Rappin' With ReefBum
Guest: Andrew Sandler, Polo Reef
(upbeat music) - Rapping with Reef Bomb is sponsored by champion lighting and supply, Polo Reef, and Fauna Marine. - Hey, what's happening everybody, and welcome back to another episode of Rapping with Reef Bomb. I'm your host Keith Burklehammer. Well, on tonight's live stream, I welcome back Andrew Sandler from Polo Reef. What's going on there, Andrew? - Hi, Keith. Hi, everybody. - Sorry for the delay, folks. We had a little trouble connecting tonight, but I think everything is now in order in terms of the sound, the video, and what have you, but for those that don't know Andrew, he has the famous 17,000 gallon reef tank in his own, plus many other incredible tanks, and he is the founder and CEO of Polo Reef, and we're gonna talk a lot about all the different projects that are going on with Andrew and his crew. But before we start chatting with Andrew, I wanna take care of some business and thank the sponsors of the show. My sponsors are really important to me because they make this show possible with their support, and that means a lot since I wanna continue to bring on awesome guests to help foster a learning environment on the show. Polo Reef, Andrew Sandler, thank you very much, is a sponsor, really much appreciate that. Andrew, make sure to check out Polo Reef's new YouTube video that drops his Friday. In the fourth episode of the Polo Summer Relaxation series, Polo Reef gives us a moment to relax to view of a stunning fish close-ups, highlighting the vast collection of rare and beautiful reef fish housed at Polo. Make sure to subscribe to the YouTube channel at Polo Reef for video drop notifications. Champion Lighting and Supply besides being in place for hobbyists to purchase saltwater aquarium supplies online. Champion Lighting is also a wholesale distributor for many popular brands. If you own an aquarium store or an aquarium service company, contact Champion Lighting through their website at championlighting.com to set up a wholesale account. Todd and his crew will be at reefstock Chattanooga on August 24th and 25th. So stop by and say hello. Third sponsor is Fauna Marine. I do use the Fauna Marine Reef ICP Total Test Kit, which gives a quick, accurate and easy overview of over 90 water values in reef aquariums for macro elements, trace elements and pollutants. You get a complete overview with corresponding dosage and action recommendations. I am now a certified Fauna Marine ICP test advisor. So if you want help interpreting results, then select reef bum. You can also purchase the ICP test kits as well as other Fauna Marine products at reefbum.com. So Andrew, man, how's it going to polar reef? You've got a lot going on there, man. - Well, not only do we have a lot going on, but I'm leaving Friday to heat where I'm gonna be there for about 11 days capturing some beautiful reefs footage also with my family. And it's a long trip and a lot of hours away. So we're trying to get everything squared away before I leave Friday morning. - Well, so what exactly are you gonna be doing? Are you gonna be doing any diving or are you gonna, yep. - We're doing some diving. I'll be doing some snorkeling, but generally I'm in the water looking at beautiful reefs, hopefully it's beautiful reef. What's the last amount of that? Probably the nicest claims in the world. We're going for three different places and finding good in my primary case. (laughing) My dive space, so hopefully we'll pick up some nice times. - Are you actually gonna be able to pick out some corals that you collect and bring back home eventually or no? - No, no, no, I don't go soon. - It's not gonna be in the cards. - I don't go soon. I don't go soon. (laughing) - Well, yeah, I'm sure that's gonna be a fantastic trip, but looking forward to seeing what happens in terms of the content you guys bring back. So let's get into the projects. Now, when I talked about the video that I read in terms of the, just before about the relaxation series, talk to us about that, man. That's a really pretty incredible initiative that you guys have done. I'm not sure everybody is aware exactly what's behind that relaxation series. - So, I guess I would sort of break the news here. I'm on the board of a company who serves 22,000 PDF for Cancer Hospital kids. We're gonna be having these videos as well as 360 versions stitched together with the goggles. - Oh, wow. - These kids in the hospitals will be doing chemotherapy, watching these programs and relaxing. And that's how it started. We're doing it now on YouTube and filming it and so forth. But ultimately, we're gonna have four videos, some will be education, some will be relaxation. And some will be 360, which requires quite a bit of post edit and 360 camera in the time and the kids love it. - So, Andrew, people are saying the audio is, it's making it tough to hear you is. I'm wondering if-- - Let me see you. - Yeah, let me see if I take it. I'm gonna take that mic and I'll come it over here. - Yeah, let's see if that... Yeah, it could be the Bluetooth or something that's not behaving. - About now, way better. - Way better. - Way better. - All right. - Yeah. Yeah. So, all right, that's an amazing thing. So how many relaxation videos are gonna be in that whole series? - There'll be four on, two on two D and two on 360. So, it'll be like six. - Six. And did the, did you have any visitors also come over as part of that initiative to check out the tank in person? - Oh yeah, oh yeah. To show us how to use and film 360 and where to put the camera and the tank and all that stuff. - Pretty cool, pretty cool, man. Well, all right. Yeah, so folks, if you haven't checked out those videos and certainly do pretty incredible stuff. All right, man, let's, I wanna dig into this summer recap video that you did because you highlight it pretty much all your projects, I think, except for one, which was the clam tank and we can get into that whole thing. But let me show a picture and I took some screen grabs from that video about the dropdown, the 900 gallon dropdown tank. And I saw on Instagram right before we went on to the live stream that it's got a hell of a lot more corals in it now than it did when that video came out. - Oh yeah, quite a bit more. We actually ended our first off route today. - Did you? - Yeah. - So that's been quite a story with that tank, right? I mean, the first dropdown tank that you guys took delivery of actually broke, right? In transit. - Yes. - Yes. - Man, that would be like my worst freaking nightmare. That's like the thing that I, you know, I'm probably not gonna be ordering any new tanks anytime soon, but all the custom tanks that I did order and not nearly as, you know, customize and big iPad camera. - They want me to clean my iPad. - It's a little foggy. - The two on the outside and then is there one looking at me also? - I think that's a little bit better. - Okay. - Yeah, that's, I think that's better. So yeah, I mean, what was that like? I mean, how long did it take for them to have to rebuild that tank? - After about a month of trying to figure out whose fault it was. - Oh no. - And who was gonna pay for it and which insurance company and so forth and so on. Planet rebuilt the tank from scratch and it was probably another eight, nine months. - Yikes. Yeah. Yeah, that sucks. That, you know, that's something you always gotta wonder. I mean, with a tank like that, that's gotta be something that is really pretty difficult to transport and make sure that it's not gonna get, you know, busted up like that. - So, yeah, they're very, they are not easy. I believe the stand and the tank cannot leave each other. They need to be married and won. And it can't even have a lot of any slip where it, you know, comes off the stand just a little bit 'cause the glass can break. So it's a big job, it's a big movement job. And we have to have it craned over the house. - Yeah, yeah. Well, now that it's in place, man, it looks pretty impressive. And what I was looking at on Instagram was pretty sweet. Looks like a lot of LPS are in the tank and you said you finally got an acro in there. So it's, it's often running. What about lighting? What are you using in terms of lighting on that tank? - We went with 12 Aluma Magic, four X's. - And have you had been running those on any other tanks? What made you choose those? - When I had Rocky over, we were trying to determine why he won the frag contest, the growth contest. And I know his water and I know my water and I figured the only thing that, that it could be what were those lights. So I got 'em too now. (both laughing) - Well, there you go. There you go. What's, so what talk us through in terms of the, you know, bringing that tank to life in terms of starting at the cycling part of it. Did you guys have ugly stages with that tank? How did you get it going? - Yeah, we dry Mark O'Rock, a lot of cement, a glue accelerator, you know, that kind of, that whole thing, throw the sand on it. - Yeah. - It's their old top shelf method. - Yep. - And we had, let's see, that red plenary upstairs that's connected to it. And we, so we nuked that with potassium chloride. - Yep. - Then we got dinos, yes, we got some dinos. - They were, I forgot the kind. They were, they were not as toxic as the other kind and the other kind, but it took a little while to get rid of them. We went three nights, lights out. We did a, we put UV in. We started feeding diacom, phytostrains. We got sand in for the silicates and we showed, uh oh, we put new live rock in for the biome. - Yeah. - Tons of turbos now and showing off the one away. So that was the, was that the free floating variety? So it wasn't the nasty stuff that resides in the rock and the sand and all that. That stuff is like really pesky. - No, that, there's the osteostop and then we had that in the 280s. That's pretty really nasty and pretty easy to get rid of. This was the other one. The other brown one, but, you know, it's, it's, it's stayed on just a little part of time and we don't really see it anymore. - So what did, what do you guys believe in at Polo in terms of starting a tank? Do you, do you believe, you know, after the tank is cycled, do you think that, you know, fish should be a part of that cycling process or do you think corals should be going in there first and then fish later? And, and how did you, how did you handle that with this drop down? - Well, in this case, we take the water from the 17,000. - Oh. - Okay. So the water's ready to go and there is live rock in there. We don't just use dead rock. So we actually will put corals in and, and new fish in at the same time. - Okay. - When they're ready, when they're ready to be quarantined. These fish that are in here now actually never received meds. They were baliacriculture purples and things like that. But we watched, you know, watched them for about a month. And I had Alex, the wreath vet scraped them every week and they had three negatives and they went in. - I'm actually going to have Alex on the live stream in a, in a few weeks to tap into his expertise. All right, man. So let's, let's, let's switch to the, to the pair of two eighties. That, so I'm going to show this picture of one of the two eighties, which is a, which is a new tank. And that's the one that replaced, one of these replaced the busted marine land tank. Is that correct? - Yeah. - Okay. So you got two custom tanks to kind of like replace that one busted marine land tank. - Right. - What, so this is a, is this a custom 280 gallon tank? You got twin custom tanks? - Yes. I got twins. And planet built us the dropdown and Joe at glass cages, built us these twins. - So what, what, what features do they have in terms of the, you know, the customizable stuff? Is it Eurobracing, Starfire, external overflows, all that fun stuff? - Yes, all that fun stuff. - Okay. So I see it's pretty much predominantly acros in that one tank. What about the other 280? What's the plans for that one? - That one is, we actually took a coral from there and put it in the 900 dropdown 'cause it was too nice. But it's going to be, it's going to be predominantly SPS, chalice, reef lead. One will, the difference will be one will have the hairline. 400 watt, two 400 watt, radium 20K with supplemental bars and C5s. And the other one will be all LEDs, two glows, one grow and four radions. And they're right next to each other and quite different. - That's a lot of light said. What, what do you, what are you guys getting parwise in that tank with the acros? - With the hairlines or the LEDs? - Well, combined. I mean, are you running at the same time or are they kind of cycling on or off? - No, no, they were same time. We're getting like mid vibes on the hairline and on the LED system we're sort of going between 350 and four and a quarter. - Yeah, so bare bottom two with that tank, huh? - Yeah. - Is that something that you really like to do with an SPS dominant tank? Just go with bare bottom cuz of the flow? Especially if it's painted white already and especially if it's not in a room that needs company all the time. So the lab, the lab goes bare bottom. - Yeah, I don't know man. I like the bare bottom tanks. I used to do sand but I think it's less maintenance and less to worry about it. I do miss the rasses though. - Yeah. - Yeah. It's one of the fish we need to start getting in this 900 now. We have sand in it. And before I order rasses, I need to order the lids. 'Cause they be doing some jumping. And the cabinetry won't be ready in time to hide this all in. - Someone I made myself some lids and yeah, we're gonna make this 900 gallons, drop down amphibious and rast heavy. - Nice. How often do you cycle through amphibious? I know in the 17,000 gallon tank you got a whole bunch of amphibious in there. Is that a fish that you are replacing a lot? I mean, do you have a lot of our tail, anthias that I know those are the hardy ones. - Yeah, we have a lot of those. We have pectillis, we have randals, we have Evan's eyes, we have three belted time. - Yep. - So we have super eyes, we have Evan's eyes. What's the one they look like with a B, like Evan's eye? - Bartlets. - Yep. - Bartlets. And we have a few others around the house, but we haven't decided what to do in the 900 and the 900 if you wanted to keep it off a smaller side. So we'll probably get into Bartlets, Evan's eye and probably purple queens. Oh, love purple queens, those are hard ones to keep. - Yes, sir, that's a job from when I get home from the week. - You know, Greg Carroll, I had him on the live stream and he talks about certain anthias as rentals. Are those considered rentals? - You rent them until they survive for you, right? - Yeah. - The key is feeding and feeding a lot and getting them to the food because they're not as aggressive as the other anthias. Their eyes are very small so the feeding has to be done very small and very awesome. While you prevent urine in the air. Now those are your two goals. - I was gonna ask you, like what are best practices for feeding anthias and keeping anthias healthy and happy? You know, the type of food, I mean, obviously you're feeding them as often as possible. - Yeah, we do it in like an IV bag that drips. - Oh, really? - Yeah, or a bottle that like literally bobs up and down and releases it in the waves. The cyclopies, the ROE eggs, the calonus and then if that doesn't work, we hatch baby brides from. - That's a lot of work, you know? - Yeah. - But they're gorgeous fish. So I absolutely think it's worth all that work but people should know what they're getting into with a lot of different varieties of anthias that they are, they are gorgeous. I've really only had luck keeping the viral tailed anthias but I have not done anything special in terms of feeding and I tried Purple Queen's like a long time ago and that didn't work out too well. But. - Yeah, did you get them through quarantine? - No, no, no, I forgot how. - Do you get them out, do you get them out? - Yeah, yeah. - Yeah, that's tough. They really get urine to me at these things. And they start showing like blood bruises and by the time they have that, it's usually over. - What about Ventralis, anthias? Those things like, I remember they came into the hobby a number of years ago and they were like all the rage and but nobody could keep them alive. I think they needed a little bit cooler water or something like that. Are those still around? - Yeah, yeah. 72 to 74, also not a favorite of copper. I would do it, I would not put meds in. I would treat them and literally watch them. Maybe I'd put them in a form allen bath, but that's it. - What, I mean, just in terms of continuing on in this topic, in terms of fish, what have you seen Andrew over the years? - I know things change a lot with COVID in terms of being able to get fish and the availability of fish, the price of fish. I know what way up, what would you say your assessment is at this point in time in terms of fish? Is there any light at the end of the tunnel or the captive bread fish, the real way of the future? I mean, they're gonna be more expensive because there's a lot more work involved. - What are you seeing in terms of fish and purchasing fish from reputable dealers? - I mean, I just purchased three captive bread baby purples. From that Leop culture, I just did a, actually I come in tomorrow. I just did three or four yearples from them also. And we're bringing in three blacks, which are wild, of the same size and they're gonna have to go to a real quantity. So I think it depends. And I think the ones that are captive bread you can get away with not treating with heavy duty copper. Maybe do a few baths, do some skin scrapes under the microscope. Once it's a wild fish, it goes through the wringer, right? - Yeah. - It's copper, formality, or formality or if I'm worried about brook or anything like that, we use chloroquine phosphates. - Okay. - I mean, is anything, you know, change in your opinion and recently in terms of being able to, you know, acquire fish that, you know, we had been able to acquire in the past. I know Hawaii is closing all that stuff, so that hasn't changed. Is anything else, do you think opening up that could open up more possibilities for bringing in fish? - Well, you got the Solomon Islands and that's all opening up and they're bringing back like these huge purple monsters. - Oh, acros. Yeah. - Have you gotten your hands on any of those? - No, but Barnett promises me one very soon. (laughing) And then there's all sorts of regions in the Philippines that they just opened up and no one's been diving and apparently there are some yellow tanks there and pretty cool. So, yeah, there's some new places opening up. - Nice, okay. All right, well, listen, getting back to the other stuff going on in the lab. The, let's talk about your quarantine holding tanks and again, I've got a clip of that video that you guys have put out. So, there's actually four quarantine holding tanks. What's an update on those tanks? What's happening there? - Now, we're talking about the four coral ones. - Yeah, yeah, coral ones. So, these are the tanks you guys are collecting corals for for the new tanks. - Right, so two of them are empty and ready when the new stuff arrives in the next 24 hours. - Okay. We got some in today from candy corals out of Canada. Tomorrow I'm expecting fish from him and so two are empty and then we got a big aqua delivery from a guy named Sam, Sam's Reef. Maybe you know him, he's on Instagram. He's gonna be delivering us about 50 pieces of beautiful aqua rows. I will have to put them in a tank and make sure the vet watches them and dipping them and cleaning them, giving them a clean okay before they go and any other stuff. - So, what tanks are you looking to fill up? I know we just talked about the drop down. Is that gonna be one tank where those, some of those aqua's are going? - Yeah, so the three tanks would be the two, two eighties and one and a half of them are done. So I just did a half a tank of that and the 900 and anything that doesn't go in the 900 because it's bigger or whatever, but we'll save for the 2500. - All right, so the 2500 and I'm showing a shot of the 2500 and so that's kind of like going through some phases right now, right? You guys are apparently still working on the sump on that thing and when some time. - Yeah, yeah, talk to us about the 2500. - Well, the filter system we're using is a rotary drum filter, like a pond. - Yep. - And we had to have the right amount of water in the rotary drum and then we had to have a washing system to clean the rotary drum which is oral water. So we had to get the oral water to the drum and make it spin and clean. And right now, water is just sitting in the 2500, not going through the overflows or the sump for that matter. And it's just a closed loop and that closed loop looks like phytoplankin. Water is immensely green. You can't even see in it. - I saw the cyano in there too. - Oh, yeah, that was wonderful too, yeah. - So why, so basically water is just cycling through the closed loop because you guys are still working on the sump. - Right, exactly. - Gotcha. - And we're within, we decided to do the 280s and the 900s drop down first and that's the only reason. Otherwise, the 900 wouldn't be done that maybe my 2500 would. - So is that tank still cycling, the 2500 gallon? - It's been cycled. - Oh yeah. - It's just been cycled. It's just waiting for the drum filter and the sump. - So what do you guys have to do with the drum filter? 'Cause I saw you were showing parts of it. You just got to plumb it in. Is that what you need to do? - You got to plumb it in and water's got to come in at the right speeds. So it doesn't dismantle or discombobulate that whole drum. - And why did you guys decide to go with a drum filter for that, just because of the size of it? - We didn't want to use socks. We were afraid that the 50 foot drop that the water flow would possibly wash the socks out of the holes content. - Yeah. - And we were familiar with these drum filters through our toy system. We have several of them. - And Jonathan's been using it, his store. So I guess we all just came to the mine and why not? - I've never seen a drum filter in action. I mean, is that something that's easy to maintain? Is there a lot of cleaning that's involved? I mean, what's the whole concept behind a drum filter? - It's a roundish. I call it called a drum, but each drum has very, very, very, very fine mesh. And that mesh is basically your filter. And when that mesh gets dirty, along with other parts of the drum, it goes into wash down cycle and it takes all the water from a source. In this case, it's our 2,500 gallon big bags. And it brings on very hard pressure. - And collects that dirty water and that dirty water goes after draining. - So is this a self-cleaning thing? - Yes. - Oh, wow. No work involved. - As long as the self-cleaner is on, no work involved. - Oh, that's pretty cool. - Yeah. - Yeah. - And so is there a skimmer as part of that whole system? - Yeah. - There's a skimmer. - There's a skimmer. - There's a skimmer. Big bubble pink skimmer down there, yeah. - Okay. So that's a mechanical filtration is that drum filter and you got the skimmer. What's the plan in terms of livestock in that tank? And also what's the plan? Well, let me back up. Lighting, what are you going to light that tank with? - The aluminum magic support. - Oh, okay, there you go. You're, that's a, and so you got a lot of those. I'm sure they're going to be running over that tank. - 12. - 12 of them. - And that'll, how tall is that tank? I mean, how deep is that tank? - To the bottom is like more than four feet. - Oh, wow. So those lights will penetrate that far down or are you guys just not worried about that in terms of putting acros that far down the tank? - Right. So what's down right there right now are mushrooms, wilsones, chalices, some bowel bankies, all things that are sort of low a lot. So I didn't think any lenses, I didn't do anything. I mean, the light down there is about 80, 90 par and that's perfect for what I need. - And what about at the top? I mean, par-wise, what are you going to be getting at the top of that tank? - Well, we just put in that one acro and measured like 340, 350? - No, that's pretty good. - Yeah. - That's pretty good. Well, you know, I saw that tank in person, man, and that thing is going to be a kick ass reef tank when it's all said and done. Did you guys do any live rock to help the microbiome in that tank? - Yes, yes, yes we did. - Did that help in terms of the uglies and all that stuff? Did that also? - Yeah, yes it did. Yes it did. - Where did you get the, where's the live rock from? Is that Australia? - It's my buddy Jason Guiannis, he gets it, the Australian. - Yeah. What, these days? - First in the dorms. - Okay, what do they get in per pound these days for the Australian live rock? I mean, is that still pretty pricey? - Well, I'll give you a COVID price landed and now I'll give you what it probably goes for, but at one time it was going for $40 a pound land. - Ooh, ouch. - I think we do better now, maybe in the 26th, 25th, 26th range. - Uh-huh. - That's a reasonable, and is that, is that coming in wet? I mean, are they delivering that overnight in newspaper? Is that coming submerged in water? - It's coming in wet newspaper. - Wet newspaper. - Wet newspaper and style. - Any, you guys seen any significant die off of that, or is it pretty much making the journey okay? - I mean, the die off, some of the die off is grass and I clever stuff and that kind of stuff, I sponge it. - Yep. - But I can basically smell the rock and just tell whether or not it needs to week, two weeks, another month. So we put all these together in a big vat. We take some of our old stuff that was outside also, that was bleached, we put it all together and nicked it with some bacteria soup and heat the water up and just let it sit there for another month or two. And then all the pieces are good. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, the more diversity you could throw into it, the tank at the beginning, the better. So let's talk about the big tank, the 17,000 gallon tank. How is that going there, Andrew, with that beautiful main display tank in your house? - I mean, it feels like we're pretty much on an auto pilot. There's not much room for coral anymore. - You would have to change out in order to twist. And I'd say the worst thing that happens is an off-road or something doesn't start looking good. It starts to fade. We like, yeah, maybe we should check it for flatworms. We pull it out of the tank and throw it off there some eggs on there. And it goes out to the quarantine system to get medicated and we'll blow some fresh water in that hole and try to knock any adult flatworm in the water column for the fish to eat. That's not a biggest problem. Right now, not that big a problem, but maybe one out of every three or four pieces, you know, refined eggs. - Yeah, and so how often are you guys going in there and shooting the fresh water? I think many people know that you basically that's the way you kind of keep that pest under control is going in there and shooting it with fresh RODI water, right? Kind of like in a jet, almost. - Yeah, the temperature about the same. And we try to go underneath the colony with oral water and make a cocoon around the coral in oral water. - Right. - And if you're a flatworm, they will give up and go on the water column. And the butterflies and the rascals will eat them in the water column. - So that's like a, that's kind of a thing that when they see you guys doing that, do they sort of fall in their following way around? - Yes, yes. - Yeah. I used to do that too. Years ago when I had that, I used to take a turkey baster and blow off certain corals. I'd had them on there and I had some clown fish that used to follow me around. - Right. - But do you? - Same idea. - And I mean, you got such a big variety of fish in there. Like, I'm sure that's something. Do you have, I forgot, file fish in that tank? - No file fish. - Why not? - I don't know. - Not your thing? - No, but I would. But the rascals and the butterflies, particularly the, what are the butterflies, the Red Sea raccoons. Those guys hang out just waiting for one flatworm to eat just all day from the blowing. - Reef with me is asking if you could change anything in the 17,000 gallon tank, what would it be, if you can go back? - You know, I probably would have built a degassing chamber. So, water basically dripping through eight feet high plastic bioballs or Brentwood to get some more atmosphere. So, my PGP is not high. - Yep. - That would be something that we were considering building and still are. In the meantime, we changed some pipes around and it seems to be on the borderline right now. - Gotcha. - Other than that, everything else was, you had to be there, right? You added something, you didn't like the lights. It wasn't enough violet, so I added violet lights. I wanted to add more of our lives and more spectrum. We added a halide spectrum. We did some things with the flow and bought those middle abyss cannons that I think you would have not known unless you tried the other ones out. So, the answer is, we did a lot of things, but I don't think you would have known them. - So, Messiah Mitra is saying he would make it bigger. Would looking back, would you have made the tank bigger? Are you happy with the 17,000 gallons? - No, I'm very happy with the 17,000. - It's a beautiful thing. Yeah, I mean, everybody wants to go bigger, but that's big. That's big. What talked to us about the coral feeding and all that stuff, I know you've been experimenting with the concoction from Allen Vaux. Are you guys still using that concoction on the 17,000 gallon as well as the other tanks at Polar Reef? - Yes, yes, yes, yes. I would say we use that concoction two to three times a week. 200 grams of it, basically throughout the tank and all the other tanks in the back. And it's pretty tough to like, like you gotta shake it up and loosen it up a little bit. It takes a good hour in order for the stuff to dissolve. And once it's dissolved and mixed and shaped, we just pour a little bit in each tank. With the 17,000 getting most of it, 170 grams and the other 30 grams goes around the house. - And just to refresh our memories, my understanding of the concoction is that essentially you're taking, you're kind of supercharging bacteria, right? And the bacteria are what the corals would consume. So you're kind of like loading up the bacteria with all this pretty awesome stuff like aminos and other kinds of coral foods and elements that would be nutritious for corals to take in. So you're kind of like loading up the bacteria and assuming that the corals would be consuming that bacteria. - Yeah, I think it's a mixture of coral food like clam juice and clams and marine plankton and marine algae. And you know, I don't know what else he puts in it, but the bacteria is one of the probiotic flactobactylus. And there's two colonies of that in there. The skeptic people say there's no evidence that coral take up probiotics. However, fish do eat it and fish do poop it out. So in my view, it's good either way. I've seen very good feeding responses, particularly from the LPS side really get blown up, fat, meaty, happy chalices look better. And that's one way we feed them. And the other way we feed them is we take three or four different strains of phyto, individually in the bottle, and we make our own solution. And then I take a little bit of aquiferous food, a little bit of fondness food, a little bit of benefits, a little bit of refried, a little bit of squirt from, you know, amino is a vitamin and I'm shaking it all up. And I'll pour that in the tank also. And of gania power we use, we use a lot of recompression food in there, and we make our own concoction. It doesn't have the bacteria, but it has all the phyto and all that good stuff for the corals. - So you mentioned LPS and what have you seen a good, you know, their fleshier positive response. What about SPS? Have you noticed any difference with the SPS? - I think maybe the polyps are hairy or the colors are better, but you know, that's a test that we need to do we'll really do it when we get the cubes up and we can rank it and so forth. - Yeah, yeah. So Sturgis Reef is wondering, well, let me before I get to Sturgis Reef's question, what about the ICP testing? I know you guys are using multiple ICP testing, you know, sources to what to dial that stuff in. - Yeah, we're only used to, we use fauna and ocema. So they both go to Europe. And, you know, the MS test from ocema allows me to get into a little bit more detail where the fauna test will say not detectable, but the ocema will give you a reading as low as it might be. - Right, right. So that kind of gets down to those levels that might be on the technical. - Both give me fluoride. Now the ocema was actually also giving me my end up test, my organic content and Claude tells me there's a way of doing it on the fauna test. You just got to subtract the numbers or something like that. I haven't figured out how to do it yet. - But my last one came back so low that I don't even want to try it again. (laughing) - Andrew, are there any elements that you guys have been paying more attention to in the last year versus other stuff? Like, have you started like, all right, you kind of paid, you know, you kind of seeing certain things with certain elements and well, maybe we should be dosing that sort of thing. Is that, you know, popped up with you guys in terms of the 17,000 gallon tank and the other tanks? Epolo. - Well, so like iodine really, it's valuable depending on how much nori you're putting in a tank, how many times of day is that nori going in a tank? So iodine is one where it's very food specific and, you know, I could go with something from as light as 30 mils or 40 mils where other drugs are, other elements I'm doing three to 500 mils at a time. So that's 151, also selenium. There's plenty of foods and stuff that have selenium in them. So we got to be careful with that. But no, I think the fluoride and fluorine at the over one level of 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, keeping, I would say, molybdenum, keeping the molybdenum 12 and above, even up to 15. That seems to help the coral. - Yep. - As long as vanadium is above one and a half, that's good enough for us. Same thing with the zinc. Iron is a tricky one because I run UV and ozone and it precipitates fast. So we have to use extra very extra heavy dose of iron and we do it twice a day. And I'm just thrilled if it comes back and I even have the reading whatsoever. - Yeah, as I was going to say, I hardly ever get any reading for iron. - Right. - And iodine is a tough one to kind of lock in for me too, but ever since I started dosing fluoride, I've definitely noticed the blues pop in more and acros. Is that something you guys have noticed? - Yes. - Yeah, yeah. You just got to be careful with that stuff, over-dosing is not a good thing. Switching. - And then there are certain corals like ganis, which you know, like probably like manganese and if I have a gani in trouble or not doing well, we put them in a vat with mn, extra mn in it. - And that seems to help him? - Yeah, it does. - Oh, yeah. I've had an issue with one of my red ganis that I did a couple of bass and oxalenic acid. It didn't help it. If I should try the manganese, correct. - Magnese and vanadium, just to see what happens. And very low light. - Very low light. So speaking of lighting, man, what, anything changed in terms of lighting in the 17,000 gallon tank? Are you guys still kind of, you're using halides in that tank in combination with LEDs? Talk to us about anything new with lighting in the 17,000 gallon tank? Anything new at this point? - Well, we didn't stall all about a year ago. Orchids makes a four-pock, 325 watt fixture called the Amazonia's. And we converted all those four pucks to all violets. And so we have, well, two, three, I think we have four of them around the tank. And they're on a schedule, ramping up and ramping up, at a tight point around noon, 80, 85% violet. And then by 7, 38 o'clock, they're 10, 20, 30% left. And it just makes the blue coming out of the max spec fixture, a lot more dimensional. And so we have four of those and our prime four tans each. So we have 16 violet tans. - And between, let's say, 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. The only lights in the tank are those. And two reef bright strips, which are 80 inches long. And it's a very beautiful color. And I call it, it's the romance period. You go down and you see beautiful, I can't even film it, it's so beautiful. - Can't capture it, it's true beauty on video. - Yeah, yeah, can't do it. - Yeah. And then we're using those same lights, the Amazonas 325, up in the 2500 gallon tank. Instead of one being violet, in fact, instead of all four being violet, there are actually, there's two blue channels. Let me just make sure there's a blue channel, a violet channel and two white channels, warm white and cool white. And we have six of those on the tank, the 2500, along with two 400 watt metal halide radium 20 case. And that's the majority of the light in the 2500. - And the 25 owner, yeah. - And we can run that tank the white, we can run it really high and powerful. And it looks like a 10 K tank, or we can make the white at 40% and make the 14 K tank. And we can highlight that even more with the radiums when they go on and make that water basically, what's the word I'm using when it shines in it. - Oh, well. - Pluruses. - Yeah, it's great. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. You get the glitter lines, glitter lines. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. What, so what would you say, man, is your favorite look in terms of lighting? Are you a full spectrum guy? Do you like the blue light or do you like that variety in terms of different times of the day? - The nicest light I think is the 120 80 in the lab. That's running 400 watt, 208 of a 208 gallon, 400 watt, 20 K radiums halides with two T fives and one reef bright 450 nanometer supplement bar. And one UV orthic supplement bar. And there you get the halides, you get the extra blues, you get the extra violets, and then you get the T fives, which are pretty broadband. And we use the coral plus or the aqua blue special. - Yeah. - So it's more of a white light. - So it sounds like you get some. - Yeah, that's my nicest looking light. - Sounds like you get some good pop with that combination. - Yes, yes, yeah. And I'm assuming some pretty good growth and colors in the corals. - Yes. - Yeah, nice. So I don't have a picture of this, but what's going on with a clam tank? - We're back in business. - You know, the first few days they drop off and they don't stick and you find them on the floor and they drop and the urchin carries them around. And you lose a few that way. But once they stick on, we're not running halides on the clam tank. - Keith, we had a difficult time because our clam tank is like very shallow. I couldn't get the color spectrum that I wanted to get and the par I wanted to get without cooking the clam. So we went with two T fives and four radians. And two refrites on the back and the front. And we're able to bring the white lift in the white from the red with the key fives. - Yeah. - And use the blues on the radians and also on those refrites. - So how hard do you have the clams been? You know, I mean, it seems like I used to have a lot of success keeping clams. Didn't really, I don't think I did anything special. I had them in halide, T five combo late, you know, lit tanks. But I can't keep the clam alive. I haven't tried in the last few years, but I just really didn't have a lot of successes. Have you noticed anything with that in terms of any changes of jeopardy of clams? - Sure. The mantel will, the first thing that starts to happen is the clam gets less reactive. Then you'll see the next day, instead of looking gapped out a little bit, you'll see the mantel start tripping up and the clam not opening up and then it's totally unreactive to you and the mantel is completely shriveled up. At that point is the throw the clam away. It's gone. We have a vet who is on call who is now going to start looking at the differences between these clams and healthy ones and to see if it's bacterial or if it's parasitic and try to figure out a way around this. - Yeah, they just seem to be a lot trickier these days to keep. I mean, I love clams, but it's a... - Yeah, we've been feeding them CIDO two to three times a day. And we think that's been helping also. - Do you think the size of the clam matters? Do you think like the smaller clams or it's just gonna be tougher to keep in terms of longevity? Do you think the larger clams are gonna have a better shot? - I think the clams that have the best shot of the races and... What's the other one? The gigas and midsize and loads. - Yeah. - And then the Crotia and then the maximum. - Have you guys picked up any of those teardrop maximas that have been kind of filtering back into the marketplace? I know years and years ago, there was like a few of those that circulated and they were awesome. - Yeah, we have not this time around, but I would love to. - A blue teardrop clam is just to me like about as good as it gets, almost as good as a blue squammy. - Yeah, yep, we have a few of those. - Yeah, yeah. I miss those things. Let me thank a couple of people in terms of the super chats. I don't think I thanked Rob Alexander. Thank you, Rob, I really appreciate that super chat. And Rob of State, New York, thank you, man. Always a pleasure comments. Always enjoy your guest key. Thank you, Andrew, for sharing your reef knowledge and the passion we all share. Appreciate that, Rob. - Andrew, what about... So you don't have just a reef tanks, man. You got some pretty incredible koi ponds or one incredible koi pond plans for more. You wanna give us an update on the current koi pond and what you are planning for the future? - Yeah, so we built two koi ponds and I built them for beauty and for aesthetics and for lighting and waterfalls and people wanting me to use bottom drains and we use bottom drains. But at the end of the day, the pond itself was in a bowl, essentially. And the koi pond should really be a pool with vertical walls, almost gunite, fiberglass. You get a lot more gallons that way. A koi do a lot better than a huge rectangle. - So we are gonna be building two new koi ponds in the backyard. - We're showing a picture of the mock-up of the two ponds. - You add that? - Yeah. - Okay. - I'm looking for it now. You didn't show it yet, did you yet? - I did, it gets about 20 seconds or so and it'll come through. - Okay, any event, one will be 35 by 18 and the other one will be, there they are. Another one, the smaller one, where we get new koi and we could quarantine koi in here, frankly. But our experience has been that flukes and bugs are more difficult with flukes, with koi than mowing fish. - Oh, really? - Yeah. - I think it's that big, thick slime coat that doesn't allow the meds sometimes to get to the animals, to get to the past. And so a lot of times you have to potassium, permanganate the water first to take the slime off, then treat it with, and then there's all, fluke then there's all, hit it again a few days later and you gotta constantly be scraping the fish. - Can they, are they resilient? Can they handle that sort of scraping? - Yeah, yeah, no problem. - Yeah. Wow, that's a, so you basically ran out of room in the current koi pond. - Ran out of room and they'd rather not have me take home the champions, the competitors, the ones that got appointments in a natural stone pond, as opposed to an 18-inch sitting wall that's completely smooth. - So how do you, how do you set those? I mean, obviously they're big tanks and all that sort of thing. What kind of structure do you put into those tanks? I mean, obviously they're big tanks and all that sort of thing. Is there like some sort of rubble rock structure or sand in those things? No. - No, it's very similar to building a pool. You build it with an iron rod, but waterproof iron rod coated with zinc or something. You do a monolithic pour, concrete pour, down usually five, six feet. You either put water-proofing agents in the cement or you then coat the cement with a thin layer of fiberglass. And then over the fiberglass, there's a black gel coating that you use that you get all the fiberglass. So the fiberglass becomes your insulator. - And the gel coat essentially becomes your gunite in the pool. - Gotcha. And in terms of like, you know, water temperature, what are the coil like, you know? And how do you maintain that? I mean, you live in the New York area, you know, it gets, it can get cold in the wintertime. How hard is it to kind of maintain a constant temperature? - So once a month, we allow it to go down to 50 degrees and we don't feed out fish that month. - And that's the month that a lot of the fish are carrying eggs anyway. And you don't want them to release those eggs in the water. So by keeping the water at 50 and not feeding the fish, they absorb those eggs themselves. - Okay. - And then after that month, you send the heater back to 58 to 60 again, you start feeding them a balanced food, some wheat germ, but, and then as you get into the spring and June and the water starts heating up at 68 to the 70s, you can start feeding growth food again, especially in the summertime and mid 70s, we're feeding pellets, hecari, Japanese growth pellets four times a day, five times a day. And that's the way we do it. And we cover the pond when it reaches in the 60s. So the water, the heat doesn't escape, it's like a big giant bubble. And in this particular situation, we'll have brick walls up that we will be able to cover in a sky like glass. Cover in a sky like glass, fixture, sealing and use the brick as footage and build a permanent structure. That doesn't need to go up and down when, when the wind is over. - Gotcha. Todd from champion lighting supplies, wondering assuming the smooth pool harbors less parasites and disease, is that just less surface area for that stuff to take hold? - Yes. The vinyl, I guess the vinyl bottom, there's a lot of, there could be a lot of folds and a lot of weird things happening and bacteria can get in there. - What about birds of prey? Is that ever an issue that they're picking stuff off? - Not with these sides. - No. - Too big. - Yeah, wait, wait. These are, the average size is three feet. - Holy crap. (laughs) So you don't have any bald eagles around that might wanna take a stand battle. - Not yet. - Not out of the realm of possibility, right? - We have a kite that blocks the sun, that blocks bird from seeing the water from the air. - Okay. - And then we have an 18 inch sitting wall which blocks, you know, other vormates like raccoons. - Yeah. - From doing it. - Yeah. - And so far there's so much work and plumbers and electricians and cars that come from 630 in the morning on. The driveway is extremely busy and the birds don't really-- - Don't dig that. - Right. They don't dig the traffic. So Blue Reaver's wondering when is Andrew setting up the shark tank? Is that another, is that no, not happening? - No, I just don't room for a shark tank and the thing I would be considering would be like a freshwater, discus, Amazon. - Oh, cool. - Neon tetra planted tank. That would be-- - That'd be nice. - Yeah. - Yeah, that's right. That's kind of like what's sort of missing. - Yeah. - Yeah. - And they get a lot of views. - Yeah, I'm right. I mean, fresh water is a hell of a lot more popular than saltwater, right? In terms of people that are in that part of the hobby and also in terms of YouTube. I forgot to ask this one question, man. And then I'll let you go because I know you got a lot going on, Andrew. And that's-- I forgot to ask this question from Sturgis Reef about ammonia dosing. Are you guys doing that at all? Have you ventured into that area? - I mean, we start a cycle with ammonia chloride. And but no, I have always felt that we have enough fish. And Yelson feeds these fish two lures a day and four to five pros in a day that the extra ammonia dose-- I get enough. Now, would I try it in another tank, a lightly stocked tank where there's less fish? Would I dose ammonium by carb? Maybe I would. I have not tried it today. - Yeah. I hear you, man. It's not broke. Don't fix it. - Yeah. - You know? All right, Andrew, man, any anything else you wanted to touch on, you want to do any update in terms of philanthropy or any of those efforts going ongoing, anything we missed talking about tonight, you wanted to mention? - Let's see what's going on. Besides doing a lot of a sponsoring at these events, the next big thing will be at 225 children's hospitals that pediatric cancer. And we are trying to hire a marketing agency so that maybe we can get a guest celeb that the kids know and you would think between ocean education and kids with cancer, there ought to be pro bono. There ought to be celebs that want to do it. - Yeah. And it should be like, hey, kids, this is the rock and these videos are really important and have fun watching them. They don't need to-- - They just need to introduce them. So we're going through that now. Who do the kids know? How do we get to these people in the video? And there are plenty of people that do ocean conservation. - Yep. - There are plenty of celebrities that have been touched by cancer. The third one though, will the kids know them is sort of difficult. - Yep. - So that's on the agenda. - Georgia's Reef says, yeah, here John Senna does a lot with the children's hospitals. So yeah, there's a number of them out there. - Yeah. - Yeah. - All over the country, even the charity is sunrise. They actually run summer camps for kids with cancer and their family, and their siblings for free. But the other part of it is we visit the hospitals and cheer them up with these big trunks. And then the trunks live the 360 goggles, and the kids get to choose the goggles while they're in fusion, and someone's watching what they're watching on an iPad, etc., etc. And then there's a whole bunch of hospitals we don't physically go into, but we have our programming go virtual in. And when you add up four of those hospitals, it's like 225 hospitals from the United States. And so it's a pretty big deal between 25,000 kids. - It's incredible, man. So Andrew, how can people watching this dream or that are going to be watching on the replay? How can they help? - Obviously, go to the Polar Review YouTube channel, subscribe there, and follow them on Instagram. But how else can people help? I mean, you guys really do an incredible thing for the hobby in terms of all the research that you're doing, but also all the things you're doing in terms of the charity work, and also putting out all this knowledge to help educate people. - How can people help? - I think anybody that has a direct connection to a, I'll throw a few names out, like The Rock, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Aniston, the Asian guy, what's his name, that plays on the movies with the tiger, the getting lost, though he's getting lost in Las Vegas. - You know what I'm talking about, yeah. - Yeah, so we need celebrities to make this big. And I'd love to do it, not paying or not going through a marketing agency. - Gotcha. - Yeah. - And there are plenty of people that know people. - Right, they got from the hangover. - Yeah, that's it. - Yeah. - What's that actor's name? Somebody knows and dropping into the chat. Yeah, Fred, Fred, you know, somebody, I think it's the name of this. - Yeah. Love that act. Oh, Ken, Ken John? - Yeah. That's it. - That's it. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Yep. - That's a possibility. But you know, these are all, every agency has their people, and they tend to go through creative artists, and you got to pay the agency. I was trying to go through the back door, and like-- - Yeah. All right, folks. So if you know any celebs. - Oh, it's a person. Yeah, I know this person and this place, and this is an incredible charity, will you work with them for 20 minutes, introducing the videos? - Tracy Morgan's like big into fish tanks. What about him? - I don't think the kids don't-- - Kids don't know. - The kids don't know. - No. - Yeah, I think that guy's hilarious. - Yeah. Kids don't know. - Yeah. I hear you. All right, well, listen, Andrew, man. Thank you so much for taking the time, again, tonight, to join us. I know you got a lot going on there. You got a big trip to prep for. So good luck with that. Have an awesome time. - Have the Haitian race tank come in. - Oh, the Haitian live rock? - Yeah. - Actually, that tank has turned around since I got rid of the Karab Sea live rock. Like right away? - Pretty damn quickly, you know, after I made the swap, I was expecting this very big, ugly phase because the Haitian live rock was in my cryptic sump for a couple of years. It wasn't getting any light at all. So I just assumed, like, as soon as I put it into the display tank, of course, I ramped the lights back down to like 10%. And I raised them 10% every week for like, you know, eight weeks. And then every week I would chuck a couple of pieces of the Karab Sea live rock out of the cryptic sump. - Right. - And so let me tell you man, the Sienna was, it's still, there's still a little bit there, but I'm knocking on wood here. - You did, you put sand in already? - No, no sand. I'm not doing sand. I'm not doing sand. So I'm, I'm waiting on some new lights from GHL and I'm going to be away next week. - A lot of new lights coming, by the way, Keith. - And you like anything in particular that's intriguing? - I've just been told, I've seen one or two, I know coral view, I know coral view in combination with tulio has a light that gets very bright, looks like, like a brick. I know that, I know Julian sprung his partner ring with someone also, yeah. And I don't know, people continue to like lights like refies, the louis that we have here, people like them, although they get mixed opinions. The, I didn't just think, I mean, even who's the guy that's building these things now? There's a guy out there, I think it's, he calls himself atlas or, I forget the name, it's basically a huge aluminum reflector and he puts his own dials in and it resembles an Oozio 14 K hairline bulb. - Ow, I think I know you're talking about, yeah, yeah. - I'm trying to look them up on Instagram here, I think it'll come to me. What about reef breeders? Have you ever tried those? I've heard great things about reef breeders. - No, I never tried them. Friend dong uses reef breeders, loves them, you don't dong. - Yep. - Dongs though, yeah. But no, my, all my frag tanks, Andrew, I stopped selling frags online like months ago, so now I've got a bunch of mini colonies. So if you guys need any acros in the, in the new tanks and hit me up, because I got some frickin', I got a problem going on here and I'm gonna go to a frag swap Boston Reefer Society in November, but. - So, so we're gonna go too. - Oh good, cool, cool. - Maybe that's where I'll swap with you. - Yeah, cool, awesome, yes, quantum champion lighting supplies. - That's it, that's it, that's it. - Yeah, quantum or quanta? - Yeah, quanta, quanta, yeah, yeah. - I mean, there's all sorts of stuff going on in life, I mean, you know, and I think the old could do the job, I mean, it's, and by the way, radiance still work, it's just that, you know, you can sometimes you come down in the middle of the night and there's something blaring is there seems to be ghosts sometimes in there. - Well, your patty just put a comment on there about middle halides, bring back, let's bring back mental halides. And you're using them, I love them, you can't go wrong with them. - I honestly, today, when I was looking at those two, two, 80 twins, I almost took all the LEDs off one of them and put halides on the other. - Yeah. - Yeah, it's just something about that light that you can't, it doesn't look like it's just spectacular. - Yeah, I love the pop one on the four and a watt, 20K radiance, can't beat that. - And if you mix them with T5s and other supplementable, unbelievable combination. - Yeah, and you only need the halides on, I don't know, four to six hours a day, we run them from like 10, 30 or 11 to four, that's it. - Rich Colombo says, "Yeah, I need a source for HQI ballast, such a pain trying to fix them. I've got a couple of magnetic ballast that I've got sitting on the floor that I don't use anymore and they just crap out on me." But then after a while, Tullio, he does a bunch of HQI ballast. - He's doing magnetic now, right? - Yeah. - Yeah, yeah, there you go, Rich. Hit up Tullio. - Reef right, yeah. - Alright Andrew, man, well listen, thanks again for taking the time. - My pleasure. - And I want to thank the sponsors one more time, I want to thank you and Polo Reef. Make sure to check out Polo Reef's new YouTube video that drops this Friday in the fourth episode of the Polo Summer Relaxation Series. Polo Reef gives us a moment to relax to the viewing of stunning fish close-ups highlighting the vast collection of rare and beautiful reef fish housed at Polo. Make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel at Polo Reef for video drop notifications. Champion Lighting and Supply, besides being in place for hobbyists to purchase saltwater aquarium supplies online, Champion Lighting is also a wholesale distributor for many popular brands. If you own an aquarium store or an aquarium service company, contact Champion Lighting through their website at championlining.com to set up a wholesale account. Todd and his crew will be at Reefstock Chattanooga on August 24th and 25th, so stop by and say hello. Fauna Marine, I do use the Fauna Marine Reef ICP Total Test Kit, which gives a quick, accurate and easy overview of over 90 water values and reef aquariums from macro elements to trace elements and pollutants. You get a complete overview of corresponding dosage and action recommendations. I'm now a certified Fauna Marine ICP test advisor, so if you want help interpreting results and select Reef Fum, you can also purchase the ICP Test Kit as well as other Fauna Marine products at reeffum.com. - Hey Keith. - Yeah. - Did he teach you how to get the proper endock, your carbon? - Yeah. We've been going back and forth on that one, so there is a way to calculate that, and according to quality, it will be eventually soon on those ICP test results, so yeah. - Yeah, yeah. I know Oshamo is doing it now. - Yeah, yeah. - Yep. - I scored very well. - Nice. - Yeah. No, people have been asking about that. A big thank you to Paul, who is the moderator, as well as the president of the Boston Reefer Society. Please join and support your local reefing clubs. They are so, so important to this hobby. Also, I want to let you know that all episodes of Rap With Reef Bum are available as podcasts on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, and Amazon. The next Rap With Reef Bum live stream will be on Tuesday, August 13th, I'm off next week. This will be coral farming pioneer Vincent Challyas, so that's going to be a great episode. We're going to be talking about some rare corals that he's been diving over, so, and collecting. Please check that out. You can check out the full upcoming schedule of guests on reefbum.com under the YouTube section. Until next time, be safe and be well, for later. I got it.