Ep 23: The Impacts of Invasive Species, with Robbz Olson
Robbz Olson is one of the hosts of the Aquarium Guys Podcast. Although mostly focused on aquarium fish, The Aquarium Guys also do “out of the tank” episodes covering related topics, like fishing. I was recently invited to join them to talk about fly fishing, and now Robbz is returning the favor. As an avid aquarium hobbyist, Robbz has (perhaps unfortunately) become quite familiar with the issue of invasive species around the country, as many of these species can trace their history back to the aquarium world. We discuss several impactful invasive species, how these species are a detriment to wild environments in a variety of ways, and some ways people have tried to combat the issue.
Website: http://www.aquariumguyspodcast.com/
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Katie
You're listening to the Fish Untamed Podcast, where we talk all things fishing, conservation, and the outdoors. today on the show I'm talking to Robbz Olson host of the aquarium guys podcast. all right folks welcome to episode number 23 of the Fish Untamed Podcast. today I had a really interesting conversation with Robbz Olson from the aquarium guys podcast which seemed like an unlikely match at first but I was talking to robs and he mentioned that he was looking to have someone come on his show to do kind of an intro to fly fishing episode as sort of an out of the box series so I went on the aquarium guys which if you haven't listened to it go ahead and just search the aquarium guys and it should pop right up but then we talked about maybe having him as a guest on Fish Untamed. And while I'm not as interested in the aquarium side of things, Robbz mentioned that being a part of that world, he has quite a bit of experience learning about and dealing with invasive species. A lot of the invasive species we're dealing with in the U.S. started because someone dumped their tank of fish into their local waterway when they were, you know, over having their pets. And my impression up until this conversation was that most of these invasive species were detrimental because they directly competed with native fish in the area. And while that is an issue, one of the big things I learned in this conversation is about all the other ways that these invasive species can have an impact. It goes way beyond just the direct competition or predation between the invasive species and the native ones. But I really enjoyed this talk, super packed with information, and just very interesting. So without further ado, here is my chat with Rob's Olson. All right, awesome. I usually start by asking people about their fishing background since that's, you know, the theme of the podcast. So if you'd like to talk about your fishing background, you're more than welcome to. Also, maybe just a little background on the whole aquarium side, because that, as much as I was an out-of-the-box episode on your show, this is kind of an out-of-the-box episode a bit for mine talking to the aquarium guys. So maybe a little background on both.
Robby
sounds great well again I'm Robbz Olson nice to meet everybody on the on the podcast thanks for having me again Katie I am part of the aquarium guys podcast and I'm here to talk to you about different invasive species and maybe learning a little bit about my world in aquariums to dive in. you gave me a list of details to go over so again I'm from central northern Minnesota and my fishing experiences completely come from around the area. I live in the epicenter, see Perm, Minnesota, 30 miles in one direction. That whole stretch is mile per square mile, the most densely populated lakes in the entire world. If you look at the map, there's more blue than green. You drive a mile, you're seeing seven lakes. It's incredible. Some of these lakes don't even have names. There are so many. They always say that Minnesota is the land of 10,000 lakes. It's actually 18,000 plus.
Katie
I am so jealous of that. I've looked at maps of Minnesota and parts of Canada that are the same way, and it's just like a sea of blue, and it just looks like a boater's paradise where you could get around via boat better than car probably.
Robby
Some of the places that they have around here, they actually have restaurants and other businesses on the lake where you can just fish or have your house in the lake. You drive a couple of miles down the lake and you're at, you know, like a pizza Mexican joint and you park your boat on a giant, you know, business dock. It's, they even like do a delivery right to your boat. There's a lot of, so yeah, it's absolutely, as you described, the only thing that I think we could use in Minnesota is airboats. That way we can actually cross across, but that's more of a Florida thing.
Katie
Yeah. Is that just because it's kind of shallow? Like, could you do that if it's just like shallow between lakes or is there not that kind of set up there where it's, is it more deep lakes with land in between?
Robby
It's a lot of what they call kettle lakes. So a lot of lakes they have in here. And again, we have every type of lake. The kettle lakes look just like a perfect bowl cut out of the ground. They'll go 30, 35 feet. And some of them are not spring fed. So they're just rain entered. They're not even a river connected so there's not a lot of marshlands between a lot of the lakes like you'd assume okay everglades you'll see the kind of the same amount of blue on the map but it's all kind of connected and it's super marsh that's why okay boat is because they have to use airboat to traverse because airboats are inherently more expensive so these you'd have to travel you know a farmer's field between lakes it's just not cohesive to have a airboat
Katie
so I assume that's just using the the standard like canoe portage you know between between bodies of water
Robby
the you know the boundary water natural area I think you had an expert on your podcast talk about his love and passion of the boundary waters and he was dead on that that whole portage there's no motorized vehicles back there in a lot of sections and yeah there's there's whole masses of land where you just have to buck up and carry your canoe
Katie
so is that where you got your fishing start in that area?
Robby
Not in the boundary waters. Again, I'm closer to Fargo. If you look up Perham, Minnesota, we're kind of north central. And yeah, ours is right between all the other houses and homes. It's not protected wilderness. There are state forests in the area, but again, it's more accessible with four wheelers and trucks and vehicles. And almost every lake has some sort of public access, But the lake I lived on was very small. It was it could be recognized as a pond, but it was 70 feet deep. And it has its own seven springs that we counted from year to year. Some springs would plug some spring was where you appear. But it was very interesting for us. But no, no portages by where at. That's only like an up north in the dense, dense wilderness boundary water area.
Katie
You know, that's funny you say that because I've gotten in this debate with people before. the difference between a pond and a lake, I think varies based on where you are in the country. Like where I grew up, a pond was, you know, it could be pretty big and still be a pond. You had to get to the point where you really need a boat to cross it, you know, to call it a lake. And since I've moved out to Colorado, people start calling like the tiniest things lakes. Like there are things that you could swim across in 30 seconds if they're calling lakes. And I feel like that's just such a difference around the country with what counts as a lake and what doesn't.
Robby
in Minnesota we've always had some sort of misconception of trawling lakes lakes have fish that's how you describe a lake if it has fish it's a lake well that's not necessarily true because you go down south and they have fishing ponds that are covered in fish the difference is ours when they freeze can it hold oxygen and keep fish alive because you know I just had on my podcast the pond guy and he gave us instructions on how lakes and ponds freeze and it's not about them freezing solid. It's about them freezing and not having enough space to have oxygen. So six feet is generally a rule of thumb if it can hold a fish in Minnesota.
Katie
Oh, okay. I didn't realize that. I always thought it was freezing solid too.
Robby
Yeah, it's got to be six feet. And even then, some 10 foot lakes have oxygen issues. So it varies. And the Minnesota DNR has the, probably the nation's largest fisheries in Minnesota. We have multiple fisheries across the country and you can go to our podcast aquariumguyspodcast.com and there's we have Minnesota DNR on our show and we have one that specializes in walleye farming so they they literally do walleye fisheries and they have to check these lakes to make sure that they're not going to freeze out that they're stocking for sport fishing and do a lot of research but no I i still don't know a complete accurate definition of a lake versus pond. If someone could tell me, great. But that's always been a misconception. It has fish, it's a lake.
Katie
Huh. So is like a farm pond a thing where you are or would that be like a farm lake if it's got like bass and bluegill in it?
Robby
You hear a bunch of people in the South. The South versus us, how they treat things are so different. They do ponds for different reasons. They either do it for their cattle. They do it to have water access close by their farmer's fields. They do it because they have a hobby thing where they dig a tractor and throw bass and sunfish as you say bluegills in there that is so foreign to us because the Minnesota DNR is so protective up here of our natural resources that legalities are thickened through so if you want to dig yourself a pond there's nothing stopping you you as a farmer as long as you're not within a natural lake there's lake variances of course within like a hundred yards of the lake you're allowed to dig whatever you want so you can make yourself a pond but putting native Minnesota fish into that pond you have to have licenses for you just really that free free roam no one can just build a fishing pond like you would in the south like someone finds a pond they throw bass in there on their own super illegal will get your fishing licenses revoked in some situations
Katie
that is crazy. I would I would have never even thought to I mean I would look up the legality if I were trying to you know put a pond at my house, make sure that, you know, I, I'm, you know, whatever permitted or zoned or whatever for that. But I would have never thought to look up whether I can put fish in my own pond. I would assume that it's my pond. I can put whatever fish I want in there. I know that you're not allowed to put fish in, you know, public waterways like that.
Robby
You can't just dump your fish in there, but you can't put up your own pond, nothing. That's, that's creating a separate resource that may create a disease that may get into another lake or stream. They're very, very protective of invasive species and diseases bar none. So to go even further into that, to even have a fish brought in, say you want to put one in an aquarium, that's definitely illegal in Minnesota as well. You have to have certain licenses to keep fish. They have to be under the bars of live well status. You can only keep them for so long in an enclosure. And if you do, again, you still have to have certain baiting licenses or farming licenses. Now, there are certain people in Minnesota that have private walleye farms, and these things are made for food. You'll see walleye fillets in stores. They have special licenses with the DNR. They have to submit the DNR veterinarian inspections to see the health of the fish. It's very much controlled because we're the only state that has this many lakes, and where I'm at, the only place in the world that will have that many lakes. They're very protective.
Katie
You know, that makes sense. I mean, it's one thing like here in Colorado, most of our, you know, excluding the few handful of big rivers we've got and the alpine lakes, which are pretty, you know, they're pretty isolated from everything else. Everything else is essentially reservoirs. Like we don't have a lot of just natural lakes around. If you want to fish a big lake, you're going to a reservoir. And if you're not fishing a big lake, you're fishing something that you hiked in a couple of miles to get to. And it's way up at, you know, 10,000 feet. Not a huge risk of someone's, you know, aquarium spilling out into that. But yeah, it's a completely different world, you know, where you are, where everything is water.
Robby
Yeah. Every, everywhere you go, there's water. Everybody has some sort of a lake home or cabin they go to, or at least if they're in the cities, they drive up to their lake home and cabin. It's a different experience. But my fishing, you asked before about my fishing background. And again, my fishing background's up here. So we live and breathe off of the walleye. Everybody loves fishing for walleye. That is the trophy fish. they have state limits then they have individual lake limits and they that's the most farmed fish for the fisheries up here is walleye but you know I've I fished everything that I can in Minnesota I've fished a lot of northern I love largemouth bass fishing it's probably my favorite fishing using a popper hitting hitting them crisp in the morning on the surface pan fishing we have amazingly huge crappie probably the biggest crappie I've ever seen the normal pan fish perched on fish. Uh, you know, things that we don't have a lot of is, we have some gar, you know, like a small nose, girl gar, we do not have alligator gar, stuff like that. I think the biggest fish that we have in the area would be a musk lunge. We call them muskies and those are so much fun. Yeah. So tell me about, it sounds like you've caught them before.
Katie
So tell me a little bit about the muskie fishing up there.
Robby
The only way I can describe it, it's freshwater barracuda they're absolutely massive they keep them they introduce them because they used to be in many of the Minnesota lakes and streams in the 18 late 1800s and a lot of people intentionally fished them out because they thought they were garbage fish and it's not necessarily garbage fish but they that they would you know destroy their precious walleyes or or their panfish they're trying to do so there's been DNR won't admit this but there has been introduction of muskellunge to a lot of different lakes and to be honest it has not affected populations whatsoever that's completely false it's just part of the food chain there's no way a muskellunge could wipe out anything in a lake however they're very big they're very aggressive you know 56 60 inches is not out of question
Katie
it's funny that well not funny I mean the white the wiping out of a of a species isn't funny but like it the thought of out like overfishing by hand muskies is just kind of funny to me because it's like the fish of 10,000 casts and the thought of people out there, it's not like you're fishing for largemouths that'll kind of eat whatever or sunfish that you can literally throw a bear hook out at times and get them to attack it. It's so hard to even catch a muskie that the thought of people wiping them out essentially just with standard gear is kind of comical.
Robby
Oh, and you got to remember that when they wipe out they're talking about having a family reunion and filling a small lake that may be 10 square that's an exaggeration they'll say 30 40 square acres and just filling it with boats and this is how some areas used to do and then it's not like they're intentionally doing it but that's how family reunions are done on a lot of small lakes is they'll go fishing like the whole family does they'll have eight boats out it'll be incredible and they'll spend you know a week's vacation fishing the same lake and that's why the fisheries are so important it's not that the fish can't survive on their own it's just that some of these lakes are more popular than others and they can get completely wiped out
Katie
so when you said I don't want to get off on too much of a tangent but when when you say that like some lakes are more popular than others how does one even choose a lake when there are 18 000 lakes in the state like what makes some lakes popular and some lakes not
Robby
public access versus private a lot of lakes because the DNR can only afford to put in so many public accesses to these lakes so they'll pick and choose based on lake size what type of fish are there and the population by them so if you can get a boat in there probably going to be more popular than something you can't get a boat in and you have to just like you know grab a canoe and throw it over a ditch okay fair enough that's number one number two is where's the tourist area if there's a tourist attraction, they're going to go to the easiest public access lake. There's a city an hour out from Fargo called Detroit Lakes, and there's the Detroit Lake on it. They stock that lake. It is extremely popular. It has thousands of people that visit it every year for their beaches, and the city's right on the lake. So location, and a lot of times where the people are getting their secrets. Where were they raised? Oh, I've always fished on these lakes. I'm never going to leave.
Katie
So basically if it's in a heavily touristed area and it's got a boat ramp or something, that's just like people are going to flock there because it's like the most convenient place for them to go versus somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Okay. That makes sense.
Robby
In Minnesota, it really abides by no one can own water. So this goes duck hunting, any type of fly fishing, anything you're looking for. No one owns water. So if you own land all the way around a lake, as long as it's within, I think it's a hundred feet, you have variants to cross someone's private property to get to that lake.
Katie
I am so jealous of that because we have terrible stream access laws in Colorado you can't so I know like Montana's got good ones where you know you've got up to the high water mark on a river is public and here it's like the private landowner owns up to the halfway point in that river so they own river right they've got the whole river right bank the whole way into the riverbed halfway through the stream and if someone else owns the other half or if they own the other half you can't go there you can't touch bottom you can float over it but if you even if your boat even bumps a rock or if you drop anchor you are trespassing oh yeah for a state that you know makes so much money off of outdoor recreation I cannot I can't fathom why our stream access law is so restrictive like that but it is and I'm really jealous of the states that have a little bit more lenient stream access laws
Robby
100% and the the big thing is there's still tons of private lakes I mean, there's thousands of completely private lakes because they own so much property around it. It's not that much. I mean, I think it's 100 feet. You have to look in the Minnesota DNR website exactly what it is. But it's just if you can access it within a few feet, that's the variance. And that's done for duck hunting. It's done for everything.
Katie
Yeah, and that seems reasonable. I mean, yeah, if you own, you know, thousands of acres and have a pond in the middle of it, then, yeah, people shouldn't be walking across your land to get to it. But, I mean, come on. if you've got a major river running through your property, people should be able to fish on that, as long as they're treating your land properly. That's just a rant that I get off on every time anyone talks about their stream access laws because it fires me up so much about Colorado, and I'm jealous of all you guys.
Robby
You come out to Minnesota. We'll treat you right. You might have to eat leeches, though. Apparently, some people around here do that.
Katie
Okay, well, I haven't heard of that here, So maybe we're trading off stream access laws for weird customs.
Robby
Mike Rowe, the guy from Dirty Jobs, came up here. He went for a leech baiter, right? And sure enough, they fried him up and he ate leeches.
Katie
Huh.
Robby
Not common. That's just a weird redneck thing that you hear about once in a while.
Katie
I'll have to keep that in mind if I ever come to Minnesota.
Robby
Right. But to answer your question about muskellunge, that's generally done trolling around here. There's not a lot of casting. The lures are as big as a panfish or bigger. Most people use some type of live bait, suckers, stuff like that. And it's a trolling deal. They hit exactly like a northern pike. So it's just bigger, a lot bigger and a lot more aggressive. They use spoons, stuff like that. And when you hit them, 100-pound test has no mercy on that. You have to have a massive steel leader just to be able to have hope of landing the fish It'll cut right through steel. It's an insane fish and it'll take your boat for a ride. When you land one, you got to have a nice big, we actually recommend sea fishing poles a lot of times to hit these things. It's nothing like you have to have braces, like you're doing actual deep sea fishing, but it'll pull the boat a ways. It's a big thing to land.
Katie
Have you caught quite a few?
Robby
I've caught a few. I don't intentionally try to go after them often. The lures alone are 50 bucks a piece.
Katie
Right.
Robby
too often you'll hit them though and there's people that do fish over I've got I've got a few myself but normally I'm going after a bass or northern pike himself okay that and I love pan fishing
Katie
it is so I mean when you can catch you know several dozen fish a day I don't care how small the fish is
Robby
well before we end the podcast I have to tell you my secret recipe for frying fish
Katie
you can go for that right now before I forget
Robby
all right do it now before, you're right, talk about food before we talk about invasive species
Katie
I'm down to follow any any rabbit trail we we go down so go for it right now, shoot
Robby
excellent so again my Minnesota redneck method. there's a wonderful company called shore lunch. if you don't have it you can order online you can get on amazon it is the best stuff there's a couple different varieties just get the original recipe shore lunch it's literally just like a flour batter with seasonings and all kinds of goodies you mix it with egg right you dip the fish your fish fillet and egg this is all for pan fish that I recommend and you roll in the batter that they give you and fry them you can deep fry them or you can thick pan fry them meaning you take a just a flat pan and put a you know a good half inch inch of liquid on the bottom so you're still essentially deep frying them and it works great but my deal you know mix some Lowry seasoning salt with that with just a splash of mountain dew for citrus
Katie
mountain dew, I have not heard that before but I'll have to give it a whirl
Robby
yahoo mountain dew highly recommend that's that's always the way I do fish at least once every summer
Katie
all right I'll have to give that a try the one downside I have at least where I live I mean I haven't ventured too far out but the the panfish I've caught locally have been pretty small so I've I've actually eaten them whole I gave you that recipe for trout when I was on your podcast I kind of do the panfish the same way I just I take the whole panfish cut the heads off and just grill them up like whole body but if I if I do get some that are big enough to fillet and bread I'll have to give that a try
Robby
yeah we don't have a lot of people that do that there's people from the older generation that'll that'll do that around here most of the time it's you know take a flat fillet we fillet it boneless and we just leave the skin on we just scrape skin with a spoon.
Katie
Okay. Yeah. I kind of like the skin adds, adds a little something to it.
Robby
Absolutely. Well, instead of making your listeners hungry, you invited me on number one, to, expose them a little bit to the aquarium world, but to talk about invasive species as well.
Katie
Correct. Right. So if you want to start by, just doing a quick background about your podcast and, your kind of aquarium hobby, then we can jump in. I'm sure that'll lead kind of into the invasive species world, but just a little background first would be great.
Robby
certainly so again living on a lake in Minnesota I grew up on a small private lake and I lived I had a paddle boat from like age six my mom says you're a life jacket I just had free reign to hit like anytime I ever wanted there was no like mom can I go in the boat it was just she she literally has binoculars to look in the lake to see if I'm wearing a life jacket that was the rules if there was no life jacket she came out with the boat got me brought me back in and I was grounded from the from the boat for a week it wasn't like that's a reasonable rule you're grounded from the boat they'll like take the plug out of the boat and say try it now so but no so that's where I grew up I grew up you know fishing every day during the summer and just love aquatic life and from a very young age my grandmother got me into aquariums she bred all different types of you know betas otherwise known as siamese fighting fish and I just had a aquarium as long back as I can remember So that experience and getting into different ventures, growing in the hobby, like selling fish online, doing wholesaling with my neighbor and dear friend, Jim. He's actually on the podcast with me. We decided that between us, we have probably 50, 60 years of experience and wanted to share some way the fish hobby. In 2001, aquarium fish became really difficult to distribute because of 9-11. All the flights and trying to move anything live was very low on the totem pole when everybody's worried about terrorists. So since then, there's been a massive decline nationwide on the fish hobby. And it's not just the logistics, but there's been a lot of, I hate to say it, die off of people that are experienced from the 30s to 50s. in the aquarium hobby. So the businesses, everything's online. You know, Amazon has killed the main street mom and pop shops. Aquarium businesses have closed across the country, especially here in Minnesota, Northern Minnesota. It's pretty much a Metro only thing to see a pet store, but outside of a retail chain and just a really sad deal that all this information is being lost. So we started the podcast. It's been great. We've had a lot of guests on and we really like to experience, you know, misconceptions and all this knowledge that people have, you know, recessed because it's all online and everybody wants to make a business out of their aquarium.
Katie
So do you, do you focus mostly on, or I guess not just focus, but do you have saltwater aquariums or freshwater aquariums or like, what's your, what's your passion in that world?
Robby
There's generally four things in the world that we categorize them in. Freshwater, brackish, which is 50% salt, 50% fresh. And that's kind of like a, you know, in Florida, you have fresh and salt. We have fish intermingling that are in the rest.
Katie
Like an estuary?
Robby
Right. Estuary. Climate. Saltwater and then ponds.
Katie
So I've had all of the... Pond and freshwater.
Robby
Say that again?
Katie
What's the difference between pond and freshwater?
Robby
So freshwater aquariums are generally inside. They're kept in a tank. Ponds are outside.
Katie
Oh, okay. Okay.
Robby
The whole decor.
Katie
That makes sense. So what's, what's your favorite?
Robby
I'm not going to lie to you. I'm an aquarium guy and it's going to shame me. No one's ever asked me what's my favorite and it's bar none ponds.
Katie
Really? Okay.
Robby
That's a, that's a shocker, but I love a koi. Koi are essentially interactable. You can have fish that you can feed. They're excited to see you, but you can't pet a fish. Koi, you can tell them or teach them to do tricks. You can hand feed them. They like attention. They're literally members of the family, like a cat or dog.
Katie
Really?
Robby
There's no fish like a koi. Koi essentially is just like a common carp. They're just decorative. They're originated in Asia, generally really focused on Japan.
Katie
So do you have a koi pond? And if so, did you have to get all the special permitting from Minnesota to have those?
Robby
So here's the deal. Minnesota doesn't care about ornamental fish. They only care about native species. So you can build your own pond, and as long as it's not connected to a normal waterway, You can have any fish you want into it as long as it's not on their invasive species list.
Katie
Oh, okay.
Robby
So you can’t have a bluegill, but you can have a koi.
Katie
That is so... I mean, I'm obviously not an expert, so I'm not going to say what's reasonable and what's not, but that's so backwards of what I would have guessed. I would have guessed that if you've got fish that they have there, then you'd be able to have it. But if you have fish that are completely exotic from another country, then that's when you'd have to get permitted. But it seems like it's backwards.
Robby
I think this is the perfect segue to talk about the invasive species. issues. So the thing that they're worried about, and this is done with white tail deer as well in the state, is that they're worried about not necessarily the species getting out, but diseases starting. So if you have your own pond, for instance, let's make something up and you bring in your own bluegills, your own bass, and your maintained pond outside of nature, because you're going to add food, you're going to add, clean it up, you're going to put chemicals in it, whatever else
Katie
right
Robby
it's pretty synthetic could start a disease and when that disease spreads into other lakes and then is transported with all these boats because boats again do not just stay at the same lake they go to hundreds of different other lakes because everybody travels around trying different lakes all of those diseases move and one of the examples is there's an invasive species the common carp which has been introduced carp have been introduced across the world they're a big hit for European fishers. If you talk to someone in England, their biggest fish most likely is going to be some sort of carp. That's why they go fishing in Asia and introduce carp into those waters. They have Asian carp they try to go after. They're carp enthusiasts. So in the 1800s, when everything's getting colonized and established, they added the common Eurasian carp.
Katie
So this might be a dumb question.
Robby
European carp, I apologize.
Katie
Okay. Comparing it to something like the deer, like let's say chronic wasting disease. I know that that's a big argument for not having things like high fence hunting where all the deer are concentrated or just straight up deer farming. Just having deer in close proximity because they're nuzzling, they're spreading the disease. And if that gets into the wild population, then those deer are just walking around giving it to everybody else. Now, if you have your own isolated pond, what is the mechanism that gets a disease that starts in your pond out into wild fish? If it's not connected by any means to any rivers or lakes?
Robby
Deer, blue herons, pelicans, loons, Canadian geese, ducks, anything. It's incredible the amount of stuff, even otters, fox, anything that can drag species out of it. And here's the example why I mentioned the carp. So the carp have been everywhere, and any place that they've been introduced used to have greenery, now you'll see brown water. It's because carp are diggers. They'll continually go to the bottom. They have barbels, and they dig, dig, dig, and dig, and that's their natural method. So the DNR has been trying to figure out for generations how to control these fish. Well, somebody decided to have a single goldfish. The goldfish was in someone's pond. They did not introduce the goldfish, at least this is what's acclaimed. They didn't introduce the goldfish themselves. Some predator, like a heron, like a fox, like something else, took goldfish out of the pond, ate them, and they got into a local lake. That lake had carp. So the goldfish that got introduced had a type of carp-specific herpes. So the herpes got to the waterway through a piece of dead fish that someone got from a goldfish and they found the goldfish. And in 2000, I believe it's 18, they introduced goldfish. The herpes killed every single carp in the entire waterway. Really? They had hundreds and thousands of carp showing up in the waterway. So that's one species that it was a good thing because carps are invasive around here and goldfish are just a decorative form of small carp. But that was a disease that's specific just to carp. It was a carp herpes, wiped all the carp out and left the native fish alone. But let's take another example that you'd have some other disease. It could easily wipe out the entire lake just from one fish. So that's their big concern.
Katie
So basically just like animals or people, I suppose, that are visiting both of these waterways. And they talk about that, I think, less for diseases and more for actual the invasive species themselves. You know, they warn if you've got like felt sole boots on your waders that you need to, you know, thoroughly dry them out or disinfect them before you use them between different waterways that have different sets of species. Because, you know, if something clings on to the, especially the felt on your boots, you can walk them into other waterways. But it's essentially the same thing. You know, these diseases or species are riding on the backs of, you know, whoever's visiting the waterway. And then, you know, if that just walks into a different lake, then suddenly what was produced in your pond is now wherever that other, the host carrier took it, it sounds like.
Robby
Absolutely. And I can't stress this enough. Like if I can give one message to your listeners today is that if you have something that you brought into a tank past your live well, if you have a pond, if you have an aquarium and your daughter or something wants to get rid of the aquarium. Dad, I'm done with fish. You don't have anybody to give it to. You know, talk, call a pet store, call the DNR, see if there's something. never put them in a lake or stream because those fish are essentially in a petri dish. They are built to handle different environments. It's not just about them procreating. It's about the disease that's carried on them.
Katie
Yeah. So how much, I don't want to say, I don't want to diminish what you just said, but how much of a problem is it? Like, and I don't mean, yes, it's a problem because it obviously is by what you just said, but how, how frequently is this happening? I guess like how often are people, you know, you hear about it in Florida where there's now like boas that are living there because people have decided they don't want their snakes anymore. But how much of a problem in terms of how frequently is this happening that people are releasing their aquarium fish or just fish that shouldn't be there, regardless of their, you know, tropical aquarium fish, how often are people releasing these into the water?
Robby
It's happening literally everywhere. And there's a culture that's been around, especially in the South, that they use goldfish for bait. You know, just crazy amounts of invasive species. Florida specifically has a lot of invasive species because it's the capital for pet farming. All the major fish farmed, if you have a farmed goldfish or a farm-raised guppy, it's coming from Florida. They're doing less and less importing from different Asian farms all the time. The majority comes from Florida, and that's been that way since the 60s.
Katie
Okay.
Robby
So because of that, they have all the other species, and Florida has the perfect climate so anything that gets out stays there so if you go around Florida in ditches you can find angelfish in trees you can find like you mentioned the boa it's everywhere that invasive species have hit Florida so very hard because they weren't very proactive at first in their rivers they have plecostomis those are the algae eaters you kind of see the wall marks, they grow from like I'm a six foot one man they grow from my shoulder to my fingertip in burrow themselves in riverbank so it's it's happening there more than any other place but it's happening across the united states there's places in Michigan there's places all across the midwest that it happens to and no one gives it a lot of attention because they they don't understand the impact from it so if a disease hits it you don't hear a lot of news about a disease because it wipes out the the lake and it's up to the DNR to try to fix the repercussions either have to you know chemical the whole lake to bleach it out before they can put fish back into it or it's just completely ignored because it wasn't a real big fishing spot
Katie
well yeah I'm glad you brought up the disease thing because that that what you just said kind of makes me think about how I perceived it in that you know I've I've always thought of Florida as being like the invasive species capital. like that's where people are releasing their pets and they're able to live there because it's so warm and so in my mind I'm like well in somewhere like Minnesota or Wisconsin or Montana it's so cold if someone throws a tropical fish in the water, like poor fish, it's not going to live, but it's also not going to proliferate and become a problem. But what you mentioned is the disease, which is not something I had thought of before, where I'm just like, you know what, that goldfish is not going to make it, you know, poor guy, but you know, it's not going to, it's not going to take anything over. But if it's got a disease attached to it, then that's a whole different story.
Robby
And that's not necessarily true either. So here's a couple of examples of where it beats, not just diseases, but let's just talk about the species. Okay. I'm in Minnesota. Everything should freeze there's very few fish that will live in a climate all year round underneath the ice here so if I get an angelfish it should die right well there's a couple examples example one Montana shares a similar climate to Minnesota they've released cichlids and guppies and other aquarium fish one guy just took his aquarium and dumped it in a small waterway and what he didn't realize it was connected to a fountain geyser spring heat source from the earth and those fish in the winter migrate to where the springs are and live all winter long and in the summer when everything unfreezes and thaws spread across so now we have tropical species that have found a way to survive now in Minnesota we don't have a lot of those you know geysers a lot of heat sources through the ground, but they're still finding ways. There's a example that actually was just discovered this last year. It's the red swamp crayfish. It's a very tropical fish or a tropical creature. Excuse me. It is a crayfish. And I was shocked to hear that this could possibly even survive in Minnesota. Apparently there's a waterway in Minnesota where again, somebody had it in their aquarium. They dumped it off and figured it could live the summer and then die peacefully freezing to death? Well, they lived. Apparently they, I don't like using the word evolved, but adapted to their surroundings. And now we have red swamp crayfish and normally a tropical variety living year round. They started in 2016 and they're still there year after year and really growing. And they have adapted to the cold climate. We're seeing fish do this and it's still a scare, but beyond just the disease conversation.
Katie
Wow. That is surprising to me because yeah it does make sense that if you do have like a hot spring or something that you know things could live around there but it's just it's never occurred to me because I've I've been in the same boat that you described where it's like well everything freezes you know it's not great for the individual you put in there but it'll take like basically the environment will take care of this for us but now I'm like thinking of all the places that you know what like yeah Colorado gets cold but there's places in Colorado we have warm years where things could proliferate over the winter or something like that
Robby
it's just amazing to think the amount of lack of common sense when people do this I've even seen last winter I got a call from some friends that found caiman in prior lake Minnesota this last fall really that's by a big casino down south close close to the metro and they literally found caiman black caiman small black caiman
Katie
so someone had a pet caiman?
Robby
yep and they released it in the lake
Katie
and for people who don't know, a caiman is kind of like a like an alligator type it's probably the same family
Robbz
angry much angrier than an alligator it's like a small crocodile with an attitude
Katie
I mean not the not that you want any invasive species in your area but definitely not of all the invasive species not the one you want in your in your local waters
Robby
no way that's that's that's too way too risky but yeah it's it's really sad there's another fish that's actually it's called a weather loach or a dojo loach I have a couple in my tank because I purchased them after Minnesota or before Minnesota banned them and these are guys are old when they're gone I'm never purchasing them again but these guys are from the hill streams in mountain ranges in china and they're a delicacy because they proliferate so easy they're so super hardy they actually eat them and they look like yellow small eels. There's ones that are brown and the brown ones got a lake in Michigan and have completely overtaken it. So it's not that the species are there killing the other things. They're competing now for resources with fish that are way better adapted that aren't from the local area. This species has grown twice the size that it normally does in captivity and has overtaken all panfish everything in the lake and has flooded and destroyed the ecosystem.
Katie
Huh. It's are people just really I mean, what's what's the motivation for so many people dumping their aquariums in local waterways? Is that just is it harder to get rid of them at like a pet store? Like, is it just laziness? What's what's the driving force here?
Robby
Well, I think of it like your cat or dog. If you want to get rid of your cat or dog, you hear people that just drop a kitten off in the middle of Main Street. They want, they don't want to kill it, but they don't want to be responsible for it. So something they had, they don't feel like they want to call someone because they want to get rid of it because they feel been in issues and they see water. They live in water. That seems like a really good home for them. And they just don't put a lot of thought of what it can do to that waterway. It's just lack of common sense. They're not taking the minute to think about it and they're getting rid of the pet that they didn't want. And I have yet to see a pet store besides like a Petco or a PetSmart that won't, even Petco takes them in, that won't take a fish in, no matter what it is. And if it's too big, there are people like the Ohio Fish Rescue that take in massive species. They take an alligator gar, they take an arapaima. Those things are 14 feet. People own these things? Absolutely. Really? Those aren't the invasive species, but that's just an idea of someone that grew too big and has abandonment.
Katie
there are places for it to go is the point. I had no idea that people own things like alligator gar or arapaima.
Robby
Yeah. And if you want to see this, like this is like river monsters on Discovery Channel type stuff. You can go and check out his YouTube channel, Ohio Fish Rescue, and it'll blow your mind. He converted an indoor swimming pool. He has almost, I believe now it's getting closer to a hundred thousand gallons in his home.
Katie
Okay. So my, my thought on this is that if you go to the trouble to get something like an alligator gar or an arapaima I i wouldn't expect that you're the type of person to then be like oh no I gotta abandon this like that that strikes me as someone who really wanted a fish tank they'd never had one before they get one they realize it's too much work and they dump their their you know aquarium full of neons into the into the river but like if you got to the point where you can house an arapaima like I would have expected that by that point you're like well-versed in the whole aquarium world because obviously you need like you can't just put that in a tiny little tank in your room
Robby
oh it comes down to education people go through a fish store and arapaima is a bad example arapaima is very rare and hard to find but let's take something that's normal like an arowana not the illegal kind either or a massive catfish okay when you see them in the pet store they're nice and small they got great color they look cool mom I want it and the pet store owners he has to make a living it's not his fault that someone didn't do the the homework but an ethical pet store will tell you no this grows eight feet I mean do you have a you know a thousand gallon aquarium to go in well no I'm going to reject the sale well when you put a pet store owner up to a you know a couple hundred dollars sell a fish he's he will take the money ethical ones will educate you and the biggest pet that's abused that literally most of the pet owners and pet owners, broadcasters such as myself, YouTubers try to propagate to not get is what's called a Paku. A Paku is easily described as a vegetarian piranha. They look like a red-bellied piranha and they are extremely cheap. It's two to three dollars at a pet store.
Katie
Are those the ones that have like human teeth? get
Robby
Yes. Mom, I want a piranha. Oh, sorry. Don't a piranha. They might bite you. Well, we have this alternative. It's a Paku and it has human teeth. Oh, great. Let's get it. Well, they don't realize that that will never stop growing. The paku grow. You can go on the Ohio Fish Rescue. They have one of the record ones. We're talking many feet long. Really? On a disc. And they look bigger than the massive garbage can lids. These things grow absolutely huge.
Katie
Do they not grow that big? Because I feel like I've seen, I think I've seen that on like River Monsters or something. And I feel like the ones he was catching were normal piranha size. Like, do these grow garbage can lid size in the wild? And I just have not seen that on TV or whatever.
Robby
They don't grow quite that big because, again, they're generally weaned out by massive predatory fish.
Katie
Okay.
Robby
They stay roughly as a large crappie to the length of a northern pike.
Katie
But when they're not being preyed upon and they're getting bottomless food, they'll just keep on going. Okay. I think someone actually caught a paku in one of the lakes that's within, I want to say, 10 miles of me. I saw an article that someone caught like an Amazonian fish. And I'm pretty sure I'm like 99% sure it was a paku a couple of years ago, just like down the road from me.
Robby
So across the nation, you'll hear different stories and you can look a lot of these up. It is one of the most dumped individual fish that there is because they get too big. No one will take them, even pet stores, because they're just a massive wall of fish. There's no space and it costs too much money to take care of. So those dump them. So we've, I have long lists of people finding them in the wild. There's even a situation where someone found it in the Mississippi River in Minnesota, a record size pocket.
Katie
Now, are there any, so for example, I'm just going to use Colorado because obviously that's what I'm familiar with, but there are places in Colorado that Northern Pike are, you know, considered to be invasive and they'll give you like a bounty on it. Like if you, if you catch Northern Pike out of whatever body of water, they'll give you 20 bucks a fish to kill them. Is there any sort of like, but that's, that's just Colorado. Is there any sort of like overarching law or recommendation or something for these fish that maybe across the nation, but you know, that says if you catch this, you need to keep it and you can't, you're not allowed to return it back to the waterway. Or is that a state by state thing?
Robby
It's a state by state thing, county by county thing, and sometimes body of water by body of water thing okay so I'll give you two of the worst examples one in Brownsville county Florida there is the probably the most invasive fish that I've ever heard of it's called a snakehead there are three varieties of snakehead in the world and they happen to have one of the most not the biggest but certainly the most vivacious variety there I think it's the red spotted I have to look it up but these snakehead come from I believe it's Taiwan they have a very different ecology over there and different amount of predators the snakehead is extremely hardy you can live in almost any condition it is called the snakehead because it has a actually an arrow snake-like head that can actually wriggle on land and cross from body of water to body of water walking on land essentially and these things have the worst aggression of almost any fish in nature so if you're going to try to fish for these things or fish for anything they have a vivacious appetite They're extremely territorial. And if they have babies, anything that swims by will be bitten and hit, including wild animals or your legs. So these fish have been introduced by an Asian market. They sell snakehead because snakehead are used for Asian soups and believe they have a lot of medicinal benefits. So they wanted to not pay so much for importing. So they released it into Florida's waters. And it's one of the worst invasive species that have blown apart waterways in Florida. And they're trying to find any ways, bleaching out lakes, anything they can do to stop the spread of this horrible invasive species. These things grow massive. And just to give you an example, when you take a frog or some topwater lure, the fish don't hit it because they're hungry. The fish do it because they're protecting their territory and are angry at your lure. It's one of the most unique fishing experiences of your life. I highly recommend going. There's thousands of YouTube videos, but Florida specifically, like you asked, they have a law where if you catch one, it's illegal to put it back in the water. You have to kill it or get rid of it.
Katie
Okay. And I've heard that snakeheads are particularly hard to kill. Like there have been people who have pulled them out and left them on land thinking like, oh, just like all the other fish I've caught today, it'll just suffocate. And side note, like I support people just killing their fish when they catch them instead of just leaving them to suffocate if they're going to catch them and eat them. But you can't just do that with a snakehead because it can just live out there and just basically live on land for, I don't want to say indefinitely because it obviously will die eventually.
Robby
It does have a clock.
Katie
They do have to get back in.
Robby
They'll dry out. They don't breathe oxygen, but they do last a long, long time on land.
Katie
Right.
Robby
It's not going to be like the bluegills you throw. They've tried to do anything they can with them. And you have to kill the creature. And they're not like that tasting. But another example is the Asian carp that you hear. And this is the, I think the most worrying of any in space species that we have in the nation currently that I can think of. The Asian carp, again, a big carp, works like the Louisiana paddlefish. Are you familiar with those?
Katie
Is that different from the, like, where I grew up there were paddlefish, but I only ever heard them called paddlefish. Just like the blackish, grayish fish with the big nose.
Robby
So paddlefish are very beautiful and they're being endangered by this other species. And how they feed, their filter feeders, kind of like you expect whales to be. They open their mouth, plank, and go in. So their filter feeders getting all the remnants from the water. And their big fish, they have these enormous paddles that they are supposed to be spread across the Midwest. There's some in Minnesota, Iowa, but they're at dire risk because they're following river waterways. So down south, someone introduced another Asian market, introduced the Asian carp. It does the same thing but on steroids. They grow bigger. They are mass populators. Their breeding cycles are insane. And again, they came from a different area with different predators, different cycle, and they're exploding. They're taking over lakes and completely wiping any beneficial nutrients out of the water because they're filter feeding. And these things are coming up in the hundreds of thousands. They're going out and it's getting so invasive in southern states that they actually have competitions to go out and electrocute them, slap the water, anything to get these. Because the Asian carp has a knack to whenever they're scared or anything, instead of like a fainting sheep, they shoot out of the water like a rocket.
Katie
Oh, yeah, I've seen those.
Robby
You're driving with a boat. You can have thousands of these, hundreds of these fly out at you. people have been killed by these actually in a boat but knocked out and anything else so they try to take in big festivals trying to wean down the numbers and go out with you know nets dress up in football gear anything that they can find they electrocute them out of rivers anything because they're completely devastating all the native species and they're following up the Mississippi river
Katie
so are they just out competing the paddlefish
Robby
they're not like directly preying on the paddlefish they're just out competing it they're out competing everything because there's so much think of it like the tree right the ant feeds the gecko the gecko feeds the bird the bird feeds the human you know that whole tree of life thing so in the water the base thing is the micronutrients in the water that feeds the bugs which feed the bluegills which feed the bass which feed the musky you know that whole tree of life so because they're completely devastating the waterways of all nutrients it's decimating any population of any other fish across the river and the paddlefish is most affected because they're slow breeders and they literally are the first fish to feed off of the direct nutrients
Katie
so they're basically like getting at the ground level and stopping okay so I think that's an important important sorry important point to make that the because we've already talked about the diseases and something like the snakehead which is just super aggressive and then something like the asian carp which are just basically out competing everything that invasive species aren't just something that you know it's not just cut and dry that they eat other fish or something like that like there's so many different mechanisms of how they can be a detriment to whatever body of water they're in it's it's not just straight up if the fish has a lot of teeth and is big it'll be bad but if it's not then it's fine because there's so many different ways for these species to affect the other native species that are in the water
Robby
You don't know whenever a fish is introduced, it's never been there. You don't know what now it's going to compete with its food. The dojo loach, the weather loach I mentioned before, ate all of the small bugs and creatures, anything it could find in the water, compete out the pan fish. This is given the micronutrients to feed everything else in the water and the whole tree is affected. Whereas I mentioned before my podcast that over the last decade, freshwater jellyfish have been showing up in all these lakes and streams across the entire United States. they're not taking the nutrients out of the water they're not showing up as an as a real threat to other fish in fact we probably see a couple fish even try to nip at them they're not invasive they're a foreign species that aren't invasive that almost never happens that is the probably one fluke I can ever find of any fish being introduced into a waterway that doesn't affect another species
Katie
that's so crazy that you bring that up right now because my actual my next question was going to be Where do you draw the line between invasive and non-native?
Robby
Yeah, it comes to a ton of research, probably multiple decades of seeing it happen. There's almost never a case where something is introduced that hasn't been there before where it doesn't affect the other species in a negative way. The only thing I can ever think of is maybe some plants, and that's even rare. And the freshwater jellyfish, which it's not even on most states of DNR lists that they even exist because they're just not a threat. They don't sting people. They're not in effective waterways in any way that they can find. But almost always, it's always labeled as an invasive species.
Katie
So would something like the common carp be considered invasive? Because it can multiply pretty quickly, but people aren't trying to exterminate it, I guess, is the difference.
Robby
I'll give an example. So when the carp were introduced in the 1800s, right, we had a lot of pristine waterways with a lot of vegetation. The vegetation supported different creatures above and below the surface. Carp were introduced, and they were introduced only in some waterways. So it's not that they were affected everywhere, but the waterways that they were affected ripped out tons of plant life. And because of that, completely changed the ecology of the waterway, you know, pushing out trout, pushing out certain other species. There used to be a species in Minnesota. The last confirmed sighting was 1984 of a blue walleye. Blue walleye, because of other competing species, carp, other things, have been extinct now. And unless someone has some rare reporting of potentially finding one, they're gone.
Katie
So, like, I guess my question here is, like, it's kind of the same thing as, like, pheasants. So pheasants aren't native to the U.S., but we've decided that we like hunting them. So now there's things like Pheasants Forever, where people, you know, want to keep them around because they want to hunt them. And now, like, carp fishing is becoming a popular activity. So, you know, is there just kind of like a balancing act between, yes, this is an invasive species, the population has grown more than it should have, But also there's now a group of people that probably would fight for having carp around because they value having it. And it's not having as detrimental as an effect as something like the snakehead because the carp can at least coexist with something like bass without completely destroying the population.
Robby
That's a case by case scenario. I'm pretty sure every invasive species that's really proliferated to those points have different ways that humans are interacting, having at least a positive reaction. snakehead fishing attracts thousands of people now to Florida because they don't believe that these fish that jump out of the water at your lure exist they have you know these tournaments to try to see who can catch as many asian carp and win a grand trophy they don't like the cart being there but they make the best of it cart fishing is again a real reaction because we have the species they're not going away and there's no limits on them they're not a controlled species they smoke them they'll do what they can with them and what's really common in Minnesota is they do I'm trying to figure out how to explain this bow fishing is the best way yeah okay yep they have a flat bottom boat they put halogen lamps across the entire front bay and sides of the boat and they drive this around at night and wait for bright yellow carp to swim by and they shoot a bow to try to catch these fish I know there's other states south in the south that do it it's becoming more and more popular up here. And if there is some way that they could eradicate a species, it really comes down to a lot of the lake societies. If there's people living on a lake, generally you can go a coalition and work with the DNR to talk about what happens to your lake in a voting manner.
Katie
So it basically comes down to are people going to want it there or not? And at the end of the day, we can't necessarily control whether something's eliminated. I think at that point, grass or sorry not grass asian carp would have been eliminated a long time ago if we had the ability to just wave a wand and get rid of it but because it's not that simple you know there's there's certain species that you can cohabitate with for a little bit longer without much of a problem and since something like common carp is not as detrimental as some of these other species you know people are kind of just making the best of it for the time being because like I mean what are you going to do? they're here
Robby
and with the zoologists and other scientists DNR regulations There have been cases where there's been a single body of water that have been completely eradicated everything living in it to stop some horrible species or some horrible disease from spreading to other waterways. That has happened quite a few times across the United States. Same with the chronic wasting disease you were mentioning earlier. In Europe, I believe, they made a decision, I believe it was in the Scandinavian countries, to wipe out the entire existence of caribou and then bring in some after the chronic wasting disease was done to make sure that chronic wasting disease was never there again. And that's very successful, but they had time research behind it to see what's the impact of us deleting the body of water or deleting that species from the area and reintroducing it. There's impact and pros and cons, but it's not out of the question if they, they'll find a wand, but for the entire Mississippi River to be done for Asian carp, it's pretty, pretty impossible.
Katie
Right. And you're also fighting with the public who, you know, if you just said that you're going to wipe out every fish in whatever body of water, you know, people are going to be angry regardless of whether it's in their best interest overall. You know, it's hard to convince a giant group of people, anything like that.
Robby
If I told someone that I'm starting a new podcast, there's going to be someone that doesn't like it. But I just hope that the collective at least make their opinions known and everybody's doing their best not to dump their aquariums in the water.
Katie
Yeah. So that that's kind of leads me to my last point is like what apart from just don't dump your aquariums, like what is the solution to this? I'm not asking you to, you know, again, wave your magic wand and fix all this. But like what are there are there any like obvious steps to at least help the problem? Like I mentioned earlier, if you've got waders with felt sole boots, you need to dry those out or disinfect them before you carry organisms from one body of water to an unconnected body of water elsewhere. But are there any other steps that people can take?
Robby
The best things that you can do besides don't dump your aquarium in the water is essentially for boaters. Boaters do the biggest hitchhiking, and it's not necessarily a fish species. It's plants or mollusks. We have a big crisis across Minnesota for Eurasian milfoil. Milfoil can completely choke out water from the top to bottom, no matter how real deep it is. And they have to use churning machines to rip out milfoil to essentially just even open up the water at all. It's a plant that grows every inch in the water. They have zebra mussels. Zebra mussels, again, take beneficial bacteria out of the water. And frankly, when you step on them, cut your feet open. So those are the most prolific species that a lot of waterways are concerned about. And always, whenever you take your boat in and out of the water, clean your boat, drain your water. And if you can, let it dry five days. That will take care of most of the invasive species a bit. Always inspect and clean your boat.
Katie
Yeah, I know a lot of waterways also have like a boat inspection. I'm not sure what all they're looking for, but I assume some of it has to do with asking you about you know where you've been using your boat recently and and what steps you've taken in between then and now before you
Robby
oh yeah like fourth of July weekend and some of the most popular lakes in Minnesota we have DNR that go to the boat entrances and before you launch your boat they'll ask you where you've been you know did you clean your boat out they'll check your the back of the ballast of the boat to make sure you drained it before going into the new waterway they'll they'll they'll do it as much as they can but you know with 18 000 lakes in Minnesota it's impossible, but they just got to remember to be ethical and do what you can.
Katie
Right. And don't, don't dump your aquarium in the water.
Robby
Don't, don't dump your aquarium in the water. If you have a fish that you need to get rid of and you don't find a home, talk to your pet store. If they can't take it, I got a man named big rich that will easily take whatever big fish you got. Uh, he's, he's a friend of mine from the Ohio fish rescue. Certainly, contact me, contact him. there are people. don't put it in your river
Katie
I think I saw recently a plecostomus was found in the Animas river here and whoever pulled it out it was like I think it was dead on the side of the river bank but that was a fish I had an aquarium when I was a kid and I remember I saw the picture of it even though it was like half decomposed I recognized it as something that shouldn't be here so it's it's definitely not I know it's easy to think this is a Florida problem but like I said someone caught a paku a couple miles from my house the plecostomus was found I want to say a couple of weeks ago in the animus. So this isn't just a Florida thing. This is, you know, all over the country. And like you said, it's more of a problem than I thought. Like you taught me a lot here today about like the diseases and everything. Because in my mind, it's kind of like the plecostomus that was washed up on the side of the river. I'm like, well, you know, it's sad, but that fish died. But who knows if it was carrying something or something like that. It's just something that I hadn't thought about before.
Robby
Absolutely. It's our responsibility to do what we can. And it's amazing how many people just really don't care or don't just think before they do it.
Katie
Right. Well, do you just want to share where people can find you if they want to reach out or subscribe to your podcast? Or, you know, where's the best place for people to reach out?
Robby
Absolutely. So aquariumguyspodcast.com is where our website is. You can find us on any of the major stores and minor stores. I've yet to find a store we're not on. We try to put out a podcast each week. And again, we're trying to do evergreen episodes about the aquarium hobby, whether it's salt, water, we just had the pond guy on, but we also do what we call the out of the tank series. And the out of the tank series really goes into what I believe the aquarium hobby should know about fishing because our pets come from the natural environment. If you love fishing your tank, you're going to love fishing more on your hook. So I've been going through showing them DNR specialists, the baiting industry. we just had you on for fly fishing and it's been a great series certainly come give us a try subscribe and if you again shout out to the highland fish rescue if you want to donate a fish that you need to get rid of we'll make sure it finds a home
Katie
awesome well I hope everyone comes and listens to a couple of your episodes regardless of whether they they like aquarium fish or just fishing but really appreciate you coming on today I had a lot of fun and learned quite a bit.
Robby
It was my pleasure.
Katie
All right, and that'll do it. As always, if you liked what you heard, I'd love for you to go over to Apple Podcasts or wherever else you listen to podcasts and subscribe to the show there. You can also find my episodes on fishuntamed.com in addition to articles about fly fishing every two weeks. You can also find me on Instagram at fishuntamed or on Go Wild under my name, Katie Berger. And I will be back here in two weeks, so until then, bye everyone.
Note:
These transcripts were created using AI to help make the podcast more accessible to all listeners, including those who are deaf or hard of hearing, or anyone who prefers to read rather than listen.
While I’ve reviewed each transcript to correct obvious errors, they may not be 100% accurate. In particular, moments with overlapping speech or unclear audio may not be transcribed word-for-word. However, every effort has been made to ensure that the core content and meaning are accurately represented.
Thank you for your understanding, and I hope these transcripts help you enjoy the podcast in the way that works best for you.