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We're live, guys. I can't believe we have a good editor. Now, Jimmy, we're going to start pumping these out. We're going to get back on some sort of schedule. Maybe not weekly, but certainly it's going to be better.

I think we should go back to weekly because we suck so much that we probably get one every two weeks.

You know what? What? Fluke you. We're doing two this week.

Fluke fluke you. I'm not going to be around.

Yeah, you are. You're always going to be around. Nope, you can't stop that. Jenny craig didn't come in.

That's true.

That's not till next month.

I got a concert on Friday, so I will not be around.

What's the concert?

It's an old band you've never heard of.

Guaranteed.

April wine.

Definitely never heard of that.

There you go.

All right, in order here, we'll first let you know. I've been told that we need to host the podcast better for new listeners. For those are listening, this podcast is a podcast for the aquarium enthusiasts of adult matter only, that is. We are nothing but cheeky men sitting together around microphones that like to make dick jokes and appreciate our aquariums. So if that's for you, sign up. If it isn't, this is going to be a rough ride, and trust me. It's not going to get better.

So I'm your host, Robbz Olson.

I'm Jim Colby.

And I'm Adam El-Nashaar.

Today we are pleasured to have Anthony with us from Daku aquatics. That's dakuaquatics.com. And your last name, because I continually butcher people's last names. Armata. Did I say that correctly?

Yeah, that's right. Dude, you got it.

That is the first time Robbie's ever got it freaking right. Freaking every last name you screw up.

That one had six characters.

I know.

I deserve a gold star.

Normally Robbie has to sound it out on the computer, which is funnier than heck.

Well, Anthony, thank you, budy, for coming on the podcast. We can't wait to hear from you.

Cheers, dude.

For sure.

Well, before we get into the deep dive that we have today, I would like to go over a bit of details. When we had episode 100, I was hoping that's going to be a culmination of 100 episodes of us, what this podcast means to us and reminiscing of days past. But the only thing that people can keep noting is Adam's fantastic 20 minutes rants on episode 100. He lost his mind. It was so funny. I got direct messages from all different types of fans that literally they said that they spit liquids out of their mouth, laughing so hard that it was the perfect culmination rant from Adam. So number one, thank you from those people. But there were a handful of people that weren't as happy with it. And apparently episode 100 is where they began the podcast, which is why we changed the opening this episode. So my apologies to you. And one of them decided to leave us a review. They say two stars, which that's far too much.

Well, that's one for me and one for you because Adam lost his mind.

Right?

Once a month is far too often for this show. If you like this show, you can have it every day. Just go to the food Court mall, find a table with full of high school age boys that are giggling and punching each other in the arm a lot, and that brilliant conversation and baseless opinions will wash over your ears.

I love it.

So that's our comparison. So from that, I'm like, oh, boy.

I just clipped that put in our Discord and apparently a bunch of our actual fans in discord decided to throw in a bunch of nice reviews.

Did you refund his money?

I did. He got his free podcast money back.

Good deal.

He did. He really did.

So thank you for the flood of positive feedback from The One Negative Feedback. We really do appreciate it. Just to go over some titles, we are now the one Fish cast to rule them all.

Jimmy the word.

What?

We are the One Fish cast to rule them all.

Really?

Apparently Yoshi 5127 said that on Apple reviews.

Wow.

That's what your mom goes by now?

Yoshi no. Okay.

These are real people.

Oh, okay.

These are real people indeed. So thank you.

And any notes since we last talked?

Adam's rant?

My wife and I were in the car and we put on episode 100. I personally haven't listened to an episode in months. And I said, you should listen to Adam go off, and we know more than we're driving down the road and Adam called and we were pissing ourselves.

So hard because we're laughing.

And then Adam then on the phone went off a little bit too, telling my wife and I about particular thing that happened at the big box store. Oh, and then the same thing just recently happened to me about a week ago. And I called up Adam and I.

Wait, you yelled at a kid? He gave you a lecture of what you can't do with a Beta?

Not quite, but close.

All right, so I called you.

I do tank maintenance for a hospital in a nearby community, and it's a 220 gallon tank. It's very deep, and I was looking for a long gravel vac. And I called you and you said you didn't have one. I called Dan, and he said he didn't have one.

I found out they sold out at these fish cove, all vacuums. Apparently there was a lot of filthy tanks in a one week period.

So on the way up to Fargo to pick up my fish, I brought an order in of Angel Fish. And I'm driving up to Fargo, I thought, I'm going to call our local big box store. And here's exactly how the conversation went. First of all, I called and was put on hold for about six or seven minutes trying to find the aquatics department. And finally this young bubbly girl answered the phone and I said, hey, are you an aquatic? She goes, yes, I am. She goes, what are you looking for?

I said, I need a gravel vac.

But I need a big one. She goes, oh, I've got one for a 75 gallon tank. I said, no, this is a 220 gallon tank. I need a pretty empty she goes, oh, no, we don't have that. She goes, but Amazon, let me get you the number on Amazon. And she went on and on about Amazon. She'd look it up on her phone and she told me which one to buy in Amazon and how good it was because she bought one. And she gets all done. And I go, do you know who signs your paycheck?

And she goes, what do you mean? I said, doesn't Petco pay you? I said, why are you giving me.

All this information from Amazon? She goes Amazon's.

Great.

And I called up Adam, I called.

Up Adam and I go, man, this is a good person to have on the phone. As I'm talking to the big box store, as they're telling me to call and get it from Amazon.

Anyway, I finally got one and I.

Got a used one from Derek over at Dee's Fish.

All right, fun idea, quick idea. We should on the podcast dial in to was that the Petco or PetSmart?

Petco.

We should dial into Petco sometime, see if they have some Amazon crapplebacks for us.

That guy's got water moisturizer.

That will make us some friends for sure.

Yes.

Well, Adam, thank you for your rants, even though apparently Adam disconnected and isn't here anymore. Well, know that you're in our hearts and may your comcast Internet come back. I have one quick story. There was a fish swap that we.

Did up here in our neck of.

The woods by Detroit Lakes, Minnesota, and that brought up quite a few people from the Twin Cities area.

Correct.

So those people saw what fun we.

Were having and decided, hey, let's do it.

So shout out to Tong's Fish Room. He put together a wonderful fish swap in the Twin Cities. I think it was actually in St. Paul, but I never know where I'm at when I'm down there.

It was at the Frogtown Auditorium.

It was a fun. So you say frogtown. Auditorium frogtown. We go to this community center to do this fish swap. And I was the first one there. Tong did this on his own by himself and rented out this community center. And he charged something petty like $20 a table just so he could cover some of the community center cost. We get this room with all the tables and whatnot. So me and the fellers that went with me set up the place because he didn't get there on time.

He's got a lot more kids than I do.

Get the whole place set up. And I was so mesmerized there's. Frogs everywhere. Frogs imbued in the floor, frog designs everywhere. Lily Pad Concepts. It was like it was meant to.

Be a fish swap place in Frogtown.

In Frogtown.

Frogtown. So we did it.

And in the first hour and a half, we had lines going out the community center because we couldn't fit enough people in. It was that busy. We literally sold out in a little over an hour and a half. We had just literally picked up our table and left. Other people were starting to sell out. It was a wonderful time. Everybody came in a big batch. And I love how people do fish swaps. They all quickly make an assessment across all tables and then after they've done their assessment, they go to the tables where they have their favorite things. So it's basically how fast can you look at all the tables and then quickly snipe out your purchases.

That's right.

Because you want to get the good stuff.

Yes.

So Greed dragon plecos that we brought along from my buddy Dean sold out within the first few minutes.

All of them, the entire table.

So super success.

Glad we had it.

And if you guys are in the Twin Cities area, certainly just follow along to our discord or our Facebook page. And we will always post the information on the fish swaps that we know.

About in our area to come join. But I had a blast and we.

Had a lot of fans there, actually, that wanted to say hi to you.

But you were unable to make it no, I was unavailable starting.

Has he got another one going on coming up anytime soon?

There's going to be, but I mean it's literally since we're on the podcast here less than a full week, the.

What we find up here in Minnesota is as we go into winter, we have a lot better attendance at these things. And we've had just a absolutely beautiful fall and last weekend was very warm. And to have such a great attendance over there was just phenomenal.

So hats off. Yeah, it's a party.

You guys should do a party in your area. If you're shy and don't know how to do it, send us an email at aquariumguyspodcast@gmail.com. We'll help you out. Maybe we know someone in the area that can help assist you.

Trust me.

Get it done and keep it as cheap as possible for people, if not free. We do ours in Detroit Lakes for free. And we as the club, pay the space fees. So just to cover it, to have a great time. Well, normally this is where we would have Adam tell us another piece of the government stuff that he's pissed in.

But Adam fell off the piece of earth.

He did.

Let's get into our topic. Anthony, are you ready to have some fun?

Oh, that's me. Yeah, let's do it.

Well, Anthony, we've been trying to get you on the podcast for a while.

We've known each other.

Now we are making comments to the podcast probably easily three years now.

Yeah.

So before we get too far, we want to know more about you, at least to tell the audience. So how did you get into the hobby?

What do you do and how well.

Do you do it?

I got into the hobby like everybody did.

Just got a couple of tanks.

Actually one tank when I was a kid. Your grandma forced you your life stuff. Yeah. And then you come back to it. Right, and I came back to it in a big way.

I think six years ago I started it back up and I think I.

Had 50 tanks in probably like six months. Not too crazy. And now I'm sitting at about 130 tanks and like 1500 gallons outside in stock tanks.

Damn.

And yeah, I breed a lot of fish. I breed a lot of shrimp. I specialize in dwarf cichlids, mainly rams and neocaradina shrimp. And I'm a huge plant nerd. That's really what drives my hobby, is planted tanks and everything else kind of came around that the shrimp cleans the plants, the plants look prettier. I sell the plants for more money. Everybody's happy. So that's me in a nutshell.

Our most demanded episodes are, of course, basic podcasts so people can get into the hobby. But more importantly, people want to know, number one, how to build a fish room and how to start turning that.

Breeding project at home into money.

And that's why we're having you on the podcast, brother. You give a great perspective. I think that you did it in the right way, in the right amount of time. Right now, you're sitting in your office space and it's wall to wall tanks the long way. It's beautiful.

Thank you.

If you're not checking this out, you need to check this guy on Instagram. We'll have a social media in the show notes, so definitely like subscribe. I think it's instagram. It'd be Facebook. What the kids do. Now, I'm not as in touch of social media as I should be. I'm trying, but you are kicking ass on social media. All the kudos, brother. So what was the moment where you started this hobby and just clicked that this is what I want to do?

Did it just three tanks?

Suddenly you had easy success in breeding, and now suddenly I can proliferate. Let's make cash.

Yeah.

So the biggest thing was doing the research early. Started with a couple of nanodesktop aquariums, five gallon, three gallon, ten gallon. Was really interested in CO2 injection and high tech tanks. So that's all I did. At first. I was trying to grow rare plants, learn as much as I could about rare plants, and then I wanted to bring the shrimp on. And what really started the business was A, growing too many plants, and B.

Making too many shrimp.

And I started off just selling on reddit shout out aqua swap, and it snowballed from there. I mean, the biggest thing for me, and I don't want to go off on a tangent, I'm sure you're going to ask all these questions, but the social media aspect is huge because it got my name out there and I was able to show people what I'm doing. And that's the biggest thing is people want to see what they're going to get, A, and they want to make.

Sure they're not buying something that are.

Getting scammed or whatever it might be. So I try and be as transparent as possible. My customer service is big, and that's it for me, man. I'm an open book.

So what I think is different is I got to watch through a lot of this process of how you kicked it off, how you got your fish room going. I was lucky enough to get you on the ground floor, so much so that we said, hey, you need more. Advertisement we'll help sponsor and we'll get the name out. You got a great product and you've been a fan of the podcast since near the beginning, so much so you reached out, you bought some merch, and I don't even remember. It was a hoodie. We all signed it and then we sent some gag gifts. Is that the one we did? That is the one we did.

That was great.

Oh, my God.

Yeah.

So I feel like I apologize. I can confess some details. When we sent you the gift, we put that dried up playcone we sent to you in that ornate box that just came up.

Okay? We were cleaning out the fish room closet, me and my fiance and my mom, and she's going through all this stuff in the closet, and she pulls out this little wooden box, and she opens it up, and she screams, and I mean belts. And she drops it. She's like, what is this? And I'm like, oh, that's just a dried pleco in a box. And she was so confused and probably concerned. She already thinks I'm nuts, right? But I had to explain. It was from the podcast dudes that I'm always listening to in the background.

And I don't know if that bought me any Leniency.

No, it just got weirder, that's all. There's a bunch of is to sit there and have this radio show, and now they send you dead, dead fish specimens in an ornate box.

Well, we're sitting there. We got this hoodie.

You sent it to my place. We all signed it. I sent it down to Adam. He signed it. We got it sent to you. But we wanted to add more in the package since the package is going to be in there. So we sent you, I think, an aquarium dildo as a wonderful joke. We sent you that I found I had that perfectly preserved blonde bristle nose pleco that I put in the box. Horrible story. After all these years, I can finally confess that box is what they put from a Catholic hospital. When you have a dead fetus that.

Dies and you want to bury it.

Get out of here.

That is a fetus.

Why do you have one of those? Why do I have one of those?

Because you're a lucky man.

Because it's not as a fun story. Me and my wife tried to have a kid.

That didn't happen.

My wife went in for the whole procedure, and she came out so angry.

She's like, what in the world?

Number one on the paperwork, they're putting abortion. She lost the baby before she ever made that decision. And then they're giving her all of these. I'm not kidding you. They gave her paperwork, the box. They gave her a coupon to go to see her funeral home. I mean, all kinds of stuff, because it's a Catholic hospital, and that's what they're required to do by their policy. So she kept it, and she kept, like, her, if she take a ring off to go for a shower, she put it in there. And whatnot? I'm looking around the house for this perfect thing. She hates the box, and she is the one that came up with that idea, so we can blame my wife. She offered the box as part of the joke to hold the pleco because.

She wanted the hell out of her house, is what it was.

Yeah.

She said, this is a better funeral.

Than what it was intended for. That's awful. It is.

Thanks for that.

It is. I couldn't tell you up till now.

Anyways, that got really dark from that.

It got really dark.

I'll tell you a quick story. I moved my fish room out of.

My basement into a place that I.

Found out later on was an old crematorium. And down in the basement there was actually little caskets, and I thought they were like caskets for being on display.

No, there were children's caskets, like little demo ones.

Yeah. And anyway, so I rented this place, and it was a big, massive place, very nice. And I cannot tell you how many times we got freaked out because the.

Place was so freaking haunted that I.

Actually moved because it was so haunted I couldn't stand it. I had an old lady that would keep pulling back. I thought it was somebody that there was two apartments upstairs, and I had the whole main floor, and it used to be a crematorium back in the day. And I kept having this little lady pull back the curtain that had glass.

Doors and found out that it wasn't.

Somebody that lived upstairs. It was just somebody that was the.

Boss is not haunted.

It's just the pleco haunting.

I was so freaked out, I moved 600 aquariums out of there.

Thank you.

Thank you for adding more creepy stories to this.

Oh, God.

Moving on. So we thought you do it from the beginning. You've been a fan of the podcast and friends of ours for a while, and you decided that, hey, I'm building this great fish room, and you walked us through the process. So for the listeners, walk them through the process. One, I'm good at this breeding project. I'm good at plants I want to proliferate. Then you did all kinds of research and walk us through you building your.

Rooms, your fish rooms.

Okay, sure.

So I have two fish rooms now.

They're both automated. As far as water changes go, I did was just go on YouTube, look at all the DIY videos and kind of every fish room is different. Every space you're going to build a fish room in is different. So really you have to learn the plumbing aspect, the linear piston air pumps to filter the whole room. And then once you have the basis down, you have to start learning some skills like drilling fish tanks, because you need to install bulkheads and overflows if you're going to automatically change water. You got to do maybe not as crazy as I do, but I put a three inch hole through the cinder blocks and the stucco in my house and installed a floor drain because we don't have those in South Florida.

There's no basements or know.

Basically I learned everything online, and I just did my best and the first room came out great. But there was a couple of things that I wanted to change, like my water in system. I attached it with clips with Ro tubing to the rims of the tanks, and over time, those kind of get clogged up and they get cruddy and you can't close the lids all the way. So when I built the second fish room, I really dialed in. And that's what you see behind me in my office. I know the podcast listeners can't see it, but I took them out of the tanks and everything's a lot more clean and dialed in. If you're going to build a fish room, there's a wealth of knowledge on YouTube, and you need to go on there. You need to look at your space, see what your budget is. You can do metal racks, you can do cinder blocks with two X fours. There's a ton of guides for everything you can do in a fish room.

And just figure out what you want.

To do and go for it.

So, a little bit more on the auto top off. We've had a few questions on this before. Let's specifically go off of your auto top off because there's a lot of ways to skin a cat, so to speak. Yours use a single drum that you prep the water in, and then you simply flip a switch.

That's for the shrimp.

Yeah.

So in the shrimp room, I have a shrimp room, and I have a fish room where I breed all my fish. And the shrimp pull from 32 gallon Ro reservoirs, which are just brute trash cans. So I have a pump on the wall. It's not a submersible pump. I forgot what you call it when it's immersed. Pump? I don't know. Whatever. So I have an Ro tube going.

Into the reservoirs, and I flip the.

Pump on and it automatically fills the tanks. And because all my tanks are drilled with overflows and bulkheads, as the water.

Raises up, it drains out of the.

Bulkheads in the back so that they never overflow.

Right?

So that's for the shrimp room.

For the fish room in here, I.

Ran hot and cold water to this room from my garage, from the water heater, basically, and we ran the cold and hot water through the ceiling here, and then popped a hole through the ceiling. And then I put a shower valve on the wall, just the same one you would have in a shower. And from there I built a manifold on the top part where the shower is. And that's just basically an apparatus of PVC tubing and ball valves so I can have different zones. So if you see behind me, there's six tanks per row, and each zone does twelve tanks, right? So I flip the ball valve and.

Twelve tanks get a water change.

And you figure out how much water flows. I know that in about an hour I get a 20% water change. And I just do depending on the stocking and the different zones, I'll do anywhere from an hour a week to an hour or 2 hours a day on some of my fry tanks and grow out tanks.

Now how do you choose? Because you can do all the water changes at once, but sometimes you want more control. So then if you want manual water change, you just manually change the water. You don't use the automated system for.

One specific sure, I do that all the time, especially when I'm deep cleaning a tank. These fry tanks, you need to reset them after you move the fish into a bigger tank or you sell out of that tank. You want to give it a good clean before you put the new batch in to grow out. And that's just as simply as pulling it out with a regular siphon, giving it the tank a good cleaning. And then on that same shower valve, the top part is the manifold for the auto water change. The bottom part, which would go to a tub, is actually a quick fill hose. So I can just turn like I'm turning a tub on and that'll turn my quick fill hose up and then I just have one of those hang on tank PVC setups with another ball valve and I can go around and quick fill tanks individually that way.

Hell yeah.

So how do you regulate the ball valves? Do you just leave them set and then know that they're going to get about the same water? You don't need to be completely exact or do you have to keep dicking with the ball valves?

No.

So you're never going to be completely exact. But when you set the system up and I recommend every six months, double checking that the flow is the same, because each tank has a ball valve and the pressure will be different in the line right as it goes down the line to the individual tanks. Further away from that shower valve, you can turn the ones closer to the shower valve down a little bit so it'll restrict that water flow, and more will get to the later ball valves in line. So adjust that when you set it up.

And then every six months I take.

A look and everybody's still filling at roughly the same rate. In the old fish room or the shrimp room, I touched on this, a mistake I made was putting those ball valves basically in the water. So when the water was filling up it would start getting touched by water.

And that causes a lot of issues.

Because eventually you get algae growing on it. You have some flow issues because it's physically obstructed with gunk and algae and buildup. So this new room, and I wish.

I can show you guys on the.

Podcast here, but I put the water in system on the wall and the only thing going to the tank is a piece of ro tubing and it's not touching the water, it's just sitting on the rim.

So, so far so good. And.

It's been working beautifully since I did this second fish room.

Now I see a mix of wood and steel stands, which is you prefer?

I like them both.

I love steel stands better.

A, they will stand up forever.

They're all like powder coated. You're never going to get rust. You can upgrade the shelving with like a piece of PVC and paint it with like a latex paint the wood stand. The only reason I built this wood stand, and this is just the regular lag bolt on two x four wood stand, is because this room, I wanted my desk in here. This is like my fulfillment station for the business. And if I put another deep rack in or even a smaller metal stand, I wouldn't have been able to maximize this space with another twelve tanks here. So that's the only reason I built this one. And then I painted it black to match. But if I had all the space in the world and I had my choice, I'd always go metal. Steel racks, they come painted. The assembly is a fraction of the.

Time, little bit more money.

But if you're crazy enough to set.

Up a 48 tank rack in your.

Fish room, I think you can spend the extra dollars to do it right the first time.

The amount of money being spent on.

Metal racks for me is, I don't know about you, but six months from.

Now going, this isn't working, I'm going to put in another row of tanks, or I'm going to put in different size tanks. And just the availability to be able to pop those shelves off and move stuff and not have to interrupt the top tanks or the bottom tanks. I completely change mine all the time. And then every once in a while I find, I'm sure like you where.

You have a little bit of space.

And you're going, I can put 355 gallon tanks in there. You can go usually find something that has a 17 inch depth for 55 and stick up 355s in there. That's what I've been personally doing with my discus and my angel fish.

Every time.

You for sure, yeah.

So I really like the metal racks. I've had the wooden racks before.

And what I find out, that the.

Wooden racks sometimes have to be tightened up. Have you ever had that where they've loosened up a little bit and all of a sudden you kind of look why is everything kind of leaning a little bit? Because I was using three and a half inch leg bolts and stuff and didn't get them tight enough or I've moved it enough times where it's loosened up on its own.

Whereas the metal racks behind you continuously don't move.

I mean, you can drag them around.

No? Yeah, for sure.

At our house, we went to our local Harbor Freight, and they have those huge furniture moving pads about six inches.

Square, and we actually can drain all the tanks down to about halfway and.

Slide the entire rack without having to.

Take the tanks out.

And that's what I really like about it. So I actually have all mine on sliding racks. I have carpet in my fish room and I just find it so much easier to move stuff around if something.

Happens or you have to get behind.

There for some reason.

Don't smell the carpet, that's a rule. No.

So in doing any type of fish room, everybody has lessons they learn and stuff they would do. That's why you have the first version. The second version, you did some changes. What's the top three things that you learned a lesson with that's just going to change how you do this fish keeping going forward?

Top three lessons, I would say saving money on lid handles, right? I make my own lids. That's a huge cost saving.

How do you make your so there's.

Actually a great tutorial on YouTube from Steve Poland. He's one of the OG fish tube content creators. You can get the glass cut or cut it yourself. I like glass personally over plastics because you're always especially running air driven sponge filters, you're always going to get algae on the glass and you can use a razor blade and it cleans it up in 2 seconds. So glass last stands the test of time. So I would look up if you want a tutorial on how to make my lid specifically, I used the foundation from Steve Poland's DIY lid, so check that out.

But the tip for these lids is.

For some reason, when COVID hit well, not for some reason. We all know the logistical issues that.

Happened during COVID but the stick on.

Handles got really expensive on ebay. You used to be able to get a pack of twelve for like $15. They were about a dollar apiece, no problem, you buy those. But when I looked when I was building this second room, the lid handles were crazy expensive. So what I ended up buying were one inch glass marbles and siliconing them to the dude. And I love the look of it too.

It's so clean, you know what mean?

So that's that's my first tip for sure.

Jimmy Lightbulb went off just now. He just thought to himself, I finally have a purpose for those uranium made marbles that's right for me, my childhood.

He and I have had this conversation before. The other thing I like about yeah, I like about that, too, is if you ever had glass and you've not had a good handle on it, and you lay the glass back on the.

Glass and it's wet becomes a suction between it, it sticks.

And with that marble, it actually keeps it up or a little aquian handle will keep it off the glass.

Yeah, with these specific lids, that's not even an issue because the frame for the glass portion actually sits in a plastic piece. It's called outside corner molding. You can buy it at Home Depot or Lowe's or whatever. And I just spray painted with Krylon Fusion Black. And the first piece, it's two piece glass, right? Because I want them to slide so I can easily get in them. The stationary piece that sits more towards the back sits inside of that outside Corner Molding. And then the top part sits on top. So the glass never physically touches, which is amazing. You're only sliding glass on your it's a great system.

I love that.

And after I talked to you last summer, I did that with several of my tanks, and I bought everything they had out at my local menards to do all that. And I've still got about half of my tanks to do in that. But the tanks are so much easier to keep closed because they so easily just slide back and forth. And you also can save a lot of room. If you're really short on room and you want to stack your tanks and they're tight, you don't have to worry about it leaving five inches. So your lid will flip up, it will slide back and forth.

Absolutely.

And you can get another row of tanks in there. And for somebody like you and me and Robbie, one more row of tanks could be 10, 12, 15 more tanks on a row.

That's just more addiction. That's more to rub your nipples on the morning.

No, I don't do that.

Anyways, number two he's confused, too.

Oh, yeah, sorry. All right. Number two, it's definitely got to be getting your water change system set up. If you're going to scale a fish room, the last thing you want to do is have 45 tanks and have to manually change water. And I know a lot of people dedicate their lives to that, and you get to be in your tanks more. And there is something to say about being more hands on every day when you're doing that stuff. But my solution to that is not make it automated. With a solenoid valve, I manually come in, turn the ball valves on for each zone, and then I make sure I give all those tanks a look every day or once every two days. So automate your water changes is probably the biggest tip that I would say, because it's paramount when you're talking about scaling your fish room.

Yeah, you're only one guy.

You don't actually have to hire people to do this.

Right. And that goes into the profitability thing with actually breeding for profit.

Right.

Like, you can only be successful if you keep your costs down. That's why I'm doing this in my house. That's why I'm a one man operation. The more things I can automate, I will. And that's just scalability is profitability in that sense.

You had a question, Dalton?

No, I was just going to say.

I think even not talking about scalability water changes suck. If you've got two tanks, water changes know, on all of my tanks, I've already got a pump in the water, so I just run a splitter with.

A ball valve off of it.

So when I want to do a water change, I don't have an automated system, but I can just split it.

To the discharge hose and then run.

It down the drain with the pump that's already running in the tank.

And it makes it a heck of a lot easier. I've only got eight or nine tanks.

But it's a lifesaver now I'm going to go on limit and say to people that are wanting to put this system out, I don't need to do an overflow, I don't need to set up over the edge overflow, drill a tank, I don't need to do any of it. All I can do is just top off the water. I'll watch it. I guarantee you, setting the system up without an overflow is the best way to make a water claim on your homeowner's insurance. I promise you there will be no.

More unique method of doing it.

One other method sorry, Jim, I was just going to say you can actually make the siphons and the overflows without drilling the tanks. I think Gary Sage from Select Aquatics in Colorado, I think his system has no drilling involved. It's pretty ugly, like aesthetically, you're not going to get the same look with everything behind the tanks, but it is possible if you're just looking to scale up without learning how to drill tanks and break 15 tanks while you're learning and stuff like that. So there are ways to do it.

We make them here. We've done a few fish rooms for the people in the club. I know Dean is one of the most recent persons I've done it with. He's actually building a fish cistern for his basement. He's got an old school Catholic cistern and he's flooded the bottom, kind of like you saw, everybody saw on the social media.

They had that eel basement where this.

Guy was having full size eels and a massive cistern. In the basement, he's got a small cistern, he flooded the basement, the base part of the cistern, about a foot and a half deep, and then he's put pallet racks up with racks above the water. So his whole thing is he pumps the water from the lower pond, quote unquote, into the tanks above as a continual flow system, and they have overflows going straight back to the bottom of the cistern. So we made overflows using PVC, we used the old, old school Joey King of DIY YouTube video before he became a social media guy and was just doing the DIY stuff. And it works really well. We haven't had a single siphon. Be you know, there's a lot to be said that Krylon solves a lot of problems, like you were saying before about those sliders.

Yeah, I have a friend over in.

North Dakota, and he has a piece of PVC coming down. And once you have that initial vacuum going, he has like, a regular garden hose valve on it. And he goes up there, and he turns it on and turns it off, and it automatically starts draining, and he has automatic system to start filling it. But he didn't want to drill anything because he's in a really nice house and he didn't want to drill anything, so he thought that would be more safe. So there's a hundred ways to do it. It's just whatever you feel comfortable doing. And with us here in Minnesota, everybody's got their fish down in their basement. But if you've got stuff on a main floor and you flood your main floor and it goes down or heaven.

Forbid, your neighbors below you, right.

And that could be a whole bunch of trouble.

Wait, number three, he's got to get through them. We got one and two.

I got a question. Okay, tell me about number three. All right.

So number three, when you're buying lights, make sure they come with integrated dimmers.

And timers, all right?

Because if you're going to have all these lights in a fish room, the last thing you want to do is.

Have to pair them either with the.

Wi Fi timers, the Wi Fi plugs, or have to turn them on manually every day. So having like, beams work, for instance, has all these lights in this room. Are beams work? I love them. They're cheap on ebay relative to other lights. Anyway, they come with dimmers and timers. I can adjust them as needed. That's my lighting hack, I would say, and then just zip tie them to the bottom of the shelf above. And that's all I did. They're super easy to install on these.

Racks, I was going to say, because.

I do the same thing where I zip tie them to the rack. The reason I like the zip ties is because if you take and mount them to a board and for some reason your top tank starts to overflow, then it will follow the board and take out your lights.

Yeah, fry out a light.

And so I like just having the zip ties because it's less ways for water to get to your light. If you have a leak or a.

Broken tank, that and taking a pair of scissors, cutting it off and moving them quick beats having to drill or bolt anything to what you're trying to do.

And it's quick and easy for replacement when they crap out on you.

So you built this fantastic fish room. You got a second one done. Your mother in law thinks you're crazy. She found your dried up fish.

You can't live it down, but you're.

Disproving her theory because now you're starting to have your supply ready, and you're about to make money. So you got your fish room done. What was the next steps in your process. Did you start a website? Did you do more? I feel like you did more homework.

You're very thorough.

Yeah. So before you do anything, you have to do the research. And I actually made my website early on because you can only sell so much locally and on message boards and on the internet. As long as you figure out shipping, which, again, is a whole nother process, you need to really study and figure out the best way for you to accomplish that. In whatever climate you're in, you got to do the research. So I made my website early on. I started adding my shrimp and my plants. And what was the other part of the question, Rob?

I'm sorry.

I'm just trying to walk through the bouncing ball. You made the fish room.

What was next?

So you had to figure out shipping was the next tackle. How did you figure out shipping?

How do you ship?

So you learn through trial and error, depending on what I'm shipping. It really depends on the type of shipping I'm doing. Fish. I ship through ups. Mostly. They're the most reliable. I individually bag all my fish unless it's rice fish. I'm really hot on rice fish right now. I'm breeding millions of them. Outside those, you can put more to.

A bag because they're smaller fish, but.

Making sure you're shipping with plenty of air, going through a reliable carrier, heat packs, insulation, learning when to use heat packs. Because I'm in South Florida, so it's hot year round for the most part. I don't want to throw in two heat packs and drop it off in the morning, and then it's cooking on the tarmac at 04:00 p.m.. Or 05:00 p.m.. When they get picked up at the drop off location. So you really got to learn the intricacies of your area and where you're going to ship. But that was a big hurdle early on. You really do lose things. You lose plants, you lose fish. But after a while, that percentage goes down when you kind of pick up the skill better. And now I'm happy to report that 99.5% of my shipments have zero DOAS. So it's just learning how to ship is huge. That was tested step.

You got to get your toe wet. How did you jump in? Did you find a few friends in, like, a Minnesota and give them trading?

Yeah, sure. Trading fish. I'm big into genetics with the Rams. I'd ship fish to I shipped fish to Jim not too long ago. That's a little bit later in my process. But, yeah, shipping fish around the country, you just got to jump in and do it, obviously. Learn as much as you can. There's tutorials for everything online. We live in the information age, you know what I mean? I'll say it again, siri. We live in the information age. There's a tutorial for everything, you know what I mean? So go online and learn, because if you're going to ship live animals, you better have your shit together, because you don't want to be killing things and you don't want customers pissed off at you. I've had the same DOA policy since day one. And if something arrives dead that I sell you, I reship it for free, and I ship it in the same way that the shipping that you purchase and I get it there to you alive. And that's why it's so important to.

Learn how to ship, because you don't.

Want the customer experience. After coming home from work, they get their box or excited. This is a hobby for most people, and they sit down with their fish and boom, this thing's floating. It's fish soup. Why is it cooked in a bag?

Right.

So learn how to ship. That was a huge thing that I did, and then yeah, honestly, to further that, getting your name out there is the hardest thing in the world. And unless you're extremely passionate about what you're doing, you might as well stop now, because for me, I have 75,000 followers across all of my social platforms at this point. And before I got anywhere, it was two and a half years of grinding social media, talking to myself, showing my small but growing follower base, everything that I'm working on, the fish that I'm breeding, the genetic lines that I'm trying to create myself, interesting ways to make my plants look nice online. You're in an echo chamber for the first year, and then you slowly start to pick up. And I think it took me almost two and a half years to get to 10,000 followers. Now I'm five years in, I'm at 75,000.

So that's really the next step, was.

Getting people to look at what I'm doing.

Right.

So let's pick on the same question. Top three things that you did to make yourself known on social media. Number one, sponsor yourself with the Aquarium Guys podcast. You can reach us out with your business questions to.

Even that wasn't even smooth.

Okay.

No, for real, though, start with quality.

And make sure that you're passionate about it.

Right?

Because if you don't love what you're doing and you're not producing something that.

People want to look at, what's the point? Right?

So I'm super passionate about this. As you can see, I have 120 fish tanks inside of my home. I have ponds lining my fence outside. This is a passion project that I was able to turn into a business. Right? Yeah.

Okay, so that's the first thing.

I mean, second and third thing, they're all wrapped up into each other. Honestly, I can't really say. One, two, three. Here's the magic sauce, because it kind of progressively snowballs on each other.

I was looking more like a specific post. I had this one video where something happened. That's what I was looking for. What was your magic moment? Or is it just a slow progression of consistency.

There's no magic moment. I've had a couple of videos go viral, 2 million views and stuff. And sure, that's good for your immediate follower count increase. But being passionate, people are going to see that, right? They know that you care. You show people what you're doing. You're excited about it. That's step one. Step two is when they start buying from you. Make sure your customer service is top notch. Make sure you're there. Make sure you take care of any issues. That goes back to my day one shipping policy. In the beginning, I was making 40, $50 a week. And if something died, that's ten extra dollars in shipping, plus the product that I had to reship. You can bury yourself early, but you have to have that customer service.

Right.

That's huge. And then I guess my third tip is stick with it. Because if you put enough time and energy into anything that you're passionate or you care about, you're going to gain some modicum of success.

And that's where I'm at now.

I feel like only five years in, I'm starting to really reap the benefits of the work I've put in up to this point.

One thing I think that you're not saying for yourself, you and I have had this conversation. You've said it to me personally, but.

It hasn't come up yet that you.

Do something and you do it very well, but you don't try to do 100 varieties. You're doing three, four varieties of rams. You're doing three, four varieties of shrimp, and you do a really goddamn good job with it.

I remember when you got off the phone with him, actually, you came over and you had like this Anthony guy. Where'd you find him? I'm like, he's been our fan for a while. This guy's sharp. He's taken those, as you said, the Gordon Ramsey aspect of cutting down the menu and doing what he does and do it right.

Right. And I tell you what, the only.

Mistake that I made when I ordered from this dude is I didn't order enough damn black rams. Because everybody wants the black rams, and they are absolutely black. More black.

This is what we get for living in the state with the most mung in it.

Oh, man, that is funny because it's absolutely, 100% correct. Because every time we have a fish show and the mong population come out and they love their black angel fish, they love the black rams.

Yeah.

They love the dark shrimp.

Anything that they can call a black orchid is sold out.

Black bettas. Oh, God.

But Jim, thank you for bringing that up, first of all, because that is.

A pillar of why I'm becoming successful.

Really dialing into a couple of things and doing them good, better than everybody else, or at least comparable to the best, is so important, especially when you're limited on real estate. You can't breed fish without water.

You need tanks.

You can't breed shrimp without shrimp tanks. What's the point of having everything if they all suck? For a business standpoint, collectoritis is real. I have plenty of tanks kicking around here that make me no money, but.

I love them, right?

So I have that too. But hyper focused on what you want to provide to the hobby. And for me that was from the beginning. Dwarf cichlids, which culminated in me making awesome black rams and other color rams. My GBRs are awesome. My golds have super orange heads on the males, right. My shrimp, I'd make sure they're super high grade. I'm always culling and easy plants. The plants are huge. Actually, I probably am doing more plant sales than shrimp sales at this point. In the beginning that was reversed. Now I'm having trouble keeping up with breeding enough shrimp because I home breed everything here. I do supplement with some plants that I bring in for resale, but the majority of everything I do is done.

Here in my home facility.

But, yeah, thank you for bringing that up because that is so important is to pick something and get better than everybody at it. That's how you're going to get people to pay attention.

I see two different people that are in what I'd like to call your genre of the breed at home business that do two different ways of success. One, they like you keep the menu small and they do it right and they do it top tier. You get a name in the game that, hey, when you want sweet rams, guess what?

I know Anthony.

Anthony's had quality. He's had quality for years. He's my de facto guy. I'm going to get shit from. Then you have the what's the word I'm looking for? Not out of pocket guy, but you have the mixed bag guy where people.

Will we're actually going to be having.

Another guy on the podcast we're going.

To be doing another interview with and.

This particular gentleman brings in a random assortment of rarities. He goes in, he talks to different breeders, and he's known for having the fish of the week. It's only odballs. That's the only really two successes I've seen. If you're going to, like you said, half ass something, try to keep a long list of something all the time that you're trying to be known for.

And guess what?

The guppies aren't so good. But my rams are fantastic. It doesn't help you and it's distracting from what you could be doing better.

Well, the thing is, too, is that's.

Right, is you can find a lot.

Of really good angelfish breeders. You can find a lot of good guppy breeders. But I tell you what, there's very few people who are doing good rams. And I've bought enough rams to flush down toilets.

I've imported them.

I bought them from Florida, from different farms and stuff and had no luck in my water that's how we had the conversation.

You were so sick of it and you're bitching to me. I'm like, Robbie, where the can we find some rams? I'm like, haven't you talked to Anthony?

We sent him a hoodie.

Yep, and then some got some rams from him. And like I said, I wish I'd ordered more black rams, and I probably.

Will next time, but just they live.

And live and live and live, and.

The stuff I was importing or bringing.

In from different companies, they would be good for three, four, five days start deteriorating. And day eight, day nine, they start tipping over. And no rhyme, no reason. And I didn't have to do anything with your fish other than freaking feed them, just add water and keep them more.

I get that a lot. I get that a lot from people that are hesitant, that have gone into.

Fish stores and bought wholesale. Rams that have just been, from the.

Day they were hatched to the day that they landed in that fish store.

Have been basically abused.

And they get to this point where they're on their last legs when you buy them, but they're still colorful enough, they look fine in the store tanks. You bring them home, you don't set them up perfectly, they're gone. And then they get the reputation that.

They'Re a hard fish to keep when.

In reality, they're the easiest fish in my fish room that I've kept. I never have problem with rams, ever. And it's because I started with quality. I breed quality and I keep and before you get them from me, they are the healthiest they can possibly be. And they're going from my water to your water.

That's it.

Now, where did you get your breeding stock? Did you find somebody local that was doing it? I can't believe that you called somebody over the Philippines and said, hey, send me your best.

No, I reached out to a couple of old time breeders that I found.

On message boards, and I took in as many rams as I could that.

I can bring in.

And I selected out of all the.

Ones that I received, I grew them up, right? You buy batches of babies, right? They're juveniles. And I grew them all up and I said, this fish, this male is beautiful, this female over here is beautiful. And I put them together and that was my first spawn. And that started my line. My line for my black rams, anyway, is I breed for maximum black on the fish and maximum blue on the sides and on the fins. And that's kind of my calling card. Like, you can see it all over my social media. I'm always posting my genetic makeup and my lines and yeah, I just started with nice looking fish and continued to make them nicer, or at least what I wanted, right? Nicer is subjective. It's what I wanted to breed and what I thought. People would be interested in.

So what's your hardest lessons that you can share with the group here of doing the business and getting into it.

That you just learned from the school.

Of hard knocks exclusively?

Man, I think I've really limited my.

Hard lessons by the copious amounts of research that I do. I don't mean to say that, like, I've never had a hardship in this hobby or business.

I would say the shipping hurdle, especially.

Learning to ship in the winter from.

A warm state, huge and almost impossible.

I actually limit my temperatures if you're not doing overnight shipping with me. And it's two day shipping because of all the trials and tribulations that I had learning how to ship. I won't even ship it if it's under 40 degrees, you know what I mean? So there's just no point. There's no amount of heat packs that's going to keep a ram above freezing and that's for rams, obviously, other things can go a lot colder. But the school of hard knocks was.

Learning how to ship year round.

You don't want to go into a business and say, I'm going to make all my money in the summer. First of all, all, you crazy mother effers in the winter states are locked in all winter long and all you want to do is play with your fish tanks. I have so many winter northern winter fish orders. These people just come out of the woodwork. It's crazy. So you can't just be like, oh, it's too hard, I'm done so hard knock number one, learn how to ship to the frozen tundra. And then I guess hard knock number two is let me think.

Take your time, brother.

Okay, you know what, this is a big one and we're really breeding fish focused here. But I do so much but I'll stick with this because it's the hardest thing. The hardest thing here for me and was learning how to raise ram fry and actually getting a decent amount of.

Them to sellable size the first month.

Of a ram's life, if you look at them wrong, they will die in their fry tray and there's nothing you can do besides really dial in your process. So becoming profitable and learning how to.

Breed fish, learning how to feed babies.

Is so incredibly important. I took a lot of l's because I had a lot of success right off the bat. I don't know if it was because I was super focused on research and I was studying exactly how much brine shrimp to put in the tray with that amount of fish specifically. But there came a time where I was it I could do anything and I slowly stopped focusing on the baby fish and I had a lot of die off in that period a couple of years ago and you really have to stay focused on that. So yeah, that's a huge thing that just came to my mind right there.

Now there's a lot of people listening.

Right now and they're thinking in their.

Head, I'm going to make a million bucks at this and stuff. How many babies would you say you average in a clutch and how often are they breeding for you?

Because there's a lot of people that.

Are listening that aren't familiar with how you breed. Rams, can you give us how about this 32nd tutorial of how you breeding them and how many you're cranking out?

We'll also pause this and do another episode on German rams with this fine gentleman. I think he has a lot more. We can put in one podcast to share.

Sure.

All right. But okay, 32nd deep dive. So they breed on something in your aquarium. So I use little two inch terracotta saucers, they're called. You can buy them in bulk on Amazon or go to a hobby store. They're going to lay their eggs on that. You're going to pull the eggs or you're going to see if the parents will raise them. That takes a lot of time, right? So I always pull the eggs. I'm looking for maximum to adulthood for sale. I pull the eggs, I raise them artificially. You have to be hatching brine shrimp every day. There's no way around that. I don't like worms and all that stuff. And to answer your question, how many do I get out of a batch? If the fish is the first time it can breed, let's say six months to eight months, when it starts giving me clutches, I'll probably get 150 eggs from that fish. I've had some females in their prime roughly 18 months to two years that will drop 500 eggs on that little terracotta saucer and it will not only fill the entire top of the saucer, but she will line the rim with eggs, too. And out of that, let's say that mega batch, 500, there's videos on my social media. I've been as successful of raising 90% of those to sellable size. So let's say 450. And then there's some big L's where I'll have 400 fish in a fry tray and it overloaded the fry tray and I'll lose them all or I'll only end up with 100 or 50. So it's really all over the place. So there you go.

That's the non ram podcast.

We'll get deep into it on another one, we promise you. So if you're listening in, we're going to get another one with Anthony. And there's people right now with Calculators slide rules.

They're figuring out.

I'm going to be counting.

They're trying to figure it out.

We do have some questions from the listeners. Listeners want to know how you're doing your tanks. Most of the time when people see that they're doing breeding and growouts, they don't see ten gallon tanks. They don't see an array of small tanks. So explain to them not necessarily with rams, but all of your species selections just go around your room, how do you do the process? So if I'm sitting at home and I want to pick n species, I got the breeding tank and I have the grow out tanks. What does this all look like?

Don't do ten gallon tanks. If you're starting out, you need to really know what's going to happen in a ten gallon tank when you put.

200 fish in there. Right.

But if you do go my route, I went with the maximum amount of tanks that I can have all on a separate system. So that limits my exposure to any potential diseases. That means I can bring new stock in and put them in a tank in the fish room. And there's no way to get a disease to my growouts that could affect my sales. So here, I know what I'm doing. I can do it in tens. I know how much water that I need to run through my 200 fish fry tanks that I feed three times a day to make sure I don't stunt their growth.

Right.

Because water and fresh water plays a big part on the growth of a fish. I think that's something that we can.

Dive in a little bit about when.

We do the Ram podcast.

Let's pick on a couple of different let's pick on shrimp. So shrimp, you have a colony tank. How do you grow those out? Is it a grow out and a breeding how's that work in your room?

So I start with in a ten gallon shrimp breeding tank. I always start it with moss because it has a lot of surface area for biofilm, which the babies are going to need.

And that's what you're doing is ten gallon tanks for breeding?

I do ten gallon tanks for everything. My entire operation is ten gallon tank.

Okay, continue everything.

So I start with a ten gallon tank. I only breed neocaradina, by the way. I love caradina. I have them kicking around here. But I'm hyper focused on quality and low amount of SKUs. Right. I want to make sure that I'm breeding quality. Okay, so ten gallon tank, 20 shrimp to start a colony.

Okay.

Make sure they're the prettiest shrimp that I can find around the fish room. Start with all one color, make sure they're fed well.

I do spinach once a week, I.

Do pellet food every day, but I make sure to not overfeed. You overfeed a shrimp that grow too big in their exoskeleton, all of a sudden you have dead shrimp.

You have no idea why, right? So that shrimp are really easy.

Set up a tank, sponge filter, throw in some moss. Make sure your water is at least in an acceptable range for the species that you have that you want to breed and give it time. Don't overfeed. Make sure they have plenty of available biofilm on the plants. You need plants with shrimp. I'm sorry. There's plenty of people that do shrimp without plants, but you're never going to have the success unless you have some type of hardscape for the babies to retreat to or the pregnant females. And you need plants for those babies to hide in. The adult shrimp don't predate on the.

Young, but they still are fragile and.

They need a place to just relax and eat for the first couple of days they're alive, facilitating those needs.

You got 20 shrimp in a colony, you just let them breed on their own, and then how do you harvest from them? I'm assuming that's the same breeding and grow out tank in one.

Yeah, right. You don't have separate grow out tanks for shrimp. The only time I pull shrimp out of a tank is either for sale or to restart a new colony.

Right.

So, for instance, I just added 36 new shrimp tanks to my original fish shrimp room, right? So I took all my best shrimp out of each tank and seeded the new tanks. And I'm not even done with that, but that's what I'm currently in the process of doing. I'm picking out my best shrimps and I'm putting them in the new tanks, and then I just do exactly what I listed. It's a big old mound of moss.

And make sure it's clean.

Not clean like you don't clean it, but make sure it doesn't have any crazy pests. And also make sure you know how to control pests like hydra and stuff like that. You don't want baby shrimp being eaten by hydra or planaria. So I'm very selective, especially in the shrimp room bringing in new stuff. I do not want to bring in.

Shrimp, parasite or anything that could affect.

A shrimp because they're so much more fragile than fish.

So how do you harvest from this and this is again from the listener, how do you harvest from a shrimp tank? When you have going, do you go by number? How many you see? And I can take only so many from them.

Yeah, that's actually a whole nother episode, I think, but short Cliff Notes is you never want to pull out too many shrimp from a shrimp colony because you will crash the colony and then you'll be six months to be able to sell from it again. So when my colonies get up to about 150 to 200 shrimp, that's when I feel comfortable enough to sell maybe 50 to 75 of those shrimp, right. So what I do to harvest a shrimp is I take a sinking wafer or a pellet, a couple of pellets. I drop them right in front. I always leave the front of my shrimp tanks with nothing but sand, just inert regular sand. I use pool filter sand from Home Depot for white, and I use imaginarium black sand from Petco for black. Depending on the color of the shrimp.

They'Re easier to see.

Drop those pellets in, take a shrimp net and just scoop out ones for sale that look great and the customer will be happy with. Put them in a breather bag, send them on their way.

All right.

What do you do for growouts for you? I'm trying to remember the different species.

You have rams, you have yeah, I.

Should even rice fish.

Rice fish.

I'm assuming those outside.

Can I ask a question about shrimp.

Before we move on to the fish? Do it.

Sure.

Yeah.

So how do you handle coals in your shrimp tank? When you've got your breeding stock and you're growing out and you've got 100 and 5200 shrimp in a tank, at.

What point do you make sure you.

Cull before they start to reproduce and you've got a whole line of shrimp.

That are low quality all the time? When I'm bagging shrimp for sale or I'm doing my daily feedings, I'll go in an hour later, I'll look to see if there's anything I don't like in that gene pool. I'll pull it out and I'll put it in one of my coal tanks. Just another ten gallon tank with a mix. Skittle tanks, I call them, with all different colors of culls and crazy stuff. And then once I get those cull tanks full, I list them on the website as a discount every so often. And then I'll just sell those as discounted shrimp from just mixed bags of shrimp. So I'm always culling those tanks and I'm always keeping my line. I'm always entering my shrimp into the shrimp contest. Every year at Aquashella. I do it twice a year. I've won first place last year. I won breeder of the year. I've won a lot of second places and third places. I've sweeped the show. It's just staying on top of it.

See, in my mind, I was thinking with all these calls that your rams are eating really well.

God.

You see that hard flex there? Oh, my God. He just threw it up there with 15 pounders on his arm there, bud, dude.

I hatch a tablespoon of brine a day every day. I never miss a day unless I'm physically gone on vacation. And the rams eat good. I give them live blackworms every so often. They eat tons of high quality pellet flakes and frozen foods. They are not missing their shrimp snacks, that's for sure.

Now, how are you finding blackworms these days? Is it getting any better, any easier for blackworms?

No, it's not.

No.

And I wouldn't want them daily anyway. I use them as a treat sometimes it helps trigger breeding. But if my rams are ever lagging on breeding, pulling the heater off and letting them go to my room temperature, which is about 75, usually does the trick, too. So good diet doesn't have to be all live, but definitely incorporate live. Like baby brine. It's a great food for all of your fish if it's not a six inch gigantor, right? But if you're talking dwarf cichlids and fish, baby brine.

That is liquid gold.

Well, next listener question, before we get too far away from it. What's your favorite aquarium plant that you offer?

Boost, baby. I love Boosa. Philandra.

It is just like anubius and fern. And those are probably my close seconds because they can take the higher temperature.

In my ram tanks.

But boosts is what got me into this hobby. It's what kept me in this hobby. If you come and do a tour of my fish room one day, Rob's, you will see some of the craziest boosts you'll ever see. I import it direct. I always try and source it from farms in Indonesia, not guys that are just ripping it out of the wild. I offer it on my site, and that is my favorite plant species by a mile.

Now, is Boostie slow growing like Anubias.

Or is it exactly like Anubias? No, it's nice and slow.

Nice and slow.

And it doesn't need a whole lot of light. Anubius doesn't need it.

No. Their care requirements are virtually the same. And I put them in my shrimp tanks when I get them. They keep them beautiful and clean. I have portions here sitting next to me that I'll put on driftwood and stuff and put it on my website as little premade sections. I literally just have boosts coming out of my ears over here. But yeah, man, they're super easy. It's my favorite.

Yeah. The other question I had that I wanted to talk so you said you're running heaters in each individual tank?

Oh, yeah, man. Listen, I hate my electric bill. Yeah, no, it's not as bad as you would think. And I only have to run heaters in my ram tanks, and right now that's only 30 or 40 tanks. And I run 50 watt heaters. So limit the wattage. Make sure you have a tight fitting lid. My ambient temperature is only eight degrees cooler than what I keep my Rams at, roughly 82 to 84. But there's no other way I could do it in my home. I can't live in 85 degrees.

I love it.

I got Viking blood in me, man.

The good comments are right away are only in quotations. Oh, guys, it's only 30, 40 tanks. Don't worry about it.

Do you find any particular heater? Are you buying some of the crazy stuff from overseas that's cheap, or are you buying something with a little brighter quality?

The best heater I've ever found, and.

I'm going to knock on wood right.

Now, are high top on Amazon. They're cheap, they're regular.

Thermostat stick glass heaters, I use them in every single one of my tanks. But the kicker is, and the reason why I don't experience failure is every.

18 months on the dot, they all.

Get ripped out, thrown in the garbage, and I put brand new ones in.

No kidding. I've done that.

I never run a heater longer than 18 months.

You should be selling those heaters with your funky shrimp that you're calling get like a free heater, get 20 retarded.

Shrimp and there you go.

Honestly, you can send some of those.

Shocky things my way, you know what I'm saying?

Yeah, I thought about that. But the last thing, going back to what I said earlier about customer experience, the last thing I want to do is sell somebody a two year old.

Heater and then it kills their fish.

Or sticks on or something. You need to take the Disney Method.

You got to take the Disney method. Disney wanted to put out some less family friendly content, so they made touchstone entertainment, right? So you need like, instead of DACU aquatics where you sell your premiere stuff, you need like, dumpster fire, know, and then just be like, guess what? Use heater sales all day.

I'm drunk and confused by hell.

Yeah.

So what are the high top heaters running, the 50 watt? Are they running about $1112 or what?

Are you paying for those? Yeah, okay.

Yeah, last round I bought, I think they were twelve. They give you a discount if you buy like multiples, so yeah, I think.

They'Re like $13 right around there.

We've heard story after story on this podcast about people who have killed $1,000 worth of fish because they spent $3 on a heater and not had a grounding rod for their discus and whatnot. And I've killed more fish with bad heaters. You think about the cost of replacing them, you're going, yeah, it's an initial cost. But you think about you have a whole tank full of adult angel fish and you got 30 in there and you lose them. You could buy a hell of a lot of heaters for that.

I tell you what, Jimmy, I live on the you shitty heater market, but I have more titanium grounding probes than.

I've seen anybody carry.

I live and die by it. And here's the fun thing, right? One time I go over, my cat knocks the titanium grounding probe out of the tank. So you shut up, see it happening, and suddenly I see all the fish shake in the tank. Like, damn it, I knew that ten year old glass heater that was cracked is fizzing that I bought used at.

The firefire sales.com for a nickel.

Yes. Anthony's not impressed with my idea?

None.

Yeah, I've actually never run any of those before. I've shot myself a couple times, but I've never experienced any because I change them out so frequently.

I don't have issues with my heaters.

I can't stand to lose one fish.

Let alone a tank full when I.

Find a tank at 140 degrees or something. Crazy. And that's why I use 50 watts.

Too, because it takes so much longer.

To heat up a tank. Even a ten gallon with a 50 watt heater, you'll know, before it's a real problem.

Now, those particular heaters, do they come with the old suction cup to keep it from banging on the glass.

There it is.

Jimmy.

They also have a plastic nub on the bottom, so if the suction cup fails in the tank, it won't crash onto the floor of the aquarium. Not that would do damage if it's underwater, but just an extra layer of protection.

I thought that was for Jimmy's pleasure.

Not big enough.

Yeah, the little cat, little rubber caps for Jimmy.

Rubber caps.

I actually would have to go with a 500 watt because they're much bigger. There you go.

Oh, yeah.

I'm sure I'm not waiting around for.

50 watts to claim me.

Well, Dalton, do you have any follow up questions I know you've been kind of answering? You threw a couple out there for us.

Well, I was just wondering how long it took and what your process was. Taking this from a hobby to your business. When you started out, did you work nine jobs like Jim or just barely one like Rob? He is so dead. I love this new.

Yeah, he's the best editor was.

It was two solid years of what am I doing? And truly questioning what I was doing before I realized there was potential to make it a legitimate career long term. And that kind of plays into what I said about the echo chamber on social media. You're trying to sell things on message boards and people don't know who you are, and it's not going well, and then all of a sudden, you'll have a good week and a bad week. But two years was the, what am I doing? Why do I have 50 60 fix? I must be having a mental break.

You think about people who've been on.

Around for two years on the Internet.

That's kind of a long time. For a lot. I mean, there's a lot of flashing of pans that we see come and go, but once you're around for two, three years, I think people know you're legit and that you're committed.

Like this podcast.

We've been stuck here forever.

Yeah. When are we going to get paid?

Dalton gets paid. That's the only person that gets paid in this. I know he earned it.

We didn't. Yeah.

Well, Anthony, thank you so much for coming on, brother. We appreciate it.

No problem.

Round two. We got to have the Ram Deep dive for sure.

And if you're listening yeah, let's do it.

And if you're listening, you are a sponsor of the podcast. This is the interview that we've been trying to get for a while. Thank you for being a sponsor. And if you want any of the products that he's been talking about of his quality control, where he even rips out his heaters to get rid of to make sure he doesn't lose fish, go to Dakuaquatics.com, D-A-K-U Aquatics.

Use promo code.

Aquarium guys at checkout for 10% off the store and I believe 20% off of Boost.

This is where you confirm that? Yeah, no, you can't use both coupons at once, but I don't offer discounts on my fish. And the biggest value with the aquarium guys coupon is if you're buying shrimp, fish, or any of the other plants on my website, it's 10% off site wide, including the boosts. But if you want to buy, just boost. My 20% off coupon is separate from that aquarium guy code. And just to say one thing, when we started talking and you gave me the chance to sponsor your podcast here, I wasn't much of anything at that point. So I don't want the listeners to think that this is some shill interview I'm on here, because I really appreciate both of you guys for stepping in and helping me grow the business early on, too. So big shout out to you three and Adam. I don't know why Adam didn't come back, but hopefully we get him for the next podcast because I got a lot to talk about, and I'd love to talk about it with you two and Adam.

Well, again, we've had a lot of people come and been we've been doing this for a little while now, and there are few people that actually get as far as you and get successful as you deliver a product. So we're tickled pink to have you on. We've been wanting to do this for a while. And congratulations, buddy. Not a lot of people celebrate other people's businesses, but you deserve a full round of applause. I got to see it from the beginning of being a fan. Hey, this is my idea.

And I have I'm not kidding, thousands.

Of emails of people saying, I want to do this.

They never do.

And you did, and you did it well.

Damn well. Good job.

Anybody that needs to order from him, if you think you need two pair, order six. I tell you, that's the biggest damn mistake, because, I mean, a box is a box, right? I mean, you can shove more fish in there if you have to.

I like his measurements. You go on here and you like you got, like, for instance, blue rams. You go on here, he's got a pair or a five pack. I don't see there's got to be a new skew called the Jim Colby pack of 15.

That's what we need.

So the other day, I ordered some angel fish, getting back into angel fish, and I talked to this particular person that I bought them from, and he offers five, six different varieties, and they're all packed, 20 and 30 and stuff. And I said, okay, I'll take them. And he goes, which ones?

I said, all of them, the lot.

And he goes, well, that's going to be like $500 plus shipping.

Is that all? Come on now. We're here to play the game.

And I said to him, I said, well, how many do you think you can get in a box? And he goes, probably about $700. I said, do it. I said, because we're sending a box. I've got to go to the airport anyway.

And dollars, I've never not gotten my.

Money'S worth for some reason. I'll spend an extra $100 to save $20 on shipping. I'm just freaking weird.

But you're like my wife, she'll get the five ketchups to save a dollar.

Type of thing, right, exactly. But anyway, Anthony, he can throw a whole lot of fish in a box for you and get it safely to you. When did I get mine? Did I get mine in the fall.

Or did I get mine the spring?

Early spring, I got a couple months ago.

Yeah, it was a couple months ago.

It was fairly cold out, and they came in and they're still all floating around downstairs in my fish room. We were moving some stuff around and around here in Minnesota, we get about, I don't know what, three weeks of good weather, and then we all stand outside and stare at the sun until we go blind. So now the fall is here, we're all spending more time in our fish room and moving stuff around. So the black rams are just beating the crap out of each other all day long. They just want to have babies and stuff. And I haven't given them anything since they lay eggs on the glass once in a while. So once I give them to give them a little potch in there and get them going and stuff. But right now my discus and my angels are all kind of taking a lot of attention away from everything else.

Well, Anthony, any other last notes you want to tell the audience or something, you have to ask us.

We barely scratched the tip of the iceberg here, gentlemen, so I appreciate the time and thanks for having me on. But yeah, check me out on social media. Daco Aquatics. I'm on instagram Facebook. TikTok. I will answer your questions. I will give you as much guidance as I can. I'm here for everybody. I love this hobby, I love the people in it. And rock on, guys, thanks for having me.

We'll have all those social media links right there in the show notes, and you can join our discord and message them directly there as well. So the discord is the Aquarium Guys podcast, bottom of the website, you'll find it there.

And like, we'd like to tell everybody, if it's three in the morning, that's the best time to get hold of him.

304:00 in the no, no, that's big Rich, since we gave out his cell phone number that he wasn't happy with us. No, we won't do that to you, Anthony, on purpose, anyway. Sober, we won't do it sober, no.

But I will put your number on bathroom walls when I go use the urinal. How about that?

Because call for a good shrimping time.

Call for some hot rice.

Call for large shrimp. There you go.

That's right. All right, guys.

Until next time. 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.

You know what? What fluke you?

That is the first time Robbie's ever got it frickin'right.

I deserve a gold star. Today we are pleasured.

I'm drunk and confused.

Hell, yeah. Or do you have to keep dicking with the ball? I thought that was for Jimmy's.

Pleasure not big enough.

That's just more that's that's more to rub your nipples on the morning.

Yeah, you better have your shit together.