This video intelligently challenges the "bigger is better" dogma by prioritizing species-specific psychology over simple volume. It is a necessary reminder that for some fish, environmental security matters far more than empty space.
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Welcome to another live stream. Aquarium nerds only. Had to mute my sound. Uh, I had the choice of working on my yard and trying to level out some dirt or live streaming. So, here I am live streaming because it started to sprinkle a little bit. So, we're going to hop on here for just a little humdinger and hopefully have a good time. So, while we wait for people to join, what's been going on with me? We got new fish. I got the goldfish uh in for the competition.
I need to film some videos. Got to get it ready for Brazil next month, which means we got to get like eight videos ready to go. Uh I don't know if we'll get a video out this week. We've got some videos already filmed, but um they can't come out till new products come out. Can I can I tease a new product?
Like this product right Oh, no. Oh, no.
like this product right here will be launching hopefully by the end of the month or things could go wrong and uh the container will arrive while I'm in Brazil and delay everything for a while.
So, we'll hope that won't happen and uh yeah, but we've got videos starting to line up for some of these newer products and things. It doesn't make sense to release them today and then be like, "Sweet, we might have that in a month or not might, but we will have that in a month if it doesn't get delayed." So, uh, is the store RPP locator feature gone? I can't find it on Safari or Chrome. Uh, I can't remember if we actually got rid of it or we just moved it. Um, I could take a look real quick.
I know it was like, so part of the problem we run into is we end up using like a million apps and different solutions to do a lot of things and periodically stuff will break. an API will change, a company will do a thing, they might change the pricing structure, they might, you know, like I think with at least one point with the RPP storefinder, they like the app wasn't willing to pay the fee to use like Google maps. So then they we had to switch maps and we did that. And then at a certain point though, sometimes things become way too much effort for what they're doing. But I think we might still have it. So, I'm I'm going to find where it is because I don't I think we decided like no, we're going to keep doing it. Let me let me see here. Um, yeah, right here. So, in the footer of our website, so if you scroll all the way down on the website, uh, and you look under retail partner program, there is the RPP storefinder.
So, you can find local stores to you that sell our products that you could drive to right after this live stream.
So, still there. Uh, still maintaining it and doing our best, which it's hard to maintain a lot of things. I think the one we got rid of was the local clubs.
Uh, is that true? Let me click on that.
Yeah. So, we had an app that was doing the same thing for local clubs and we moved that to our forum so that um not only can you find local clubs, but you can post about your local club and your events and ask questions. And so you go to like the state area and then you ask for about the clubs. And so that was the one that that app really kept breaking.
So then we ported it over to the uh the forum because and it works out some, you know, it's like anything, right? So some some of the forums are more active because there's more forum users there uh from that state or they've got a more busy club or they're doing bigger things. And then some there's just not much going on there. So there's a lot less cross talk.
Yeah, the 125 needs some trimming. Yeah, you could say that. I've been letting it grow just so like that that right there, that's a molly baby. So, you know, kind of the struggle of, oh, I'm not getting many mollies. Let's make this tank. So, it's starting to do the thing like the mollies the mollies are growing out. And but yes, you're not wrong that it needs a trim. Uh especially right up here.
It's getting real thick. Um but I need to do some musical fish chairs. Uh, I just got a order from bipetshrimp.com which you can save 5% when you use our code uh of aquarium coupe and uh so I've got to get two shrimp tanks kind of going today. Uh, spoiler alert. I was going to make a video on it, but uh there's a new Maboo puffer in quarantine at the store for me. I think I think we're going to name it Peabody. I think I'm going to name it Peabody, but I got to figure out, okay, it's probably going to go in a 40 breeder for some quarantine for a while and then figure out like it could be logical that it lives here for a while because that'd be fun, you know, for maybe like a year.
The problem with that is uh I've got my eel in there, right?
My ellipsifer eel from Lake Tangica and my first puffer Hank I had with an ellipifer eel. They get along great, but they both love to eat shrimp and like like cocktail shrimp and or or frozen shrimp and clams and muscles, right? So, one day they're both going after the same food. And when puffers get big, right? So when they're they're fairly chunky, they can't look straight. So like chameleons, right? A baby puffer can kind of see in front of them because their nose is small, but as they get bigger, their head gets wider, right? So their eyes move further apart and they can't actually see right in front of them anymore. So they they have to use their eyes and they go and they look at something from the side, right?
And if you look at your puffers, you'll see this. And they can look at it and they see the food. Then they have to move their face and then they go eat it.
And that all happens quickly, right?
Because they're they're a striker. They strike to eat. And so in that same little dance I just did, you've got Mr. Eel just bumbling along, sniffing, going, "Oh, there's the food." And so in that time from looking like this to this, the eel comes in, grabs a piece of food, Hank bites through the back of my rare eel, and it was a mortal wound, like went through its spine. It lived for days, and we tried to heal it up, but it just couldn't make it. So, I don't want a repeat of that. Like, even though it's a freak accident in there, long story to say, that means the eel that's in there has to go somewhere if we want to put uh, you know, Mr. P body on camera for like a year or something before. So it go from there. Maybe it goes to 230 after that. Maybe it goes to the 800. Not maybe, but then it go to the 800. So it it'd go through the the the series of tanks because you would think that a fish this big and 800galon, it will love it. In my experience with uh at least maboo puffers, anytime we put small puffers into a giant tank, they do not do well.
they feel like they're in the open and someone's hunting them. So, by putting them in smaller tanks, they thrive and they eat a lot better. So, progressing them tank to tank to tank works really well for at least, you know, at home and at the store. What we've done as these display pets and just dropping them into an oceanized tank is the opposite effect you would think because that's, you know, bigger is always better. And what we have found is some fish that's not the case. they feel like they're too open and uh you know that that doesn't so they don't want to come out and eat.
So yeah, so musical fishing chairs need to happen quite a bit in here which leads to okay some rocks are probably coming out of there. Some wood's probably coming out. I need to trim. I need to like that's a thing. So, I try to be efficient and if you're going to get into a tank, well, let's set it up for what it's going to do. And uh it's probably, you know, three or four days of like, okay, well, if I get this 40 beater ready for when it goes through quarantine for a while and then these fish got to move and that fish got to move because like all the live bears can stay in there. The plants could stay in there. Even the rocks and everything could stay in there for now, but I I pretty much have to get the rocks out to catch the eel. And the problem with the eel is they're escape artists. So you put a hole this big at the top of your tank, it will go out there. It just goes like, "Oh, I wonder what's out there." Turns out the eel's out there now. And so I have to pick like, "Okay, what tank?" It could go in a 40 beer, but it had to be sealed up really well. And that could last probably another year or two. Uh long term, maybe it goes in the 800galon. Well, not long term, but medium-term.
or I've said this for a while that the 230 galon could be a final tank forever and it would love that, but it being acrylic, it's got some holes and some things that I need to plug up. And so really, I just need to uh use some calipers and things and measure all of the holes that are in the top of the tank, 3D print plugs, make them pretty thick and heavy so you can't just knock them out. And then I could rehome, not rehome, but move all the shabbunkans to the pond. Um, or some ponds outside would, but I'm I'm liking where they're at. I guess I could live with the eel, maybe. Uh, and then the giraffe cat would probably it could live with it, too, but probably it's going to need to move anyway. So, maybe that moves the 800galon. But to answer that question, if it's moving to the 800galon, the African cichlids probably should come out first. So that's where it's like, oh man, this is really going to be a lot of movement. So I should probably film a video and go, hey, here's what it looks like now because it's going to look radically different here in a couple weeks. And then there's the whole challenge of like it's probably not smart to move half of the fish room fish into different tanks and hope they all adjust to the new tank sizes and maybe new mixes of fish well right before I'm in Brazil for a few weeks. So that might mean that I'm stuck in like a little bit of a stasis mode till July.
And so yeah, maybe the the fast part is ah get a 40 breeder ready for au buffer right now. Make sure it does well and then we'll start doing the musical chairs. Fish Tetris. I like maybe fish tetris is better. I might like fish tetris better than aquarium musical chairs. Fish fish tetris. Although my brain already wants fish tetra, but fish tetris I like that.
Stopped by the Edmonds store the other day. Hadn't been there since the overhaul. New space looks good. So did the cherry tetras, but I don't have space for them yet. Uh yeah, right now Zenzo's at the store um you know, helping helping along. We're working on some bigger projects and things. I just ordered some parts um for the automation system trying to keep it cooler might be the wrong word. Trying to keep the temperature more stable more of the year. So, if it's 100° outside, normally we'd creep up to like 82, 83. I think we can stay at like 78 in those scenarios. So, uh we're working on automating dehumidifiers, the heaters, the uh the HRV, heat recovery, ventilation systems. Like, we're we're going to try to make them all play together and get a better result instead of manually everybody's tweaking because like Broncho just told me, we turned the heaters down 5 days ago. Well, today it's like 55° out where yesterday was literally like 80. So, that makes it hard in a fish store like the temperatures rise and fall slowly, which is nice, but um it makes it hard when you're getting on ladders to adjust thermostats and trying to get everything playing together. And so, we're making that smarter, which in turn will hopefully be more efficient and lead to uh lower humidity, lower temperatures in store, so people don't have to take their coats off as much.
Um, has anyone developed long fin CPDs? Uh, they exist.
I I had a breeder that I was talking to and he got some, but then he like had to move his fish room. So, I don't know if he's working on them, but they do exist.
I do think they would be a hit. I think they look cool. I haven't seen them in person, but I believe that the hobby would embrace them. And so I'm hoping that some of the people that are getting their hands on them are starting to work on them and get them in some numbers that uh you know that can get into stores basically.
Which by the way, if you're local, you should totally go and buy all of the rainbows. I'm holding myself to the same rule. Uh we bought I basically bought every fish Blue Ridge Breeders had. So, if you watch that video and you liked it, every fish they had for sale and shrimp, I said, well, not every, there was like one I didn't take. I don't think I got the split or the amika splendins and there was like one other one, but we bought all the rainbow fish, we bought all the rice fish, we bought the long fin cherry barbs, we bought the black Venezuelan cory's. And so, uh, if you want to make my life easier, go buy all like the Kalawa rainbow fish because I want some. I just don't know where I'm going to put them. So, I ordered them all going, "Oh, I'd love to have that in my fish room. I'd love to have that in my fish room." And, uh, that quality of fish at that size, colored up that much for $20, I think. I think the Kalavas might only be 15.
They're 15 or $20. And the other rainbows, like, it's a steal. There's no way we can order from a wholesaler uh and get that size and quantity and color at those prices. So, I make everybody at the store adhere to the same rule I do, and that is when we buy fish like that, they have to be in the store so customers have a chance to buy them for a week before we buy them. Because otherwise, you get me, I'm the biggest culprit of this, and and employees, we snipe all the cool stuff. like you bring in a batch of of uh I don't know 20 angelf fish and the day it comes in you go I'm buying that one that's the best one and so then the employees and the owner end up with all the good stuff and the customers end up with the second best stuff and I think being that we're in business it needs to be the opposite.
So it also gives you a selling tactic in the store of like if you don't buy this I'm literally going to buy it on Tuesday when I'm allowed to buy it. Like I want that fish I will buy it. And so we as employees end up selling more fish and good quality fish because even we want them and we're being truthful about it.
It's not that scenario of like I'd buy this but you're not literally I would buy it but my own policy sets that I can't buy it until everybody's had a fair chance at it. So yeah, it's a right now is a real sweet time to walk into that store going, "Wow, look at these.
Wow, look at those." Uh because if it's it's like I want to say by like next Monday I could go in and I would I would take a sizable amount of those fish home with me. So I'm hoping that uh yeah I'm hoping people will will save me from myself.
Bring back the fancies. Make goldfish great again. Goldfish are great. And I do have goldfish. I've got Thomas in a 40. I've got uh what did we do last year? I can't even remember. But I have those in a pond outside. I've got Bristol Shabbunkans in a 230. I would say for you know the 30 tanks I have. I think it's 29. Two of them are filled with goldfish right now. Like that's a decent amount. Um but yes, I do love goldfish. Fancy goldfish can be problematic. I don't love I don't like introducing more high care level fish, which I realize Amubu puffer is exactly that. I just I'm ready for it again. Like it took I don't know how long it's been. Maybe it's been has it been a year since we've kind of lost Ladybird. Might even be two years.
Ladybird and Murphy. Might be two years actually. I think it is two years. Um and so why why is that still Oh, I only muted this monitor. Is that what's going on? I don't know. How do I mute?
I can't I can't mute my system. That seems impossible. All right, maybe just text messages come through. Anyway, uh yeah, so it's been been a while and now I'm I'm hankering for it again because I I do love puffers.
Employee waiting period to purchase goods is normal. All right.
because it wasn't at stores. I mean, obviously I'm friends with lots of uh fish store owners slash uh people that work at fish stores and oftent times that's not the case. Like yeah, either way, good policy. We we we follow it.
Chris might have leaked leaked our next trip. I don't think next trip's a big secret. So, um, yeah, the goal, I mean, the goal is I want to film ember tetras in the wild.
So, there's other goals, too, other cool things to see. But, uh, that's what led to this trip was we were on the trip and they're like, "Oh, yeah, there's a spot, Red Ember." Well, what? We actually could go be filming Red Ember Tetris.
That sounds amazing. Um, and they were talking about how clear the water was and all of that. And so, we're hoping to do that. And I say hope because there's nature, right? Uh nature being it could be cloudy. It could be super sunny that day. It could be the water's murky. It could be you have pedestrians basically.
Normal people like, "Oh, they're having a wedding over there." Or, "Oh, there's lots of boats coming through and all it takes is a boat going through and then you can't film for a couple hours because the water's so turbid now." So that's why I say we hope to be able to film that. Also, if you got a bunch of people, like maybe it's real hot, people are just swimming, the fish are hiding, right? So, uh, but being that, you know, I think that part of the trip we've got scheduled for like three or four days, likely we can get there early enough or stay late enough that even if there was traffic from something else, we will be able to get some good footage. And actually, I need to I need to turn the footage I have into um into videos. So, I' I've started the process. I've got probably two or three more videos to come out of Brazil, and that's on my to-do list of like, all right, I want to get those kind of ready to go and releasing while uh while I'm in Brazil. That's the hope.
Am I breeding many Mandaka rice fish these days? Do I still see them continue to gain popularity in the US? I do think they'll continue to gain popularity. Uh, I'm not really breeding them. I've got some in a pond outside I've been feeding and I'm hoping to make some more this summer even though I'm gone for one of the three months basically. But uh I do believe they will continue to grow in popularity because they're small, they're colorful, they can live in almost any water parameter. That's a recipe for success.
added a a a shaw of congos.
Oh, hold on. To my 75. There is a pop of color. I need Congo tetras. Congo shoddeni puffers. Guessing tetras. But I do love a Congo tetra.
Are you going to visit April's aquarium anytime soon? Shout out to from Vancouver. Uh nothing on the calendar currently. Uh Darren, the owner of April's Aquarium, has been coming down here. We've been doing some business meeting stuff. Saves me a little bit of time. Uh before that, I was going up there about once a quarter, but uh most of it is business stuff. Like I think the next time uh we want to talk about with the employees and everything like quarantine procedures with meds and just crosscontamination. And what's really bene bene beneficial in a lot of businesses is having someone who knows the industry come in and just watch what's going on because your people will be doing it um dayto day and you don't see what like well why are we doing that that doesn't make sense and when someone else watches you and that kind of you know is in the same industry they can go well that doesn't make sense to me and then you talk about it and you go why are we doing that well and a lot of things will stem from, well, we're having this problem and so that's why we do it this way. And then it's like, but are you still having that problem? Oh, no. Okay.
Well, then we could optimize it further.
And that's what we'd be looking for. So, you don't know what you're going to find till you start looking. So, um, we need to schedule that one of these days where I kind of spend a weekend and just watch the quarantine room and employees and just see like, okay, yeah, we could, you know, and it's simple things like um maybe you change like when water changes happen because people typically are dosing meds at this time or and a lot of times plans on paper are great, but in practice like, okay, on Saturday and Sunday, but the crew is so busy. There's so many customers that meds that should have happened at 11:00 a.m. happened at 700 p.m. and the water change schedule is set to go at X and so you're not getting 24 hours of meds before adding more meds or whatever it is. There's all these little things you can watch for. Um, and we're hoping to just improve things even further. So, show some love by liking the video.
Yeah. Yeah. YouTube's back in a phase where liking and subscribing. I don't know if you guys saw this. Um, but they released a a little video update that says they're YouTube is now going to I don't know how to say it, but decide who you'd like to hear from. And so basically, if you're not interacting with a channel, it's not going to show you notifications. So even if you have set notifications to all for the channel all that be notified if you're not leaving comments and liking or I shouldn't say and or liking basically taking actions to show that you still want the content it will decide like well they're not clicking on the videos they're not liking they're not uh leaving comments we're going to uh prioritize the stuff that you are and so it's trying to further curate. So, the the intention is good, but also um I think it's going to be we're going to find like, oh, I watched videos. I didn't interact though, and oh, they weren't showing up in my feed. And so, we'll see. I mean, they might revert it.
They might do something else, but they literally put out a video that says, even though you're set to get all notifications and do all of that, if you're not interacting with the creator uh in meaningful ways, we're going to prioritize other creators that you are also subscribed to. and are interacting with. And I I can see both sides of like, yeah, that makes sense. There's a lot of people that don't understand how YouTube's working and that their fetals get better. And then it'll be frustrating for someone like me that I love the content, but maybe I don't need to make a comment publicly with LOL's Fish Lab because I could just talk to him privately, which I do from time to time. So, uh, just know that, yeah, we're back in an era where liking and leaving comments and being in chats and things. If you want more aquarium qu stuff in your feed, it will help doing that. And if you're not doing that, we will be phasing out of that, which doesn't sound great to me, but hey, you know, there's always changes. We just move with them.
When am I going to come down to Portland for the GPS? Uh, I think Dean's speaking there the 17th. I considered it but and then I I've got I'm basically it comes down to what I've said for the last 10 years, five years, whatever it is. I'm just too busy. I want to it makes sense to Dean would be the perfect one to and then there's the got to get eight videos and the fish room ready and everything prepped to be gone for a lot of a lot of uh June. So June, I go to Brazil for two weeks plus travel time on either end. And then I'm home for I haven't bought the ticket yet, but it's two or three days. Then I fly to Kentucky for uh the ACA ALA Beta Congress mega event, right? That's in Kentucky. That's five minutes from a warehouse. If you're a member, I think I think it's Saturday night.
we're going to have you over to the warehouse and we'll, you know, we'll do some food and meet and greet and hang out and just have some fun after uh the event on Saturday. So, um yeah. So, trying to prepare to be gone for almost an entire month basically or or stuck in travel mode for an entire month and uh make sure that I don't fall way too far behind in video content and the pawns I want to work on. So, like if if it if it was go to G, you know, go to another club meeting or get some filtration installed on my big pond, I'm going to work on the big pond is what I'm going to try to do. So, we'll we'll see. We'll just have to see uh what time allows. Dean is doing tours in Salem, Oregon, I believe. Meet and greet across the river from Portland in Washington. Oh, okay. Good. Nice.
Yes, the bluegrass bash. I will be there. We will be there. You might be coming to us. So if you're, you know, if you're going to that and thinking about becoming a member, like be a real opportune time to be a member.
I hate the force engagement so much. I just want to watch fish and do research.
I agree. I I like being the fly on the wall.
Um, in fact, I I'm very irritated that the one place that I could go to see the content I wanted to see, the the subscription feed, they're monkeying with like, oh, now it's they've got the whole shelf of most uh most relevant. Like, I just want a chronological order. I just want to see like, oh, Bob Steinf released a video from LOL's Fish Lab this day. I don't want to have to hunt and be like, wait, where'd that go? And so if I wanted YouTube just to go, "Hey, here's what you should watch." That's what the homepage is. So I don't know.
Why don't we sell fish on our website?
Uh mostly because we can't do it all and it's really difficult to ship fish at scale.
Yeah. It's, you know, when like if you go watch like uh Imperial Tropicals tour, you see the scale of that and you're like, "Okay, it's several warehouse buildings.
There's a team of 20 people making that happen."
And my guess is that we would be 5x the scale of that just from our online popularity. And so if I was to do that, then it would be like there would be no time for new products and and doing the other things. And so um the way I kind of look at it is if you wanted to be compete at the high level of tennis, you don't also take up hockey and then also take up dodgeball, right? Like you there's for the most part most people will never be able to be one of the greats at all three of those, right? And so you can strive, most people never be great at even one of them, but you would strive to be pretty good at one of them.
And that's that's kind of our thing of like we just really want to do planted community tanks. And I realize fish go into that, but that's it's different enough that it's such a big commitment to do right that I think it would uh it would take the company in a whole new different direction. And so that's why we don't sell our own fish on online. We do sell we do have a retail store. Um, but yeah, I I think it would make lots of money. I think there'd be lots of learning. I think there's all it' be all that kind of stuff. But, uh, yeah, can't do it all. Dan's fish is a great fish shipper. They are great at shipping fish. Yeah, it's it's it's a skill that you have to develop for sure.
Um, what 3D printing projects am I working on right now? Right now I'm working on uh like a breeding trap type of thing.
trying to make a a better mousetrap for libears that I'm kind well I shouldn't say I'm liking but frustrating to try all the iterations and mostly it's because you get like a pregnant female and then it's like it might be two weeks before she drops dry or it might be the next day and so where a different thing you might be able to try several iterations every day. So I'm working on that. Got a few other projects in the pipeline. Um, one of the things I don't have it on my desk, but we were printing out samples of a food that means we've got a food that we like for like a a sinking food that people would like for us to make. And then we were printing out different shapes and and how how big and how thick and what what do we think about this? And so we 3D print them and go, hm, how does that look? Because it's one thing to say, I want it 3.5 millimeters and I want it to weigh this much and I want it to be like this. It's another thing to hold a bunch of variations in your hand, kind of mix them up and go, of these samples, which one would be the perfect one? Oh, I like that one and I like that one. And then you do some more, you know, you get some more made up and you go, okay, now out of the mix, which one would you like?
You keep picking the same ones like, oh, I really like that one. It's a good way to identify like the direction you really actually want to be heading. And so we're at a point right now where I've done that process and now we're talking with the uh the dye well we're talking with the fish food manufacturers and they're the in between with the dye manufacturers to make the food uh dyes which a food dye would be how the pellet or the shape or the whatever whatever the food's going to look like is going to look like at the end. We go through that. Then we got to make foods because each food right like imagine you have you were making um pizza dough right and if you had a cookie cutter and you just go pink I make you know this dinosaur shape. Well depending on what type of dough you're making or how long you let it rise would be did that dinosaur come out looking like a flat dinosaur? Did it bubble up a ton? Did it do this? And so picking the shape, getting the dyes made, then starting to produce it and see does it come out in the way we want.
Will it be pleasing to the consumer at the end we're and then and then produce and then get it here and then market it.
We're probably a minimum of six months out from having that food launch. It's my guess. We might be able to do it sooner. We also might take longer. Um but yeah, 3D printing sometimes it's just printing like what's that thing?
That is a fake looking piece of fish food. Like, oh yeah, yep.
Uh, let's see.
I'm currently designing a root tab gun to 3D print. I've also designed a nozzle to drop the water current from my cancer filter, but not the flow rate. It's because I got an African butterfly fish.
That makes sense. Yeah.
dispers disperse the flow.
Have I thought about a smaller linear air pump? Uh have I thought about it? Yes. Is it feasible? Not so much because it's expensive to like What do I want to say?
I've got some construction going on. Um, if you can hear that.
Making a like if you had to build a car, right? Like maybe the cheapest you can build a car is $10,000.
And maybe a car that carries four people is $11,000, but one that moves one person is still $10,000. That's kind of the air pump of like at a certain point too small, you're paying all the price. I've got a sneeze. It's going to hit any minute.
Uh, all right. There we go. Uh, and so it doesn't quite make sense. But that being said, see if I can not reveal things. I We are working on some air pump stuff. I've got four different air pumps and sizes. And I've already broken one by taking it apart um and putting it back together and stress testing it. And right now we're in the process of asking can we change diaphragms from rubber or a better to a better quality rubber or silicone or like we are working on those things because we keep making air powered devices as in you know like the latest thing that will come out is an underravel filter. Um we've got the airstones, we've got the uh sponge filters we want to work on kind of like a air driven hang on back.
There's like all these things and at the core of that is air and I do love linear air piston pumps and but not everyone needs 20 tanks worth and even 10 tanks and bleeding some off and like Zenzo's fish room which you guys haven't really seen a whole bunch yet which you will be soon uh is running off of our smaller our our linear air piston pump and uh only running seven tanks I think bleeding off them, but it's still super reliable and quiet. He actually mounted it outside, which is cool.
What happened with the rotating drum filter? They're all sitting in my cargo container waiting to be installed on the pond. So, I'm going to install uh at least one, maybe two, on the big pond outside. And that's part of the filtration stuff I want to do in addition to building a housing for uh an air pump with fans and stuff like that.
I don't want to overheat because it sits directly in the sun. Uh this last summer I had power ran to the pond so that I don't have to do a long extension cord anymore. Uh so yeah, it's, you know, probably frustratingly so with the viewership here. Some projects take years because it's just not necessarily the the forefront.
But I'm usually I'm pretty good about when we say we're doing a thing, it does happen. sometimes takes a long time and this pond I really want to enjoy it and uh so like this summer what the plans would be get filtration set up the other plan is to have the dock rebuilt so last year we waited till the pond receded really low and so you know end of August early September the pond's at its lowest and we had four more pylons like cement cement pylons put in so that we can rebuild the the the dock or yeah the dock I guess uh this summer. So now we're at a point where we're like waiting for the water to recede again so that we can get the the big timbers kind of put on the the peers and everything and we can get access to because right now all the all the peers like the water levels up to it because it's still the rainy season and so some of these projects like oh it's multi-year like yeah that's a bummer you know I thought you said you were going to do the thing I am doing the thing it's on the schedule like we're we're trying to get it done but we're again kind of this hobby is at the mercy of weather. So, we are working on it.
I'm debating getting a linear air piston pump, but 47 liters per minute, I think it might be overkill for my rack of 20 highs. I'm sticking with four 18 liter per minute pumps for now.
Um, yeah, I don't know. I mean, four 18 L per minute pumps is more than 47 L per minute. But one of the reasons you'll be seeing like so Zenzo's got a new fish room. Uh Ry's got a new fish room. He just set up a rack of of 20 highs and it's running off the line in air piston pump. And so one of the things will be you guys get more opportunities to see our products or products we use like the linear air piston pump in effect. So like I run the whole room with linear piston pump. But you're probably not going well yeah I've got an 800gallon and I've got all of these. But you might go, "Hey, I want to set up a rack of 20 gallons. I could do that. Oh, look, this equipment's working well in that scenario." So, the more examples we can show in depth, the more uh hopefully helpful it will be to you guys going, "Oh, that's something like I have that seems like that would work. That would be the hope."
Um, how do I find how do I wait, how do you find 3D printing? I find it addictive.
As addictive as fish keeping. I started with one and now I have three. Well, I still only at my house I have two 3D printers and uh they have a little bit different capability. So like the one just basically only prints things in black and lots of prototyping. And then like this is one that I had to resize. But for taking pictures of goldfish for the goldfish competition, I use my other 3D printer that does two colors easily, which not going to go down the rabbit hole of AMS's and all of that. I I realize, but I only print out a 5 kilogram roll. So giant rolls of filament and uh have the 3D designer make this. This fits. I don't have one because that would have been good. That would have been a good idea, but I could go grab it, I suppose. Uh, this fits in our catch cup.
I don't just imagine that, you know, our collection cup, it fits in there. So, when you need to take pictures of fish, now you have size references, right? So, the big the big hash mark right here, that's an inch from there to there. And then you've got all the way down to quarter inch. And so, no matter where the fish is swimming, it also works as a black background for the fish. Um, just kind of a cool thing. And yeah, maybe at some point we'll release the file so other people could print these if they wanted. But use two colors of filament to pull that off. And uh, yeah. So, we do kind of cool fun things, little little projects.
I don't have one in the corner store. I do. I do have one in the but I also have I'm just going to grab the one I grabbed some more spoilers while I was at it cuz I haven't spoiled stuff in a long time. Uh, so yeah, this is what I use to take care or to take pictures of the goldfish that I needed to submit.
You could see I went down to just front and back. So, what I learned because you're always learning, right? And when we printed this one, this one took because it had the three sides, right?
This one took like seven hours and it printed like this. Okay, so nice flat back. What I learned was using the two colors, every time it wanted to print the lines on the sides, it had to switch the colors. And that really slowed it down and wasted filament.
When you print like this, it's all black. So you do 98% of the work all in black. Then you just put a layer of white on the top. This one took like an hour to print. So sometimes really uh and then so this was version that was version one. version two, we actually could fit it a little bit better because this is sloped a little bit. So, but now we can take pictures of fish. Um, where I I did and I submit it to the goldfish competition and it worked out well. So, can you make one for the other 99% of the world that use a metric system?
Yeah. Someone someone in my little fish group was like, "Do you have metric on the back?" And I'm like, "I don't speak that language." Um, it doesn't it also doesn't flip around, I don't think.
So, this chair or this like I don't think you could flip it.
I'm trying to think. Yeah, you couldn't flip it. The only way you could maybe flip it if the bottom piece Maybe if the bottom piece was real short, you could Let me think.
You have If If metric was on the back, you'd flip it. it would just stick out from the back a little bit. Maybe that could work. But I could see it doing this where it like in the water it wants to fall forward or something because you're basically doing Yeah. I again, this isn't really a product we're trying to sell or anything. So like our the 20 printers we have at the warehouse, they print one color and so this thing wouldn't necessarily work for that.
Uh oh, you saw my comfy chair. These are my absolute favorite chairs. It took me five plus years to find it. They are ridiculously expensive and but I will let you know because some people are like me and they spend a lot of time at a desk in a chair and they don't want back problems and other things. And so through all of my testing and I tested a lot. I spent years working on this and people are going to be like Aeron Miller they're they're going to name all the stuff. I own them all. Like I I literally bought every chair that is out there. I was at the point where I was researching who custom makes the presidential chair. So if you guys don't know, every time there's a new president, you get you get to pick out a chair and it's custom made for your office desk, right? And so I was literally looking up who manufactures those. I was also looking and I learned concepts of 24-hour chairs. So, uh, like air traffic controllers, 911 operators, because it's a 24-hour shift, there's always someone at the station, and you need things like how fast can the phone recover between shifts. Someone sits there for eight hours a day on the computer taking 911 calls. Then there's a a swap, and then there's another eight hours, and there's another swap, and there's another eight hours, 24 hours a day. after even with even with all that research, all the stuff at the end of the whole thing, it's uh it's a stressless uh who makes it is it a stressless? Let me see here. Stressless.
It is. Yeah, it's a it's the Stressless brand office chair. So, you've probably seen a lot of those chairs, not officewise, but it's that and they're they're stupid expensive. But being that I spend 8 to 16 hours a day basically in an office chair, just like beds, I think you guys, if you have the money, invest in a bed, a good bed, because you spend eight hours a day, every day of your life in it. Uh, let's see. What are the prices? is the going rate on these prices. Like here's one. It's 2500 bucks. Now, that being said, here is what I would tell you.
The chairs go for sale on Facebook and things like that way cheaper. Like I tried I saw another one a month ago and I could I they were being flaky. It was in white leather which I didn't love, but it was only 500 bucks and that would have been a bargain.
Uh, and I I realize how out of touch a $2,500 chair sounds. So, that's not lost on me. Like, this is purely do you have that kind of budget? Are you in a chair for 8 to 12 or 8 to 16 hours a day?
Maybe you're at a you're at an office job where they have a chair budget and you're like, hey, this is the one I want. Cuz you can spend 1,200 bucks on an Aeron Miller real easy. Not as good in my opinion. I own them. I own two of them. You know, I own every gamer chair.
We own them. Like you saw like way back in the live streams, you saw that like we had secret lab chairs for Jimmy and I. Like earlier in the career, we had less money. We still were in chairs all day editing and working on stuff. Tried to make it better. Those are not worth 500 bucks in my opinion. Not at all. Um so yeah, but that being said, like an Aeron Miller chair at 150,200 bucks on Facebook would be a great deal. At 4500, not as much of a good deal. Um, and I'm a patient dude. I will definitely buy some more of these chairs on like a Facebook uh marketplace thing or something or Craigslist over the next five years going, "Hey, I found one for 100 bucks." Right?
So, that's just what works. And obviously, it's my body type, right? I'm overweight. I'm of a certain stature.
what works for me, you know, might not work for Candy, might not work for Senzo, might not work like Yes. So, uh, but for me it, uh, Steen P, we did just drop seven grand on a new bed. Worth it? Nice.
I mean, there's there's certain things in life, I think, that are make or break it. If you have a terrible bed, your life starts unraveling. And I'm that way with a chair. Like, and most people, well, I don't know if most, but like a lot of people might not have it, but you can work so long in a chair where it's painful. Like, when work is painful, no one wants to do it. No one wants to do work when it's not painful. Um, and yes, getting up and walking around and doing things, yes, it helps and everything, but you know, how do you make sitting, if I'm going to do an eight hour live stream or even a two-hour live stream, how do you make that more comfortable?
because there's prep time before, there's work I got to do after, all of those things. And uh I mostly mention it because if there are other people looking for the best chair, this is a strong contender. The the stressless line of office chairs are I've never found anything better.
And I I was going down the rabbit hole for a long time because I was having back problems. I was having these things. Um, I need to be able to recuperate from a trip from Brazil or standing on concrete and Aquaella for 3 days straight and your back is killing you. Um, so yeah, my chairs have to be some kind of slightly breathable fabric.
It's not lost on me. I do love Aeron Miller's like mesh system. Uh if you're having troubles of like getting too hot in chairs, uh one of the hacks is buying the USB plug-in air conditioning units you can buy for cars. You can literally just put that, you know, like slide it on, you know, put on the chair like it's the back of a like car seat or whatever.
Uh and you'll get good cooling and everything like that, too. So yeah, it in my career I've just, you know, whether I'm editing videos, whether I'm in spreadsheets, whether I'm answering comments, whether I'm making YouTube posts, like whatever it is, I'm just in a chair a lot. And so over the years, um, and it's warm. Like fish room stays warm. So over the years get better and better. Like, okay, I need something that's going to make work better. And that's that's one of them. So, uh, let's see here.
Is there a reason why guppies who look very pregnant don't drop their fry? It's been several months now. I've been told could be kidney disease or a kidney issue. In my opinion, they're dropping their fry, but they're getting eaten. So, what I've been able to experience in the last couple months, you guys always see I'm making some guppies. That's working right with a breeding trap. I'm now making 10 to 20x many guppies I've ever made by just making sure that the the adults can never get to the babies.
I now have big batches of of sword tales where I've talked about struggling with that. They're getting all eaten.
I believe what's going on in most people tanks when they're not getting batches is you've got an adept hunter in there.
One of the males or one of the females are really good at chasing down the babies. They've got a taste for it.
They're eating them all. And the difference between like if I just let a fish drop, you're like, "Oh, sweet. I got 10 babies." If I put it in a trap and I work at it, you're like, "Oh, sweet. I got 62 babies." It's literally that much of a difference. And so if you're getting zero, my guess is actually like you you're they're dropping 30 40 50 fry, but they're getting eaten. So I would work on getting this level of cover from plants or using some breeding apparatuses to physically separate them out from adults.
What is a breeding trap? Uh, a breeding trap is well I I mean I've kind of got one right here actually. So this is this is a style. There's a million different styles, but here's one that's 3D printed that.
So in this system right here, this would go on a 10-gon tank and it would sit there, right? So sitting in a 10-gon tank, you would put like a trio of guppies in here or sword or a big pregnant female sword tail, something, right? The adults are in here. The babies come out the sides. Now, the bottom's there so the food will stay in there when you're feeding them, the adults. But this is a breeding trap of like keep the adults away from the babies. Basically, you could do it the opposite. Technically, you could keep the adults out here and then hopefully the babies are smart enough to go in here, but I find it easier that the babies kind of get out and get lost in the tank, which is better. Um, and that will increase the amount of yield you get because there's no big predators on the outside, right? So, and there's a billion different kinds of versions of that.
And this is one that I haven't installed and played with yet. But the way this system works, in case you were wondering, it's in a 10gon. You have like a a trio of guppies in there. You let them sit there for a month. The babies get out and then you would take this basket.
And you see here there's no holes down here. It would hold this much water and you would move it to the next 10gon tank and let it sit there for a month and it'll have babies. The babies in tank one start growing up. You do like a three tank rotation. By the time you're ready to take this out of tank number three, the ones in tank number one are 3 months old. They get sold to the store.
You start the process again. So, and you could rotate out the females or whatever you want to do. Uh but that's what this type of breeding trap would do is uh you keep the adult fish in here. You just move them to different tanks. You grow out all the fry. You do with whatever you're going to do with the fry. You're selling them. You're feeding them to turtles. Whatever you're doing. Um and you optimize for that. Sometimes you go, "Hey, I could put a little bit of guppy grass in there, but then the babies might stay in. Maybe you want that, maybe you don't. Uh, you could put a little bit of flow to it so that the the babies are pushed out, but then you could also have it so that the the females are getting too tired having to swim against it. So, what size holes did you make for the guppy baskets? Uh, you basically just want as big as you can go without the adults getting out.
But, you know, there's differentiz guppies, too. There's like these big whale guppies. There's endlers that are pretty small. There's wildcaugh guppies.
There's picto guppies. And you know, usually when you're designing, you're like, I want to be able to do a bunch of things with it. So that's kind of what we're doing there.
My wife's talking about Henry's donuts.
I thought someone else was like, "Someone else knows how good Henry donuts are?" But no, my wife does.
I've been using a DIY female guppy trap.
Looking forward to the co-ops. And I'll add some guppy grass. Yeah, I mean I'm I'm still working through our versions.
I've killed some fish. No one wants to hear that. But you have to take things like to an extreme. And what I mean by that is if we say on the package, hey, don't let a fish be in here for over 30 days. You'll get people that leave them in there forever. And so I have to test the limits of like how small is too small? You know, if we say it's guppies only and someone puts a sword tail, is that a problem? Uh, like we had a small one that I was working on and I put in a big female sword tail and the lid wasn't heavy enough. They literally were jumping out and moving the lid off. So then it's like, okay, we make bigger, thicker lids. We, you know, we're we're making the spaces bigger.
But, uh, I mean, I've only killed one fish, so let's It's not like I'm just murdering fish, putting it to the limit, but I did have a fish pass away. I'm like, oo, I don't know what went wrong there. That's not great. It's stressful testing. Um, like that one's in white. I have one installed over there I'm playing with is in black. Um, black's really good. Makes the adults feel safe, but you can't see the fry. And so, white's really good at showing the fry, but then the females are more stressed out. So testing different colors, testing different, you know, hole sizes and flow rates and all the things so that when I eventually go to launch it, if we ever do, uh you'll know like yeah, reasonable amount of testing went through and you know like people always say like why don't you do like I had this conversation people were asking for smaller uh our snail traps and I'd gone through so much stuff I forgot the reason we didn't because I brought it back. I'm like yeah people want a small one for the five gallon. Like why don't we do that? you should do that. Should accommodate customers. And Randy knocked it out of the park. Was like, we don't cuz it kills fish. And I was like, oh yeah, that's right. I was like, we don't make them smaller because you make them too small, fish get stuck. Like they have they they're about as small as they can go and not kill fish. And I was like, oh yeah, that's right. We we figured that out. And so that's why we don't have a smaller snail. Even though other companies, you know, go, "Oh, I can make that." and they make it and they some of them are using holes and things like that. Like in our testing they kill fish like and they might not kill your fish. That's fine. Uh but in our testing where we're trying to make it uh oopsy proof. Yeah. And I'm I'm not going to say no fish could ever not die because sure always could be freak accidents, but mostly we're optimizing for like betettas and lots of common fish not getting wedged in and and things like that.
Do we sell those breeding traps? No.
Currently, we we don't sell these breeding traps. Um, not that we never would, it's just so something like this is very intensive to print. Like this is I I think to print all these pieces like almost a day, right? Where if we get this perfect and then we injection molded it, it's like had a factory make them in a with a you know, this gets prints line by line. If we use an injection molder though, the price could be 1/5if the cost and we could massproduce them. So, we use 3D printing for prototyping, we're not at a point where we would send it to a factory or anything yet. Um, and that would assume that we see if it's viable, right? And what that means is you can have something that's amazing and then go, "Yeah, but it's $20,000 in mold fees. How many do you think you'll sell?" Well, I think we'll sell 5,000 of them. Okay. Well, are you going to make at least $4 a unit after shipping?
Because then after all of that, you will have broken even. Until then, you have lost money. Um, and so we got to go like with breeding stuff, the more niche it is, like I don't know if there is like how many people are trying to breed angelf fish, would they buy a breeding slate? How many would we sell? And so we got to get it to a point where we're confident to invest that kind of money and then over the next couple years not lose money. And uh yeah, and then you got to think of how you're going to market it too. So it's a it's a process.
But are we selling them yet? No. Will we in the future? Yeah, maybe.
What about selling the STL? Yeah. So, we haven't done that mostly because with all the free files online right now, you see people having problems complaining like, "This doesn't print right. This didn't do a thing." Then add in the level of, "This killed my fish. They don't know what they're doing." Then add in the level of using a different kind of filament and having problems there.
Then add in, "Hey, I tried to print this. I bought it from you. It didn't work. Candy of customer service, could you tell me how to fix this on my 3D printer?" I don't think Candy's ever hit print on a 3D printer. Um, and then there's the whole like someone takes it and then they start manufacturing it and they make it better. So, not and I I we where am I going with this? Where I'm going with this is typically we either produce a product and sell it and offer all the customer service support with it or we offer it for free and there's files to print for free on the website or on the forum. But then we get to go, hey, that was a free thing. We're not running the tech support on this. Like that's on you. But if we exchange money, like we take the money for the thing, now we have to run tech support for it. And so that's why we've never sold STL 3D printing files because we don't want to turn into a tech support company. We want to be support for the products that we sell and we don't want to be like, "Ah, figure it out." That's not the co-op way. If we take your money, we're going to try as hard as we can to get you what you need.
Uh let's see here.
What's our top online top three online sellers? Um, my guess is it's sponge filters, easy green, and easy shrimp and snails is my guess. It depends on the videos that come out and uh the marketing we do. Like we we marketed air pumps yesterday or the day before.
So, like air pumps. If I looked at a snapshot of these last few days, it would be much higher on the list.
Uh, let's see. Oh, some things that we're working on that, you know, probably make videos and stuff, too. But here is, uh, this hopefully will launch by the end of the month, I think. But some of the foods will start having different colored caps now. Uh, because we're launching more foods, right? And if they're all green with all green lids, it's not easy to pick up the right one. So, we're launching more like this is going to be the uh the magic bite-size pellets. So, kind of in between Magic Small Fish Feed and Magic Nuggets is in between that, but it has a gold lid. And I think longterm, uh, some of the ones that all have green lids right now will get some different color lids. It helps stand out when you're grabbing it off a shelf at a store. If you've got two or three or four of these containers on your shelf at home, you go, "Oh, I'm I want to feed the gold lid right now. I want to feed the black lid.
I want to feed the brown lid." Whatever it is.
Um, yeah. And then where's the other one?
Oh, and we're going to be launching some 2.2 kilogram bag sizes of some of Well, long term hopefully all of it. But it's stupid expensive. But the breeders, the stores, uh the facilities that are, you know, going through tons of these, it makes sense to sell it in a big bulk bag. But I want to say off the top of my head, the bags are like over $100. So, yeah, they're 4.7 pounds of of food.
These are all all prototypes or or production samples. So that we've been getting pictures and getting it ready for the website. So when they come in, we've got some pictures available for you guys. And then, you know, we get pictures, then you guys have questions, then we do more pictures and we do more description because when you work with a product for so long, you know it, but you forget that like, oh yeah, but the person on the other side of the computer doesn't know that. They've never seen it before. I need to describe that better in the description or I need to do this better. So, uh, let's see here.
How many colors there going to be? I have no idea.
Yeah, we we first started color coordinating things a little bit with our sponge filters. If you see those at a store, you'll see like, oh yeah, they've got different colored like bars at the top to try and uh make it easy.
So part of it also is uh if you get a big order for a store and there's a bunch of foods in there, you got to sort them out onto a shelf, right? And so we're trying to make things easier.
Sometimes it's not even about improving it for the read or like the the like the end user, you guys. It's improving it for the store that improves it for you guys. So um and for the most part, I don't think a different color lid costs us any more money. we just have to order 20,000 of them or something. So instead of ordering a 100,000 green lids, we go, "Hey, how about we get five different colors, 20,000 each color." Um, and it is basically the same price. So hopefully that'll help. Sometimes it makes it worse, like, oh, we don't like the look or whatever. But we try it and then worst case, h next run we'll do it or we won't do it.
Corey, I got some Venezuelan Cory's. Did you get them from the from the store or you just got some in general?
Oh, Steven P's on the 3D printing train now. Nice.
Um, I got a pair of random endlers at a fish order. I wound up with fry even though I separated them. The fry are doing great on the magic small fish feed. Nice.
Yeah. Uh, endlers can carry Well, libears can carry sperm. So even if they're just like with a male for a day, they can carry sperm for like six plus months. So kind of kind of a cool cool thing. Yeah, the food's been selling really well, which is which is great for us. And uh the market's kind of spreading a little bit, which is nice to see. And uh yeah, so we're we're taking it slow and steady, though. We don't want to we don't want to launch bad products. So we've just been testing and and working on things. And still no flake food, though. still still on the to-do list. And uh yeah, still want to do frozen food at some point, but the shipping economy of the world needs to calm down before we're playing with any more frozen things. We just got, if you saw on on the YouTube post there from yesterday, we got restocked on brine shrimp. So, if you watch the video on the warehouse tour, you saw we were getting low. That was a few weeks ago when we shot it, and then the the reup of it came in. So, now we're restocked well again.
Um, which hopefully, well, not hopefully, but now we just got to wait for the bank account to recover because Brian shrimp is just it's such a clutch thing for breeders and and the quality is great, but boy is it just disproportionately expensive to order and keep frozen the whole time. And you know, it's it's it's kind of like your business is working with ice cream the whole time when you used to sell rocks.
You're like, this rock could be any temperature. It could take a beating.
This brine shrimp though, very needs to be treated a certain way.
When will you and Chris Lucup aka the shrimp king do another video together?
Well, we'll be in Brazil together uh most of next month. So, we'll be filming a bit together, but um not necessarily like going to do videos together, you know what I mean? Uh I keep inviting him over. In fact, we were going to do he was going to come to the the uh bluegrass bash and we were going to hang out and do a bunch of stuff, but then it ended up we scheduled that Brazil trip right before it and that it's brutal.
Like I'm I'm honestly a little concerned I'm going to get fairly sick and lose a couple weeks of work and everything cuz that's just I'm asking for trouble to go to a foreign country, be in the jungle for a few weeks, then go shake hands with lots of people and probably pick up a random cold and then I'm just going to be at home moping around with the sniffles for a week or two. So, it's going to be a long, you know, that that start to when I'm healthy again probably process going to be pretty long. Um, but it's hard to say no to once in a lifetime like getting you never know what you're going to see out in the water. And there's going to be a day where either I'm too old and I can't go or financially I can't go or like I would love to go to the Congo but it's war torren he can't go there.
So it's like well I've got the opportunity I want to go I need to do that even if there's short-term you know some downfalls to it. all know that these these are memories that I always look back and go, "Yeah, that was super cool." You know, you talk with I talked with Dean, I talked with uh with Randy about, you know, previous Peru trips.
Remember that? Remember that? You make some moments and so you you tend not to remember the getting sick part or the parts that were really a bummer and you remember the parts that were really good. Uh, and so but I just I'm getting better at better and going. If I'm out of town for four weeks, really it disrupts my life for about eight weeks. Pretty intensely two weeks before and pretty intensely two weeks after. So yeah.
Any update on when the Kentucky tour will take place? As in like uh uh the membersonly thing? Saturday night is we we've been working on a lot of stuff. We just need to like set we keep going back and forth of like how do we make sure the entire public doesn't show up at our warehouse two how do we get the information out and and all of those things. So we're like trying to figure out the best way and then it's like people travel conventions with friends. We don't want to split up friends, right? So on one hand, hey here's my buddy. They're not a member. Can they come with me? because otherwise it's awkward. Like we're splitting up, but we're sharing a hotel room. Like, okay, come on it. But how do you stop the like, hey, these 40 people are my buddies. Can they come in? Like, okay, well, that's that's kind of different now. Um, and yeah, so all of that, we want to keep it manageable. We want to keep it, you know, we don't want it to be like, oh, the entire convention just showed up at our warehouse and it's absolute chaos. We don't want that. Um, so we're we're trying to figure out how do we get the, you know, information to the right people. How do we we don't necessarily want you like you got to sign up, you got to do this, you got to do that. Like that just adds steps, right? Member only video, but we have to have all our ducks in a row.
We have to give the location. We have to give where to park. We have to We're trying to decide how many do we ask people to sign up because then we're going to try to buy food based on that.
Does that make sense? And then knowing from events, people just go, "Yeah, well, I've got my buddy here now." And then there's going to be x amount of people that will sign up to become a member like the weekend of how do you account for that many people? So, we haven't we haven't had a final meeting going here's what we're doing, here's the plan, tell the people yet.
And we get more information every day basically on things. So, that being said, I don't even have a plane ticket to Kentucky yet. So, we that's on my to-do with to-do list this week. Um, yeah, which my wife Dorcula was going to come with me, but our dogs have been sick, which I don't even know if YouTube really knew knows about that, but to the point where uh Tinky had a feeding tube and that kind of stuff, that's now gone. the dogs are on the mend, but not well enough where it makes sense to leave them with dog sitters and go to like Kentucky because my wife's never seen the Kentucky warehouse. Never been to Kentucky.
Um, so, but now we're like, okay, she's not going with that. I can just buy my ticket instead of us buying two two tickets together. But we were waiting to see like what are the dogs doing because it's been like a two plus month saga there. Uh, so I buy my tickets then I can tell people.
Yeah. logistics. That's That's I should have said logistics. That's why we haven't done it yet. Work.
Um should make the tour a small fee and sign up. Yeah. The the problem is that you guys are already paying us by being members and it no matter what it'll always rub some people the wrong way where it's like, "Don't I give you enough money?" like and they don't see they're like you do and I promise you I will give you more value than you're going to pay but we're trying to keep it so that not everybody and the kitchen sink shows up unannounced.
Um and that's the thing is like we don't want to we want it to be kind of cool as in that was a good time and not like we got overwhelmed and everybody had a bad time. We've all been those experiences where you show up to a thing and you're like, it probably would have been good, but it was so crowded and busy that I never got to talk to Corey. I never got to shake his hand. I never got to do a thing. And we're trying to not have that happen.
So, but even then, right? So, you take a small fee. Okay. Who's collecting the fee? How are you validating it? How, you know, you got who when they when they show up, are we do they have a QR code?
Like, who's checking people in? like there's just ends up being every idea spawns, okay, who's handling that? And so we're trying to keep it cuz we want to go to the convention, we want to hang out with you, we just want to be like, now you can come over and then we'll do pizza or whatever we're going to do.
We're trying to keep it, you know, someone suggests like Indian food and I'm like, I love Indian food, but now it's like, okay, well, now we kind of need bowls and lots of utensils and maybe we need lots of seating because eating Indian food standing up is not as easy as like a slice of pizza. And, you know, and there's already like, okay, we have to provide drinks. Do we have enough bathrooms? Do we have this? Do we have that? We also want to make sure someone doesn't like take a a plate or bowl of Indian food, set it down to talk, it gets pushed off and like lands on a bunch of products or in between the aisles of the warehouse and now we've got rotting food somewhere. Like there's all these little little things that you have to deal with the aftermath and so we're trying to optimize. So that's why I don't have be there at this time that'll be perfect.
I received my 5-year membership coin and water bottle. The quality floored me. I love what you do for the hobby and I'm proud to support. Yes. I with with merch and swag, I have the firm belief that if it's not something I would have paid for, I won't give it away for free because I can go to a convention and you get four million t-shirts that are ultra low quality that become rags. You get uh frisbes that won't fly because they're so chintzy plastic. You get cups and pens and and whirly gigs that nobody wants and it all stays in the hotel room. You're like, I'm not dragging this back home. What's up?
>> All right.
>> I'm live streaming, you know.
>> Do you like it?
>> Your outfit looks great. My wife is uh wearing a Shroo Farms uh t-shirt and she just got done planting 10 more roodendrrons. So, as I'm dodging the outside work by live streaming, There's a light light mist happen.
>> Yeah, there's still a light mist. So, I'm operating under the cover of light mist.
>> Way comfortable. I know.
>> Yeah, my wife's wearing some of my sweatpants, which you might have seen me wearing cuz I like to lounge. So, >> um >> roadie update 2026. 10 have been planted. We've been working very hard.
Uh overall, I think we're going to be at around a hundred shrubs and trees and things like that.
If you're listening to Deep in the M podcast, you've heard a little more about that. But we've really been working on our property, I guess, just to make it more uh animal friendly deers and like we've got a uh a pair of little native chipmunks that are hanging out on our porch that we're loving. We've got uh right now we have eight geese babies out on the pond. So, the geese had babies again this year. So, we're really enjoying that. I've got a camera set up that we can put on our TVs so we can watch the uh watch the the geese and everything like that in the living room because even though I'm inside I like to you know enjoy nature daily. And so we just been working a lot on trying to I don't know make outdoors cooler. I guess that's and so we we planted some paw paw trees. We planted elderberry, chokeberry, uh some kind of cherries. We planted uh what else? a lot of lot of fruit bearing stuff. Some of it we'll do it even in the winter so we get lots more birds and uh yeah I'm just trying I mean it's because it's so much it's been a long thing of like I think we bought like 30 or 40 roodendrrons so it takes a while you know if you ever been digging holes you know like eventually like I'm kind of tired of digging holes for today.
Yeah. Business schedule from the waist up until my team meetings. Yeah. Yeah.
Um, Corey speaks the truth. Uh, oh, I have some Aquarium quaff sweats from the Aqua Shella thing that are five year in the five-year cup's amazing. Yeah. I mean, those those sweatpants for the member only sweatpants, they would cost us so much money. But I would I would literally rather give nothing away than just give stuff that gets thrown away or left in the hotel room. So, when we do give something away, I want it to I want other people to be jealous and be like, "Where did you get that? How do I get one of those? I can't believe they gave that away." That is what I want. Um, yeah, an augur with a drill. Yeah, I did. I have a battery powered augur for my Ego brand batteries. So, but Katie Katie was planting those ones herself.
I'm guessing she didn't go grab the augur to do it. Uh, normally I'm the guy making all the holes she's putting in the plants.
yard tour. I don't know. Maybe, maybe someday.
Um, I keep an elephant nose on a small island. No black worms, tube effects, or frozen food available. Currently feeding mosquito larae, but won't accept anything like crushed prawns. Any tips?
Let me think here. I keep an elephant nose, small island, no black worms, tube effects, or frozen foods available.
Okay. Uh, what would I So, yeah, obviously the mosquito larvae are working.
Um, I feel like I might try breeding cherry shrimp or uh like some dwarf Mexican crayfish. See if he would hunt on those. What else would I try if I had a picky eater that I needed some like live food for basically?
Uh oh, I would try uh farming Daphne. I would get some I mean I don't know how remote this island is, but I assume at some point you meet civilization and in a bag you could bring back some Daphnia and make a pawn for Daphnneia. I feel like that would be one I would be trying for a lot. Um yeah, I think Daphnia is the best move there.
Um earthworms. Yeah, earthworms chopped up like redorm wiglers and stuff. That'd be another good option. Yeah, that's a good point.
Welcome to come visit the Harriswood Garden at the Indolana Indola at Indians. Indians some see serious woodland gardens roies and hydrangeas galore. Yeah, I I can't really tell you what any of the plants are. I can just go Yeah, grew three inches. Yeah, we're keeping it alive. I love this. Um, and then I love when animals are interacting with it. It's real satisfying to see like, look, the bees are using the little water dish.
Amazing. It's working. And each year that we've kind of invested, you know, time, sweat, money into the property, we seem to be getting more living things living on the property, which is super cool to me. Um, because I just I geek out when I'm like, "There's a lizard over there. Oh my gosh, I just saw a mole run across the ground. I'm looking at this thing. Um, so like right now we installed a big fence for our dogs to be able to run around and it's completely covered in bird poop, which I'm loving because that means that they're getting to use it looking for the worms and all the stuff. And so yeah, I'm not bothered by a little bit of bird poop.
Uh, if you breed shrimp, make a video about it.
me. I mean, I've made lots of videos about breeding shrimp.
Trying to think of like, did I say a different type of shrimp? Um, I mean, I'm going to unbox some shrimp later.
Uh, my aunt had a clover backyard and the tiny flowers. I I planted a ton of clover, but the grass is still winning.
So, we've got some big patches of clover, but also big patches of grass.
In fact, the thing I'm trying to do is we last year in the summer, we rotatailled the whole yard and planted clover, and there's still grass, but it's uneven. So, I'm going to try to put some top soil down and use a drag thing behind the lawn mower to spread it out and fill in some of the gaps. Um, just haven't done it. I decided, let's live stream instead of doing that right now.
Uh, just the other day I woke up to my hang on back leaked overnight and drained about three inches of water from the tank. Not so much fun. Talk about a new fear that's unlocked.
Yeah, I think a lot of us have run into that before. Um, the the main thing I can say is like try to make sure it's tilted forward. I see so many times I'll visit a fish room or something like a fine like and it's like leaning backwards because like the little piece or whatever is set wrong and they're like, "Oh, it doesn't leak."
And I'm like, "Yeah, but as it clogs up, that's where it will leak." You always want to make sure that when this thing fails, like that should always be in your aquarium mind. When this thing fails, how is it going to fail? And you would rather it fail the way you want it to. So, for instance, like a heater, you would want it to fail by not coming on than as opposed to sticking on a hang on back filter. If it was going to plug up and overflow, you'd rather that happens flowing back into the tank than backwards onto the floor. And all that takes is like, let's say it's this thing, right? You could have it exactly like this, and that's how the manufacturer would tell you to install it. A lot of people will let it sit like this where the water level is low enough that it's not overflowing, but as it, you know, six months later it might flow onto the floor. And then there's Corey where I'm going, the manufacturer tells you this. I'd be doing it like this. So that you have you have even like double or triple the amount of oopsie before it would ever possibly overflow. And if it did, the low point is back in the tank.
And uh yeah, can I recommend a midwater fish to keep with breeding corridors? Some stirby and gold lasers. Needs to be able to handle this flow. I tried carry tetras, but they ate the cory eggs. Dwarf neon rainbows. Okay, so can't eat cory eggs and got to handle the flow. Uh dwarf neon rainbows would be cool. I think that would that could be a potential. Um I'm trying to think of something with a real small mouth.
I would be tempted. I mean, that's not midwater, that's upper water. But like the browntailed pencil fish, I love up top. Midwater, small mouths that want to stay midwater without being too snacky.
Um, I feel like a lot of the smaller tetras like cardinals and and neons and uh like black neons get a little big. They might eat some eggs maybe. Trying to think of oh I know one of my favorite fish that I like would be rasbora hets. You could do the oranges, you could do purples, you could do the hangli, which is like more of the pork chop rasbora. Ra a lot of the little rasboras have pretty small mouths that I think would do well in that setup. So I'd probably go with the splash of color. And I I I I'm a sucker for some themes sometimes of orange stirby, orange lasers, orange midwater fish. I can fall into that trap pretty easy.
Thanks for the worm tip. We'll try that.
I have Daphnneia, but the elephant knows ignores them. Interesting. Also lives with cherry shrimp, but never touches them either. All other live foods are banned here. I wonder if it never touches a shrimp or it only eats a certain size.
Trying to think of what. So, the live foods are banned.
Yeah, I think you're just you got a lot of the easy options cut off. So, it's makes it just difficult.
Yeah. Honestly, I never thought about tilting it towards the tank. Yeah. So, I need to redo a bunch of videos I've done over the years of like basic hang on back because there's I forget that not everyone has the same common logic. Like my wife wouldn't know a lot of the plumbing principles and water always takes a path of least resistance and it will always self-level and it will always she just because she wouldn't do that. She would know all the cooking and baking stuff that I would never know um of like get milk too hot it curdles.
Butter does this you know if butter's cold when you make a cookie it turns out to flat cookies and if it's room temperature it does this and if it's too warm it does that. I would never know any of that. And that's the same stuff about aquariums of there's all this little knowledge that you learn from flooding and doing things of like, oh, here's how you prevent that. Maybe putting air brakes or siphon brakes in different things and I need to kind of if I recover some of the basic, you know, I'm going to do a video about hot rodding a hang on back and try to cover some of these things. that knowledge gets dispensed again, which I've dispensed a lot of knowledge, but there's no way someone's going to watch 1,200 videos and then be like, "Oh, yeah. I found the knowledge that I needed there." So, you have to I need to make more targeted videos again and try to remember as many tips off the top of my head. You know, it's kind of like when you ask someone like, "What's the 10 most important things about fish keeping?" You probably could get to like five or six. Then you're like, "Uh, what would I even say for seven, eight, nine, and 10?" Meanwhile, there's actually 150 things you could say that would be very meaningful. And so, it's really easy to just to forget all of those little tips in a video. So, if I do more videos, I'm more likely uh to miss less of them.
Thank you for the stream. See you in Kentucky. All right, Zab Beast 465, we'll see you in Kentucky.
It's too late now. should have done like a custom coin or something for Kentucky.
I still want to do that kind of stuff.
Maybe I'll bring some uh wildcaugh Corey coins and hand some out.
That's a maybe, by the way. People always like, "You said you were going to do it." Like strong maybe because turns out didn't want to travel that heavy and didn't bring them.
What's the What's How to best deal with hydra without killing all your snails with chemicals?
Uh, some fish will eat it like croaking gouramies, sparkling gouramies will will snack on it. Um, aren't people using There's got to be a dose and I don't know off the top of my head, but like a flu bendazol or a fenazol dosage that will kill hydra but not kill shrimp. Like it'll stun the shrimp or not shrimp, sorry, uh, snails. Yeah, I wouldn't be willy-nilly with it, but I think there's a dose that can go between those two.
Uh, the Venezuelan cories I got are spawning like crazy. None of the eggs seem to be fertile and I don't really see typical spawning behavior. The females are just laying eggs everywhere.
Uh, a lot of people report that they need more males than females when breeding corydoras. So, if you have like eight females and two males, you might just need to find more male uh Venezuelan cory's and that'll help get enough milk onto those eggs to actually um get viable fertile eggs.
I love the idea of the co-op sweatpants with duckweed printed by the pockets in various places. Yeah, honestly, I think we will probably uh probably work on that stuff more when the economy is more stable. And what I mean by that is just like there's always a lot of unknowns each morning. And those projects, just like like this sponge filter, it's like they're not going to make us money.
They're cool and I want to do it, but I also don't want to be like, well, we're having a hard time financially because we did too many of the cool projects that don't make us money. So, we got to be careful with our money, which we always have to be careful with our money, but you know, let's say there's a 50-50 risk right now. I want to wait till there's like a 10% risk only. Like, now we'll do that kind of stuff. I don't want to get stuck with a bunch of sweatpants, duckweed pants if I don't have to. I'd rather make it work.
Um, I appreciate that the co-op is a safe place in a box store. A mom wanted advice for a kids soon to get an aquarium. I knew referring her to you guys would be safe. Yeah, we try. I mean, there's I will say over the years we've gotten some reviews of like we're opinionated at at the fish store and that's definitely true. We don't get along with everybody because there's there's people that just want Oscars and five gallons. There's people that, you know, they're the cranky old person that know everything. And then sometimes there's just miscommunication. And then there's sometimes employees having a bad day. Let's not rule it out. We got have humans working for us and we all have bad days. But for the most part, we try very hard to be the safe, welcoming space. even when you know I remember some of the craziest ideas helping customers through of like the one gentleman he loved technology and he loved figuring things out and he really wanted to only use rainwater and he wanted to make an enclosure that was a fish tank that would uh have a fan that moves the humidity from the fish tank captured above it down to the snake and would ask me questions like what could go wrong there and I'm like well I don't know anything about your snake I don't really know reptiles like that at all to and then he would come back and he's like okay now I'm having problems with X Y and Z and it's like yeah but okay what's the runoff from your roof that you're collecting like well I don't know how do I test like I don't know I don't do this I'm just trying to logically help think you think through it with you of like and then it's like that water's going to be very acidic what are you doing about that and then he was having problems with like mosquitoes and other things getting into the water change system and doing this and it's like at some point you got to tell him like yeah I don't know you've made you're like you're taking this concept you're making it really difficult ult. I'm not sure we're going to get to where you want to go. Like, you might be able to, but I don't have expertise in where you're trying to go.
So, I'm working through it with you at the same time, not knowing that if the advice I'm going to give you will actually improve the thing because it'll be like, would you be a sterilizer fix it? Like, probably not. It's not going to affect the water parameters. But if you're starting to get some stuff growing in the water from the roof, then yes, it would for that part, but wouldn't solve the part over here with the original problem you came in with.
And sometimes people can take it like you just are anti their idea where you're trying to save heartache and politely tell them you're in a in a realm I don't I can't really help you.
It's not that I don't want to help you.
It's that I don't know how to help you.
Um, it it's more I maybe it's another another way to say it would be like asking your doctor like, "Well, what's wrong with my dog?" It's like, I don't want to comment on that. Like, I don't know dog anatomy or dog disease or dog thing as much as I like I I work on I'm a brain surgeon over here. I don't know about your dog's, you know, hip dysplasia. Like, yes, I understand physically what it is, but I'm not an expert in Chihuahua hip dysplasia or something.
Can baby pea puffers eat fully grown rams horn snails? My snails seemed way more dominant since I added the puffers.
No, I don't think the babies would eat full growns. No. Um they might pick at them a little bit, but I did see that we have at least at least two people now, I think, raising uh pea puffers they bred on magic small fish feed. Just a cool aside.
I recently started breeding my holy grail fish, the syllabaks, and got some platinum half beaks. Uh, they're still growing out. Have I had any luck with mine so far? No. But to be fair, mine are still living in a 10gon.
So, yeah, I I I want to breed them. They're fat and looking healthy, but the guppies are breeding in there a ton. I thought they were going to eat a lot of the guppy babies. They're not eating the guppy babies, even though they eat their own babies. So, I need to I need to build build a better mouse trap is what I need to do.
So, uh let's see. David Wood says, "I meant your videos." Although, uh I'd be up in the Oh, your store from Nebraska. Yeah.
So, the Yeah, the videos I think are, you know, for the most part outside of live streams even keeled. Every once in a while there's a day where flu ball be tripping and I go on a rant or something.
Uh curious, why are the holes in the guppy box prototype on the sides and not the bottom? Yeah, so two purposes. The original purpose of that uh the designer was using it so that the guppies can be moved from tank to tank. So you if you put holes in the bottom, all the water comes out. Two, when you put food in and it settles to the bottom, if there's holes, it goes to the bottom bottom of the tank where if it falls to the bottom and the fish, the adults can still eat it. kind of a benefit there. Um, so that's that's the main reason. Is a giant sponge filter coming back? I believe we have maybe up to a hundred of them coming on the next container at the end of the month. Uh, but then like the next three containers after that, there's none on those because we didn't have room. So, we happen to have a little bit of room on this container. So, we got like a hundred of them. But, I don't know what the final number is because when they packed the container, I might have like, "Oh, we got 56 of them on there." Like, yep, we got 56 then. Um, so yeah, they'll go in inventory and then people will probably gobble them up, which is cool cuz it's fun to see what people do with them.
Pea puffers eat the faces of my full-grown rams horn snails. I believe that adult peuffers, they will for sure, but they said baby pea puffers, so I think they'd be a little bit too small to be doing taking them to murder town.
Love your content. any advice for opening up a new fish store? Yeah, there's lots of videos kind of on that.
Um my, you know, people that have been with us for a long time, seven, eight years, they're going to be like, "Oh, here we go." But my main advice, which is not all the advice, it's like, "What's the starting point, Corey?" And it's not funding. It's not how to build it. It's go run someone else's fish store. Not just work there. like work your way up to become a manager at someone's fish store. And that might take you five years.
Then you'll know, do you want to do that for the rest of your life? And do you want to learn all the pieces you don't know about? Because I've been all the way from volunteering.
Sorry, I had to had to burp. I've been all the way from volunteering at a fish store to getting hired at a fish store to running a fish store to opening my own store, being there to managing employees to now not being at the store, managing the store as like an entity.
And what I'll say is every person above you on the way up has all these things they have to deal with that suck that you have no idea about. So, you're doing your job going,"Wh do they get more money or why do they get more things?"
Because what you see, they're doing what you do and you're like, "I could do that." But each step you go, oh, I got to deal with this. Oh, I got to deal with this. And so, like at the volunteer level, like, you come and go, you know, at the employee level, you got to deal with customer problems and other things.
Then it's like at the manager level, you got to deal with employee problems, employee conflicts, scheduling, these people can't work together, whatever it is, and the mo the hardest customer problems. At like the GM level, now you're dealing with landlords and closures and making the call on snow days and permitting on projects and and and at the next level up that you're going with funding and managing profitability, making sure that it's not losing money at aggregate, all of those things. And each one is a stack of another level of complication. And so if you're wanting to open up a store, you have to be at that end level. But there's almost no way to learn the end level. So the level I think people can get to pretty easily would be managing someone else's fish store. And that'll get you to that level. Then you're man, you've got some experience managing some employees.
You're managing customers. You're managing all the fish. You're managing you're seeing some of the problems that come up with landlords and parking lots and road closures and all of that kind of stuff. Getting some experience there.
And that gives you a basis to learn all the other stuff without that falling completely down while you have to run into that. Um, and so that's where I would start. I I will never forget the comment of someone who's like, "I'm opening my own fish store. I've got the money. I'm doing the thing." And when I gave them that same advice, they said, "But I can't afford to work at a fish store for fish store wages." And I'll never forget because I'm like, "Well, then you can definitely not afford to open your own fish store because when you open your own fish store, guess what your paycheck is?
Zero. When you work for someone else, you're at least going to get minimum wage, right? if you come work for us, you'll start out at $25 an hour. And so, if you can't, you know, survive off of the $25 an hour, there's no way you're going to be able to open up your own store and make zero for the first year or two and make it. Uh, and so, you know, I people want to run their own thing because they love the idea of I get to be my own boss. And it's great.
You get to pick whatever hundred hours a week you want to work. You know, the problem is you got to pick a hundred hours you're going to work. uh and the the fact that there is a path to someone will pay me to learn the industry. You can come work at our store, you can work at someone else's store, we will pay you to learn to talk about fish, learn to interact with customers, and if you get good at it, we will pay you to start managing employees and doing these things. And you're getting paid the whole time you're learning it where most there's a lot of other things where it's like, yeah, you want to be an engineer, you get to pay to go learn how to become an engineer so that home someday you'll get a job. with this, it's like a it's like more like a journeyman where it's like you're learning to become an electrician or learning to become a do a plumber or or a welder or or a mechanic or a billion other jobs. And so that would be my thing is make sure it's something you're going to want to do the rest of your life. Make sure you can handle it. Make sure you you enjoy working the weekends.
You enjoy the long nights. You enjoy the 3:00 a.m. picking up fish from the airport trip. All of that. Because once you've put your money and your livelihood into it and you're signing three, five, 10 year leases on buildings, you can't just go, you know what, I'm done. I'm I'm done. It's real hard to get back out once you've sunk that far in. But you can get all of that at arms length by working at a fish store and then managing a fish store.
And you can decide, you know what, end of the year, I'm done. I'm going to pivot to uh volleyball salesman is what I'm going to do. And that transition is not nearly as painful as how do you wind down an entire fish store and the loans and the leases and all the things that you would have. So that's what I would that's the advice I give is go run someone else's fish store and make sure you want to uh do two or three times as much work as that, but also get if you're successful lots more money. If you're unsuccessful, you lose lots of money. And that's the thing I see a lot of fish stores where it's a they're like I thought it was going to be the same but then you have you being a manager of a store you don't have the stresses of like like for instance my managers no matter what the store is doing you get paid but like me we could have like oh it's a really slow summer I'm paying all my employees we're actually losing money so it's like oh I'm working really hard I'm there I'm trying to help and at the end of the day you lost $5,000 Corey like you paid someone $5,000 or not someone but a group of people to lose money. But you're banking on long-term we'll get it worked out and things like that and sometimes out of your control. You could have a fire in the building next to you.
You could have, you know, the lots of snow days, lots of whatever, good weather, bad weather, all of those things out of your control most times.
So, um, just know that that stress will weigh on you as an owner, whereas as a manager can still be stressful. you'll you'll care about the thing, but you your paycheck won't get cut. So, still easier to maintain because you're not gambling your money.
Do I do live streams on a schedule or when I have time?
These days, just when I have time and when I'm in the mood for it because there's days that you don't want to you don't want to do that stuff. Maybe you were hot and sweaty planting roodendrrons all day. Maybe you were dealing with HR nightmare issues or maybe you're, you know, dealing with lawyers on other things or Yeah. So, not that not that most days are like that or anything, but uh being a creator, your show is always better on like, oh yeah, I really want to be in front of the people. I want to talk to people, have a good time, than forcing you to do that. like, "Oh, I really don't want to do that right now."
Entrepreneurship and trades in general are like that though. Learn by doing.
Yeah, very much so. And uh you know, my the first store I ran, the owner there who who has passed away, so I don't want to talk bad too much, but I I tell people that, sorry, my my voice is cutting out on me. I tell people that I learned much more of what not to do there than what to do, which was still very useful. That's how I knew always have a clean stocked bathroom. That's how I knew um like selling fish at a loss. Like feeders just don't make you money. And there was a lot of things to learn like, yeah, I won't be doing this.
Like I I see the numbers here. We're losing money doing this. And but there'd be the owner saying, but we have to. I'm like, but do we do we have to because and now I was I'm able to prove it for myself of like clearly I didn't have to because I didn't do that and I I was luckily able to make it. Um, you know, there's always a little bit of luck involved, a lot of hard work. I, you know, as a as a serial workaholic, I do love the the quote of like I don't even I don't know who said it or if it's even famous or anything, but I I think of it fairly often. And it's like, huh, the harder I work, the luckier I get, it seems. Because a lot of times people will downplay lots of hard work with luck. And no doubt there's some luck, right? Had to have a business partner believed in me to invest money. Had to be able to hire the right employees. Had to be lucky that stars aligned, right?
But even, you know, I could you could offer that same opportunity to 10 different people. If they don't put hard work with it, most of them will probably fail. And uh but yeah, I think it's I think the right the right uh the right way to think about it is yeah, the harder you work, the lucker you get and it takes some luck and hard work to make businesses work. So it's not all luck. It's not all hard work because there's some of the hardest working people you ever meet just can't seem to catch a break, right? So I think it's it's a mix of both. That's kind of like that art and science thing where some things are like a little more artistic, a little more sciency, but you need both to make whatever the thing is like work.
It's it's equal parts. And I'm not sure that luck or hard work is equal. But it does take both parts of it to make any business pretty much work. Right time of place, right time, you know, you could be right time, right place, can't find the right employees. Could be right time, right place, right employees, but your health gives out. could be. There's always something. So, you need a little bit of a little bit of both. You could also have you got your health, you got your money, you got your employees, you got everything, but you're not a hard worker. Like, that won't work either. It takes all the things to go together.
Do we take volunteers at Aquarium Co-op?
No. Uh, in our experience, we haven't had that work out well. Um, it's not that it goes horribly wrong. It's that when we have volunteers, if they're not being paid, they end up like, "Oh, well, I got a dentist appointment, so I can't make it in." and we end up losing a lot of resources on our end of like, well, we kind of scheduled it so we had time to help train you or you were going to cover a lunch shift, you know, an hour while someone was at lunch. And so, in general, we either we pay you and you're an employee or you're not. And, you know, that's I'm sure there's someone else better at it, but that's what we found like, yeah, it just tends not to work out with volunteers.
Uh, the founder of uh, Heron's Wood Garden used to shop at Aquarium Quinn and Edmonds when he had tanks. Oh, that's a neat little Easter egg. Nice.
Now I should really make an effort. So, I don't know if you would know who I am, but it'd be weird to be like, you're here. Yeah.
Uh, let's see. I can imagine pre-recording on your good days and drip feed content would help a lot.
Yeah. Uh oh, because that's a reply to how do you manage your emotions when it comes to being a creator and a business owner? Bad mood equal bad stream, but you always feed you always have to feed the algorithm. That's a hard spot to be in. It's incredibly difficult. Uh YouTube both blessing and a curse. If there was out of all the stuff in Aquarium Co-op, if you said, "Corey, we could take one thing off your plate, you would never have to do it again." What would it be? It' be like content creation, social media, 100%. If I could drift off into oblivion and just work really hard behind the scenes. I would love it. I'm an introvert by nature. I don't like being in the public. I don't like being in front of a bunch of people. I do it. Turns out I I'm okay at it. Um, but the neverending content grind is people won't understand it until they've done it. Like Zenzo and Randy, they're doing content. Zeno's been doing it longer, but Ry's doing content, you know, with the podcast and now he's doing a little more videos.
You don't understand. Like people won't understand the amount of little like stress and trying to think of ideas and then like well I lost my voice for a week and then I was sick and then my kid had a thing or my dog was sick and then I had to travel and then there was all this stuff at work but at the end of the day they're still like great and where's the eight videos we need for next month?
Like yeah, I'm working on it. Like I I realize that it's only building up in intensity of we really need that. We really need that. Um and so that's that's a thing I would definitely uh unload if it was possible. We tried we tried unloading it with like making Dean more of a personality uh people like at the store and other stuff and and the reality is it's it's it's a difficult thing even though from the outside looking it's really easy you make a lot of money like that can't be that bad for sure like it's not the worst thing ever but uh it's the first thing I would give up for sure especially we're in year 11 I think online and so it's not like oh yeah you you know like it's been a a lot a lot of videos, but there's also days you wake up and you can't wait to tell the world about the thing. And those videos are super easy to make. Um, like right now, I would if if it didn't matter and it was just like just make content, I'd be making tons of video about 3D printing, home automation stuff in the fish room, all of that. But it makes no sense for business. So like Randy, his work warehouse, proud of it, wants to show it off. The algorithm says only 10,000 people care about it.
You have an eight out of 10 video. It's it's eight out of 10 is bad. One out of 10 would be good. So, sorry. I got to take a drink.
So, if we're, you know, if I was managing Randy, I'm like, "Hey, we need to make less of that and more stuff that people want to watch." Meanwhile, I'm not saying that because I I like the video and I don't want to do only what the algorithm wants. But at certain point, you have to listen to what the the public wants, the business needs. Um, and the unfortunate part is if you look at the last, like well, I'll pull that up. If you look at the last uh let's say 10 videos we made, right?
the the way to evaluate how they're doing is just at a surface level, like you guys could do this as well, any channel, just look at the videos and the views, right? And so, if we look at the last 10 videos, six days ago, we had the aquarium warehouse tour, which people have been asking, where's an update on the tour?
10,000 views.
Now, in a vacuum, that's a lot of people watching, no doubt. But if we compare it to other videos, if you had to spend two hours of your life, what would you spend it on? Maybe we'd spend on something else. You brought me some broth.
>> I'm going to end it instantly now.
>> I want to make people hate it when you bring me broth.
>> Oh, now you're trying the broth.
>> Thank you.
Uh, and then so then you see I did a top 10 bestselling fish 32,000 views. So that same two hours I can reach 10,000 or 32,000 view the video before that. Uh, how to culture Daphnneia with a real life wizard. That was took 4 days to basically film because I'd be out of town. 29,000 views. So four days work, 29,000 views. Top 10 video, 30 minutes of work, 32,000 views.
Uh, Imperial Tropical Tour, that was like a fiveday thing we did. Filmed a few things, obviously. 27,000 views.
Uh, same trip to Daphne Wizard. So, uh, Blake and SJ's fish room, 57,000 views.
Walking around my fish room, 20,000 views. Top five popular shrimp and snails, 11,000. Stinker.
And then you have a tour of Chattanooga, Tennessee, 46,000. Top 10 cold water fish, 37,000. So the data kind of shows I should just crap out top 10 videos like every 10 minutes. And that's what uh the algorithm would want and what would make me quit my job.
So that's why I don't do that all the time because I find them to be grueling to make because I don't find that they're substitent enough. And people always say like, well, why not make it like that? And I was like, cuz then it wouldn't perform.
So you know, if you said, what do you want to do right now, Corey? Right now, I want to be live streaming. Like if I'm going to make content, I want to be live streaming.
I don't want to make a top 10 video. I don't want to do these other things. Uh, so then it's like, okay, well, you have to make a video then. And then, so it's like, okay, I should just make the thing that performs the best then. If I want, if you're going to make me do something I don't want to do, I may as well do the best version of it. And so far, it shows the best version is do a top 10, Corey, which I would guess most of you are like, ah, no more top 10s. But you're a different audience than the bigger audience that we have.
I mean, some of you will like it, obviously.
Um, yeah. And then like the deep in the ms that we do every week, absolutely terrible in terms of like time usage, but I have a great time laughing with my friends who happen to work with me and you guys kind of like it, too. So, we keep doing that one.
Like that one, that one I don't dread going, "Oh, deep in the podcast." I go, "Oh, sweet. Deep in the podcast tomorrow. Let me think about what my pick of the week is, what I get done.
That'll be fun. We'll laugh.
That Daphnneia video was really eye opening though. I really like the multiculture type. Yeah, and that's that's the thing is I love like that Daphne video. I love it because I learned the viewers will learn and it actually did pretty okay, which is great. I'm not I'm not complaining. But a lot of times you'll get a video like that that is really good informational and like oh the people that need it.
This is awesome. just not that many people need it. You know, we've all probably been there where you're like, "Oh man, I looked up this problem with my car and I found a video with 1,700 views and it literally shows you how to fix it for a$112." And you're like, "This is the best thing ever. I love YouTube. Thank goodness." But for most of the world, they would never need that video. They hate that video. Why would you ever suggest this video to me?
Because it didn't apply to them. So, you know, if you're playing the game, it's way better off to make a very generic video. Like I'm sure we're all tired of somehow tricking ourselves into clicking into a video like top 10 things about a thing. Like it'll be like top 10 things to watch out for on a car. Number 10, make sure you change the oil. Number nine, make sure you don't have a flat tire. Number eight, make sure your headlights work. Number seven, make sure you get your brakes done every 100,000 miles. Number six, make sure your seat belts aren't faulty. Number five, make sure there's not a cat living in your engine. Number four, make sure your tailpipe's not stuffed up with a potato.
Number three, make sure you don't put diesel fuel in your gas powered car.
Number two, make sure your car has tabs.
And the number one most important thing when it comes to safety of a vehicle is make sure you have a driver's license.
We'll see you next time. Hit that like button and subscribe.
Meanwhile, I already clicked off at number six going, "Why would anyone even make this video?" And yet it will perform. Like, how's that have 2.3 million things? Like, everyone owns a car. Everyone clicked. Everyone thought clickbait sales. If I say this is the last live stream ever, we'll have twice as many people. Well, if I just say, "Hey, it's it's uh Wednesday. What's up?" I'll get half as many people, right? So, you got to you got to balance all the things. Do I go click baity? Do I do the top 10? Do I do the Daphnneia video? You try to balance it all out and try to make as many things work as you can.
Yeah. Don't forget the ad break and the ad read probably, too. And we've got a Pens Oil Oil. Your number one oil spot maker in your driveway. Guaranteed to last.
Yeah.
Uh, I love the live streams deep in the m and the warehouse videos. Thanks for all of them. Yeah, for the most part, we just try to do what we think might make us somewhat happy and people happy cuz, you know, one person's really into guppies. They want 400 guppy videos over the next month. Someone's an African cichlids. The next person wants to learn about We have a decent amount of of people listening that don't even keep fish at the moment. Maybe they used to, maybe they're thinking about it, like they just like maybe our personality or, you know, just background noise, whatever it is. So, what did I just turn into? Cory's automotive tech.
Yeah, that was that was a pretty close Rex Quando.
Take a kick to the What is it? Like a leg kick to the face. No way.
Block it every time.
All right. My face is turning red. Not from embarrassment, which it should be, but from the hot broth, actually.
But yeah, that's that's basically my thoughts on top 10s. They perform well and YouTube loves them, but I really don't like making them cuz I don't find them to be beneficial and I feel like lumps me in with the other like super clickbay top 10 crap that I just and I get sucked into it too. Like, oh, top 10 things about a thing I'm semi-interested in. Oh, nine out of the 10 things are just so obvious that it's really irritating.
You'll need more broth. That voice.
That's right.
Do I design my own files for 3D printing? No. I uh have not learned how to do that. Well, I made one file to prove that like, oh, I could kind of do a thing and it sucked, but it physically did the thing. And then uh and then I met someone on the forum who is like a wizard. The best when I explain it to other people, I explain it is uh this person can make 3D files like Jimmy can edit.
Watching Jimmy edit on Sony Vegas, which for all the times I tried to get him off of Sony Vegas to other editing platform, it's like watching someone play the piano, it's just hotkeys going and things are like doing edits and cuts and click click click click. like it's like he's playing the piano. And I I assume that uh that our 3D editor or or printer guy that we're working with is like that because it just you can turn around stuff and he's so good at it and and uh so very lucky and it's been a fun partnership to I think I think he's enjoying being able to actually get things done. Let's improve it. And then it actually like I think the first product the underground filter. Is it the first product?
Let me think.
It might be the first product that went all the way from 3D printing to factory making and will release because we sell 3D printed parts.
But is it the first thing that we'll have made it all the way through? We thought up an idea, 3D printed it and tested it for months and months and months and months, then got a factory involved, then in 3D injection molding, then it will be on a shelf that he could walk into a store and buy. It might be the first product that that's happened with, so he's pretty excited about that.
I think Jimmy uh became a editing wizard from doing a lot of top 10s because they're real repetitive. And if you to do a good top 10, there's a million different clips and breaks and sound effects and titles and and all of that stuff. I mean, obviously hard work and stuff, too. Don't want to discount that.
Uh, but there was a long time when we did the top 10 meta and that kind of stuff, and it was it's a grueling edit.
Top 10's, not even are they not fun to make, but it's all in the editing. So, it's it's brutal on the editors of like a 10-minute video and you're like, "But that took me eight hours to edit, takes me 30 minutes to film, takes them eight hours to edit. That's a bummer." Where like a a store or a room tour might take me an hour to film, and then an hour prep before that, and takes them 12 minutes to edit. So, you know, there's always a mix of stuff. Some are real heavy lifting on the editor, some are heavy lifting on the person making it.
Yeah. try to get a mix of it so it's not unbearable on any one person.
Um, you should add a freshwater tiger more eel to the 800 gallon. Not really into more eels.
Since we're on the subject, when do chili rasors come into season or is it somewhat unpredictable? I think it's predictable. I just don't know when I I was I talking about deep in the m or last live stream. I know I was talking about I just don't remember where that we should almost come up with a system or a a a website. What am I trying to say? Like a page on a website where it would kind of list some of the seasonalities because it can't be a mystery. I'm sure just no one's really tracking it of like well here's the season like where we go film fish underwater. there's a season where it's you can collect them or it's not. When the water's low, you collect them. When the water's high, you don't. And I'm sure we could just if we started asking and documenting, people would provide us some of the info of like, hey, here's the run.
And then I I I'd want to find an animator so that we could have our version of What is it? Is it like uh Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fud where it's like rabbit season, something else season, rabbit? I'd want it to be like pea puffer season, chillier rasbora season, sle real Danny season, and just have a gift that keeps moving different fish because that would make me laugh as as a seven-year-old me or something.
I look forward to deep in the m every week. Yeah, I should probably do my thing where I I do my job and I tell you guys, hey, uh membership's pretty cool. You get coins, you get uh at the five-year mark, you get Yetis, you get emotes, you get uh monthly presentations, you get access to all the back catalog. There's now over 63 episodes of Deep in the Malm, which is a oneh hour type uh podcast, video podcast format with Randy, Zenzo, myself, sometimes special guests. Um you get 5% off on the website and participating retail partner stores. You could come to the the bluegrass bash and tour our warehouse if you're a member when we do that. There's all those kind of, you know, usually there's like a perk that people will like. Like, oh, I really like this part. But you get all the perks, right? And so, if you're thinking about becoming a member, that would be awesome. Be part of the smaller niche group. Um, and if not, that's fine, too. It's not for everybody, but uh it should at least I thought I haven't talked about a long time should let you guys know some of the things you get. I'm sure there's things I've missed too, like oh yeah, there's posters to download on the website. You get access to the scratch and dent version of products on the website.
Um there's probably some other things too that I can't think of. But yeah, usually if it's like how do we give this away or but not let it become unmanageable like yeah, we'll do it for the members. That makes sense.
And you can see here, you know, like Scruffy's been here for five years, Candy for seven. Uh we got someone for for four two years, you know. So it's not all just like one month people where they see it and they hate it and they get out of it. A lot of times people stick around for a long time which is fun.
All right, my broth has been consumed.
Why weren't you ever fully involved with Malawi cichlids or Malawi or Tangan cichlids? I mean I ran a store of 300 African cichlid tanks and bred them to to keep the power on at my house. So I used to breed a lot of tangenans mostly trophus cypercchromis and then on the Maloi side uh demoni aci yellow labs and a lot of peacocks to provide just provide the store and then for a while I was selling on Aquabid um different Africans as well and so it's not that I have never it's that I went through five years of overdosing on African cichlids in a professional setting for YouTube.
Basically, um, in the fish room right now, I have an 800gallon filled with salosi, African cichlids. I have a lake tangen eel. It's real rare. I have two different types of cypro chromis here.
Do I have any other Africans?
No, that's it.
So, but I guess maybe the question is I'll reframe it. Why haven't you become like everybody else who's into African cichlids where all they do is African cichlids? And I just I've never been that guy um or that person that only gets into one thing. I want to sample it all. So even though I love Mexican food and I love Indian food, I don't only eat that. I go, "Yeah, but couldn't you do taco Tuesday and then have Indian food Wednesday and then have pizza Thursday and then have chili on Friday and then have uh a Reuben sandwich on Saturday and then Sunday have you know, turkey dinner. Like, yeah, that's And so, my thing has always been I want to do it all and I don't want to become super niche because I feel like you miss out on each part of the hobby has these like lines of thinking, right? And so, African cichlid people get really good at managing aggression, for instance.
Um, and I can use that like angelf fish get aggressive. So do sword tails and some other things. So I can use that knowledge over there. But then maybe growing fry. Maybe I get really good at that with live bears and I can apply that to African cichlids. And in general I I thought about this for a long time actually and I hadn't thought about it till now about my original strategy. My strategy was in business, I want to do community tanks because that's the most inclusive. I like that part of the hobby, including, you know, people, including fish, including plants, inclusion.
And I didn't want to be a purist in any one area. Even though I have a very strong affinity for livebears and puffers, I keep a lot of different things because I like them. And I I feel like so often people try to tie their identities to things like car is a good example. I'm a Ford guy or a Chevy girl or a Jeep person or I I drive uh I'm a lifted truck in the mountains person or I'm a a race car driver or I'm a uh a low rider person or whatever. And I always thought like but why can't you just like all of them? Like I always think normal people they just go I like that. I don't like that. And they don't have to explain why. And I think I'm that way of like, why do you like that? Because I like it right now. Hey, you don't have that anymore. Yeah, I don't like it right now. Why not? I don't know. Like, we don't have to justify things other than I really like the hobby of today you can go buy a fish and keep it in a glass box in your house and enjoy it. And then next year when you're not enjoying it, you can give that fish to a person that will enjoy it and get a different fish and enjoy it. And then if you don't enjoy fish at all, you can get rid of it and then come back in two years and enjoy it again. It doesn't have to be.
And so my fish tastes are like most things in my life where it's really eclectic where um you know just other hobbies and just things in my life. It's always like, "Oh, you're into that? Oh, into that, too, huh? That's weird." But you're not into that? No, I don't I'm not into that. Like, oh, people usually into that. Like, yeah, I don't know. I don't know. That's how that is. Weird.
Where are my fly river turtles? Uh, my fly river turtle is at the store. Elmer is in the 360-galon tank. That's where mine lives.
Which I won't be sad if he ever comes back home. I would like to interact with him some more. But then Dean's considering switching up his fish room and maybe I'll adopt Dean's fly river turtle to my house. And so there's a lot of stuff in limbo, which I could see myself almost needing some more big tanks, which seems terrible because I don't enjoy the big tanks as much as I enjoy the small tanks.
I do enjoy I do enjoy the animals. So I could see myself getting like maybe the 230 galon becomes Ellipsifer eel and fly river turtle. Maybe that works. But then also puffer would have to go 40 to 150 to 800. That could work. So try to keep my options open and you know I don't want to come up with something too sappy like you know enjoy every day smile every day but in general if something's causing you stress you're not enjoying it switch it up especially with fish like I just I'm really like my gallon there are days I'm like oh man all those cichllets are pretty cool and then most days I'm like I really want to do something different with that I really miss the plants and so probably after Brazil until after I'm healthy again from that, I settle down.
I'll probably go, "Okay, here's the three days. We're going to work on this tank. We're going to catch out all the Africans and probably donate. I'll probably give them away unless they want to offer me some trade to a wholesaler.
And then I'll probably have a plan of what I'm going to do. I'll put plants in it. These fish are going to go in it.
Long term, a big fish will land in it, but I want to be ready for that.
Do I still have clown loes?" Yep. So yeah, the clown loaches I think would stay even though I know longterm sometimes they pester moo puffers, but I don't want to get rid of my clowns that I've got. I'm enjoying them.
How would you recommend managing and getting into uh the more conservation side of aquariums? You might have a local club that is in a CARES program, so that is specifically targeted towards conservation. There's a cares uh is it what is it like? I'm trying to think. There's a national organization.
What is it called? Yeah, it's just called CARES. So, caresforfish.org.
That's the overall thing that works with all the clubs, but you could also just do it there. And that kind of keeps a list of what's a priority thing to, you know, help con conserve and and finding other people to trade and share with.
So, that would be one angle with that.
Then there's uh is it let me look at the next one. Is it uh yeah if you're in if you're in America there's NANA which is the North American Native Fishes Association.
Um if you're in Australia I'm going to be at that club or that not club but organization. It's what's their version?
It's like uh Enva. Is it Enva?
Ena.
Yeah, it's ENGFA. And what does that stand for? It stands for I think Australian and New Guinea Fishes Fish Association. Yes, Australia New Guinea Fishes Association. Um, so you might have, you know, if you're in a different country, you might have another thing like that for your country. Like maybe there's one for India and Madagascar. I don't know. Um, but those are two avenues that would, I think, still keep you in the hobby, but also be a part of conservation. There's other avenues as well. Lots of saltwater kind of coral things and fish things and, you know, pick a flavor, then start trying to Google your way to that. There's probably an organization like, hey, I could be a little bit part of that.
I got my one-year coin from the last order. I was totally surprised. I didn't know it'd been that long. That's right.
the sooner you sign up, the sooner different coins and little cool things will make their way into your orders.
Um, at the, you know, one year mark all the way up to, we're having it made right now, the 8-year coin is being is in production. Uh, at the 5year, you also get the Yeti, which those Yetis are expensive. Like, they're our cost is like over 70 or 80 each, our cost to have them custom made. Um, but you know, you guys are giving us five bucks a month. So, we don't really make money on memberships between paying speakers and and the upkeep of like updating the website with working and but it builds a better foundation. You guys spend more money with us outside of that anyway. Um, so my philosophy has always been trying to like this is cool, but I don't want it to be a money-making thing. I want it to be a let's use these resources to do things. So, like one of, you know, one of the projects that I think we might be getting pictures. I'm not sure, but there's a local local fish club uh at a school for um I I think all the students have some challenges. I'm not sure if that's true, but um we ended up donating quite a bit of, you know, air pumps and decllorinator and tanks and substrates and everything. So I think this year um that 10 people will have aquariums after going through the I want to call it the coursework or whatever you know the there's days where they learn and all of that and uh and uh yeah so that that I take that I guess the group funds and kind of put it towards I mean we do it also but it's real easy to justify I guess in our minds of like, yeah, people are buying this bigger thing. Let's try to make the hobby better. Um because it doesn't sound nearly as cool and like all the dollars you guys has donated bought Cory's lawn mower. Like that doesn't sound as cool, right? But technically everything goes into the same pool.
Eventually some profits come out and that kind of stuff, but it makes it easier to tip the scale of like, hey, this, you know, we're, you know, like when we donate things to clubs, we have the club program, we have uh, you know, the events, all that kind of stuff. we yeah it's marketing but also you know there's a lot of decisions where it's like I don't know if I would do that but yeah I don't why was I talking about that oh conservation I don't know I don't remember how I got down that but that's how we're there oh you got the one member coin that's what it was um you should start an annual aquarium co-op shella of sorts with speakers product demos seminars Yeah, I'm not going to. But one of the things is if I was going to get back in at the level where we're doing three, four shows a year and having all the shirts made, doing all the things, we were spending over $100,000 a year just to show up to events. And if we were going to do that, I'd be much more tempted to how do we get to something like that? Not a, you know, I always called it Corey Con because I just I thought it sounded cool, but doing an event. And I think where what we're looking at is like we're doing my my Roomba's going. Hold on. I got to tell the Roomba to to turn off. We're going towards like Bluegrass Bash and CatCon.
Uh you know, we donated.
It's either like5 or $6,000. I think we sponsored every speaker. So, at CatCon in Washington, uh, we sponsored every speaker slot because I'm very passionate about education. And so, I wanted Aquarium Co-op's name. Like, every speaker that will speak at CatCon 2026 will be sponsored by Aquarium Co-op. We could have bought the hospitality package. We could have bought any, but they're like, "No, no, I want to be the person that we want to be associated with. We want to sponsor the educational part because that's always the most important part I think of the shows of like, yeah, go have a good time, but let's get these people that have dedicated their lives to different types of fish that want to teach people. Let's give let's make that opportunity cheap and easy, and we want to be a part of that. So, my room stopped, so maybe it's good.
But now that I've said we donated $5,000, that doesn't mean we're gonna My Roomba's talking again. That doesn't mean we're going to donate five grand to every event because like we can't do that. We just we because it's in our backyard. It's in Washington. Like, okay, let's do that. It also happened to be that the Kentucky one was in our backyard also. Let's get behind that one. We didn't get financially behind that one as much, but we're sending not sending or I think we're doing bags and product and other stuff in addition. Um, and you guys have probably been getting some of the flyers. If you guys live in proximity to either of those events and have ordered from us, you probably have gotten recently a postcard that advertised the event. So, that's another way we can kind of uh give back to the clubs, use our platform, try and advertise for them, get you guys to come out and also get the paying customers, right? because our RPP stores will be vending there, our other manufacturers, other kind of stuff. And like if we can bring paying customers, that's that's a win for everybody. So we try we know that you're a paying customer because you bought something from us, right? So when we send that postcard that goes, "Hey, Bluegrass Bash." And you go, "Hey, that's only an hour away. Maybe I'll go." That's part of the marketing we can do for them. Uh we're also doing that here in Washington for the catfish event. So yeah. Have you ever tried Madagascar cichlids? Yeah. Uh, one of my favorite, they're real honory, but I really love the looks of Paulini Bleeckery. Uh, sometimes called the midnight cichlid.
I like, you know, if I was going to go for like a flower horn type fish, I'd probably keep a polini bleeery because I just think they look cooler to me. Um, that that mint green on black looks super cool.
I met Zenzo at a hope to meet Corey in Kentucky. Yeah, short of me like getting the plague while I'm in Brazil, I will be in Kentucky. I'm buying the ticket and I really hate wasting money. So, short of me being really sick, uh, I will be there. So, pretty safe bet. Know this, if somehow I'm not there, I'm I'm I'm in rough shape. Like, I tried to get on a plane once with a temperature of 104 to go film at Extremes Fish Farm. My wife wouldn't let me and rightfully so, but I didn't want to waste the ticket.
They end up refunding it, which was sweet, but you know, you can't always count on a ticket getting refunded.
Wasn't they I got credit, so they didn't hang cash back, but I I used it on a different flight at a different time, so it was worked out a Okay.
Anyone tried the magic nuggets in a pepper grinder for feeding? I'm sure someone has. I haven't.
Just ordered some Magic Small Fish Feed and going to try Easy Green for the first time. Your world and your mind's about to be blown. It's going to be awesome.
Yeah, I haven't found a good way to continually talk about products that I think are amazing without selling out.
Like Easy Green. I I used it yesterday.
I still think it's absolutely amazing, but we've launched all these other products and I have to talk about all of them. It was a lot easier when I only had like one product. you should buy Easy Green. How do you want to support me? Buy Easy Green. Now it's like, well, we got a lot of stuff we're doing, but Easy Green, I still love it.
I mean, I love a lot of our products, but there's there's always like a tier like our sponge pads, like well, I'm not in love with them. Like, yeah, I like them and I totally use them and I would use them again, but I'm not going to see it from the rooftops. Easy Green, our fish food line.
Got be other stuff. Oh, sponge filter.
Duh. I use that every day of my life.
Yeah, there's things I use every day of my life I take for granted because I've I'm now 10 years out or a long ways out of like remember when you had to use XYZ. Like, oh yeah, yeah, that I didn't love that. It worked, but I didn't love it.
What size bit to use for a 1-in bulkhead? Well, first you go to aquarium.com. you go to our bulkheads that we sell and then you scroll down to the information section and it will tell you. But off the top of my head, I believe it's a 42 mm diamond drill bit.
Let me look.
Let me see if I've drilled enough uh 1-in bulkheads to know if that's a true statement. We're going to Oh, while I'm thinking about it, Candy, don't let me forget because I stumbled upon this yesterday at lunch with my wife Cinco de Mayo. We had tacos.
Don't forget uh brine shrimp because I did that brine shrimp post. Brine shrimp eggs are only into breeding supplies and not under the fish food since that website error that must have gotten mixed up and I need to fix that. So if you send me a message or an email later I will do that which I noticed once I open this up because I'm looking for parts which will be I think bulkheads are under parts. Yep. And then if I scroll down and I hit the show more button, it is 1 in is 45 millimeter.
I think I buy 42 though. Let me see. Let me see if I buy 42s.
It depends on what's available. I've used 45s before, but uh let's look under bot.
Um why can't I find the things I want to find?
your account, I guess. Yeah, your orders.
And then let me type in Wholesaw.
Wholesaw.
Um, no. It's a lot of 45s. I've been buying 45s for like 10 years, so I was wrong.
I think it stuck in my brain. One time I got 42 and I wanted 45 cuz sometimes I bought 70s, I bought 75s, I bought 45s. Bought 45 is a lot at least in this account.
Yeah. So 45 off the top of my head. 43 43 will work, but 45 is easier to find.
Let's see if I even sell a 43 on this listing.
That listing's too old. That was from 2017. Anyway, you can find dimensions for any of the bulkhead sizes that we sell, which is up to 2 in, on our website and the corresponding diamond drill bit size that you would buy. And typically, they're sold in millimeter for the cheap ones you're going to buy on Amazon.
Have I ever kept vampire plecos? Mostly only in the store. Not I don't think I've kept them at home.
I'm having an issue on the website. It keeps bumping me back to login every time I try to look at my order history.
I think that's uh that Yeah, Candi is saying that's a Shop app issue.
Unfortunately, we use Shopify and they're really pushing a lot of crap to change their system with the shop app stuff, which is causing us to have to change things. So, like right now, we have another parallel website in development. We're $40,000 into it. We still got to uh still got to get YouTube integration working and a few other things. It's hopefully going to solve some of these. Like right now, most people have what's called a legacy account, which means you log in with your normal email and and password. And I think in June or July or August, one of those months, they're forcing everybody has to go to their new shop app login, which is going to be a customer service nightmare. People are going to hate it. I hate it. Which means now you have to like authenticate it through your phone and it'll lead to less sales because people's phone will be on the other side of the room and they won't want to get up right then.
And but whenever there's big changes like that, it forces us to have to adapt. And then there's bugs. And so being that they're starting to push through some of that shop pay stuff, that's probably why uh you're running into that issue right now. And hopefully it'll be more solved when we roll out the new version of the website. But yeah, it's it's brutal.
It's brutal.
Yeah. So hopefully in the next I mean I emailed our our person working on that yesterday like what's the update? Like I'm going to be gone most of June so this either needs we need to roll this out before or we need to roll it out after.
So because yeah website being broken while I'm in Brazil it's not going to work.
Did I say Peru a minute ago? I meant Brazil.
Um, yeah. So, irritating part of the job when things change and you have to update because it's like it was working fine, now it doesn't. Oh, good.
Yeah. But like, yeah, the Brian Shrimp thing is cuz an app broke all of our collections. I had to rebuild them all.
That was terrible. And then the way I built them, it's not pulling in brine shrimp eggs under fish food. But it's only pulling them in under breeding supplies, which you know there's several products that can be multiple obviously like that's a breeding supply and it's a fish food.
Um I can option on Shopify to start accepting cryptocoin tied to the US dollar. And I was like nope. It just the the what we find is not that we don't want to embrace things. It's that each thing we have to become proficient in.
So, all of a sudden, someone's going to be like, "My Bitcoin wallet or my not even Bitcoin, it'll be like my uh piece of paper coin wallet thingy 2012 thing isn't working. What do And we're like, I literally have never heard of that. I have no idea why it's not working for you." And then we spend hours and then we're going, "Okay, yeah, it looks like you got to do this." And they go, "Oh, well, I just I end up paying with a credit card. No problem."
Like, I'm so glad we spent going any time to go going down the rabbit hole cuz you're the one person that has that random coin.
Am I still using the UI X10?
You better believe it running in my house. Uh the one out here is the lower model, which every day I wish it breaks so then I'll have a reason to buy another UI 10 because it'll run like every week. it invariably gets stuck like on a python hose or something that I've left out where the U10 will spot it from a mile away and go I'm not going to run to that. I'll go around that. This one's technology. It can't see anything under about an inch in front of it. So, it'll literally just go like and I'm stuck. It can see like a big object like oh I'm not going to run into your cabinet or your chair or your ladder that's out. But anything under an inch, like that one inch, it'll just it can't see it by the way the cameras work. And the UV10 has cameras and it has LAR, so it can see all the way down to the ground. Doesn't have that problem. So, it's not trying to eat hoses and uh cords and things nearly as much. Uh every once in a while, it'll, you know, if you get something real tiny in a dark room, it'll still hit it. But uh yeah, the U10 still gets my praise. I enjoy it. We also we use a U10.
Uh what is it? I think might not be a U10. We use a UI vac at the store. I think it might be U10 though.
Uh do cherry shrimp eat live Daphnneia?
I've heard differing opinions. I don't know that answer. I've never seen it. I have fed Daphneia, but I never I never even thought to look. I just assumed no.
I don't have I don't have one way or the other on that.
The update. Yeah, it worked. Had to reset my password and it's a total pain, but I got in. Yeah. So, it's it's we're in that migration, you know. It's kind of like you're at work. We're launching the new system. There's going to be some bugs and some quirks over the next few months, but we'll work through it. We're basically being forced to do that. I hate change. Um, and I've put off as long as we can, but it's literally like your website's going to break and you won't be able to accept money if you don't do this. Like, oh, thank you for that. And, uh, so yeah, we're going to be going through that transition. We will make it as painless as possible for you, but there's some things our hands are tied like having to use a shop app.
If in my world, I would never I would never. I'm still the guy that refuses to use an app to order fast food. I refuse.
like, "Yeah, but you can get six dump trucks of chicken nuggets for $4 if you go through the McDonald's app." And I'm like, "Or or I could just buy it from him in person and not have to go through the app." I hate that. You know, it's like, "Oh, you want four nuggets? Uh, that'll be $29. If you use the app, uh, we'll actually pay you $5 to take four nuggets." I don't understand why it has to be a giant disparity of like, I don't want to give you my information. I don't want to have the app. I don't want to have to do the thing. I don't want have to recite a code. I don't want to do any of this. I just want four chicken nuggets for a reasonable price.
Uh, my constant new bosses keep fixing things that are not broken. Did you know, Bob, that I have to when I make a mistake, I have to get yelled at by four different people? Four different people.
Bob.
Uh, let's see here.
Using your end user as a bug tester. I I honestly believe that all the companies try their best to not release something buggy, but you just can't envision how everything is used. I think that's more of the case. I mean we we I try really hard on our products and every time we release a product people will use it in a way I hadn't considered going h okay I will try to design around that too.
Uh let's see where' that comment go.
I'm being called but I can't take this call at the moment.
I got to silence that. Silence.
Someone's asking about the Amazon list, I think.
Oh, let's see. Or whatever the one on my I think it's the X. Yeah, UX10, I think, is on the Amazon list, which I need to put a few more items on there, but uh yeah, I slowly grow my Amazon influencer list. It lists different products that I've bought on Amazon or whatever that get the Corey seal of approval. I don't think I have any sitting on my desk right now, but um when I find something like, "Yeah, that seems good." Because a very, you know, people get to know me in my life is like, I need a thing. Do you have a thing, Corey? Because if you have a thing, you've tested like my chair doesn't whatever it is. I have a illness that I have to have the best one. It could be a um a Wangjangler 9000. It' be like, "Yeah, I had to test all of them before I found the right one, though.
Let me tell you, this one's got this thing wrong. I like that thing over there. This one's this thing.
Uh, let's see.
I bet there are people that have hit their thousandth path. Thousandth, that's hard to say. Thousandth. Yeah, thousandth password in this app era.
Man, it took me a solid 20 minutes to register an account with my new RE hybrid water heater because it had to be at least 12 characters, upper and lowercase with special symbols, but not all of the special symbols. I hate that when it's like you must use special characters, but then they limit it and you can't use a lot of the common ones and you're just like you are and it took so long to find and they with this one they didn't list which ones they didn't allow and every time I hit submit and it wouldn't take it it would clear the forum and I was losing my mind for a little bit. I was like, but I really wanted the app to work because now it's now I can get alerts from the store and from my home water heater and I can set the temperatures and I can do the things. But I was I really Can I show that? I really am irritated with this app. Let me see if I can replicate it in real time for you.
Yes. This drives me insane. Let me make sure it's not going to give away all my details about my life here.
Yeah. Okay, we're good.
Watch when I open this app. The amount of animations and time I have to wait to be able to interact kills me. Watch this. I just opened it, by the way, so it's not like it's updating or anything.
Okay, let me close it down because you got to watch the animation. You got to do the thing. You're waiting. Oh yeah, Ream, I'm so glad. Let me do the thing. Nope. Now I'm loading. That time was just that. Now I'm finally in on these water heaters.
And those four seconds that are meant What's next? They're going to put a commercial there. Like I just want to open the app and be able to do the thing. Don't want to watch the the Rem logo animation every time for four seconds or three seconds or whatever that is. Um yeah.
All right, I should wrap this up. I actually have to I have to return a business call now, which I hate being on the phone, but it's been How long's it been? We've been live streaming for a while. We're somewhere there's probably stats. I don't know how long I've been going, but probably good enough. And I'm ranting about apps and other things. I've gotten off a fish. Uh if you want to do us a big favor, order stuff. If you got stuff in your cart, hit the buy button and and finish it out. Keep our people busy. Get yourself some new products. Um, spend if you spend 125, you get a free shirt.
Pick out your flavor you'd like. And they are the exact same quality we would sell. Anyone that has one of our shirts knows you can wash it four billion times. Wash it. Uh, you know, you only have to get rid of them when you've stained them enough with spaghetti. You know, so if you eat spaghetti once a week, you know, you probably got to replace them every few years because you're going to get that many spaghetti stains. But otherwise, you know, they don't fade very much at all. They uh we actually have them screened 3D printed. We actually have them screen printed as opposed to direct to garment. Like they're bulletproof.
They last forever.
Asterisks. They don't actually last forever. They last way longer than any of the other stuff you're buying. And you get one for free when you spend $125 more. I realize not everyone can afford that. I can't afford to give away expensive t-shirts for $5 orders either.
So, we'll just have to agree to like that doesn't work out. But, if you want to order some stuff, that'd be great.
That's the reason, not the only reason I do this, but that really helped me continue to do this. And uh yeah, I'm going to return some phone calls, figure out if I'm going to work on my yard or what I'm doing next. Got to make some videos. Oh, I gotta put shrimp away. So, after the phone call, I got to put shrimp away and film from bypetshrimp.com.
And uh yeah, I will talk to you later and try to do this more often as I always say I'm going to try to do, but we'll see if that actually happens.
We'll see you later. Bye-bye. Finding the button. I went two hours and 36 minutes. I literally thought I was like, "Yeah, I'll hop on for an hour." Two hours and 36 minutes. No wonder I got work stacking up.
It's one It's 1:41 p.m. now.
I see. Time flies when you're having fun. All right. Bye-bye.
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