John Hudson: All right, there it is. We are live, very excited to be here tonight. It is nine o'clock on a Thursday which means what? It means it's Tank Talk Live time. I'm very excited about this. No Lisa today. Yes. Remember when I said, "Mute your computer, Ted." Remember when I said that? [chuckles] Anyway, that was mine. Already starting off with a bang, it's a beautiful thing.
All right, listen, folks, no Lisa tonight. She is tending to our cat that went and got neutered today and doesn't need anybody to take care of him, but that's what she's doing right now.
She's also not here because I have a special guest sitting right in front of me right now, who we will get to in just a second. I want to talk about a couple of things real quick before I introduce my guest.
That is, first, this Saturday night, eight o'clock eastern time, I'm going to have the one and only the mod of all mods, Candi Overhuls for the first time ever appearing on any live stream or any video, is going to be on my live stream Saturday night, eight o'clock on the channel. I'm going to put it up right after this stream. I'm going to schedule it so make sure you go on there, you set a reminder for it so that you don't forget, and come back and hang out with us on Saturday night. It's going to be a lot of fun.
Next thing that we have to talk about-- Whoa, I got to catch my breath. Okay. I got to go through a little spiel here. I'm 45 years old. I have two businesses that I work that basically both require full-time hours for me. I am about 50 pounds overweight right now. I've got five kids, a grandchild, a house to take care of, all these things. I have, folks, very little leftover energy at the end of the day, very little. You're sitting there looking at me like, "Yes, whatever young man," but I have very little energy. The energy that I have is extraordinarily valuable to me.
Because whatever leftover energy I have at the end of the day is so valuable to me, I will not sacrifice even one bit of that energy on this silly drama that's happening on YouTube right now. I have seen people already asking questions about it. Am I going to talk about it, am I going to address it? No. What you've just heard me say right now is all I'm going to say about this drama. I don't have time for it. It's not my thing. I stay away from it. That's it.
I'm not going to talk about it when I have an amazing guest sitting here across the table from me that is ready to talk all things fishkeeping, all things big aquariums, all of that. I'm not going to waste his time by spending a bunch of time talking about a bunch of nonsense. With that out of the way, again, no drama, come hang out Saturday night with Candi Overhuls.
Now, in order to introduce my special guest that's sitting across from me, I got to tell a little story. That's the way I do things. I had to get the dates from you but I think it's 2010, 2011 somewhere around there, Lisa and I were going to build our first fish room. We had a lot of rooms that had fish tanks in them but we hadn't had a fish room and so I went online to a little website called YouTube, and I started looking around for videos about building a fish room.
I came across this one channel, this channel that had amazing videos. He's probably going to laugh when I say that. They were amazing videos with very good information, very well edited, very well shot, everything was awesome, very easy to understand. I loved it. It was awesome. I watched those videos like it was a religion. I mean, I watched them over and over and over again. It's weird because that guy who I'd never heard of, never seen before, didn't even show his face in videos back then, barely, anyway, right? There was a couple you're there.
Ted Judy: Very rarely.
John: Yes. That guy is now sitting across from me at the table which is really weird when you think about it. I'll put the camera on both of us now. Ladies and gentlemen, it is Ted Judy from Ted's Fishroom. I've got the link to his channel in the description down below. Take a look at that. It's awesome. You will not be disappointed. I forgot to hook up my internet in here today. We're on wi-fi so we'll see how that goes. This is great. I'm really happy about that. I just realized that. Anyway, we'll see if we can get to the bottom of that.
I'll give you the opportunity to introduce yourself and then I will run real quick and grab the cable and bring it in here. It's going to take me 20 seconds. Don't worry.
Ted: I've got to fill 20 seconds of time?
John: Yes, just a couple of seconds. I'm going to put the camera on you, introduce yourself, talk about who you are, what you do, all that kind of stuff.
Ted: Okay. My name is Ted Judy. I have been involved with the aquarium hobby, the aquarium industry for about 40 years or so. I wasn't always in the aquarium industry. I did start-up in retail, then I went off and did some time as a teacher. Then when I moved to Wisconsin about 16 years ago is when Ted's Fishroom really took off. What John was talking about, was I had a website called tedsfishroom.com. There is still a website but it's just going to tell you to go look at social media.
Back before YouTube became what it is today, really, it was just a way to express and put some information out there and have it hosted in a way that didn't cost you a whole lot of money. If you had a website and you wanted to show videos, you're putting them on a Vimeo or YouTube or something like that. I don't think that myself, for I can speak for myself, for sure, but I know that 10 years ago, 2009, is when I got started, nobody was really out there trying to become-- No one really thought that YouTube or FishTube or PetTube was going to become what it is today.
John was really complimenting my videos. As he mentioned, you very rarely saw my face in videos very often. Two reasons for that, one, I'm self-conscious. I don't particularly like the way I look on the camera. Also, maybe it's just old school. When you're shooting a cat or when you're shooting things for videos, you're behind the camera shooting it, I didn't have someone helping to shoot that.
What I was trying to teach about was the parts of fishroom, how to put an air system in, how to put a water system in, how to handle humidity, how to handle water flow, all those kinds of things. This doesn't show that. All that shows that.
John: You're just not full of yourself. You can admit that. It's okay.
Ted: I guess.
John: Okay. I'm going to switch the wi-fi over. It's going to probably go out and come right back again, folks. I'm pretty sure that's what it does. Let me see here. I was supposed to do this before we started. I forgot because of all this action that we have here, with you being here. You threw me off a little bit. It's not your fault. It's my fault. I'm supposed to be a professional.
I am going to-- Well, it says it's hooked up. Maybe it does it automatically. I don't know if that's means it's going to-- All right, let's see what this does, folks. Listen, if it goes off, come back. This is embarrassing. Remember when I was saying when we were getting ready to do this? The worst thing ever is when I have technical issues right off the bat.
Ted: Well, it seems like you have a lot of technical issues.
John: [chuckles] I do.
Ted: Well, you said that, not me. You think you sat down and said, "We have had so much technical issues."
John: Yes, it never ends. Let's see.
Ted: I've never done one of these before. I've done call-in, where you're talking on a phone, a podcast type things-
John: I remember you talking about that.
Ted: -but I haven't done a Livestream like this on YouTube. I've always been curious about it. I see your setup here. I've thought about it. Maybe there's room out there for another show. I have some ideas. I don't know if I have the time or the inclination to put this much work into getting this kind of setup going on. This is great.
John: You know what? It's a lot to get started but once you have it all started, it's simple. The problem is I keep messing with stuff. I just never stopped trying to do these or do that and so I end up making it harder than it really needs to be. You can Livestream from your phone. You don't need any equipment or anything like that.
It looks like the problem is fixed so, yay, me.
Ted: We're good.
John: I'm going to pat myself on the back. Is everybody with us here? We don't have, again, that amazing lead-in because Cory usually streams before me. He gets like 1,200 people watching. He'll tell everybody, "Go over to KGTropicals," but because of the season that it is, the retail season going absolutely crazy, he hasn't been streaming the last few Thursdays so it's like "Man, it's--" It'll be fine. He'll be back. I think he said he's going to be back next week and it'll be good.
I've got a lot of things that I want to talk to you about. I've titled this stream Moving Large Aquariums.
Ted: I had to put my glasses on to be able to read what's going cross. Maybe I'll just actually not read what's going across.
John: [laughs] Yes. I can tell you what it says.
Ted: Okay, because I can't even see this. I can't see the screen.
John: You're probably not going to want to have the old man glasses on there. I get it. Let me see if I can go to this other page here. I would like if I could real quick to shout out some super chats. Bradboys with the $2, "I'm having trouble breeding fish, danios and corys." You've bred both of those, have you not?
Ted: Several.
John: Yes. How about giving my viewers some advice on breeding danios and corys? He paid me for it but you can--
Ted: If you wouldn't mind, there's a lot of different types of danios, and some of them are a lot easier and harder than others. Can you give me an idea which ones you're having difficulties with? Can he respond to that pretty quick? When he does, then I'll see if I can give him some advice on or not. I've done all the really easy ones. I've done about half the hard ones and none of the impossible ones.
John: You've got our first bred danios down there, pearl danios. Totally bred by accident.
Ted: Yes, that's--
John: The eggs were in a little piece of moss which she brought over from that tank and put it into that one, and, hey, babies, four of them. [chuckles]
Ted: Yes. There you go. I was going to say that tank down there is set up perfectly for breeding pearl danios. It has water.
John: Yes. [laughs] Apparently, they're not very hard to breed.
Ted: I used to keep a lot of pipefish. They need really small live food but you also want to give them a food that's got some calcium content in it so fish is really is what you want to feed them but any real small feeder fish. I would breed zebra danios just to feed pipefish. I would do them in a five-gallon bucket. I would take a five-gallon bucket, put yarn in the bottom of it, and I would take about 50, literally, that many zebra danios, big males and big females, put them in a five-gallon bucket with tank water and an air stone, and they would just spawn. Then I would take all the adults out, and two or three days later, there'd be thousands of baby zebra danios in it. That's one of the easy ones.
John: There you go.
Ted: There you go.
John: I mean, somewhere for the eggs to go so that the adults don't eat them. That's the name of the game right there.
Ted: Another way to do it, if you have a problem with danios, they're eating a lot of the eggs, the way do the fish farmers do it is they use baskets. Think about a colander. You could actually use a plastic kitchen colander and take 20 fish, breathing fish. Take your females and males, separate them for a couple of days. Put that many- they don't need much water. They only need a couple of inches of water over them and they'll just be packed in there. They'll spawn like that. All the eggs will just fall right through the colander. You'll end up thousands and thousands of egg on the easy ones, like pearl danios and zebra danios.
John: That's funny. Before you know it, you're going to have a real problem with having too many, [chuckles] too many danios.
Ted: That's why you use them to feed pipefish,
John: There you go. Yes. That's about the only acceptable way I will be okay with feeder fish, is if they're bred by the fishkeeper. We are very much against feeder fish from the pet store here on this channel which I'm sure you probably are too.
Ted: Yes, I can. You can't get around it if you're going to breed fish. If your goal is to actually be able to produce somebody's animals, you just simply cannot get around the food requirements for a lot of things, especially for wild fish, or especially for some that are very obligated fish eaters. It's like feeding a pipefish is like feeding a seahorse. You can get them trained onto something else but if you feed them one type of food, one thing over and over again, it's the only thing you feed them, it's a very one-dimensional diet. You don't eat one thing.
John: Right. I could. I could eat Big Macs.
Ted: Okay. There's lots of things at a Big Mac.
John: [laughs] Bob's Steenfott came through with the $2, with ecto-1. I guess it's Ghostbusters reference. I don't know really what that meant. Maybe it was something to do with my technical problems. I don't know. With Bob's Steenfott, do you know Bob?
Ted: Yes, Bob. Hi, Bob.
John: You only have to meet Bob once before you know exactly what his deal is. He's a rascal. It's what he is. There's another one in here real quick and then I want to ask you about moving big aquariums. Fish Tank Barn [chuckles] with the $5 super chat, says, "It's the Ted Judy ice cream fund." Now, there's a story behind that. First of all, Ted is a very healthy eater. He would probably not eat ice cream.
Ted: I love ice cream. I don't eat it very often but I love ice cream.
John: Mike Howell is the fish tank barn. You've probably met him at these events. He goes to all of them. He gives us $5 super chat every single week for ice cream. The reason why is because we were following Chris Lukhaup around at the Aquatic Experience in 2018 last year. You were there, weren't you?
Ted: Last year. Not this year. Last year.
John: Right. Yes, because Custom Aquarium, that tank was there. We went to ice cream every night. It became a running thing that Mike would give us $5 every week to go to towards the ice cream fund for next year's Aquatic Experience. We're going to have $700 to buy ice cream by the time we get to the Aquatic Experience because Mike is--
Ted: Count me in.
John: Yes. You'll go with us if you all even go this year. Anyway.
Ted: Not my decision.
John: I know.
Ted: It was kind of funny that it's not but okay.
John: Yes. That got awkward real quick. Sorry about that. I do have to say something real quick. Fishy Biz, I see, is in here. He's my friend. Your Facebook is all messed up, dude. I've been messaging you movie quotes all day and it won't go through. I need you to figure out what's going on with your Facebook Messenger so that you can message me back.
All right. I've got you. Did you talk about your employment with Custom Aquariums when you were--
Ted: No. Actually, I talked about Ted's Fishroom. More common questions I get still today through my youtube channel is "When are you going to start making more videos?" I actually shoot videos and shoot footage. I just got back from another trip to Columbia and I spent all week shooting videos and stuff. I'm three trips behind on trips to Columbia. Because I work for Custom Aquariums, my job is titled PR social media manager, but among the many things that I do for Custom Aquariums is I shoot videos, I make videos. If you go to the website, you see the videos about how our equipment, our marketing videos, how it works, how I put them together. I do all of that. If you go to the testimonials page, you see the video testimonials. I shoot all of those.
John: Including one today. [chuckles]
Ted: I'm still spending 20 hours a week or more editing videos so it's hard for me to take my free time and then go edit something for Ted's Fishroom. It's actually a big internal struggle for me. John and I, you and I, talked about it. We spent a few hours in a car earlier this year. I actually, greatly, value my experience with YouTube and I, greatly, value what I have in my library of videos. I'm very proud of them. I'm not going to go anywhere. I've actually thought about maybe they should go off in the [unintelligible 00:17:59].
John: No way.
Ted: I won't do that. I've contemplated turning comments off but I actually check my comments everyday on those videos. I still respond to comments on them. I just don't have the time and the energy. John has just enough energy. I don't have the time and energy to do a bunch of videos.
John: Now, see, the reason why I don't have energy is because I spend so much time making videos and all that kind of stuff.
Ted: Anyway, the whole question was about Custom Aquariums. Yes, I work for Custom Aquariums. I feel very fortunate to work for Custom Aquariums. I have a really good job. I have been with the company on multiple levels for about six years. The filtration systems and the way we build aquariums, I had some input into doing that. It's a product line that I believe in. I'm very happy to say that I'm able to market it and help people learn more about our equipment.
I've watched this company grow. I've watched product line get more and more popularity. I think it has less to do with marketing as it does the fact that it's just a really good product. People who do get a custom aquarium and get the system and use it realize that too. That's what I'm doing now.
John pulled up in front of the house this morning. John said "Hey, that looks just like the car you had in Wisconsin." I said "Well, yes. I drove." He goes "You drove from Wisconsin?" Well, I'm on a one week tour going from Wisconsin, visited some family and stopped to see some other customers, some other clients, spending the evening here with John. I go down to Chapel Hill tomorrow and go-- We also build custom cages, the other side of the company. We also do other types of animal enclosure.
I'm actually going to be working with an animal shelter in Chapel Hill, building a catio enclosure tomorrow, and then working with another, and then spending the evening with another influencer, another person who does videos with us but on the caging side. Then, I'll work my way down to Florida and I'm going to spend a few weeks down in Florida because it's really cold in Wisconsin.
John: [laughs] Yes. That was a beautiful area when I was up there. If you recall folks- what was it? October, that I went there?
Ted: When was Aquachella? October?
John: That's what I'm asking. I don't know.
Ted: First week in October I think.
John: I think so, yes. That sounds good to me. It was Ted that organized that trip for me and I was very grateful for that. It was amazing to be able to get there and to see it. I've been affiliated with this company for a few years now, and actually all the other youtubers have been there, but I wasn't there yet, so to be able to go there was nice. This is going to sound weird but it's not supposed to. The night Aquachella ended, we got in Ted's car, the one he has here today and we drove to your house. I stayed the night in his guest room, which was a beautiful home.
I was very comfortable but it was a little weird because we got there late and everybody in his family was already asleep, so we got to tiptoe around. I've never been in this place before and I'm like-- It was weird. I had to be real quiet, but we got there, we went to bed, got up the next morning and left to go to Custom Aquariums. I didn't get to meet anybody. I met your son, briefly, but I didn't get to meet your wife or anything. I had forgotten her name. This is the funny thing that happened today.
Shame on me, I had forgotten Ted's wife's name, and I'd never met her. He emailed me whenever it was, last week, "Hey, I'm going to be passing through. Can I stop by and get a testimonial?" I said, "Yes, you can stay and be on the Livestream with me. It'll be a lot of fun." You had said, you and Maggie. Well, I just assumed that that was his wife's name. I'm assuming he's coming here with his wife.
He pulls up, parks in front of my house. I go out there to greet him. [chuckles] He gets out of the car and says, "Well, can Maggie come in with me?" I'm like, "Duh, of course," because I'm still thinking Maggie is his wife. No, Maggie is his dog. [chuckles] She's sleeping right below our feet right here, which, of course, I was like, "Yes, please, do bring the dog in." The whole time I thought it was Ted's wife that was going to be coming in the house- like I'm going to say, "No, leave your wife out in the car." Anyway.
Ted: I don't Deb, probably, wouldn't spend eight days in a car traveling around the US with me, but Maggie really doesn't have much of a choice.
John: Well, one thing I've learned about you, I've known you for a few years now, we've had many, many, many conversations, you are one of the few people that talks as much if not more than me, so in the car with you for 20 days or whatever it is, it'd be a lot of Ted talking and not a lot of Deb talking probably.
Ted: Maggie's a good listener.
John: There you go. That's the perfect audience. Absolutely. I need to thank a couple of super chats real quick, including a monster one. Good grief, why in the world would I deserve this Multi-Tank Addiction? The gentleman I was telling you about that drew those two beautiful pictures for me.
Ted: Those are beautiful, especially the Arowana. That's great.
John: Also, just contributed a $50-super chat. Wow. See, you should start Livestreaming. You get beautiful things like this, and then Ally Patton came in with a $20 one, and I can't- which is just as big a deal. I don't mean to act like that's not a big deal. Multi-Tank Addiction just said "Merry Christmas." That was attached to his. Then Ally Patton says, "Thanks for another great stream, Merry Christmas." What a beautiful community this is.
Ted: Merry Christmas.
John: With the shenanigans that have been going on this week, it's a beautiful thing to get this kind of love. It's not like I haven't been getting love. I'm not involved in that drama, but anyway. All right. I want to get right into this. I took you down into my basement when you first got here. Again, I know that sounds weird but, no. If you've been following along you know that the end of next month, Lisa and I are going to be moving all of this down into our basement, so I figured I would take Ted down. He's the first one to see it.
Ted: Are you going to get rid of all the mannequins?
[laughter]
John: I told you not to talk about those.
Ted: It's only creepy because they look so real.
[laughter]
John: That's my hobby that I don't talk about on YouTube. I need you to talk me off the ledge when it comes to, not this one, because this one, I moved this one a couple of times. You may know this I don't, but this is a 240-gallon tank. I don't know what it weighs. Do you do you know off the top of your head? Because I know this one's like 700.
Ted: I don't know off the top of my head, but I'm going to say at 240, probably, is in the neighborhood of 450 pounds to 500 pounds.
John: That's what I was going to guess too. We're talking just the glass, bone-dry. That's not including the substrate and all of that. It's probably a hundred pounds of substrate. It would make sense to move it out. Again, this one when we have the suction cups, I'm not worried about this one, but I sure am worried about this one. We've already
talked about it, but for my audience, if you don't mind, I did title the stream Moving Large Tanks. If somebody's going to buy a big tank, maybe we can take this in another direction. Maybe it could be something where somebody's interested in buying a custom aquarium and they're concerned about, "How am I going to get it in the house?"
Ted: It's a concern. It's one that we hear a lot. Glass is heavy. Glass has got a lot of advantages, but the big disadvantage is probably going to be the weight. Well, I'd like to say is that unless you're planning on being John and want to move your aquariums every time they're set up and established, once that aquarium is in place, you're not going to have to move it a whole lot, so really it's only a [unintelligible 00:26:19] once.
As far as moving these glass aquariums, really the secret's just being prepared and having enough logistical help to get it done. A rule of thumb, it's nothing that I know is published anywhere, just my personal experience, is one person per 100 pounds plus one, so if you have a 700-pound dry weight tank, you need eight people. Then use those eight people if you're going to lift, if you're going to carry it, if you're not going to use machinery, if you're not going to use a tool, if you're going to just bulk strength it.
If you have a tank that weighs 200 pounds, you say, "Two people could handle 200 pounds." You're absolutely right, two people can handle 200 pounds. What's the third person for? Getting the doors open and closed, and getting things out of the way. You may not need exactly all those hands to lift it, but always have one extra person there.
On your 240-gallon aquarium, if it weighs 500 pounds, I think you should have six people. As far as getting it up off the stand and moving it, really nothing works better than suction cups. The suction cups give you handles where you want them to be, you can move them all the way around the tank. Even if you have a painted back surface, as long as it's a relatively smooth painted back, you can use a suction cup on the painted back and it's not going to hurt it.
John: I was going to ask you that.
Ted: Yes. It worked pretty well, a good suction cups. Where do you get suction cups? We lease them, you pay a deposit and a small rental fee, you get the cups, then when you're done with the cups, you send them back, and then we will give you your deposit back.
John: I've done it. It's worth every single penny, I promise you.
Ted: Great. I'd give you an idea but, you know what, since I don't work for that part of the company, I couldn't even tell how much we rent them for, but I can tell you that the cups that we send out, if you were to buy them, they are about $120 a cup. I should probably just say, I don't think we put that much deposit on them. Actually, maybe our deposit is what we're actually paying them. I've looked them up online. When you go to Amazon and buy them, they cost about $120 a cup.
How many cups do you need? Really one per person. People think, "You need two for two hands," but for most of the moving and carrying, if you have enough people, they can get one arm around it.
John: Because you're going to carry a tank like a pallbearer would carry a casket.
Ted: You can, but in picking it up maybe you'll need more, so get a few more than you have people and you'll be okay. Where on the tanks to put it? This is one of those things that if the tank is high, you got to think about how you're lifting aquariums. You want to lift with your legs. You want to push on things more than you want to pull on things. If you can, if we were trying to move this big aquarium that's behind you, and we were going to lift it off that stand, or move the stand from underneath it, I would actually have those cups put in the top third and have everybody, I don't know if they can see me here, lift up on them like this because that's actually safer than trying to pull up on it like that.
As far as moving it from point A to point B, it's better to get it on to something that you can roll or you can push, than to try to bulk-lift a 700-gallon aquarium, unless you have a lot of people. The challenge you're going to have as we step down to your basement is the door width. You have a door down there. It's a single door. It looks like it's about a 31-inch wide door. That aquarium is 36 inches wide on one end, so the only way you're going to be able to get it through the door is to turn it 90 degrees sideways and have it go through on its side. The challenge when you do that is you can get suction cups on the bottom of the tank and the suction cups on the ends, but you're not going to be able to get suction cups on the top. All your people are going to be on one side or the other. Yes, it's going to be a bit of a challenge.
John: Let me ask you this, and this might be just a dumb question, but-- It had never really occurred to me until we talked about it downstairs. First of all, the tank's 24 inches tall, so it makes sense, turn it on its side, we can take it in sideways. That makes total sense but you're not going to walk with people on either side through that doorway. It's probably going to be one of those deals where there's people inside and people outside and you're just inching it. Basically, three people inside, three people outside pick it up and carry it six inches and just work its way through the door.
The question that I have, first of all, I'm probably going to see if I just can't take the door out. That will solve that problem. If I do that, this is a non-issue. I just have this idea in my head and I just want to run it by you. If the tank is turned sideways, could someone put a suction cup on the inside of the tank?
Ted: On the bottom of the inside?
John: The tank is sitting like this. This is the bottom of the tank. This is the open top.
Ted: Right. Yes, put the suction cup on the inside of the tank, on the bottom. No, no. We need a better--
John: Do we have something that's a rectangle?
Ted: We need a small tank. Basically, when you tip the tank on its side, the open end is facing out and you can't put a suction cup on the open end but you can because you can put it inside the tank on the glass.
John: Would you put it on the part that is up top, so you would be carrying the suction cup like this, or would you put it on the bottom?
Ted: Whatever is more comfortable and however high you can be. Personally, I would like to have it up here but-
John: I would too.
Ted: -you also have to realize you've got the bottom edge of that tank is going to be banging up against your leg as you're going through. Most people are going to want to have it to where they can just hang it off their arm. If you get enough people, you can do it. You have enough space because your stairwell's wide. If you picture what John has, he's got a stairwell that is-
John: Six feet wide.
Ted: -six feet wide, but the door at the bottom is only 30 inches.
John: It's a double door but the one door is stationary. It looks like French doors but only one door opens up the other one is fixed in place.
Ted: I suggest that this is a really good opportunity to put in French doors.
John: Yes, it would be if I had Ted Judy money, maybe it would be.
[laughter]
Ted: You can just knock the door out and then cover it with plywood when you're done.
John: That'd be fine. I mean, hey, who needs a nice door.
Ted: It's down to the bottom of the stairs, no one's going to see it.
John: What I'm talking about here with having a suction cup actually on the interior of the tank, is really a non-issue because we're not going to be carrying it that way. If it was wide enough for us to walk on either side of the tank turned up on its side, then we could carry it regular way through. It's not really an issue, but I was just curious about, do you start to get concerned about if you're pulling it from the inside? If there would be concern about it maybe busting one of the seams or something like that.
Ted: No, that's not really going to be a problem. Actually, we were talking earlier about stairs in general and I'm not a big fan of carrying tanks down steep inclines or stairs. One slip, one trip-- This is about carrying big tanks. Yes, a big tank can really hurt somebody. You don't want to drop it on-- Those are cement stairs anyway, you don't want to damage the tank but you really don't want to damage the guy that's coming over and doing it for beer and pizza.
The way I moved one recently, I had a very similar situation. I have a- it's 265-gallon aquarium, but it's also 3 feet wide, but it's 30 inches tall. The narrowest dimension on my aquarium is 30 inches and I have a 31-inch door. You've been to my house. I had to get it down the stairs from the main level to the landing, where the room you stayed in was, then that door, it's right next to the landing, I had to open that door, pivot this tank around and go down another set of stairs down into the sub-basement. That's the door that is 31 inches wide and a 30-inch wide tank.
The way we did it, was I took two by fours and laid them down on top of the stairs like they were ramps. Then I wrap the aquarium, the side of the aquarium in blankets. Then we sat the tank on the two by fours, and we slid it down to the next level. That way we had one person who was at the bottom of the stairs, just holding it in place but we also had, as you said, carry straps and then people on either side of the tank, holding most of the weight. We're not scratching the tank. It's the blanket that's sliding down them.
That's what I suggested for your big tank, because your tank, it's about twice the size of the one that we were moving. The longer it is the harder [unintelligible 00:36:05] because it's so awkward. My tank's only 5 feet long, yours is 8 feet long.
John: This is just getting me more and more scared the whole time.
Ted: Just get plenty help and take your time. Try not to be in a hurry with it. I like your idea of moving it on the back of the truck the way you got it in here.
John: That's going to happen.
Ted: Then you move it to there. I think the only challenge you're going to have with that-
John: Is the stairs.
Ted: -is the stairs. The other challenge with a big long tank like you have with stairs, imagine last time you carried a couch or something downstairs, when one person is lower and the other person is up above, they can't hold it at the same level, so one person suction cups. The ones that are at the top of the stairs, they're going to be at the top of the tank, while the ones at the bottom, it's going to be at the bottom of the tank to try to keep that thing relatively level. This becomes a whole lot easier if you slide it. If you build a ramp for it, put it on it, and let it get down there to the bottom.
The other challenge you have with your tank is because it's 8 feet long, one way to get tanks through doors, if they're 6 feet long or they're short, is you get the tank to the bottom of the landing, stand them up, pivot it, and then tip it through. That way you're not actually-
John: I've done that.
Ted: -carrying it through. You're just tipping it through, but I don't think that you have enough space at the bottom of your landing to be able to tip an 8-foot tank through.
John: No, it wouldn't. Now, what about getting some big, beefy toe-straps like you would use to pull a jeep out of the mud.
Ted: Yes, you use that- if you're going to use a sliding method, you're going to use them at-- Yes, certainly, you can use that. Then you have people standing above it, but you have enough space around that tank to have people along the sides of it with suction cups also to keep it from going down. Toe-straps are nice because then no one really has to be below the tank.
John: I've been involved in one too many tank crashes where I just can't imagine there being somebody below this thing. This one, you can probably outrun that but this, if this goes down with somebody in the- somebody is going to die.
Ted: I think that the toe-straps would help. You can do it that way but I, also, think that because you have so much space around it, you've got 6 feet of space, then you can have people to the side of it with suction cups. They don't have to be below it and then if something starts to go wrong, they can just let go and it's just going to be tobogganing down to the bottom.
John: And a lot of tears. [laughs]
Ted: Well, put a pillow down there.
John: [laughs] A pillow for me to lay my head on while I'm crying.
Ted: That is correct. No, I think you'll be okay.
John: Well, you're going to come here and help me then because--
Ted: Yes.
[laughter]
John: I'm sure [crosstalk]
Ted: I will check my schedule. When did you say that?
John: Yes, you're going to be busy that day, I'm sure. No, I don't blame you. You only live on the entire opposite side of the country. No, I mean, I don't even know how I'm going to do it because I don't have 12 friends. I don't know how I'm even going to get people here to do it but I'm thinking-- See, I overthink this and maybe that's good because it's better to have a super detailed plan than to just wing it.
What I'm thinking is-- I, honestly, don't think, with enough people, getting it down the stairs, would be that difficult, with the proper amount of suction cups. Like you said, if we could get 12 people here, which I don't know if I know 12 people, but I'll put an ad on Craigslist if I have to. If we can get 12 people here, getting it down the stairs isn't going to be that hard, but, once we're down at the bottom of the stairs, there's not a huge landing there, the tank is going to be like this because it's not like at the bottom of the stairs there's enough room for us to put the tank down flat. The tank is going to be sitting like this and then we have to turn it on its side and then we have to get it through the door. When it goes through the door there's not going to be anybody--
Ted: Do you know how to use a wheelbarrow?
John: Yes.
Ted: Okay, so what you need is a furniture dolly. Furniture dolly sits right inside the door on the inside of the jamb, all you have to do is get the end of the tank onto the furniture dolly, inside the door, and then everybody else can be outside of it holding it up and you push it through very slowly as you lower the tank down. That furniture dolly will roll onto that end. Have somebody on the inside pulling on and holding up as well but let that furniture dolly carry most of the weight of the tank as you bring it through.
I just thought of something. I'm sitting here staring at your tank and you're a big tank, and I'm about to throw a major wrench into your gear.
John: The stand isn't going to fit through the door.
Ted: The stand is not going to fit through the door.
John: The door has to come out.
Ted: Right. That just made this a whole lot easier because I was thinking about that if you have a 30-inch wide door but your stand is 36x36. 5 feet, yes.
John: Damn it. You were supposed to come here and make me feel better about this, Ted.
Ted: I did. I just convinced you, beyond the shadow of the doubt, you're going to have to take that door out anyway to be able to get that tank in there.
John: I'm going to have to take a closer look at that because we don't own this house yet.
What in the world was that?
Ted: I don't know. Maggie doesn't know either.
John: You know what? I think that was the cat coughing up a furball.
Ted: [laughs]
John: Yes, I don't know. We might have just completely ended this conversation. That's definitely what that sound is. Thankfully, it's not coming across.
[chuckles]
This has been a fun night. That's a challenge because you're right, unless we wanted to build a new stand, not you, but I could build-- I don't know. We'll have to see.
Ted: Such a nice stand.
John: It is. I like that stand a lot and I definitely don't want to do that so, I'm going to have to look at it closer. I haven't even really looked at it all that close to see how easy it would be to take the door out. Usually, those aren't that hard but it almost looks like it's all one unit. I don't know. We'll have to see.
Ted: I looked at it, it's all one unit. Basically, you've got- it's like a French door frame but except one door doesn't have any hinges on it, and it looks like it's built into the frames. It looks like you could pull the frame and then pull the whole thing out, put everything in and you can put the same door right back in. As I was saying earlier, you're getting ready to put a fish room down there with a whole bunch of big aquariums and you've got this wonderful set of stairs, if you're going to pull the door out, put in French doors so that you have the double wides. I know it's not your house.
John: Not yet. We are going to be purchasing this house, hopefully, in the spring, but I just really don't want to wait that long. A couple of people have said doors are easy to remove. It's not that I don't think I'm capable of taking the door out the jamb and all but it's just not my house yet and that throws a monkey wrench in it.
Anyway, we could sit here and talk about my door all night long. I want to talk about something that is fun to talk about as long as it's not you that it happened to. That would be the nightmare stories because with you working in the aquarium industry, I'm sure you've gotten quite a few. I have one that I've shared but I'm not going to talk about mine first. I wanted to open it up to you. You have to have customers calling you saying, "Oh, my God, we got our tank and we dropped it and it busted into a million pieces." What are some of the nightmare stories that you've heard or even maybe not having anything to do with the company you work for, just stories from friends or whatever?
Ted: Custom aquariums- and you've unpacked some of our aquariums. We are pretty OCD when it comes to packing aquariums because we've had some of our tanks arrive in a shattered condition because of the shipper doing something wrong with it.
John: That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about more the tank arrives to the customer's house properly, they're carrying it in the house, and boom. That's what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about custom aquariums had something happen.
Ted: I can vaguely recall one or two stories where somebody has done something that has damaged the aquarium but very, very rarely. I think that we do a pretty good job of communicating with customers before they even order the tank to let them know what's going to be needed. As a matter of fact, when we sign the paperwork, when someone signs paperwork that they're going to be buying this aquarium from us. One of the things that's in there, the part of the agreement, is that you're going to have the help you need on-site when that aquarium arrives.
That's probably the biggest problem is when somebody orders a 300-gallon aquarium and stand, it's arriving in a big huge crate. We tell you on multiple occasions that the truck is going to bring it and the truck is responsible for dropping it at the curb, not in the house, not bringing it in the house, not unpacking it at the curb. If it's over 8 feet, as you know, it goes to another location because they can't send it on a local delivery truck. You got to have a way of getting it in and then the tank arrives at their home and they're completely unprepared. It's just them. There's no one there to help them do it.
These truck drivers, they are talented, talented people and they can get these big huge crates onto those lift gates and get them to the ground. When you watch this happen you're sitting here cringing. They know what they're doing but when they say, "Hey, I need a couple of hands to steady this," they mean it. They need a couple of hands to steady this. We've had some stories where people haven't been able to get their tank delivered because things weren't ready to go. We try to communicate that.
Probably, the most common-- It's not common. I hate to say common. I'd say the thing I've heard about more often than not is when people get the tank in the stand from us and they get it setup and they don't put the pad underneath the tank and on the stand and then they-- That's really, really important. The pad is a part of the whole system and then once all your friends have left for the day, are gone, you have to get them all back and get those suction cup backs to pick that tank up to put that pad underneath it.
John: I know somebody that's made that mistake.
Ted: Yes, [unintelligible 00:48:12] done that. Oh, well, you [unintelligible 00:48:16] The most early on- now, we know what questions to ask, we know what to tell people. The most common one for the first couple of years we did this, for the people that would order an aquarium and simply could not fit it in the door or and get it around a corner, that's a big one. They want to go down into their basement and maybe the stairs in their basement goes right up to a wall where there's a short landing, and they have a 10-foot tank and they can get it onto the stairs but once they get to the bottom of the stairs they can't turn the corner for it, and people say, "Well, how do you figure that out about the best way."
I tell people do is go buy some 2x2s and build a frame that is 1-inch bigger than the outside dimensions of your tank and see if you can get it in if it's going to be that close.
John: Well, tape a bunch of cardboard boxes together or something.
Ted: Yes.
John: If you make that mistake you're kind of an idiot though. [chuckles]
Ted: I don't know. I think that-- It's one thing to say, "I want to order a 36x36x8-foot tank and every door my house is a 31-inch door." Yes, that's kind of a bone head thing. I can understand if people have never bought an aquarium before or never bought a big aquarium before they could make that mistake. We're in the business, we like to say that they were building someone's dream aquarium. This is what they want. For many people that buy aquariums from us, they might have had a small aquarium or two, but this may be the only big one that they've ever had or that they're going to have. If they've never dealt with a big one they may not think about those things, we try to think about them for them. Our customer service reps are now really, really good at asking those questions, "Where in the house is going to go?" Another one is, "What floors is it going to go on?" People, you get a 300 gallon or a 400-gallon aquarium, and there's some engineering considerations to take into the case of where you're going to put it. Don't assume that the ground level of your home is strong enough to handle that too because most ground-floor levels homes are still on joists and so forth. It can be a challenge.
John: I've always told people, this might be extreme, but if it's over 125 gallons, it needs to be on concrete. That's what I've always recommended to people. I've had that tank right there in my living room, not in this house, in another house. On the second floor, there was never any problems, it was fine. I wouldn't put on 150 there or a 240-- No way, a 240, no. When people ask me, I say, "If it's over 125 it needs to be on concrete, it needs to be in a basement or in a slab, whatever."
Ted: I think I would qualify that. I would say if you can't put that aquarium on concrete, then you need to make sure that it's got support underneath it. If it's going to go for example, in a living room over top of a crawlspace or a basement, you can put some jacks into that. Do the joist go parallel to the length of the tank or do they go perpendicular to the length of the tank? If they go perpendicular to the length of the tank, how many joists are going to be under that tank? Where's it going to line up on the wall? I also agree I don't think that's really going to be an issue in most modern homes until you start getting up into over 200 gallons. Think of it this way, your refrigerator is pretty darn heavy, your refrigerator is going on a much smaller footprint.
Basically all that weight is going into six-square feet, whereas you take 125-gallon aquarium, it's going to be heavier than that refrigerator, but the square footage that it's sitting on is quite a bit wider.
John: Well, I've been keeping fish 25 years. There's a benefit to having an advanced-- I'm not talking age. I mean an experienced advanced fish keeper here because it opens your eyes to things. I just thought of something where you mentioned, refrigerator. Bathtubs. We've got a huge bathtub in our bathroom upstairs. It's on a regular second floor. That kind of does argues against my argument, but again, here's the thing. You know this because you're in a custom retail industry and you're a YouTuber. I tell a guy, "That 240 is no problem in your living room." Then something happens, he floods it, which I just flooded this tank the other day, I flooded that one a couple of weeks ago. It destroys his hardwood floors and then it becomes my fault because I said it was okay.
You know the way the world works. We're looking for someone to blame all the time for whatever mistakes that we've made. That's why I like to keep it safe. 125, other than that it needs to be on concrete.
Ted: This is a story of long before, back when I was working retail. When I was in Bloomington, Indiana at Indiana University. The store that I worked at there, somebody bought three large aquariums, is it a 125s, 135s or something like that. It had a real problem because they put all three of them on the same side of their mobile home.
John: What?
[laughter]
Ted: If you just picture it in your mind at a mobile home, it wasn't even like a double line either. It wasn't huge. How they got them in, I don't know. They put one on the kitchen area against the back wall, the living room area against the back wall and the bedroom area against the back wall. Over time, the supports they had behind this mobile home sunk into the ground. Then when the winter ended and the ground got really soggy, they brought me actually Polaroid picture. This is back before cell phones. Polaroid pictures of this mobile home literally tilting. The guy's response to us was, "I'm going to be okay because now I'm going to put the one in the living room across the middle. I'm going to put the one in the kitchen, leave that one there, but I can rearrange my bedroom and put the other one on the other side so everything will be balanced."
John: That's funny. It does not surprise me. Imagine how many cell phones would be taking photos of that if that were to happen today. That's hilarious. Once again, if you make that kind of mistake, you're an idiot. You deserve whatever happens to you. That's just nuts. When I was there-- Thank you once again for bringing me to your facility there, there was a tank there that made me drool. Amber is the girl that works there, right?
Ted: Yes, Amber is a star.
John: She's in my video that I did quite a bit siliconing these-- I'm asking you like you're going to still remember, "Oh yeah, that was Mr. Johnson's tank." There was a giant tank in that warehouse that day and she was inside of it walking around, and she could have drove a golf cart around in that thing. It was huge, do you recall the measurements of that? It had to be 12 feet. Like 12 by four by-
Ted: That was 12 by 4 by 3.
John: That was going in someone's home?
Ted: I don't know, but yes, we sell them that big for people's homes.
John: What is the biggest tank that Custom Aquariums has manufactured?
Ted: For a home or just in general?
John: I don't care. Just what's the biggest tank?
Ted: Biggest tank that we have manufactured is 12 feet.
John: 12 is the longest you can go, right?
Ted: There's how big have we built or how big will we build? There's a difference.
John: I want to know facts. I want to know something that's already happened.
Ted: 14 feet, 6 feet, 5 feet tall. 14 feet, 6 feet wide, 5 feet tall.
John: That's the size of a super duty.
Ted: Now, ask if we'll ever do it again.
John: The answer is going to be no.
Ted: Answer's No. Not do we have any problems with that tank, we didn't. When it was done, we looked at it in service. When it is in service, it's functioning and it's a good aquarium. We weren't comfortable with the idea that we're going to build those a lot of them for a lot of places. The problem is that there's no such thing as perfect glass. People think, "Oh, you get high-quality glass and low-quality glass." That's true, but even in really high-quality glass like we use, there's no such thing as perfect glass. The bigger the piece of glass, the greater the chances are for being imperfection in the glass that can cause a problem. Then you go and say, "Okay," well, then you temper it. All right, well, so you can temper glass. Tempered glass is stronger, it's less likely to shatter, but it's more flexible.
When you take tempered glass in really big panes like that, unless you get really, really thick tempered glass, which definitely you're not going to go much bigger than an inch thick. The more it flexes you might even not have a challenge with the tank anymore, the glass itself. Where are you going to have a challenge? Your seals, because as the glass flexes then you're putting more stress on the seals. I want to say right now after you can log in if you go to the configurators in the website I want to say that the largest we've built now is 12 feet long and we will still go six feet wide. I think the tallest we'll go is 36 inches tall on those dimensions. You can go eight-feet long and four-feet high and two-feet wide.
The engineers-- I'm not an engineer. There's a formula that we use that can very accurately measure the amount of pressure per square inch on the panes of glass, and what that's going to do with the seals, what's that's going to do on the glass? What's safe, what's not safe? We refine it. Have we ever had a tank have a problem? Yes, you can't build 40 to 60 custom aquariums over a month, per month, over as many years we have and not have a tank that has a problem. What do we do with those? We replace them. We have a lifetime guarantee on our aquariums, we stand behind our product. I will tell you the number of problems we've had with tanks, I can count on less the two hands, and that's a really, really good percentage.
We learn every time we have had a problem it has been when we have pushed the bubble. When we have said, "Oh, can we go that higher or that much wider or that much broader and can we use that thin of glass or that thickness of glass?"
When we've had a problem, it's because we've pushed the bubble and we learn every time and we learned that. I love the name of the company, customaquariums.com. I think it's fantastic and you get people calling us, "I want a round tank." We don't do round tanks because you're a custom. We are. "I want a tank that is 24 feet long and two feet front to back and 18 inches tall," "Sorry, we can't do that because you're a custom." "You're right, we're a custom."
John: You're not like Britain Wade.
Ted: Well, I guess not.
John: I want to go back a second because this is another one that just popped into my head. We're sitting across from three 10-gallon tanks and a 13-gallon and a couple of 5s and they have these little bitty beads of silicone. I don't know if those tanks are built like yours where the silicone is between the glass or if it's just on the corners or what. It doesn't really matter. My question is when I look at those, it's this little bead. When you move up to this and it's considerably larger or you move up to those considerably larger and then you get to this one and it's naturally the bigger the tank the bigger the beads are. I would imagine.
Ted: Proportionally no. The reason you're seeing a relatively small bead on that tank is because the glass is thinner, therefore, the amount of silicone-- Let's go back again. When you look at the aquariums you're pointing out over here or behind you and you see the big black trim around the side, there is silicone in between all the glass but that tank has got three-quarter-inch glass. There's three-quarter-inch of black silicone there and then there's what we call the second seam or the inside corner seam that protects what's actually sealing the tank. When you look at a 10-gallon aquarium, you're looking at very thin glass.
There is silicone between the edge of the side panel on the front panel but then you have that white bead. Those smaller tanks they probably have proportionately more silicone than these big tanks do. If you're actually measuring, this is the length of the tank and this is the thickness of the actual silicone, those small tanks probably have more because of a person's finger's only so big and they can only make that bead smaller. I've seen a lot of tanks in the market now, that ordinarily they're used for the aquascaping stuff or the Nano tanks where they use extremely small amounts of silicone. Some of those tanks, they have leakage problems but at least they're relatively easy to patch up and seal.
John: Well, where I was going with the question was you look at the bottom seal on a 10-gallon. It's a rough bead, not a finger smooth bead, usually. I watched amber do that in that big giant tank. It was a big thick-- A tube of silicone would go four feet. It was a lot. What I was getting at there was when you have this tank that's 14 by 6 by 6, I would imagine the silicone piece to be that big around. That's what I'm saying. As it gets bigger it gets more silicone. Would you have a log of silicone going through the [crosstalk].
Ted: Are you talking about the bottom bead now, the bottom seal on the inside of the bottom of the tank? That's the one you really talking-
John: That's the biggest one.
Ted: Yes. That's the most dangerous place in your tank. That's where all the pressure on a silicone seal that has the greatest amount of pressure is at the bottom underneath the water all the way the water is pushing out on it. On a large aquarium, remember because all glass bows and how good your frames are, there's an awful lot of pressure in there. If you can picture an eight-foot aquarium but as that glass starts to bow, it's going to bow more in the middle because that's where the length is, then you've got a lot of pressure right at the bottom in the front of that, that's trying to push that pane of glass off of the top of the bottom pane that that's sitting on.
We use very beefy beads on the inside of the tank. I'll tell you that the people that build a lot or who use a lot of big tanks especially in commercial settings and so forth, they really like them. The people that don't like them are the ones that are doing no substrate inside the tank at all, bare bottom tank and they don't want that really really thick look all along the sides. We can do a cosmetic bottom. It costs a little bit more, you'll still get a significant amount of silicone in them but now we're going to tape that off and we're going to spread the silicone. People say, "Why do you charge more to do that," and the response is, "Try it. It's not very easy to do." You saw us taping and siliconing the vertical edges and that's not that hard to do but it's actually hard to work down inside those tanks.
John: Well, and the smell was intense. I love the smell of silicone but I remember because I didn't get in the tank but I remember leaning over to film it and while she was doing it. I was like wow. It was extreme, the smell from it.
Ted: We use a really high-quality silicone so that the solvent that's inside of it when you're using a lot of it but- the solvents-
John: Well, it's in a closed-in area too.
Ted: It's enclosed and there's a lot of solvent to keep that stuff pretty pliable.
John: Now, let's be honest with each other for a second. I mentioned Brett and Wayde. You know who I'm talking about when I say, Brett and Wayde.
Ted: Is that the Tanked?
John: Yes. How much has that show sold tanks for you? I know they build acrylic and all that. I'm going to ask that question better because you're a fish keeper for a long time. How much of an impact do you think that show has had on the hobby?
Ted: Well, we're not going to qualify it as the kind of impact. We're just going to say impact.
John: How has it helped to popularize this hobby? This is a question coming completely out of the blue.
Ted: I think that Tanked and shows like Tanked have done a lot to mainstream the hobby from a perspective of this is what's possible and what you can have. The company behind Tanked, Acrylic Manufacturing, for a while, whenever they needed a glass tank they got them from us. Still today, I have to find out, that I think that if you go to their showroom floor in las vegas, I think they still have like three of our aquarium setups there for a while. Now, they're also building glass tanks of their own and they're doing their own thing. That's fine but for a while, we had a pretty good relationship with them. It's not what I do for the company so I don't know.
I think long before I started working for Custom Aquariums, I was already doing a lot of traveling and I remember I was at a fish event. In the bar having a drink, there were some people who were in the hotel and they saw these aquariums everywhere. They weren't actually at the fish event but I overheard their conversation. They were talking about that show and they were talking about how they would have loved to have an aquarium but they didn't want to spend $20,000 or $30,000 on having a nice aquarium display in their home. I interjected myself in the conversation very politely I said, "Hey, I couldn't help overhear what you just said. If you looked around and seen the aquariums that are at this event."
"Yes, we have. That's what we're talking about." I said, "Okay, I'm just letting you know that you can have a beautiful aquarium in your home without spending that kind of money. What those guys are doing are building very custom one-of-a-kind and they're bumping those numbers up because I've seen some of the things they've built and I know other people that have built similar stuff and not spent that kind of money." I think that maybe that show had a negative effect on making people think that in order to enjoy the aquarium hobby, they have to spend that kind of money to do it. I think that was a disservice that they did to the hobby.
John: I think exposure to the hobby, I think they did a lot of really good things. They didn't do a whole lot to educate the hobby. That's been the purpose of my channel. That the purpose of your channel is to educate. There's no doubt it's like when they show American Chopper came out, how many people went out and bought motorcycles? It's the same thing. They don't teach you how to ride a motorcycle, they don't teach you how dangerous motorcycles are but they get people excited about something. I think it had that kind of an exposure, kind of a thing. It had an exposure, a thing. Funny story about that, 2012, I think it was, we had four or five videos on our YouTube channel. We were just getting started. I started a Twitter, which I don't even use anymore. Within the first four days or I had four followers on Twitter, and one of them was Brett Raymer.
Ted: Who?
John: Brett Raymer, the guy from Tanked. I was like, "This can't be right." I looked at it and he had pictures of his family, and it had the blue checkmark and all that. That was actually Brett Raymer follow-- Four people following me and one of them was Brett Raymer. [laughs] I thought that was funny, and still following me to this day, even though I'm not on there and don't do anything. I don't know what in the world brought him to me, but he was following 12 people at the time, and one of them was me. It was the weirdest thing. I never really thought it was true. My brother-in-law went to an event in Roanoke, it was a pet expo, and Brett and Wayde were there. He went up to Brett and he said, "Hey, I think you follow my brother-in-law, John, up in King George." He said, "Oh, the KGTropicals guy."
Ted: Nice.
John: I felt like a celebrity. I was brand new to YouTube at the time. I don't even know why that happened, but anyway we're not here to talk about me. We've got 17 minutes left. I've seen a couple of super chats pop through. One of them was from Petsotics, for having a great guest gave me $5 for having a great guest. How about that?
Ted: Thank you.
John: Steenfott Aquatics. Again, Smart Alec came through with two more dollars said "Ecto-1 is a Ghostbuster car movie you noob." I said that. I said it was a Ghostbuster reference. Then Eric Ferlo, I can't get to the message. He came through with a $2 super chat too. "I wanted to make sure I shouted them out." I've seen a lot of comments about this drama which I said I'm not going to talk about. Let's see if we can find anything that people need. It's too much to go through and there's nothing more boring than watching somebody read the chat. That is terrible. I ran out of questions. I figured you were going to be talking a lot longer, because you're a talker like I am. [laughs] Well, shoot. Let's talk about shows. Do you know of Custom Aquariums doing any shows next year? Any trade shows?
Ted: Yes.
John: Aquashella is the closest, right?
Ted: We'll do Aquashella. Unfortunately, I'm going to miss Aquashella in Dallas. I'm not going to be able to be at that one. I had a really good time last year at that event but a big life event, my youngest son, the last one in the house is graduating high school that weekend. Something tells me I can't get a kitchen pass.
John: You want to hear something funny. Exact same scenario happening here, same weekend. We're not doing the graduation party that weekend. We're going to do it another weekend which is part of the plan already, it's not because of this. What I'm going to do is I'm going to go to graduation, they do graduation eight o'clock in the morning here in King George.
Ted: On what day of the week?
John: Saturday.
Ted: Saturday?
John: I'm going to go to graduation with my luggage and hit the airport straight from graduation. I'll get there mid-afternoon on Saturday.
Ted: Yes, you'll see most of the festivities then.
John: I've been given the green light to do that. I don't know for sure that I will. Aquashella in Chicago was a lot of fun and there's not going to be any graduations there that weekend.
Ted: Aquashella, I know that we'll be there. The trade show stuff is interesting. I am the PR social media manager. I do go to a lot of trade shows. I do promote trade shows. I like it when we go to trade shows, but sometimes we'll be having a meeting and planning into the next year, and they'll put the name of a trade show up, and we'll have done our research, we know how much it's going to cost for us to go there. Someone will look to me and they'll say, "What do you think?" I'm the guy that has to say, "If you gave me that much money to invest in social media advertising I can put our products in front of millions of people instead of the 5,000 that are going to be at the show." That being said, shows are extremely valuable, they are a lot of fun.
It's one thing to get your brand and image in front of millions and millions of people, it's very very effective, but it's a whole another thing to be able to interact with people when you're there. People can actually hold the equipment, and see the equipment, and feel the bevel of the glass, and feel how strong the aquarium is. It's worth doing. Our company has three divisions. One division is aquariums. One division is leasing and maintenance. The other division is cages. In 2020 I would say that we were going to be at more caging, bird caging, reptile caging, and so forth shows in 2020 than we will be at aquarium events. We've put a lot of time and effort into the aquarium side in the past five years.
We've brought up, we've been to all. The first Aquatic Experience we've missed was this last one. That's because we picked up and started going to the Aquashellas, but also because of the time and distance, and the expense of going to Aquatic Experience.
John: I can imagine.
Ted: It just wasn't in the card for us this year. We're working on some caging stuff. We're hoping to get-- Especially with the Vision product line. The company purchased Vision products, Vision cages, Vision racks, which is a company. It's been around for 20-something years. We purchased them almost two years ago, a little over a year and a half ago.
We really want to get those back into the big show. Any RBC, Daytona, a few of the other big reptiles are all going to be this year.
John: Whip's World says, "You couldn't pay me to go to Dallas, but Chicago I'm all-in next year." Yes, I'm not crazy about going to Dallas either because of those Cowboys, but I'm going to go for the people. [laughs]
Ted: I'll tell you what, I had a good time at both of them.
John: Well this is Redskins country though. I don't know where Whip's World is from. His picture is really creepy. I don't know where he's from but this is Redskins country. It would be going to Minnesota from where you are because of the Packers, Vikings. Dallas Cowboys are the enemy. Going to Dallas is a nightmare.
Ted: I guess, but you know me. I like to travel. The idea of going to different cities and being in those places and seeing places. You get me, I'm just not a big football fan. [laughs]
John: Well, that's fine. I'm not a football fan much anymore either.
Ted: I like stepping out the back door of Aquashella Dallas, and it's literally right next door to the Cotton Bowl. It's literally held in the same complex, the State Fairgrounds area where the Cotton Bowl is at. If you watch college football-
John: Are they going to do the same venue though, this year? I thought they would change it.
Ted: I don't know if they're changing the venue in Dallas. I have no idea.
John: I remember talking to Sean about it. Maybe he was saying they were looking into it. I don't know, because they had to turn people away last year.
Ted: Right.
John: They want to avoid that. I don't know what his final decision was on it. I remember something that I did want to ask you that is about Custom Aquariums, and that is the new building because I was able to tour the big empty building when I was there. Is it still empty? What's going on in there now?
Ted: It's not empty yet. It's not full yet, I shouldn't say-- It's being used to some extent. Again, it's not something that I'm involved with as far as getting it, running it up, and running it, and forth. What this new building is intended to do is to help us to expand our production capabilities, but really expand and speed up our fulfillment capabilities. The idea is to-- Right now, you were there. We showed you that loading dock area where we had about six or seven big created aquariums, and cages ready to go. There was no room for any more. Until the trucks picked those crates up then the craters couldn't start building new crates to get the next ones out the door.
This building is-- We have six or seven going out a day, we're trying to get up to where we can start to get to where we're having 10 or 20 going out a day. When people ask us, "Why does it take long to build a custom aquarium?" Our lead times are running six to eight weeks depending upon the size the aquarium is. I'd to be perfectly honest with you and say, "No, it does not take us eight weeks to actually build your aquarium, but it takes us four weeks to get to your turn in line." That's a really good a problem to have. We are working on taking those bottlenecks and reducing them so we can reduce those lead times down. A big part of that it's fulfillment.
This building is a lot about fulfillment. It's amazing how hard it is to get permission to actually start using a building.
John: [laughs]
Ted: I'm just hearing this from the sidelines really. As the sprinkler system wasn't to code yet or we didn't have enough of these or there wasn't enough emergency exit lights. You would think that you're going to spend this much money on a building and the people who designed the building would know all that. The other challenges I found out, it's not that we won't pass inspection. We will pass inspection. It all ducks in a row but now we got to convince-- just like our lead times, it's not that it's going to take him very long to inspect and approve the building, it's going to take him before it's our turn again for him to come and do the inspection.
Apparently there's two guys in the entire state of Wisconsin that do it. The building is close to being done. Well, it's basically done being operational.
John: It looked done when I was there.
Ted: We just have to get the clearances and permission to start going full steam ahead. It's really cool. Just like anything else, there are some unique things that have been engineered specifically for that room like the way the temperature controlled-floors and stuff we're going to be doing. There's basically a floor that's designed to help cure tanks. Not faster but evenly.
John: How about that?
Ted: Think about that. The temperature and dryness are two of the factors that deal with curing tanks. You have to have even temperatures.
John: I have no idea why that comment from King and Queen Cichlids was posted on the bottom of this page. Sorry folks, I must have hit a button by accident. I don't even know what that said. You can't see it but I can put people's comments from chat up on the screen and it was up there. I don't even know how it got up there which is odd. Scott's been very active tonight. River Life, a friend of both of us came through with $20 super chat. Good grief. He said, "Pizza for Ted. No, that's going to pay for the Subway that we already got for Ted.
Ted: Right. Thank you very much. I was hungry.
John: Then let's see, it was Fish Room Fever came through with $20. See, when you do live streams people give you money for whatever reason. It's like you don't ask for. It just happens.
Ted: How about Sunday mornings? Anybody up for Sunday mornings? That's about the only time I have open.
John: I used to do Sunday mornings and I got a pretty good turnout there, but it was too much. I was doing two live streams a week and it was too much. That was a year ago when I was doing that. Fishroom Fever with $20 is throwing in this for cheesy bread and wings.
Ted: Oh, great.
John: Apparently, they think you and I are having a party after this stream. [chuckles] Yes. That's--
Ted: I can go for some wings?
John: I can't eat wings off the bone anymore.
Ted: At all?
John: I don't know why. It's weird. It's a thing with me that makes me-- I don't know. I get boneless wings. I'm one of those idiots that gets boneless wings because I--
Ted: Chicken nuggets.
John: Well, no. [laughs] No, not chicken nuggets. Chicken boneless-- Okay, they're chicken nuggets. That's fine. I don't know. Something about eating it off the bones freaks me out now. It's an old age thing. I don't know.
Ted: I'm older than you are.
John: I know but I don't want to offend people here but I feel a savage, ripping it off a bone. It makes me feel weird. I can't do it. I'll eat boneless wings all day long.
Ted: There you go.
John: Put them in hot sauce and--
Ted: You like spicy?
John: Yes.
Ted: Super spicy?
John: Not stupid spicy, sign-a-waiver spicy, no. I like to taste my food. I don't want to be crying and-- No. I can hang pretty well with some spicy stuff, but why, are you a spicy connoisseur?
Ted: I'm the same way. I like it pretty hot, hotter than most people.
John: I like it's spicy flavor, not clear your sinuses and make you cry. I don't enjoy that. I want to enjoy what I'm eating I don't want be feeling like I'm being tortured by what I'm eating. That's just not cool to me. Anyway, we've got four minutes left and River Life is coming up next. He streams at 10:30. I don't know if you'll be there, which would be 8:30 your time? You're two hours behind us?
Ted: One hour.
John: Okay. It would be 9:30, anyway. It's hard because Lisa and I used to just go for as long as we wanted and now we have to cut it off at 10:30 because Rack is a superstar now and he has to go on here for us. We do need to come up with a hashtag for Rack's stream. Somebody suggested hashtag spicy. No. I'm going to say hashtag Ted Judy. What we do is we send people from this stream over to Rack stream and to show that they have come from our stream, they have to put a hashtag in the chat and it's a different one every week.
Since you're the guest of honor tonight, it's going to be TedJudy. T-E-D-J-U-D-Y. That's what we're going to do. Hashtag TedJudy. If you haven't done it, folks, check out Ted's channel. This is one of those channels that you can gain from.
It's not just good stuff, Ted's knows what he's talking about. The man can build a fish room, trust me. I'm not saying this because you're sitting across from me and because you're my friend, I'm saying this because it's true. I learned how to build a fish room from your videos.
Ted: Thank you. You learned one way to build fish rooms, there's lots of ways to build fish rooms.
John: I learned the Ted Judy way to build- them so they work.
Ted: Before they let go, if I move this camera, can I show them Maggie?
John: Absolutely, but you won't see it.
Ted: I don't want to see it because this is how boring this show really is. This is called a bored-hound dog on her bed.
John: It has not even made a sound the entire stream. What a good dog. Ted came into my house with Maggie, and I also have a dog named Maggie. My three dogs were going ape, you know what. They were losing their minds, screaming and howling and his dog never made a sound. I was like, "I'm so jealous."
Ted: I wanted her to make a sound but you see John has a Beagle, and his Beagle was just sounding-- Maggie can put that to shame. This is a walker-coonhound when she gets going, she'll light the world up and she's like, "No. I'm not familiar with that stuff."
John: She wasn't having anything to do with that. Was just, "Whatever y'all, I'm you guest, y'all being rude," but no. She's very sweet and I'm sorry that I confused her for your wife. That was weird.
Ted: That's okay.
John: I will not forget again for sure. Anyway, thank you to all the people who have super-chatted tonight. You were very generous, even Bob. [laughs] Bob, Steen, Faal and I we break each other's balls non-stop. Thank you for coming in, sitting here with me. It's late at night, you still got to drive back to the hotel and all that kind of stuff.
Ted: Yes. I got a long journey tomorrow anyway. Thanks for letting me come in, we talked about doing it and I've always wanted to. It's my first time actually doing one of these live streams like this. It's interesting.
John: It's fun, isn't it?
Ted: It is fun. You come up with topics every week. I have a hard time with topics for videos. One reason I had to stop doing it.
John: There are a lot of times where I will come up with the topic the morning of. It's like I'm thinking all week, "What are we going to talk about? What are we going to talk about?" It is difficult. For me, the worst thing I can do is expect the chat to provide me with what to talk about. I'm terrible at on the spot answering questions. I forget everything. People ask me questions and I'm like, "I don't know." [laughs] I hate that. I'm not an encyclopedia like you and Cory are, I can't do it. I got to think about it for a little bit, process it and then I'll answer the questions. Chat, Q&As don't work well for me. We got to have a topic and go back and forth. Anyway, who cares about all that? Thank you once again.
Ted: You're welcome. Thank you.
John: It was a lot of fun and I hope to see you at some of these events and go check out Ted's channel. Come and meet him at the events, he's going to be Adam. He's going to be being paid to be Adam which is nice. Very cool, thanks again. You all have a good night. I'm a complete disaster. We'll sign off now, thank you so much for hanging out. Go hang out on Rack stream, hashtag TedJudy.
Ted: Thank you. Goodnight.
[01:29:08] [END OF AUDIO]
