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Welcome to the aquarium, guys podcast. Jimmy, we've gone too far.

What do you mean? The anal stuff or what?

Well, on that note, I'm your host, Rob Zolson.

I'm Jim Colby.

And I'm Adam El Nashar.

I don't know where that came from.

What, the butt sex?

Nope. Nope. I don't know.

So I was watching Shrek this weekend.

Intros are very hard. Cold opens.

Guys, I was watching Shrek this weekend, and he got kidnapped. And he goes, I've been ass snapped. And I thought that was pretty funny.

Wait, was that actually in the movie?

Yeah, I watched Shrek this week with my grandkids.

Are you serious? Yeah.

He goes, Shrek is the best movie ever. There's so many things in that movie. My personal favorite is that big castle where they have that giant tall castle with two short castles on there. And Shrek goes, I think he's overcompensating for something.

I hate you people and your tangents, but you got me in this one. Have you guys watched the Smurf movie ever? You got to watch it with your grandkids.

No.

The entire movie is nothing but like a def jam comedy hour of level swearing. But they replace every swear word with word smurf. I swear to God, it's the worst. But anyways, now to get our actual, real schedule programming today, I'd like to introduce our guest, Oliver Spencer from Oliver's aquatic garden. Thank you, sir, for joining us.

It's an honor.

It's an honor.

You've been lurking around our community, lurking. Lurking around our community lurking since about the beginning, honestly. So it's long overdue that we've had you on the podcast, so I appreciate you holding out this long for.

I mean, I've been a fan for a while now, and I was like, I need to get on there. So I made it a priority. Now here I am.

Well, I appreciate it.

Welcome.

For those that don't know, Oliver's aquatic garden is on YouTube. Check our show notes. We will have links to it. And you can go to Oliver's aquaticgarden.com to check out his website and. Oh, my God. Look, Jimmy, I'm actually on his website. We didn't talk to him about this, but there is a promo, guys, square promo code.

100% off.

I have, like, three or four in there.

It says 100% off. Is that a typo? 100%.

No, it's 10%. 10% on plant combos.

If it was 100%.

Yeah. He needs to make something.

Made him look anyway, right?

So check out the website while listening into the podcast. But we are having you on the podcast to talk about pallidariums. If I'm. I have a habit of butchering every single word that has anything to do.

With extra vowels and everybody's name, so.

I'm super glad I nailed that one. Finally.

That's true. So, paludariums. The name of it is palu means, like, everything. So when it says terrestrial and water, I believe it means the entirety of it. But as far as the name goes, as far the building, the building is very simple. It's a terrestrial portion and a water portion. In order to make a everything area, you would say.

So to go over the definition directly over the Wikipedia version, a pallidarium is a type of vivarium that incorporates, like you said, terrestrial and aquatic elements as a requirement. A vivarium is an enclosed ecosystem of anything in an encapsulized environment. So we are of the vivarium culture that specifically does aquariums. And hopefully you'll teach us more about how to make some terrestrial corners in our aquariums today.

Exactly. I had started off in the aquarium world for about four years out of my entire time in the hobby. I've been in it for like, nine now, if you're including both the aquarium hobby and the terrestrial hobby. So it started off when I was filling up one of my 75 gallons, and I filled it off halfway, and I was like, all right, what if I stopped right now? And I did. I stopped right then. I gave it a few times, and then I was like, let's come back and remaster this. And I came back, and on that one video where it was my highest viewed video on my YouTube channel. I designed my first ever, and, well, hold on.

I love that description. I want to do that. Everything in life, like, you know what? I built, like, half a car, and I'm like, you know what? I stopped there now killing it. I have a convertible. I don't need to go any further.

I mean, really, it was just like that.

I feel like I'm good enough. Don't even worry about it. How many people just give up? Like, you know what? I started on the top of the head. I don't need the sides. Just have the hair up here.

Reminded me of my first marriage. I've had enough.

I have my kids.

I'm done. It's perfect. We're over. I'm moving on.

Anyways. Continue. That was a good one.

I appreciate that, but no. Yeah, I mean, it was just something looking at it, I was like, man, that reminds me of a slice of a swamp or something. So I was like, man, let's incorporate some terrestrial animals in with these aquatic animals. Let's see what we can cook. Uh, so I made that first video.

This started all on your video on a YouTube channel. Your entire act of doing a pallidarium did not start outside, alone in a private space. You did this for the world to see all your mistakes.

Yes. On the first video. Yes.

Okay, walk us through how that went before people click your link and spoil it.

All right. So, obviously, I'd gotten inspiration from my past Aquariums, filling them up about halfway. So this time I was know I was starting off my polydarian plans. I had purchased all my equipment at, like, lowe's, and I think it was some pet stores, some fish stores, and I'd recently come back from moving from. Had my. I had my brand new tank. So I was getting ready to get the polydarium started. And as I wrote down these plans, I was like, hey, let's put it on the YouTube channel. Because prior to that, my channel was mainly an informational channel. And so I started to build my frame, which your frame can consist of any kind of boards or bricks or large stones to elevate what they call a fake bottom.

Now, is it any different than a normal aquarium frame? Are you talking a frame inside the aquarium? That's what I'm trying to visualize here.

There are two ways to do it. You can do a built in frame. Like, if you were to do a box inside of the aquarium and put things on top of that box to add elevation. It varies on the style that you want to go.

No, I'm still confused. Are we talking a frame outside the aquarium to lift up the aquarium itself? Or are we talking something inside to lift up the innards of the aquarium?

Oh, I'm talking about a frame inside the aquarium.

Okay, now I'm with you, brother.

Something like pvc and egg crate.

Sure.

Exactly. Imagine if you're building yourself, your frame, and it's going to add height to the box of your polydarium. I'm sketching it out as we speak just to get a good reference.

But doing it live, baby.

Yeah.

I'm building that box or that frame. You reinforce it with something simple as just 100% pure silicone. That's what you want to reinforce it as.

So you don't want it loosey goosey. You want it stabilized.

We all want it tight.

You want it nice and tight.

Nice and tight.

Exactly.

So you want to have your frame really nice and tight. Or if you're going with the hardscape method, if you're doing it by hardscape, instead of building a frame, you want to have all that siliconed in or tucked in and secured with the pond lining foam.

And you said pond lining foam. I'm going to have questions. That's why I'm asking ahead of time.

That sounds good. Pond lining foam. Obviously they do it for pond lining. When you're building your pond or you're messing with any kind of, like, filter intake, you can readjust things and secure things using like this. It's a spray foam that hardens into a mold, a hardened mold. That makes sense.

Got you. You use the sheets, not like the blocks that you cut.

Yeah, use the sheets. In the video, I used these type of plastic sheet boards. I've got the name in the video. If you want to check out the exact boards that I used. And I reinforced them with that silicone, and they held up really well when holding down 60, 70 pounds of hardscape and soil.

Damn. That's what I'd call a foam shit.

No, really, it was really quality. Well, I mixed in. I used to support the frame with silicone. Then I put the foam over it to give it an extra security, if that makes sense.

Fair enough.

Yeah. So once you have your frame all sturdy, all set to go, I love to add a lot of the hardscape in, in this step. And this could be the hardscape going into your aquarium part. Or you could put the hardscape in the terrestrial part on top of your shelf.

Now, I'm assuming by this time you have some sort of frame done the aquarium part, is that going to be sealed off from the terrestrial part or we're going to allow water to flow into the terrestrial part as part of the system here. What do you do?

On my personal polydariums, I like to run water going underneath the shelf. I don't think there's really necessarily a need to secure off a watertight seal from the aquarium portion and underneath the shelf.

Do you feel that it acts kind of like as a filter?

It acts as like a. Well, you know how the larger the aquarium it is, easier it is to keep the fish alive, right? Yes, it pretty much acts in that sense.

So more surface area, the more biological filtration you're going to get. But on the other hand, you also have a potential for some of the smaller creatures in your tank to get caught in there. One. And two, wouldn't you worry about some detritus getting in there and causing, I don't know, an ammonia leak?

That is a thing that I've thought about, especially with the fish getting trapped in there.

Don't let it get big enough for that.

Yeah, well, I haven't built any where the fish have gone through there.

You build better than that.

Yeah, I haven't had any fish get trapped in there. And if I were to do, I would have to restrategize my entire build. But out of experience of building several of them now, I haven't had that issue as far as ammonia goes, which it carries on to the next step in which I go to after I align the hardscape and set it into place. This is when I'll add the soil. The aqua soil or the dirt in like a dirted method aquarium. And after you add your substrate, I love to add plants. And I don't go skimpy on the plants. I go full send. Like full send. I've throw in so many plants, it's hard to see.

So let's stop with the dirt then. Is there any type of special recipe? Are you just going to use dirt that's going to be safe to get in the aquarium all around? Or are you going to have some sort of cap that's only going to touch the water and then the stuff above will be terrestrial only? I would worry that anything you put in that tank would need to be some sort of aquasafe.

Exactly. And they are aquasafe. The soils that I use, I use for my build in my aquarium, I use some organic soil from. And this is going to sound crazy, but I'll take some soil, I'll bake it. I'll mix it in with some organic potting soil that is healthy to go for fish. And I mix it in both for my top layer and my layer in the aquarium. And then in the layer in the aquarium, I add a thick layer of sand.

Sounds pretty straightforward to me.

Very straightforward. I was really surprised how easy the build was as I was doing it.

So just to kind of go over this again, you want to make sure you have soil that isn't like miracle grow type stuff that has fertilizers and whatnot. You want something that's completely organic and safe for your fish, correct?

Exactly. If you use something like miracle grow or one of those soils that has that heavy fertilization, it's going to kill your fish over time.

Now, what do you do to filter the water? Is it just going to be a completely planted tank? And you really don't use much filter besides oxygen or a sponge filter? Or do you use some sort of mechanical filtration, like some pump? I'm assuming you can't use a hang on the back filter unless it's real tall.

So in my video polydarium, I used a sponge filter just to break up the surface agitation. And for some of my other polyariums, I use canister filters. But I have designed it to where there's a waterfall trickling down off of objects, whether it be wood or stone. But in majority of the other polydarians, I go completely filterless.

Now, explain where you're putting the water in this. Is it just like two sides, like you have a rectangular aquarium? Is it just two sides and the water is in the middle? You use one particular side for the aquarium esque portion of it? Or is there a special river you have flowing through this to get to the end? What do you recommend, and what do you say that we should stay away from, as far as designing these out of a traditional rectangle?

So the size of the tank does vary. If I'm doing something like a 55 gallon long or 55 gallon tall, it's going to be very different depending on which one I go with. But for something like this 75 gallon traditional that I used in that video, you can really divide it up into quarters, is what I like to do. And the most common way to do a polydarium is to leave the two front quarters that face that you're facing closest to the aquarium in the aquarium portion, and have the back two quarters be terrestrial, although you can change it up by leaving the back quarters, one of the back corners empty and having three thirds of the enclosure water, or three thirds of the enclosure terrestrial. It's really customizable and it's up to you, but it's just going to be determining on how you like it.

Now, is there any risk using heaters in the aquariums? I always think that there's not enough space in these things to have traditional glass heaters, but I completely underestimate the amount of space in these. They're generally much bigger than I always anticipate when I see them.

So that's where I enjoyed the underwater portion of where I had my polydarium. And at the time, it was risky when I was building it. But I enjoy putting the heater in the portion where it is underneath the terrestrial portion, if that makes sense.

Yeah, that makes sense. So that the flowing water gets heated up and then it goes right into the tank.

Exactly.

And it's very protected.

I feel like that's putting an electrical heat source underneath. Dirt would be asking for a short out or something. But I guess that makes sense if, as long as you have water flow. Right.

How deep is you?

Oh, sorry. The heater is underneath in the. It's not covered by any kind of soil. It's just completely underwater.

So you're making this frame a shelf? This is a full on accessible shelf underneath, yes.

Accessible after you've built it. No, that's what the risk I took.

Well, how are you going to get to that heater? My guy?

Titanium grounding probe.

Hey, the heater I used for that one was old, but in my other mean, it had lasted me a while. I was confident in my heater.

Oliver, you're just like. God bless you. You're there forever. Don't even worry about.

Really? No, really. Anyway, but for my other pallidariums, I'll put the heater behind some hardscape and they quarantine.

Okay, so when the heater craps out, you just go from having tropical fish to goldfish?

That's what I do.

Exactly.

Damn right.

We're doing endlers and white cloud mountain minnows. That's what we switch to, boys.

Fiddler crabs.

Okay. Is it fair to say, since this is a pallidarium, you're going to have terrestrial creatures? Those creatures might have to be heated. So you might have heat lamps and other sources, and you might not even need a heater.

Yeah, I mean, if it's a heat required animal, like a terrestrial animal, like some types of frogs, then yes, obviously you're going to need a heat light.

But I mean, damn, I'm good at segues. Let's talk about what you can put in these things without wrecking fish.

I want to know, first of all, is the lid tight? Is it a glass lid? Is it a wire lid? Go ahead.

Thank you. So for all of the builds I've done are glass tight lids that keep the humidity levels high in there.

Okay. That's what I was wondering.

Well, I'm out. I wanted to have put like a tree out the top of mine.

All your critters are going to crawl out on your tree.

I was just going to have a broken wings.

What, do you snap off all the little fiddler crab pinchers or what? Let's run around your house.

I mean, I saw a guy that took. What was he getting? He was buying lobsters from a grocery store and then breaking off their claws and putting them in a fish tank.

What the hell would you do?

Was on, it was a guy on YouTube and then he raised them up. Then he found out the claws grow back and I don't know, I hope.

That they pinched him on the.

Yeah, I was going to say bake the crab claws and hope for a redo.

It's just a sad thing. But no, I just wanted a tree out top and I wanted to somehow make sure that nothing, because they could only crawl on the tree and couldn't jump off. But never mind, my dream's over.

Like a big failed animal. They'll jump.

Yeah, fine, fine. Take it away from me, Adam.

So what kind of livestock are you running in these type of tanks? Anything crazy?

So in the aquatic portion, I've done guppies, I've done paradise fish, I've done tetras, I've done pea puffers, I've done maybe a beta or two. I've done quite a few fish. As for the terrestrial portion, I had in an update video, I added one of those giant american millipedes.

Exactly.

That was my reaction.

Oh, I'm in. As long as it's not a centipede. Centipedes are worse.

Centipedes look evil.

Yeah, because they are.

Here's the fun thing about centipedes. Fun fact, they will survive in the water part for up to an hour. And in fact, I know several people that do centipedes. I know one person really well and she said that the whole way you sex the giant centipedes is you just about drown them to see what sex organs they have and then pull them out of the water to look at them. And when you're done looking at them so they don't bite, you good lord.

So slap them around a little bit, check out their junk. Good lord.

They like, apparently.

Wow, this went off the deep end pretty quick here.

All right, moving on. All right, keep lids on your tanks and beat your centipedes.

Got it?

So you've got centipedes, millipedes, you do dart frogs, you do firebelly toads, you do fiddler crabs, anything like that.

I'd love to get some dart frogs on my hands in that sense, but, man, I have had bad luck looking for them near me. But outside of the millipede, you're going to stock it up. I stocked mine up with some isopods, some bumblebee millipedes, a whole lot of creepy crawley insects. And then I could throw in. I threw in some american toads and they liked it. But after I've kept that main one from the video and I kept all the terrestrial animals, I fell in love more with the fish side than I did with the terrestrial side. And I really haven't been keeping that many terrestrial animals in my other polyvariums.

Vampire crabs and red devil crabs.

So what you're saying is you're keeping semi aquatic stuff like Adam just mentioned?

Not yet. I've been doing a lot of the terrestrial portions just empty without any animals.

Yet they're just waiting for good excuses to get a vampire crap. Come on now.

The ones I've done in the past.

Waiting for, like, something good to come up.

Good to come up.

Mud skippers, that's what he needs ASAP.

That'd be perfect for a brackish one. And then you could have the trees that you buy.

The trees?

Yeah. Well, I don't know. Mangroves climb, don't they? Don't they pretty well.

Mangroves, yeah.

You can put mangroves in there, but I don't think they can climb straight up a tree.

Trim them. You know what I'm saying? Oh, the creatures, the crabs.

Yes.

Trim your bush. Trim. No, that should be a new t shirt, you know that? Trim your bush.

Thank you. That was real beneficial.

I'm just trying to help.

You're helping.

The last time I had one of these crazy things, whisper products used to come out with one where the river ran. I've still got two of them. And you know what? If you go online, you can find them for like $110. I think I paid $30 and brand new.

I must pause you because we're going to have questions. What the hell are you talking about? Know what you're talking about? Tell the audience what you're talking about.

Oh, my God, what was it called?

Adam, remember whisper magic river or some stupid shit?

Yeah, whisper river system.

And anyway, it was just a little.

Hetra had it, too.

Right. And they made them for quite a while. And what I used them a lot for in some of my stores is I'd have buy a very shallow tank, like a 33 gallon long, which they don't make anymore. It's one of my favorite tanks. And you could run the river system through it and just kind of slope off the gravel on one side. And those fiddler crabs would go in and out of there all day long stuff. And I would just throw in 50 feeder guppies in there at a crack, and they would just go in and grab them and come back out and go, I got a feeder guppy, buddy.

So the way that I can describe this is you take, was it a 20 long? That's made for at least 40.

Yeah, at least a 20.

They're pre made plastic units for a rectangular aquarium. You go in and it has a divider where it's supposed to be made for one side being an aquarium, the other side having dirt for a terrestrial area.

Right.

And this is the divider it makes. And it has a river system where it can push water through from the aquarium and then push it through a fake little plastic river through the dirt. And it's like a pre done guide for your pallidarium. And that's what Jimmy was using, so he know, have a live supply of feeder Guppies for his lot of.

I mean, people love those things. And when they first came out, they sold a crapload of those things.

I've only seen them twice in the last ten years, and they were extremely expensive, used.

Yeah, I was going to say I've seen them for $110. I think I paid $30 for them, probably wholesale back in the day.

I think it was $150, and it wasn't even completely complete.

All right, and so anyway, you know what? I'm going to set mine back up because we're going to do a tour of my fish room here in a few. Next month or so.

Next month?

Next month or so? Yeah.

All right.

Hey, get off my ass.

I got to get you on your.

You know what I'm going to get you for Christmas? I'm going to get you handrails installed in my ass because you ride me so hard. But anyway, enjoy the view. Yeah, it was so cool having all those little fiddler crabs in there, and they would run in and out of the water and people at the store sitter and watch these things. And you know how the fiddler crab will sit there and just kind of wave their hand like this here. It's like, what's up? What's up, mother? And we sold just tons and tons of fiddler crabs. And then people would take them and buy them and put them in their aquarium. And they would die because they couldn't get out and get some air.

Yeah.

What a gimmick.

I sold lots of them.

What a gimmick.

Yeah. For those of you listening, the fiddler crabs need to be able to climb up a plant, at least to the top, to grab some air.

You sure should. You sure should. But, Oliver. What shouldn't you put in a pallidarium as far as creatures?

When I experimented, I think any type of fish can go as long as you know your fish. What type of aggressive fish? Just like an aquarium that just half full. As far as terrestrial animals go. I had some bad. I had times with some geckos. I don't think some geckos end up drowning.

Species of gecko. Did you try.

I used some common mediterranean geckos.

Yeah, they don't swim well.

It's just a little trial and error.

I wouldn't put any expensive fish in there because they just tend to not do well unless you've got a deep enough tank. How deep is the water in your tank?

I agree. Let's see, it was about half of a 75 gallon. So I'd probably say about 32, 33 gallons.

Yeah. So that's pretty sizable. That's a lot of water. You can put a lot of cool fish in there.

Most of them. These tanks do high flow. If you're going to have the river system. So angle towards that corridor is. I know, excel in a lot of these environments. In fact, I have friends with pallidariums where they breed better than any other aquarium that they've set up. Thanks to that lovely.

The flow.

Flow system.

Yeah, I've seen some pretty cool ones.

Cory's love it.

I've seen some pretty cool ones, too. That have had some beautiful long fin, gold danios in there. And for some reason, just because of the low level of the water and how fast they are with the right lighting, it just sits there and flashes and flashes. And that's beautiful when you see a lot of action in your tank.

Well, I got one to add. And for those who've listened to our story, times have passed. I did, many years ago, a pallidarium for school. It had a beta. It had these green african tree frogs. And I don't know what species it was. For the damn life of me, they were just green. Some sort of tree frog. They didn't have the red eyes, kind of like you see in the magazines, but they were definitely bright green tree frogs. And for some reason, at night, they just screamed. Adam, I think you told me what they were during the story time. They literally sounded like someone was being chased or attempted rape. It was bloody murder. It was awful. So stay away from tree frogs at all costs.

The best things for it.

No, that.

No. I like Adam's work, too. I love tree frogs in there. But if you get a bunch of them. When I used to wholesale them and bring them in, I bring in like 50 at a crack, put them in a tank, and, my God, after dark, it just. What the hell's going on over in that corner? They can chatter so loud.

Yeah. So if you're going to have this at your home where you're sleeping, don't you know what?

Put it next to your hamster cage. Because your hamster is up on the wheel all night anyway.

That hamster will die of a heart attack, 100%.

Put the hamster in the pilot area.

That's another bad idea.

That's something. Yeah.

Your hamster will drown. Why? Because I've had friends that tried that.

What about that cool guy on the Internet.

Who's dumb enough to put a hamster in a fish tank?

Hamchur.

Hamchur. We've seen this before on the Internet.

Yeah, the guy that makes. We talked about it a whole episode on it. Adam. He makes the submerged enclosures for hamsters.

That guy's got issues.

That is a very od thing to be interested in.

Did you listen to our little podcast on that one, Oliver?

Yeah. Was it in the same episode with that teenager that bred, like, a million frogs?

Yeah, frog army guy. Yeah. By the way, I'm pretty sure he got sued.

That was disturbing.

Yeah.

Still is disturbing.

Why did he get sued?

I think the city sued him, went after him. Yeah, but I think that he was let go due to mental. This is just me guessing. Complete hyperbole. I have no facts for this. I just have some gut feelings. From some details I found. I think that he kind of got away with it because of mental handicaps.

That is hilarious.

Don't know. No way. Just my speculation.

So, has anybody got any ideas of what would be really cool? And then people out there listening right now, if you could just send us what you think would look really cool in there. I mean, I think a little pterodactyl dinosaur would be cool.

Well, you remember those japanese bug wrestling, Jimmy, back in the day, okay. When I was a kid, it was the coolest shit. You go on the Internet and you watch this japanese bug wrestling and you find all these cool giant ass beetles and all these scorpions and whatnot.

That'd be a good one.

I thought it was the coolest thing. But the problem was they put them in such white, plastic, vanilla glass surroundings with nothing in them. I think that you need a natural area with a water gauntlet. You need some actual features. So you need a pallidarium to put down the bug gauntlet.

You know, it would be cool to be an elph and dung beetle. I don't know. We're going to get elf and dung to keep this beetle busy, but those things are so cool.

Or a rhinoceros beetle, just to roll the shit into the aquarium and kill yourself back and forth.

I mean, just ammonia balm.

So somebody keeps putting on their green and olf. Actually, I don't know if you know this guy, Philippe de Vocili. He wrote a book on these, on pallidariums. I might have the book somewhere in one of my collections. I think he didn't use them because they were kind of dumb and they'd hit the water and they drown. They're kind of like mediterranean geckos. You'd need something that's semi aquatic. Bacillus glizards, if your tank is big enough. Water dragons, if your tank is big enough. There's some smaller. There is a few species of green and old, not green and oles. There's a few species of an old. There's a completely aquatic species of anole that actually stores air in a bubble above its nose and it'll dive and it'll hunt fish.

That'd be sweet.

That would be the one.

I may or may not know some people that have them because as far as I know, they're special. And I use that in quotes. But you'd want something that's aquatic that can go back and forth. So most people go put newts, toads, that type of thing. Firebelly toads. They're actually very destructive. They dig a lot.

And before people start messaging the Jesus lizard, those things are too big and need way too much space to ever put in a box if it's big enough.

Oh, turtles would be a good one too.

Yeah, well, turtles would dig it up too. But yeah, turtles would work.

That'd be a big pallidarium for a turtle, though. You have to have, like, at least 125 to start.

Musk turtles get about four inches, and they would probably work depending on how much land you have.

But then we're talking about a USDA banned turtle. You know what?

You know, right now you can go online and buy baby turtles for educational.

Hey, Jimmy. No, you can't. We're not telling people to, you know, if you happen to find a website on your own without our recommendations.

So I saw the cutest alligator will be amazing.

I saw the cutest little red ear albino slider and it was only like 800, $900. But God dang, it was cute as a button. Talking about turtles real quick. So my wife and I are going on vacation here in the near future, and they have a place where you can go with these sea turtles and go swimming with the sea turtles. Do you know it's three times more the price than anything else for an excursion you can do off the ship?

The sea turtles.

To go swimming with sea turtles. I'm going. Is that illegal or is it not?

Is this the rock band thing?

They're federally protected.

That's what I'm saying. But they're selling. They're usually.

Hold on, hold on. Aren't the sea cows. Sea cows, manatees. Aren't they federally protected? And we can still swim with those sons of bitches.

Yep. We did that.

Yeah.

Didn't they bust a woman for, like, bareback riding one?

Yeah.

Yeah. You can't touch them. They tell you that when you go swimming?

Yeah.

So Rob's and I and our wives.

We were feeding them. They gave us food for the.

Yeah. And we were in Florida, and it's the only place you legally can go swim with the manatees in the world. And the Florida DNR are sitting right there on the shore watching you swim with these things and stuff. And if they approach you, that's fine, but you can't approach them. It's kind of like things women at a bar. I don't know.

It was fun getting in a little black teddy in front of them, though.

Yeah.

I'm not going to lie.

Sexy, sexy.

All right, we're getting off topic.

I like that. Baby alligator.

Baby alligator.

Manatee consent. Manatee consent.

If you want a baby alligator, I will message you after the show. Or I can let you know of a couple of places.

I've got connections, too.

You do, too?

Yeah.

I was going to say alligators are pretty easy.

I know. I've been bitten by one.

Right.

That explains a few things that you.

It does.

Back in the day when I was buying from Seagris farms. They sold Cayman for a long time. They don't evil and they are more aggressive than an alligator or a crocodile.

I enjoy Cayman.

And I would buy them. And I remember my kids took them to school for show and tell. Somebody would buy a couple of them. And I was paying at that time wholesale, like $25 apiece. And I'd buy them for 25, I'd sell them for 55, $60 and they were selling them for 129.

Hold your son.

My son now is in his 30s, right?

So I'm the same age as your son. Like, I brought a twelve inch buck knife to school, right? He brought a cayman. It was a good time.

Times have changed, people.

We had fruit roll ups and Captain Planet. It was a good time. Anyways, we're totally off topic. I got more questions that have been messaged to prep for this. How do you deal with excrement in the tank? Is there any particular species you got to be concerned about with their terrestrial shit that would do adverse things in the aquarium side of the pallidarium?

Let's see. As far as the terrestrial side, no. However, I don't think platos would be very good in the aquatic side, though. I think it'd make it ten times difficult.

Why?

They crap everywhere.

Well, I'm not worried about aquatic shit. I'm thinking like, is there a tortoise, like a baby tortoise that you put in and somehow that tortoise has some weird acidic shit that once hit the water would crap out my neon tetris.

Not that I'm aware of. Not that I'm aware of.

All right, turtle, not tortoise.

Oh, no.

Swim well if it won't let it drown.

Definitely drowns.

It needs to drink baby salcada.

Tortoises will float for a little bit.

Can confirm.

Yeah, I've seen so many of those videos on TikTok where they like, oh, we saved this baby turtle. It's a dank tortoise, and they throw it in the freaking. It's like, it's terrible.

Hey, my favorite one. I don't want to call out the guy because I already did and it pissed me off. But there's a famous gentleman on YouTube, and he did what I was called the goldfish roller coaster where he took and bought a bunch of feeder goldfish from a petco and then put them through this hundred foot plastic tube and then funneled him to his bathtub for fun.

I saw that.

Oh, nothing. Wanted me to delete YouTube app off my phone more oh, lord.

So, something I've been watching now for the last couple of weeks, and I've talked about this to Adam off air, and it's a new program called extinct or not something like that.

Right. Extinct or alive. I'm addicted. I've watched every season.

Have you seen the one now where.

They go find the Oris Galante is my sexual serpent, where they find the.

Freaking tortoise on the island, and the first thing they do is they pick it up, they kiss it, they love on it, they hug it, and then they tie the son of a bitch up and they take it across the island and they take it home.

Why? Because it was a like. Why are you mad about that?

Well, I mean, if this tortoise has lived on this island for its entire life.

Jimmy, Jimmy. And I'm not painting out the picture here, it was on a volcanic, unstable island that it was a miracle that it found a piece of grass to live off of for a hundred years. By itself.

We don't know if it's by itself.

Oh, they searched the entire island at the very end.

They said they're out searching for a male right now.

Yeah.

On other islands, that turtle that they got was. They said it's the only island they've ever found it on. Yeah. And it hadn't been like, what, 1898.

Or something like that. Literally. The last known specimen was one that a pirate cut open to eat on a ship.

Yeah. Because they said they used to buy or steal these things off the island, and then they would just put them on the ship alive, let them roam around, and then when it was time to eat something, they just kill the tortoise and eat the meat.

Yeah, because before they had coolers or freezers or salted meats, they would just keep tortoises on ships.

Right. Okay, so this one is the only one in existence, so we're going to take it and put it on a pet and zoo farm.

Yeah, because it's like one gas cloud away from getting killed on the volcanic island it was on.

So this thing hasn't seen humans in its entire life, and the first thing they do is pick it up and kiss it. Come on. This guy might have had herpes or some sort of vaginal things, we don't know.

Honestly, if that's so wrong as an STD, I want.

Oh, my God, you freaking zoo.

Because we know that that came from Blackbeard himself.

Oh, God. So, yeah, so we stole this and we put it on this turtle sanctuary, and we're hoping to find a male if we don't, well, we're just going to make this one fatter.

Can you imagine Forrest Galante sitting in the ER? Excuse me, the test results came back and we haven't seen this strain of herpes.

Turtle herpes.

We haven't seen this strain since we actually found it from a fossil record in the Caribbean.

Where were you? Anyway, great program. Really enjoy it.

Like how Forrest Galante can take rare and endangered shit and he's quote unquote saving it. And I do that and I'm vilified. That's right, Adam and everybody else.

You know what? Let's save that for the Pissy Aquarius program that we're going to come up with here shortly.

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All right, we got to come up with the final questions here that have pre listed first. I got to go with the chat here. I'm just making sure. Conehead lizards. That's not a thing is it?

Yeah, it is.

Is it?

There's actually in Minnesota that's breeding them, I think he's on our podcast.

No shit.

I've never even heard of that many people breeding them. And he's one of the few. Is it very good.

Is it a large lizard? Is it a small lizard? What is it?

It's like an eight to twelve inch lizard. It looks like a gamma, but it's got a weird. It's related to a gammas.

Okay, I thought that was last extinct in 1993 with the movie.

Probably. All right, for those of you who haven't followed this program for the whole length that we've had, Adam is kind of our resident reptile guy. Oh, herpetologist type guy.

He's the herp specialist.

I thought you said.

No, that's you. We were talking about the podcast last time. He got drunk and he painted his penis to look green, to end I quote, look like a sexual serpent capable of spitting its venom everywhere.

Oh, the Egyptian spitting cobra. Yes, I've heard this story.

What was it? Aw, no. Driving while Arab.

DWA.

That's DWA.

So Adam is a good guy, and when he was younger, he would take his fellow Buddies out drinking, and you had the most sketchy van your grandmother owned. Like a medivan, right?

Yeah, it was like a medivan, yeah.

And it had a little ramp on it and stuff. And Adam would load up all his budies on his thing, take them out and get them drunk, and then drive them all home. And of course, they'd pull out at 01:00 in the morning, and they'd get pulled over because all his buddies are hanging out the window, hooping and hollering like a bunch of six year olds. And then they'd pull up. Adam, go, you know why we pulled you over? And Adam said, what?

Dwa.

What's that?

I'd have just, like, driving Arab driving.

Well, Arab.

I would just like, lean the back like, guys, we're in a med event. Just pretend to be retarded. Lean into it. Don't even worry about, like, me drink. No, these guys retarded. All right, we do get another question.

What is it?

How do you handle erosion in flowing tanks? For instance, if you're using sand or other substrates with a river, how do you handle the erosions in it? Do you use glue or other compound?

That is a great question.

That is a really good question. So, in the terrestrial portion, that's what the frame is all about, is making sure there's no making sure you have everything secured so when you add your soil to the frame, everything should be in line. If not, you can go back and tweak it. For the water is put into the polydarium in the aquatic portion. Let's see. I haven't had any issues. With the substrate coming undone with flow. Although I'm sure if you have too high of a power jet, it would definitely, like, the sand would get kicked up for sure. But I keep my levels when they're with flow. At a point where they don't fall down and hit the sand. And if they do, I'll readjust the pump. I mean, it's really up to the flow in that sense.

Now, I got a quick question. If I'm doing one of these. Where I'm running an undergrow or underwater pump to the corner of my tank. Could I take, like, a piece of pond liner. And do like six inches wide and two and a half foot long. And kind of bury that under the gravel. And put clean gravel and river rock on top of that? Would that work?

Exactly. Not only will that work, there are other examples of people doing it. I haven't done that. I was going to do that method for my second build, which the footage got corrupted. But that method does work. And there's this guy on YouTube who do it really, really well. He made, like, these intricate tunnel systems of it. I can't remember, but he was really good at it. But, yes, you can do that.

Okay, that sounds like an easy way to keep the erosion from moving around.

Don't worry, there will be details in our show notes. Where Oliver will send us follow up information. And I'm assuming you can check his feed. For after actions on his own YouTube channel now.

Exactly.

Another question I got from a user. I built a polydarium. I built a frame. I put in my frame and glued it like you told me to. I have built my system. I ran it for quite a long time. And now my frame's super stinky. I'd like to take it out. Why did you make me glue it?

Super stinky? Frame stinks?

Yeah. I want to access it, clean it out, take care of it. Why did you make me glue it?

Dang.

Why does it stink, Robbie?

That's what I want. I want him to address here.

Make any sense?

I'm tossing him a low, easy ball here.

I have not had that happen. I mean, I usually go the natural route. And let the roots get in there, but haven't had it get. What's the definition of dirty? Are you talking algae?

No. Stinky. Not dirty. Stinky.

Stinky.

Stinky.

Stinky. It looks fine. Everything's good to go, brother. It just smells bad.

Smells bad. That means something probably got underneath there and died.

Yeah, dead.

And that's not a good sign. That would mean you probably have to take it down and take it out.

All right, is there any other methods in case something didn't go and it was just bacteria? Do you have any solutions?

Yes, there would be a way that you could poke some holes into it. Like if it was an anaerobic buildup, you could try accessing it through the terrestrial portion where you don't have to take it all down. Like, how would I explain it? Kind of like cutting a hole through the roof of it and letting it get some air. I mean, it's. Sure it'd be nasty, but it'd smell quite a bit. But let it get some fresh air down there.

All right, I'm going to beat you to the punch here. So I've seen this in a lot of forums and a lot of comments. Absolutely. Getting air is a great one. Try to access it, find the source of the stinkiness. Because something probably crawled in there or slipped in there somehow. But the last case ditch scenario before you rip apart your scape would be to prime that bitch apart. Sometimes you just get an excess build up inside of it. Something got cruddy in somewhere and it built up over time. It doesn't smell well, dump prime into it or some other.

Add more stink to it. Add some prime. So basically it's kind of like chili night at the Olsen house? Is that what you're saying? Are you trying to clear up why it stinks at your house after chili night?

I got to have something to blame it on it for sake. Come on now.

I think if you all seen those, go ahead. Have you all seen those aquariums where they don't feed them and they have the. I can't remember what the type of fish, but they would eat off a leaf litter.

I just sent Robbie and Adam one today where the guy was doing a jar with freaking tiger barbs.

It was not just a jar, right? He let no surface area. He filled it all the way up to the top and then covered it with a plant pot. So there was literally no surface area agitation. And then he just trapped barbs underneath it. It was so much fun.

Was that like a YouTube video?

Yes, it was. It's our boy fish for thought.

Really?

The king of shitting on aquariums. Shout out to you, my friend.

And what happened in the first minute robs.

I don't want to call them out because we don't own the patent on ducks for censoring our swear words. I feel it's more of an homage because he's a secret fan of ours. And if you, Mr. Fish for thought, are a fan of ours, reach out, because I would love to. Some aquariums with you.

Yeah, come on. On.

You know what I'm saying?

I was watching that today, and I was into the first minute, and all of a sudden he says something and goes, quack. And I go, son of a bitch. And I sent that to Robbie and Adam.

Jimmy's a big fan of yours. I'm just going to say Jimmy's a big.

I'm just know since you got tiger barbs in that jar. And here again, it wasn't his jar. He was just crapping on people. And mean is the only reason you didn't put a six inch goldfish in there, because you couldn't get it through the neck of the bottle or what's the deal?

No, I'm being serious about that. Prime recommendation, by the way, before we can move on.

Adding stink to stink.

No. If you're having an ammonia buildup, you have just schmoo and schmoo build up somewhere in a pocket, and you do a prime blowout. It has worked for a few of my friends.

So you're saying do a prime flush anima?

Yeah, a prime flush. And it does work. Now, when you do this, your butthole is going to. You got to remove. It's basically like 100% water change, and it can burn your plants as well. So it is a last ditch effort before you tear apart your pallidarium.

Burn your eyes.

Water change would really help that out, too.

This is a Hail Mary pass once you've exhausted all other efforts, but, yeah. Thank you.

Just so you guys know, zoomed has a book on pallidarium with a big suggestion list of animals.

Now, that's a company I love, by the way.

Zoomed. Good company.

Zoomed.

Yeah.

Really good place.

I love mean. That's what I really like, pallidariums. I mean, you can combine both a terrarium world and the aquarium world, and you can have, like, endless opportunities of stocking, to an extent.

To an know the other thing, I'll say that I used to buy and get in that were really cool. And I don't know if Adam remembers not. We used to get in the green vine snakes.

Those things were awesome.

Even small ones were 1012 inches, but they were so beautiful and they reminded me a little bit of the green anaconda color. And I think that in there would be cool because then you could throw a small mouse in there once in a while.

Man. I'm going to stop you boys before you start reminiscing about getting a goliath frog and telling you to put it in a 40 gallon. So we're going to let Oliver wrap it up here. What are we missing, brother? What haven't we talked about?

Tarantulas.

All right, so we've talked about if there's anything that falls behind the cleaning for the polydariums, it's pretty self explanatory. It's very similar to just a water change in the aquarium. Unplug your equipment, get in there, get the waste off the ground. If you're not running as many plants as I usually do in my polydariums, the aquarium portion very. Don't dirt that portion of the aquarium, if that makes sense. Do just a sand or gravel substrate.

Makes sense to me.

What would you suggest for a starter plant for a yuckhead like me and rob and Adam?

So for starting plants, about 99% of the aquarium plants you all have can be transferred over to the terrestrial side. So that's where if you have something like alternatehera, you can grow it both in the water and outside the water. Those like alternate thera, reconi, Amazon swords, any kind of floating plant. Obviously, very hardy aquatic plants are really great terrestrial plants to grow in the terrestrial portion. And they look different than their submerged form, too.

Can you.

Do you know what be awesome?

The plant.

What, Bill? Plant.

I need to get my hands on that.

Well, I'll tell you what, Oliver, you let us know and we'll ship you some.

Yep. Will Anubius and crypts do well?

Anubius and crypts would do fantastic. I've done brown crypts, basically every single plant except for pothos, guppy grass, kombumba and valisneria, if you want to do both portions. Now, if you just want to do aquatics, you put those in there.

But what about pothos?

Almost anything.

Pothos will work.

So many of those hold on, all different types. Any kind of house plant you have.

Hold on, put it in there. Pathos is toxic when the roots are broken. So why would I risk breaking roots and letting that get into my water?

The roots don't usually break.

Well, I'm dumb and I move my stuff around and I break roots, brother.

Well, I mean, I had your fish vines in there, and they didn't mean.

All right, I literally would have pothos.

With some of the most rarest geckos that you could think of. And they were perfect with it. Never had an issue.

All right.

Don't be a Debbie downer, Rob.

I know that this is going to be, like a pro tip. I haven't done a ton of these things, but I've done a few. And my personal favorite, because it stays short, it finds nice. It really pulls off.

Don't talk about your peepee.

No, you said it.

Stay small.

I don't have the real name. I had to google it. The common name is insensitive. And I'd like to apologize to our jewish audience, but it's called a creeping jew. Commonly, it's the inch plant. I think it's a purple, beautiful purple plant. The wandering jew, the creeping jew.

Whatever it is, I think it's transcantia, isn't it?

Yeah, sounds about right.

Yeah, because you're kind of being insensitive, you dick.

I have a bunch of white people handing me plants that are 90 years old. What are they going to call it? They're the same people that call Brazil nuts the n word. You know what I'm saying?

The nigerian one calls them that all.

The time as he eats them.

For those that don't know, look up n word toes. You're welcome. Your grandma knows what that was our audience here. My grandma still calls him that. See? Anyways, regardless, you give her a go if you need some help. Oliver's aquatic garden on YouTube. You'll find the link in the show notes. Otherwise, you can check out his website directly. Oliversgarden.com promo code aquarium guys for 10% off plants, I believe, at checkout, yes. Did not know about that promo code till literally we hit record, and I found it on the website. Thanks for the fun there, Oliver brother, you got some last notes for these fun people? This portion of the audio is available for Discord and Patreon supporters only. Check this episode's show notes for more information on how to become a supporter to unlock this content, and much more. There you go. If you were here to deal with the microphone issues, you get that code. There you go.

You know, Rob, you should buy him a new microphone just for being a dickwod last week when we had him on, and you're going, your microphone sucks.

Your microphone sucks.

And he goes, I'm trying. And you go, it still sucks.

When Oliver hears sultry voice on this recording, he's going to just. You know what? Rob's was right.

He does sound sexy.

I'm glad I waited. That's what he's not.

I'm not. There was no rush. Getting the audio right was right.

Yeah.

And now when you do sexy videos and stuff, it'd be even better. Some of those microphones have like, a Barry white filter on it.

Yeah. Give us a little your Barry White outro before I hit end.

You know what? I'll go a little young gravy action.

There we go.

Minnesota classic.

Let's see.

Minnesota. Let me think.

Yeah. That's beautiful, baby.

Yeah. That's amazing.

That is amazing. Wow.

That is amazing.

You're badonk dunk.

All right.

Makes me want to junk a junk.

We'll catch you next time. Bye. 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, subscribe. And make sure you get push notifications directly to your phone so you don't miss great content like this.

We all want it tight as an STD.

I want what?

The butt sex?

I hope that they pinched him on the knee.

No, I'm still confused.

Trim your bush.

I hate you people.

So slap them around a little bit. Check out their junk. You know what I'm going to get you for Christmas? I'm going to get you handrails installed in my ass because you ride me so hard.

That guy's got issues.

Don't be a Debbie downer.