And just poof, they all came out of there like and plants are the.

Way to go for breeding, in my opinion.

Yeah, I have to totally agree with that.

So now let's go through the process. Now, this is only my experience. I know that Adam and I both have bred quite a few Bristol noses in the past. Right, Adam?

Yes.

So in my experience is make sure to have a well planted tank. If you can give them hiding spaces better and some sort of substrate. It doesn't matter if it's sand, it doesn't matter if it's gravel, just as long as they're substrate, because I have much less activity in a bare bottom tank for breeding than I ever will in something with some sort of substrate. Now, after that, get your fish in there. You can sex abusing those placos. Once they are over two inches, you will begin to see that males grow long, tendrils those tentacles on their nose, and they will become much more pronounced than the other playoffs that have almost no bristles when they're the same size.

Just kind of stubble, right?

Just a little stubble, like 05:00 shadow sometimes to almost nothing. Those are the females. So once you get to two inches, you should be able to sex them quite easily. Put multiple playcos. It's not like where you have to have two females for every male. This is a little different. You want to go heavy males at first. Once you get the males in there, then give them hiding places, bring in the caves, bring in the driftwoods and give them places, and you will start to see that they will claim caves and claim corners of the tanks. And that's the beginning of breeding behavior. If you have less caves than you do bull males, they will even begin to fight over different caves and different structures in the tank. Once that starts happening, you know you've reached magic. So watch carefully because they will beat the crap out of each other. Now, you think that these fish have no teeth. They do have rather rough exterior, very rough fins out.

Really bad.

What did you say?

The pectoral fins are really bad, right?

They're very rough, and they hit each other with it. More importantly, they have these I would like to call them maces on the sides of the fins that they actually stick out their spikes, bone spikes that pop out of the sides of the placo, right where you could see their cheeks almost, you could call it their cheeks. And they bash into each other with them, and they will rip each other apart. So once you see them fighting, split them up. You get to choose the winner if it's your favorite male or not, and then move them to another tank or move them to another corner. Then you'll see that male will stick to his cave. That's when he's looking for a female or trying to entice a female to come over to the cave, the male will claim that cave throughout this entire breeding process. Once he finds and lures a female to come into the cave, he will pin that placo into the back of the cave and not let her go until she drops the eggs. Once the eggs are dropped, he'll release the female, he'll fertilize the eggs, and then he will begin to protect that cave and not let anything else but himself go in that cave. The way that you can tell that either egg behavior has happened is about to happen, or already happened is you'll see a fanning behavior, they will take their side fins and they will wave them up and down. That is, to cycle water in and out of the cave to oxygenate the eggs, since the eggs have to breathe through the exterior of the eggs. So if you see a male placo tail in there, take your flashlight and you'll see if they're doing that fanning behavior, you're probably sitting on eggs. So you can take a flashlight, lift the cave out, whatever you need to do, and you can see the yellow golden eggs in the back in a big clutch. What I do from here, this differs from some people, is I leave the mail, let him sit on those eggs. Depending on your water temperature, it'll maybe a couple of days, maybe a few days, but eventually those eggs will hatch and they will become wrigglers. So it just looks like an egg with a tail. And if you see these little tails wave, you know that the egg hatching is over. They're free swimming wrigglers. And then I will strip the cave. I'll take the cave out because the father will not leave his cave. I'll take it into an ice cream pail with water, and I will have to coax and shake the placo out of the cave. The adult placo will fall out of the cave, and then I will continue to tap and shake the cave to release the wrigglers. And I will put them in a free floating baby basket, much like you do with baby guppies, and make sure that it just has enough oxygen flow. Whether I have to put an aerator in there or I at least know that there's flow around the baskets to make sure they're oxygenated, because their tails will wiggle, allowing water to flow over them and breathe. And you will then watch them absorb their yolk until they're tiny, free formed babies and you can begin to feed them.

So what do you like to feed them when you have babies?

Me, personally, I use a mixture, but the most important thing that I've found is spirulina. You can't just feed direct spirulina because it's like giving your kid broccoli, and only broccoli. They're not going to like the taste, it's not going to entice them. So I have to find different ways to get them to eat it. And generally high protein things work. So my favorite is cobalt's, ultra pellet, shrimp and veg. This is a ten millimeter sinking pellet, so it's huge. So I throw one or two pellets maybe in that basket, and then watch them eating this dissolved protein and spirulina. pellet works great for me. I get good growth, I get really good runs. I'll get easily 300 playco in a clutch, and I'll get most of them to at least that inch size. Where that time I'm passing them off to friends, giving him to Jimmy to go sell and put out his grow out tanks wherever I can pitch them. Because I have so many playcos. I have too many to deal with in my small fish corners.

So how many do you get in a clutch?

I'll get 300. No, I'll get 300.

No way.

Out of my biggest females, I'll get 300 in a clutch. Holy crap. Lower end. You know, I'll see 30 out of out of a new pair.

Yeah. The bigger the female, the more eggs. Of course.

Well, I'll have three males in a tank. Three, four males in a tank, two females. And they will keep in some situations, they will keep all of those males attentive with eggs.

So you have a bunch of slutty.

I have a bunch of slutty females.

Wow.

So here is the first question I have for you, Rob.

Yes.

You have multiple males in the tank, right?

I do.

Jimmy, do you have them in the tank, too?

I have a breeding group of 15 plecos that I bought. They're long fin plecos in a 40 gallon tank that I bought from a guy who went out of business. And I never lost a one. And they're freaking gorgeous. And the females are ripe with eggs, and they just stare at me.

How many males and how many females?

I would say there's probably about six or eight males in there. I'd actually have to take them out and count them.

And females are matching.

Yeah. I would say that I probably got a few more females than males.

I've done it wrong. I've done where it's more females than males and they still breed. I've done it where it's more males than females. They all breed. I can basically throw a handful of placos in a bucket in my fish room.

I want you to do that. You prove to Jim that you can do it.

I have. In fact, jimmy's had this big set up where he's doing these what he called because he's again, he's talking to, quote, unquote, professionals that do this. And they were showing him these shallow breeding ponds is what they made. So he spent a lot of money. He set up all these breeding ponds. He got all these specialty caves and all this. And I'm sitting here with my rinky dink broken caves that I've glued together, and I've used a rubber made tote and I just got batches after batches. jimmy's come down, was like, hey, rob's, ready to do the podcast? Hold on. I'm pulling. I'm stripping. Three caves.

And and the last three, four caves that he got was from me that I'd gotten from Steve rubiki. Yeah. So I have the exact same freaking caves that Robbie does. I just I just gave him some some of mine because I like, they're not being used.

He will give me his placos. He will give me his caves. He will give me his drift wooden plants. I'm using his same exact water.

We're two blocks away from each other.

It's got to be that I don't do water changes in the tanks they're breeding in.

My next thing, Adam, that I was thinking about doing is I keep reading from people a lot like angel fish to do cool water changes.

All mine are cool water changes.

And so that's what I'm going to do next, is I'm just going to do a water change every day.

Well, it's not changes. They're top offs.

I'm just going to do water changes and top offs, I'm going to pee in the tank. I'm probably going to take and put some dog dookie in there, swirl around, maybe run a couple of holstein cows through there. I don't know. I'm just ready to throw them. These long fin bristles piggles that I have are just freaking gorgeous, and they are four inches, three inches. And I know that they produce because the guy that I bought him from, I was buying all his babies from him, but he went through a divorce and he had to move on, and I bought his, and I thought, Here we go. Look at this. Check it out. Hey, Robbie, look at my fish, right? And he comes over and he laughs at me.

So the things that I've done wrong in breeding is when you overcrowd, especially if you have a log, if you have enough play goes and you're not paying attention, they will burrow their way through the scent, the core of the log. So I I was actually taking down a 75 gallon tank, and I had this big driftwood log inside of it. And when I say log, like a tree log, like, I had to have help getting out of the aquarium. Well, being in there for so many years, I found out that the mass amounts of placos that I had in that thing burrowed a tunnel in the center of it. And there were so many platos fighting for certain corners because they were breeding inside the log on their own, that to fight for dominance and keep females in there, they would actually suck red rings into the female placo. So I have female placos with, like, ring sores on their body. Hickies, essentially, they're hickies. They're just really deep, bloody hickies fish hickies. So if you start seeing any rings or damage, you have too many placos, you don't have enough caves. Put more caves in, you can't go wrong placement of caves. People ask me, Where do you put caves? Me, I've put caves upside down. I've hung caves inside of decor. I've put them in the substrate. The best luck that I have is in the substrate. If you can make the entrance of the cave level to wherever the sand or dirt that is in, that's the first cave they want to hit.

Now, the other day, when you were over at my house on Thanksgiving, I showed you that new pleco cave system that I found online, which I can't find right now.

We're going to have to have him on the podcast. But they call these he's not the guy that invented this. They essentially call them like placo cave cities or stackable placo caves. So I'm looking at one here from another vendor. And essentially they take the traditional pleco caves and they'll put plates in between them. So it's a stacking plate. So then you have essentially eight to twelve to 24 caves all stacked on top of each other. I've done this before in my own way. I haven't purchased the expensive ones because clearly I don't give a bout doing this.

Yeah, the guy that I found online, which was interesting, is that I was watching a YouTube video. Somebody was at a show showing the new and exciting stuff. And this particular vendor has, I want to say it was called, did I send that to you? Rod easy caves or something like that.

Or we're going to have them on the podcast, so don't give away too much.

So anyway, what he has is it looks like a plea city. It's probably three levels, four levels, and the plea caves slide on and they lock onto the rack. And so you could have this rack, six high in a 40 gallon tank and 20 long.

Well, it it fixes the issue. Because if you stack these so you're doing, let's pretend four pleco caves in the bottom, you put on a plate. On top of them, three pleco caves, another plate, and then you stack these well plecos, when they're trying to fight for the cave they want, they will knock this tower down that you've built.

I've got big placo caves that are just getting pushed around them.

They will whip them around.

And so this guy is there the interlock. And the other thing that's cool about it is it isn't closed on the end cap, but they split. So you can pull you can slide it off the rack and then you could split it in the middle and get your eggs out if you want. Right.

It's not just split. They interlock. So the plato is not going to crack these apart on their own. You actually have to pull them apart. And it's like a good inch of how they interlock. It's a quite a cool system.

Yeah, it's kind of like kind of track system. And I just discovered it. I haven't pulled the trigger yet. I think it was about $100 for a rack of like eight right. And stuff. But he sells them for about $12. Right now, we're looking at a website and we're seeing them from six to $12. And again, they have all these different shapes and just like anybody else, like a human, a plea might like the triangular shape versus the round shape versus the square shape. Depending on what type of fish they are.

So if you think of shapes, the ones I traditionally use are circles or ovals. They're generally handmade with clay. It's a pretty simple deal. Which ones? I have success with these 180s.

We call them one hundred and eighty s. Three hundred and sixty degrees for a circle. That's a 180. Okay?

So the FICO cave that you're talking about is a 180 is essentially a half circle where it's flat on the bottom them, and then the rest is a circle.

Right?

Then they have triangles, squares. I've had luck in all of them. The best luck I've had is walls or circles, circle.

You radio. I've had luck with none of them. The ones I've had luck with, the.

Ones I spent loads of money on this, too.

That's me. How can I throw money at a problem?

Absolutely.

So I could have hired a carpenter to come over and do my three walls, but it's just so much easier to go out and buy lots of new tools and do it yourself. And it cost me $1,500 for my room for three walls. I'm talking eight foot tall by 14 foot wide walls. $500 a wall. Just the plastic alone for the vapor barrier between the block wall and the studs, $65. Sure, I feel bad for people who are building real homes that are spending money putting up real lumber type projects and stuff, because it is ridiculous. But if I would have hired somebody else to do it, it would cost me a fortune. My whole thing was I was trying to warm up my room and try to reduce my electricity bill. So we'll see what happens. I'll give you an update here in a few months.

Fingers crossed. Now, other dons that I would highly encourage.

Don't have Jim help you if you.

Want to have placo's. For the love of God, stay away from loaches. If you have clown loaches, those sons of branches will come in there and they will just rip apart every cave that you have. Literally. I had one clown loach in a 75 gallon tank with eight caves. All eight caves had eggs. The clown loach cleaned out every one.

Of those and left the snails.

Well, I didn't even know I had a clown loach until I tried to pull a cave and notice you have a clown loach.

I know. That's what I'm thinking to myself, too.

And found them in there. Well, I thought I got them all.

Out, was the problem. So you had out you had a rogue I don't know how many I have a rogue ninja. Clown loach.

Clown loaches. I bet you had the crew.

Like heck when I ate thousand eggs.

They are the egg sucker. The thing was so frank and fat, it was insane. It was small, too, so I know it was an egg bound. It was just egg full, you know what I'm saying?

It.

Was just insane. So stay away from loaches like the plague if you want to breed placos. I haven't had problems with cooly loaches and whatnot, but again, I probably wouldn't do those either.

Cooly loaches are pretty safe.

Yeah.

I've had them with breeding with bumblebee gobies and stuff, and they've never been a problem.

So when you say safe, like dolphins safe?

No.

Okay, checking.

Okay, thank you. Dolphins.

No, they are usually safe with other fish. Culoh is to the best of mine, what I've seen.

Yeah, I haven't seen anything, but one bad parent that doesn't protect the cave properly might get unlucky and a lot of cooly loach into eggs. Eggs are eaten by every species. It's just what can get by a defensive placo male and loaches, I don't know if it's the nose. I don't know if they don't have scales so they can slip in between them. I don't know if they're just faster.

But every time loaches have that eye spine, right?

Oh, yeah, maybe that's so what happens.

Is the loaches will stab them with that eye spine, especially if they can stab them in the sides or in the belly or in the face. That makes sense because a male bristle nose will use those maces on the sides of the cheeks to fight.

Yeah.

And the ACLU will just whip out that eye spine.

And so what you need then is to add a couple of paradise grammys to come in there and suck the eye out of the clown loach. Problem solved.

Go ahead, go ahead.

I apologize. The only loaches that I've had luck with that I don't worry about is dojo loaches penis fish. They're just so mopey lackluster. They're not really on the hunt, and they won't burrow into a cave.

However, yoyo botillas are pretty good, too.

However, once these wrigglers start become free swimming, they will just slowly release from the cave as they get hungry. And they don't have enough food in the cave, and everything in the tank will eat them. So what I do is I had I told you about the 75 gallon, it was primarily placos. I mean, I had, you know, peaceful species in there, like tetras and some mollies and whatnot. Most everything left them alone except for the penis fish. So I took out the penis fish, and then suddenly I just had these placos breeding on their own, propagating on their own. And if I had a batch that normally did 100 on their own, 20 would survive. So I would have this massive factory churning out these placos. The problem is me scooping them. Scooping placos, tiny platos are a nightmare.

Especially with a tank with any type of structure, right?

So I would give up on any platoes that are free swimming until they got big enough where I could scoop them. And then I would strip every cave and then move the stripped caves over to two and a. Half gallon shrimp tanks, ten gallon tanks, whatever I wanted to split them into, grow them up a little bit and give them to Jimmy.

Right. I was so bored today. I'm watching this young guy from another country and he's raising bettas and he's raising daniels and he's breeding them in styrofoam fish coolers. And his whole philosophy and stuff is to never handle them with a net until they get so big. And so he just takes and siphons everything out. Yeah. And his big production was that he was raising betas and stuff and he had a, I want to say, 125 gallon long tank with three inches of water, and he just had it full of java, maz and duckweed. And he started feeding him the egg yolk to get them going and stuff. And then as the fish got bigger, he kept adding water to it. And he said that by keeping the water lower, it's less area for the fish when they're small to go hunting. Which makes total sense.

Yeah.

So I'm going to take my pleco, take it down to about two inches, throw them in the toilet and flush it.

Now, the different kinds, there's a bunch of different personal pleco species you can find all over the place. But the main ones that you'll see are what we call the common, which are the black or brown variety, the albino, which can be full on pink eye or non pink eye.

Well, then it should not be albino because correct.

It's lucid.

Yeah. Acousticic.

Yeah.

There you go. Non caucasian, they still call them albino, whether it's pink eye or not pink eye. Then you have the long fin, which can be common, albino or otherwise. And the super reds are quite popular. And because, again, breeding is don't forget the lemons. No, that's the finisher. The super reds and the albinos can all be crossed with commons. And when you do so, you get blotching patterns. So if you cross a super red with a normal common, a brown black one, you'll get what they call calicoed or blotched, super reds. And that's becoming more of a trend now because people mix their placos, I think, that they're even more beautiful than a normal super red. That's just my personal view on it. If you cross an albino or leucistic or lucid, what did you call it? Liquid stickoustic. If you cross that with a common bristle nose plato, you'll get spotting. And when they're young, they'll have white tails, tips on their tails, lots of fun. They will maintain fun patterns throughout their entire life. That's the majority I had was crossing them. I had big females that were white, I had big males that were black, and I had really fun patterns on them. And they sold really well.

The ones that I really andrew he's racist. He is.

Hey, I like my fish like I like naughty videos.

Send your complaints to or your VR.

To robs send your fish breeding videos to guys podcast.

My favorite ones are some people call them the Green Dragon long fins, where they've got kind of a green sheen to them, right? And those are the ones that I really think are beautiful. I also like the blue eyed lemon.

So that's the right now the popular Holy grail. If you can get a long finned, blue eyed albino, brisbane nose plato, these things go for insane amounts of money they have.

Is that what you guys want for Christmas?

Well, that's what we have at these fish that we got in there was a couple really advanced breeders and ironically, he became breeders by accident. He had these decorations that he put in. There were porcelain bells, like for a church bell, like a decorative Christmas bell. And these, just look at those for their breeding caves. So that's what he does. He just has these really high end that he spent a ton of money for. Lemon, blue eyed, long fin, Bristol nose plato's. And he breeds these out and we sell them for crazy amounts of money at these fish.

I like that idea about throwing money at a problem.

He threw nothing at it and now it's getting money. That's kind of how it works. But yeah, these are very much designer play goes. Check them out. They're beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.

So I do have a couple of questions for Jimmy.

What?

First question I have, and Rob, you can answer this whether or not you have your lights on cycle timers, right? Mine, do you have your Bristol Platos with lights and cycle timers?

I have them right off of my fish room and where it has natural lighting. So no, I do not have them on timers.

Okay. And then, Robbie, do you have that? Do you have them on timers?

I'm going to confess, I have a group that are on timers that turn on and off at exactly the time of day. And then I have the different tanks that they breed more proficiently when the light is left on 24 hours a day.

God, I hate you so much.

So that would be one thing where I would start with Jim, is putting them on a cycle. So when I was breeding them, I was breeding Bristolnose plecos with wild caught rams. And that's what I did, is I didn't even throw caves in there. I just threw chunks of driftwood, put them up against the corner of the ten gallon tank that I was breeding the wildcot rams in with. And then I had that light on a timer and then I also had it on it so it would dim. It was like on a dimming timer because I found this out. Baby ram cyclists are stupid and get sucked up by your pump. And so then I started putting the sponge filters around the intakes of pumps. And then I just went to straight up sponge filters. But I would try that first. And then I did routine water changes with colder water. And that always triggered a breeding response from my ram cichlids.

I know the people say that when you do a cooler water change, it's kind of like when it rains out in the wild. But I tell you what, if you threw open my bedroom door and put some cold water on me, I don't think it would help. Well, no, I'm just saying.

And then here's the other thing. Did I interrupt somebody?

No, you're good.

You're good. ramble.

Okay.

So mean.

Whenever I did water changes, and I don't know how you guys do them, but whenever I'm breeding fish, I have the water go from the top.

What does that mean?

I can't feel the tank from the bottom.

Yeah, you know what I mean.

No, I know people put their what.

I'm trying to say is, okay, so when I put my hose, I would put the hose most people put the hose all the way through to the bottom of the tank.

They do fill it up that way.

I've never done that.

Oh, that's the way everybody else was doing it. And then I always put it up at the very top, like just right underneath the water surface and let it fill up that way so that it just naturally drifts down.

No, see, I got this cool C.

Clamp from menards for $0.99.

For ninety nine cents, I got tan of them. And I use the garden hose and I make it so there's an arch shooting up and back into the tank, mating a giant aerate aeration torrent for the entire fish, disturbing the gravel, kicking fish around the tank. That's what I do. I don't recommend it.

I have thought about this now, too. Maybe what I could do is just take and drain it down about half way. And I was going to take a piece of pvc pipe and drill little bottom holes in there so it like drips in like rain. I've actually thought about doing that. I haven't done it yet.

That's an idea. Make it rain, Jimmy. Make it rain.

Deep rain.

I mean, that would work. So you're just going to run the water through it and then call it good.

I'm at this point where I'm just kind of suicidal, to be honest.

What if we just take your tank as is, set it here and plug it in right? And then use the location.

And then I think we'll start breeding and then he'll start selling me my it's.

That nasty. aftershave that you use was it brute?

It's brute.

It's brute. It's old school brute.

It's the same bottle of brute I had since high school. Since 1982.

Sure. All right. So quick review, Brisbane. Those playcos get four and a half inches. Temperature varies. I've had them where there's no heat at all. I don't recommend it. And I've had them at like 85 degrees. They've done well in all of those circumstances. My favorite temperature, and especially breeding temperature, is lower. If you can do breeding to get them started, at about 74 to 72 degrees, great. Although I've had them breeding at 81. 82.

You're saying 55 is too cold?

55 is a little too cold.

All right, Jimmy, I'll zoom it up.

Yeah, well, 55 is too cold. optimum PH, I think, is you can literally look this up on the wikipedia pages. They're like 5.2 to 8.9. That means they'll live in anything they're hardy, and they're the go to play go for people for a reason.

Hang on. Sure. There.

Hardness does affect eggs. PH does affect eggs. And the viability of eggs and sperm.

It does affect the amount of time that an egg is viable for the sperm to go into, because in hard water and angel fish eggs, in hard water, you'll get a much poor same pair. You'll probably get like a 70% to a 90% difference, because if the if the water is hard, then the eggs harden faster and the sperm can't get in there to fertilize.

So, gentlemen, there's two recommendations we have here. If you're trying to get your wife pregnant, install a water softener and stop drinking Mountain dew.

Actually keep the cellphone out of your pockets. that'll probably be just fine.

You two are the only two people I know who run the microwave with the door open. You're so dumb.

Not next to the scrub, though, Jimmy. That's a rule of thumb. lifespan five. We'll say again, mine is ten years. jimmy's is a lot shorter because he keeps his room hot food. We talked a little bit about what we're fed for babies. I love that shrimp and veg pellet from cobalt. Just because it's hard to find protein in an algae wafer. Because I want spirulina, but I also want protein to grow them out. But as far as food goes, they're going to be eating your pellet, they're going to be eating your excess flake. They're going to be eating that food. And in between times, they're going to scavenge. They're going to eat algae. It's not going to be their primary diet. So if you think that this is some sort of magic algae eater, it will help keep the tank clean. They will do a good job, and they'll even eat that brown algae, which I don't recommend feeding to your fish on purpose. Clean it off instead. But if you're going to feed them, feed them fresh. Around here, especially towards the fall time, we get people that give us zucchinis and cucumbers left and right. Everybody in their mom in the midwest has their own garden, and everybody is giving that away in buckets at church.

That's why you need to lock your door in the fall, because you could come out of the grocery store and find out that somebody put seven zucchini on your front seat.

Yeah, absolutely.

I'm serious.

This is not a joke strangers have given me. I found a box of zucchini in my front seat of the car going to the local grocery store. Yeah, I don't know who did it. I don't know if it was a friend of mine. I doubt it, but I've literally done that. And just like you, Jimmy, I've gone home with zucchini.

So my main gig is I drive bread truck for a bread company, and I have a route, and in one of the smaller towns, they know that I'm looking for zucchini. And so that's like the worst thing that can happen, because they tell their neighbor, and they tell their neighbor, and pretty soon you've got £100 of zucchini in the back of your bread truck when you went inside of the grocery store for ten minutes, right? And people just throw it in there, and I'll say, hey, you want a couple of loaves of bread or whatever? And they're more than happy to do some trading and stuff.

So here's what you do. You take that zucchini, you take that cucumber, and you slice it up. You take I'd say, what, quarter inch slices, Jimmy?

Yeah, I usually do it half inch, not even that much, but I probably do quarter inch, quarter inch, and I'll do a half the zucchini, a regular size zucchini. Yeah, not the big monster ones. And I'll throw in six, eight pieces a day into my and the next day, there's nothing left but ryan, you'll.

Just see the tiny green ring, right?

Leave that for a day, and that's gone, right?

So that's how much you feed. But take that same zucchini, that cucumber, and don't be afraid to freeze the slices you can put in ziploc bags. And I've had them good in the freezer for a year and a half.

Yeah, right now I have some in the freezer, because right now, this time of year, I've been buying them at our local grocery store, and when I get home, I just cut them up, throw them in the freezer downstairs, and I have that brand new refrigerator downstairs because I like throwing money at a problem. Bought a new fridge.

You have a fish room. You have to have a freezer for the fish room. I do, yeah.

And it's just by coincidence that there's some beer in there.

Just, I mean, just little coincidence, little coins don't freeze your beer. So then you take these slices, and people complain, like, oh, it's floating at the top of my tank. Well, fish that have already been acclimated to cucumber platels will go to the surface of the tank and suck them dry. But if you're just introducing for the first time, and you're trying to get them on the horses, so to speak, on the wagon, and you're trying to get them to taste and chow down this food, don't be afraid to go to your hardware store and get yourself stainless steel screws works great, doesn't bleed into the tank. And you literally screw in a stainless steel screw into your plato slice. It drops down nicely, and the plecos divorce, leaving the screw behind.

Yeah, I see that. There's a lot of professional stainless steel things that you can clip on your zucchini and stuff and pay a lot of money. And I recommend that you throw money at a problem. Just spend a lot of money. But that's probably a pretty good idea, too. Yeah.

You can use jimmy's nipple clamps. As long as they are stainless.

They are stainless, but you have to make sure that you unhook them from the electrical.

Fun fact, we get a lot of crap for dildos and aquariums.

No, you get a lot of crap because you're the only one that deals with it. Nobody else does.

I put you I tell you, I put a lot of dildos and aquariums in my day.

You do?

I still have three extra dildos on hand just to put in more people's aquariums.

Sure. We'll we'll say that's why it is.

That's why. Glass in the box, brand new, ready to go. But now what I'm going to do is get nipple clamps for me. That's genius.

Oh, yes.

I'm sitting here the whole time like, what are you going to use for plato food? Nipple clamps.

Nipple clams.

They're already stainless, right? They're made for this purpose.

Just make sure you get the ones that aren't already wired for the small electric current. I'm just saying.

I do have a serious question for you guys, and I want your opinion.

Yeah.

Because I'm kind of at this opinion.

Okay, well, if you're starting with nipple clamps at them, start small. Is that what the question is?

The gauging?

Yeah, just start small. Don't go for the big ones right away.

No. So in the reptile world, leopard geckos are a mix of at least three or four, possibly more different species. Do you think that Bristol nose placos are a mix of three, four, or five different species as well?

There's so many crosses with different types of placo species that you could get that in nature just because they're so common in the South American waters, they're at. I would highly doubt it.

Think about this. There is no mirror in the water for these fish. I mean, how do they know what they look like, what their spouse should look like?

You smell it?

Pheromones.

Yeah, you smell them.

You guys are so weird.

Yeah. I mean, nipple clamps wasn't far enough for you, Jimmy.

Well, I'm just saying that how come the white pleco doesn't want to hang out with the black placo with the red placo, with the albino, bristol's pleco with some other pleco. Just because it's a pleco. Maybe it's a pleco party.

The albino, quote unquote, species are an anomaly in nature. So there isn't that money. We've just expounded upon that weird strain in our hobby so you don't see many of the weird variations you see in our hobby because of the selective breeding processes we've done.

Is that what you're going to call it?

Yeah, I'm being nice.

You're not going to say that it's fish porn?

Bone chicka wawa.

Okay.

So, yeah, that's where we're at with Brisbane, OS, plato's. We've had a lot of requests and a lot of people asking what to do. That's what I've done. There's a lot of different ways of doing it. Some people see eggs immediately, they strip them. They'll use some sort of, like, cichlid egg hoppers to make sure they're done it's. A lot of extra steps when dad's going to do it better than you. So I always try to leave the dad in there, check the eggs every day, and when the wrigglers then pull the whole batch, that's been the easiest and best for me.

So a question we haven't answered yet is, how long does it take for the bristle eggs to hatch?

Depend on temperature.

It all depends on temperature. A few days, two days. I mean, three days. It just depends on your tank. So watch them every day.

Don't let it go.

Just pretend that any moment, because you don't know when they were dropped either. So the moment you see eggs, pretend that it's been a few days and they're going to hatch any minute and keep checking that cave.

And the one thing we haven't talked about yet, the few that I've done, and I watched them grow, I mean, they exponentially get bigger every day. The clutch looks like it's like they laid more eggs in there, but the eggs just get bigger and bigger and bigger.

So day one, you'll see a small mound, and you'll just assume to yourself, it's probably a new mom, like a young female dropping it, and then two days later, you'll see that whole mound has grown in size. You're like, oh, maybe she added more. nope, you're right. Those eggs got bigger.

Right? And I've had some people ask me, too, that, well, the male won't let the babies out. And I'm going, well, the male will.

The mail does not block babies coming and going. So when regulars hatch and they're free swimming and they actually dissolve their yolk and now they can be free swimming, they stay in the cave until they're hungry, right?

They'll come out and he'll let them out to eat, and they'll go back in for protection from other fish.

No.

What?

Once they go out, start going out to eat, they very rarely come back.

And no, I had them always go back in. The three times it happened to me, they all went back. The three times it happened to me. I have had somebody that was so worried about it, they were taking an air hose and putting spiralina water through the air hose into the mouth of the cave.

Yeah, it's just so much work. When they just breed like rabbits anyway.

Yeah, whatever.

Really? I wouldn't worry about it. I think the difference between the three batches you've had and a few batches I've had is not just the fact that that that's been there, but the fact that when my plate goes leave, they have loads of places to hide. Your tanks might be a little bit more bare, and that's the best place to hide is the cave. That's a guess. You know when you when you leave into a 75 gallon aquarium where there's a log, they're going to want to be on the log rather than go back with dad.

So I'll buy a new log, then buy a log. I want to buy a log. I want to buy some substrate. I'm going to buy some freaking cold water. I'm going to throw some more money at this problem, and I'm going to have a full report for you in six months.

I can already see the text. It's going to go like it, and you're going to send me egg pictures.

It's going to go like this. Hey, guys, I'm standing on the edge of a bridge. I just want to say goodbye to you because I'm killing myself because he's damn. You know what, though?

Everybody has their certain things that they're just lucky at breeding, and they're good at breeding.

Yeah, this is my luck. There's very many things I can't do.

That's true of me. Because you're lucky. Look, adam's got four kids, right? So we know what he's good at, right?

Kids aren't my thing. Yeah, adam figured that one out.

You could read.

I would read other stuff.

I just need a better tan, and I maybe get a little better at it.

There you go.

But what I'm saying is, Jim, how many times did I have problems breeding guppies?

Really?

And you would laugh at me.

Yeah, I guess. Yeah. That's the achilles heel. What is actually mine? What is mine? That I'm trying to think of ones I've tried. I had a problem with angel fish, but Jimmy was able to train me out of it.

Did you do you ever get your rice fish to go?

Which one?

Betas. The medicine. The meduca rice fish.

Madaka rice fish.

Medooka. medica. I did.

I finally got them to go, but I couldn't actually hatch the eggs. That progress was stomped because I had a child.

That's right. All things stopped because Robbie had a child.

I had them have because medaka rice fish, they will actually hold eggs on their body. So I've seen them hold eggs. I've watched them lay eggs across the tank. But I cannot get the eggs to live long enough through fungus. So I don't know what to do if I'm going to have to pick them off plants and then put them in methyl and blue. I don't know what to do there.

Maybe put some more almond leaves in there. It's always good for bacterial and fungal. fungal, is it? Yes.

Poop water makes fish stay healthy.

That's right.

We should call Scott.

So my biggest thing besides guppies that I've had problems with, I'm trying to think here. Guppies were my hardest ones.

There again, I think Adam was up there where the water was pretty hard, up north in northern Minnesota and stuff. And what I found out, too, is that to get the right stock and like right now, I brought in some Crowntail guppies, which you love so much. Robbie and I brought in so nice. I brought in six or eight pair. I paid a lot of money for him. And I ended up with one female that didn't die from that initial bringing them in from the orient, and she had babies. I kept all those babies. Now I'm already on f three babies, and now I don't lose them because they've grown up in my water.

Right. You have that many batches?

Yeah. So it's just a decent stock that used to your water. Because overseas, lord knows what they're doing for water quality and different things and stuff. But, I mean, there's so many times I brought guppies over from overseas, and they get that I want to call it gram negative bacterial infection. Gram negative bacterial infection on their backs where their backs just dissolve. Looks like a saddle. And the fish just dissolves in two pieces. So, yeah, not a good thing.

Well, that's the plant. What we had the plant. So the thing that you call the plant was identified as a certain strain of weeping moss. That particular strain, you decided that you're going to have Jimmy take a couple of pieces and put them in all my tanks, which is why that was fun for me. I was able to identify most of the tanks. Some of the tanks I just let grow, and I want to see the cycle. So I had a two and a half gallon tank where the shrimp died in. I'm like, well, I'm just going to let it go and see what happens and not touch that tank ever. So I from that time how long ago was this? Over a year ago?

Yes.

More than a year and a half, two years. It's been a hot minute. I let that one tiny little clipping piece that you put in my two and a half gallon shrimp tank go and see what happens. And I didn't change the water. I didn't add water. I did nothing to the tank. It completely overtook the whole tank, grew and covered the outside edges of the glass where it got the most light, grew up and out of the water. And once it covered the entire top of the tank, the bottom started to die off because it was getting no light, and it suffocated its own self out. So it started dying from the bottom up, up until it finally got to the top. And then there. Was nothing. rooting and grounding it, and then it died, fell to the bottom, and the whole tank was dead. And then resprrouted and continued to do the whole cycle over again.

Kind of like herpes.

It was great. It was great. And by the time it just started to do that second cycle, there was 35% of the water remaining because I didn't add into the water. I didn't do anything. It was just a sponge filter in there. So it's really cool to see that full process.

And the reason you didn't go in there is you're just scared, right?

Yeah. Well, remember the whole I put garbage in jars and look at it as a kid? That was the latest from me being an adult.

How much fun was that?

You put in a jar and I watched it. I thank you for the entertainment, gentlemen.

You're welcome.

Do you still have some of that weaving moss there, Jimmy?

I do not. I think I told you this last three podcasts ago. That bag Adam gave me, it was in a ziploc bag with maybe two cups of water, and I threw it on my bagging station at home. For how long, Adam?

Two years.

And then I met Adam down to Minneapolis. We're going to a show. And I gave it back to him. I said, look at this same bag. It's never been opened. It still was green, and it's just been sitting on the counter.

Well, if you need some no, we.

Gave that away when we're down in Minneapolis.

No, I mean, I still got some.

For no, I'm good.

I have a lot of it.

For. No, we're good, too.

The tanks that I've taken it out of because there was so much growth, and now it took all the growth out of it. I now am propagating moss balls throughout all my tanks to take over the growth problem in my tank. So I have curtains of this moss ball material. I roll it up, and I have a perfect moss ball.

I can give you some moss balls. I had about 50 moss balls on hand when the whole snail thing through the moss ball thing happened. Yeah. Oil back so I could squeeze your balls. Yes, I did that. I didn't know. I did not.

Oh.

But I kept them, so I just I stole them in my tanks at home.

Sure. Got anything else, Adam?

No, that's what I got.

Well, I'm telling you, when we get this new merch store up, if those that checked our existing merch store, you'll notice that the t shirt I love, cock kok with the ball on the flower's head, has been removed from our merch store. Apparently.

Good job, Robbie.

Apparently, teespring saw the uptick in orders, and the printer people that had to see the t shirts pulled it from our store.

They still are designed.

So we're trying to find a new merch place, and when we do I think zucchini placo zucchini nipple clamps have to be on that. Absolutely. stainless steel plato nipple clamps.

Exactly. How could you not want that? So like I said, Adam, when you're starting with nipple clamps, start small and work your way up to the big ones. Just saying.

I've only fed placo's watermelon once, but how great would it be to actually have actual slices of melon on a nipple clamp for your Plato?

That's deep.

That's deep.

I'll think about it. I'll get back to you.

All right, guys, if you like what you're hearing, go to the aquarium, guys. Podcast bought on the website. Email us, join the discord to listen to these live or buy some existing merch or throw us a few bucks. We appreciate it. It helps editing costs and keep this podcast going.

You know what we should do is you should offer people if they donate so much that you'll send them some of the plant.

I can do that. Now that we know that it's technically legal in all most of the 50 states.

Technically legal in most of the 50 states.

Everything is legal in Florida.

I can't wait.

No one cares.

I can't wait for that phone call. Hey, Jamie, come get me out of jail.

Hey, so are we still going to have the dnr person coming on soon?

I am working on that, actually. The dnr in Minnesota are proposing a new list of banned species, and I would love for them to come on and tell us more about it.

I'm going to have to be on my very best behavior.

When you say you know a guy, you're just going to get ejected from the podcast. For the safety of our own repertoire.

I literally might just be only be able to listen to this.

Hey, if adam's not there, you all know why.

Yeah, all you'll hear is vibrating on the other end. Like he's just ready to start saying the F word.

One little cliff note there, Adam. They're finally banning the Wells catfish in Minnesota.

I thought they were already banned.

They're federally banned. They're not state banned.

It's about time, because Wells fargo sucks. I tell you, I had an account with those aholes one time, and I just can't even begin to tell you how much. They're right up there with Schmelta Airlines. By the way, I am flying Schmelta here shortly.

People are sweat.

This may be my last podcast, people. I may not get back home. I don't know.

All right, well, hopefully until the next podcast.

Adios.

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.

I do have a serious question for you guys, and I want your opinion because I'm kind of at this opinion.

Okay, well, if you're starting with nipple clamps, Adam, start small. Is that what the question is?

The gauging?

Yeah, just start with spring small. Don't go for the big ones right away.