it's not every day when I go out to eat Vietnamese food and then I see next door
there's a brand new fish store that popped up out of nowhere and not only that I don't
recognize most of the fish that are in there so cool hi my Irene with Girl Talks Fish and
today I am 20 minutes north of Denver and we're gonna check out Ray's Tank [Music]
so Eric here is the manager and son of Ray from Ray's tank and tell me a little about
the store what are you guys all about of course we do mostly fresh water monster
fish we do primarily fresh water but what makes us different is that we do fish that
get a lot bigger than just any other store we try to stick with something a little more
unique than you would typically see at PetSmart so we carry more of the monster
fish species that are gonna get two feet four feet even eight feet in some places that is a
I personally only keep nano fish so why did you guys decide to go into the monster fish market
that's just what my dad Ray was always into when he was a kid he started off with smaller stuff
like everyone else does but the bigger stuff is just what he's into now he just got bored of all
the smaller stuff and now the big fish is what he's really into why would you tell people to get
into monster fish what's the attraction a monster fish I like personally I like seeing seeing my
fish so the smaller nano fish not that I don't like them yeah um you got to get a huge school I
mean like a hundred of them or in a larger tank especially because I like the larger tanks so I
like to see the larger fish in the tank and then being able to feed them like big chunks of tilapia
big chunks of food What's your routine like how do you take care of so many tanks in the fish store
so when we come into the store first we have some of these tanks sectioned off but we're gonna be
cleaning we clean tanks every single day we have to maintain these tanks all the time because the
tank gets like cleaned I don't know once a week or usually depending on how overly stocked we
have a tank we'll clean it every two or three days sometimes for the stingrays too we'll do it every
two or three days just to keep the nitrates and every any levels down because a lot of these tanks
are overstocked yeah of course it's a fish store it's a fish store it's meant to just be held here
and not mentally kept forever so everything pretty much can go in the store so is it just manual
uh like the the siphons that you would use at home or how do you guys do water changes
we do a python they help hook up directly to the mop sink doing buckets would uh definitely be a
huge thing I look a lot bigger than I am now if I were doing buckets all the time um any tanks that
look foggy we'll do a small water change on and then any tanks or act where the fish are acting
funny we'll do a water change on that as well and anytime they're not eating right so that's kind of
our our exact time to really do a water change and we test some of these bigger tanks as well to make
sure all the levels are all all good as well okay typically for a monster fish tank you can run I
always advise a sponge filter plus something else so you can run your sponge filter if you want to
do a hang on back or a canister depending how much you want to stock in your tank I always like two
filters just in case for the worst case scenario of your air pump going going out or your uh
your hang on back just stop working all of a sudden you have an alternate filter that
can provide aeration agitation to the water so that can keep the fish oxygenated and they can
have air breathing air all the time so that way when you find out it's stopped working you can
actually get the other piece that you need to start getting your filters going again and then
you still have one running at the same time. One of the questions for my audience is how
do you decide what species of fish to bring into the store all right um so honestly there's not a
whole ton of thought into it besides what we think looks cool we do some research on them look at the
care that they need nothing super complicated for the fish something that looks cool and
that's going to get big now I think the question that everybody wants to know is how in the world
do you feed all these fish monster fish so we we mostly keep them at staple diet tilapia and shrimp
so we'll cut up fillets of tilapias this is stuff you get from the grocery store yes okay
okay you can get them at the grocery store we get them from a wholesaler that we make sure there's
no extra additives or chemicals so some stores will sell you um frozen food with like baking
soda or some sort of additive to it a preservative that the fish aren't a big fan of because they can
smell it and or the taste is not exactly right when you eat it raw so we try to get something
with no extra additives or chemicals to them that way they can get the actual taste of the tilapia
and they're not really messing up with your tank too much maybe whether it's baking soda in there
they're leaving the food at the bottom because they're not eating it then you have your ammonia
or nitrate spikes so you're mostly feeding frozen foods basically and then anything else
frozen foods that's mostly for our predatory monster fish smaller fish you can stick them
mostly with like the pellets um flakes and all that as well we mostly do pellets small pellets
um just because I tend to make less of a mess compared to the flakes yes
um and it really depends on the fish as well some fish are less picky so we can always do
pellets for them instead of always having to do tilapia and shrimp for everything else you guys
sell tilapia frozen tilapia to like customers who want it yeah we do have our frozen tilapia
and shrimp that we know are has any chemicals in there or anything we can we always do tell
them you're welcome again from the grocery store just make sure there's nothing else added on there
we just know our the ones we get don't have any extras. So for a beginner who is walking
into your store for the first time, what advice would you give them what fish would you recommend
etcetera etcetera definitely the first thing we let them know about is your tank cycle
what have you done to cycle your tank did you just put water in there yesterday if that's
the case we need more time come back later we will give you all the chemicals you need
to start it with some live nitrifying bacteria from Fritz is one of our recommendations your
water dechlorinator some people just don't even put the chlorinator in there depending on how
far beginner they are or how how much they know about fish so they need the dechlorinator their
aquarium salt is one thing that everybody does but aquarium salt I do recommend that in the tank
because it's actually in a good antibacterial anti-fungal sort of remedy it's natural remedy
all fresh water ponds and lakes also have some sort of salt content in there so we try to get
them in our tanks as well but it does depend on the fishing stock if you stock scale this
fish some fish have more salt sensitivity so a lot of times just to be safe we do uh
maybe 25% dosage or 50% depending on how sensitive the fish are and we'll always let them know
depending on what fish they're going to get okay okay so you help them with the cycling process and
then what about first monster fish for beginners what do you recommend for beginners a monster fish
um a lot of the times I like to do the bichers okay the uh albino senegalus bichers those are
really or just any senegalus bichir species those are just really uh very hardy fish
they're pretty easy to take care of as long as you can just maintain your tank every so often
so and do you put anything with them you can put stuff with them as well you can once you get the
hang of the bichir you can start doing your gars um maybe your clown knife or something like that
as well for arowanas as well so a lot of people keep those with bichirs so those are actually a
pretty good one to keep with them maybe you want to start with a Senegal you can start
with something bigger because if you're going to do larger fish like the arowanas you might
want to start with an [endlicheri] instead of the senegalus. Okay if you missed my last
tour make sure to check out the cleanest fish store I have ever visited. Also huge thank you
to my members for your support I love reading your comments and also getting your input on
what fish to get next take time to enjoy your aquariums and I'll see you in the next video!