Jennie: Hey, guys, it’s Jennie. Welcome back once again to another Solid Gold video. It’s been a long time since I’ve said that. I took a few months off. It’s been about four months roughly since I last made a video. The reason for that is, I had a bit of a health crisis that required me to step out of the public eye for a minute– for a few minutes, and just focus on getting better. For a while, that was all I could really do. I really wasn’t able to do much other than just focus on my health, focus on getting by day by day for a long time. I did not want to return to my channel and pretend everything was normal. In fact, I don’t think I would have been able to which is why I stopped.
It wasn’t what I wanted but, I did have to take a bit of a hiatus. I’m finally getting back to the point where I’m feeling like myself again. My symptoms are finally being reined in and under control. I have a treatment plan that I’m on and I’m feeling better, which is something that for a really long time, I actually thought wouldn’t be possible. I really don’t want to go into detail in terms of what health issues specifically I’ve been dealing with.
I think you guys will understand that. I did just want to come back on here and acknowledge the hiatus, give you a little bit of a reason why at least without going in too much detail into personal health issues, because that’s really not what this channel is about anyways.
I don’t want to derail into that stuff. Yes, I’m alive. I’m still here. I’m okay. I’m doing much better now. I do also want to say a huge thank you to those of you who during the time I was away send me emails, messages on social media you name it of support. I just want to let you guys know how much that means to me and how grateful I am that– It’s mind blowing sometimes to me because all I’m doing is sitting here in my fish room talking to a camera. You guys are not just the camera. Obviously, you’re real people out there and you’re actually watching my life and following along in it. You get excited about the things I get excited about and bummed out when bad things happen.
It’s just amazing. It’s hard to comprehend really that there’s a lot of people out there that care about me so much. I just want to say, “Thank you. I really appreciate you guys for sticking with me through this. I’m really excited for 2019 and to see what this year is going to bring.” I do want to say also I may not get back right away into my consistent upload schedule of trying to upload at least one new video every single week. I’m going to take things day by day, see how it goes, make sure I’m still feeling good. I still want to make sure that I’m taking care of health but I really I’m finally excited to jump back into this again.
For a long time, that wasn’t the case. I really felt like I was going to have to change careers basically because, I didn’t feel capable of getting back into this for a very long time, which is why I was away for so long. I don’t know, I just hit a turning point. I finally feel like I’m excited about all this stuff again. I’m just back to my old self and probably, even better for taking the time away, taking some time to think. I’m just really excited about it again. In this video, I want to give you guys a little bit of an update in terms of what’s going on out here in the fish room. I have some finally started getting back into some projects again.
You guys know I’m always doing some project or other relating to my animals and the fish room here. I finally had the energy and just the excitement to get back into it again. I’ll show you guys what I have going on out here and give you updates on all the animals. Let’s just jump right into it. Before we get into that, I do just want to give a quick notice here that, I have my 2019 calendar, it’s finally available for sale on my website. They just came in today from the printer. There’s actually two different kinds this year.
There’s one with all just goldfish because some of the feedback from last year was that, some people were disappointed that it wasn’t only goldfish because, a lot of you guys just love goldfish and I get that, so I made one that’s all just goldfish. Then I made a second one that is a variety of all the pets that I have pretty much. I really love these and I hope you guys are excited about them as well. There’s going to be a link in the description down below where you can go purchase these. They’ll be shipping out in the next few days. Now, let’s get into the fish room tour. All right, I switched cameras to my handheld one so I can show you guys the whole fish room.
We better start with Paula cause it’s his dinner time and he is looking very sad trying to guilt me into feeding him. Are you hungry? Want your food? He’s just going to be eating while we go around the fish room. I have a ton of plants. There’s this big Elephant ear that we uprooted from my backyard and planted back here. It’s not doing super well. It’s still trying to acclimate to less light because it’s lot more bright outside, obviously, but it’s alive, it’s hanging in there. It puts out a new leaf every now and then and it has a lot of little baby plants too. Anyways, this is my huge Monstera plant that just keeps growing and growing. I love it.
A bunch of other plants over here. These are all waiting to be used in this screen enclosure. This is one of my latest projects that I have going on. I’ve said in my videos before that one of the animals I really want to keep someday is a chameleon. Specifically, I want a Panther chameleon. I actually have a couple different small breeders in mind that I want to buy from but, I want to get the cage all set up first properly and give the plants some time to grow in before I actually get the chameleon. Right now, I have left the research phase of my chameleon project and have started on the cage build phase. This is the largest. It’s extra-large Reptibreeze cage. It’s all screen and then I got the bottom tray for it.
Those are just all my supplies. That is some great stuff foam that I’m going to use to make a little structure to put the plant pots in. Then, here are my four 120-gallon aquariums from Custom Aquariums on the rack. I have some changes to update you guys on regarding these four tanks. Here’s one of the tanks with little Marshmallow in it. Marshmallow is my Pearl scale goldfish that you guys have seen before. She’s the only goldfish I have from the original group of fish that I used to have before I took a hiatus from YouTube. That’s because, when I was at the worst point in my health crisis, I actually became unable to care for the amount of– Especially the high maintenance pets that I had.
I had to make the difficult decision to re-home some of my pets. That ended up being almost all of my aquatic pets because, I don’t know about you guys but I find fish and other aquatic type pets to be some of the most difficult and time-consuming and high maintenance pets. I just knew it wouldn’t be fair to them to put them through who knows how many months of improper care because I just wasn’t able to do it. I did end up making the difficult decision to re-home all of them, all of my goldfish except Marshmallow. Chris convinced me to keep Marshmallow.
He said we have to keep at least one and now ended up being fine because this is 120 gallons and it is connected via the sump underneath to the other 120-gallon tank up there. That’s 240 gallons of water for just one fish. Even if I missed water changes, which I did end up missing a lot of water changes while I was really sick. One little fish in this much water volume was going to be just fine. She is doing fine. She’s just as wiggly and begging for food as ever but, just by herself for now. That’s really a bummer. I was nervous to let you guys know that I had re-home my goldfish because I knew that a lot of you would be upset and would miss them but, it is what it is, guys.
I just had to do what I thought was best at the time. Honestly, I didn’t even think I would– For a long time, I didn’t even think I would be able to get back to this until I turned the corner and started feeling better. That’s the goldfish situation but I do have some new goldfish in quarantine to show you guys in a minute here. This tank up here is empty for the time being. I don’t have firm plans yet to stock the empty tank. I’m just going to play it by ear. I’m going to go nice and slow with regards to the aquatic animals just because, I don’t want to run into another situation where maybe my health takes another turn for the worse and I have to rehome them all again, that would just be stupid. I’m taking it slow, taking my time but, little Marshmallow here says hi and she’s doing good. Then, over here, we have some newbies. I did restock this tank and this tank. This guy up here or girl, I don’t know and might never know is a baby albino Oscar.
I just got this one like a week or two ago and she’s doing well, I named her Roxy. I’m really excited to see her grow. Oscars grow very fast and I never had an Oscar before. I’ve always thought they were really interesting because of how interactive they are and how intelligent they are and everyone that has an Oscar says how much fun they are. I just thought it would be a good opportunity to try one out. She has that whole tank all to herself, she doesn’t have any tank meets right now.
I’m thinking about getting a pleco for that tank just to keep the algae off the background but so far I don’t have one. Then down here, I have another Oscar and this guy is sulking which I’m learning is something that they really tend to do a lot whenever there’s something that they don’t really like, they just tend to go lay down in a corner. That’s what he’s doing but I will insert some footage here of him being more active and swimming around.
I don’t know what’s gotten into him right now, I guess he doesn’t want to be on camera or something. This fish is actually like 10 to 11 inches long and so, obviously, he’s an adult. I don’t know how old he is but I got him from a pet store and it was the situation where somebody had like 10 of these huge Oscars in just a 300 gallon tank, so that’s not really enough space for that many Oscars. Also, it’s not really a good idea to keep that many Oscars altogether in one tank because they can become quite aggressive with one another.
They really do better as a single Oscar or if you can manage to get a male and female pair, that can work too but, it’s not really that good of an idea to keep like a big group of Oscars together, so I don’t really know what they were thinking. Anyways, they brought all of their Oscars to this fish store to find new homes for them. We just happened to be in there looking for something else, I can’t remember what, I think some tank decorations or something.
We saw him and I had been kicking around the idea of getting an Oscar someday and Chris really wanted him and was excited about him too. We decided to bring him home and Chris named him Brazno and he has this 120 gallon tank all to himself. I haven’t gotten him to eat anything yet, least I don’t think so. We’ve tried everything, I tried soaking the food in garlic because that usually stimulates a fish’s appetite. I’ve tried pellets, a variety of different frozen foods including bloodworms and emerald entree.
I’ve even tried live feeder fish that just little feeder Guppies and some of them are missing, so he may have eaten them or maybe I’m just not seeing them. It’s hard to tell right now how much he’s eating or if he’s eating at all because he’s just really shy. He’s so shy. If you think about it, this is a huge change for him. He was in a 300 gallon tank with like 10 other huge Oscars for his whole life and I don’t know how old he is but presumably, he’s at least a few years old, I don’t know.
Anyways, he’s really used to that and he goes from that to being in this like tiny little sail tank in an aquarium store to then, coming to live here all by himself in a proper sized tank but still, it’s a big shock for him. His whole world basically has been turned upside down. He is just sulking a lot and I’m trying to give him time to come around on his own terms but, I am a little worried. If anyone has any suggestions for how to get an adult rehomed/rescued Oscar to eat, I would be open to hearing that.
I also tried earthworms by the way and crickets. All the things that Oscars are supposed to love and go crazy for, he is just not interested in right now. I think it’s just because he’s an adult and he’s been used to living a certain way his entire life and now, his whole world has been turned upside down and Oscars tend to be touchy and sulk a lot anyways when they don’t like something, so that’s what he’s doing. That’s the four original 120 gallon tanks that I got from Custom Aquariums back in, I think that was April of 2018.
Surprise, I have the other four 120 gallon tanks and racks now from Custom Aquariums too. These ones just got here two or three months ago, something like that. I am currently in the middle of painting the backs and bottoms of all of these tanks black. Once we get these up on the racks, the black paint is going to look really nice on the back and bottom of these tanks. I’m going to set these up to be for the more sensitive fish.
I love these tanks, I absolutely love the aqua decor backgrounds that I have in these tanks but I think they’re better suited to fish that are less touchy than goldfish. While Marshmallow here is still doing fine in this tank, I would feel more comfortable if she was in a tank that was like more idiot-proof, not idiot-proof but just safer for a goldfish because they’re big clumsy fish. Oftentimes, they have big fancy fins that can get ripped on things really easily.
I think I’m going to keep these four tanks really bare and just orient them more specifically to good goldfish care. Then, for these four tanks, they’re going to be more natural-looking with more natural-looking fish in them. That’s the plan for this but, as you can see, the aquarium rack wall is really coming together and I’m just excited to get these last four tanks up on the racks. It’s going to look really nice. Then on this side, I was going to have a couple of tubs. Actually tubs like those ones that are stacked right up over there.
I was going to have them stacked here for goldfish breeding but I decided to change my direction and save that space for the chameleon cage instead. Because, I don’t think I’m going to be getting back into goldfish breeding any time soon so, I wanted to use that space for something else. That’s this wall. Then, we have all these aquariums taking up the middle for now but soon, they’ll be moved on to the racks. Over here, we have some new goldfish.
Now, you guys remember, I was talking about getting some goldfish from East Coast Ranchu, I’ve always admired her Ranchus and Orandos but, never actually got any until just recently. These four fish are new and they are here in their quarantine tanks. I even have a little bit of pathos that I stuck here into the filters, that is a really good plant for helping to clean the water, so it’s just like additional filtration that’s really natural. This one here is a Sakura Oranda with a little red and white Ranchu.
I did decide to switch up my fish choices a little bit. So, some of these are ones that you guys saw in a video where I was picking out what fish I wanted to get from her, but then I changed my mind and decided just to get fewer of them for now and no bubble Eyes for now. Just these two up here and then, these two down here. These two are really extra special because, the red and white one, there is a descendant of Cynthia’s fish named Turnip, who’s really well known from East Coast Ranchu and then, the black one there is a descendant of her fish named Diesel who also was a really well-known fish of hers.
You can find pictures of them on her Instagram which is @eastcoastranchu. I’ve had these guys for a little bit now and they’re doing really well so far. They have just a little bit of sand on the bottoms of their tanks and it is a quarantine tank, so I’m keeping it really bare, minimal and just put a little bit of sand in there because they do really enjoy sifting through it with their mouths all day long looking for little bits of food, so just to give them something to do.
So far so good with these guys. These are just two of my empty exoteric tanks that I used for quarantine of my new frogs. You’ll see those guys over here on my reptile and amphibian enclosure rack from custom cages. The four tanks on the top are all bio active, which means they all have live plants and substrate that the plants can grow in. They also have insects that act like a cleanup crew in the soil, so that would be isopods and springtails. You can see the little white spring tails scurrying around, but the isopods, there’s fewer of them and they’re harder to find, but the spring tails are plentiful.
All the frogs just went and hid because I disturbed them, but you can see one hiding back there. They really like to duck into that skull decoration anytime they get spooked by something and then they’ll crawl back out the eye holes, it’s really kind of cool. The dart frogs that I have are Dendrobates tinctorius and the color morph is called, Patricia. I have a group of four of them that I’ve had for gosh, I don’t know, a couple years now probably and I separated them out in pairs of two.
I’m still trying to determine whether they’re male or female. It’s really hard to tell, I may have like all females except for one male but I’m not a hundred percent sure yet. I wanted to split them up. I just decided to split them up so they have more space rather than keeping all four in one tank and then, getting another variety of dart frog for the other tank. I just decided, I’m just going to keep the ones I have– look at them, and not get any more dart frogs for now although I would love to some day, but I just wanted to split them up so they could each have more space.
There’s two dart frogs in each tank and that’s them. Then, down here, we have my two leopard geckos, Sylvia over here and Rune over here. Rune is a shy guy but you can see him in his hide right there. Hi Rune. I’ll give you guys a peek, hi bud, what you doing? He has really grown so much since I last showed you guys. I did switch up his tank a little bit, same with Sylvia’s. Hi Sylvia, how’s it going? She’s doing well. They’re both doing well. All my reptiles and amphibians are doing really good.
The top up there, we’re going to need to get a ladder for, so let’s get a ladder. Hi guys. Now you’re coming out? Look at how much they’ve grown. See how big they are? They’ve gotten so big, my little babies. This tank up here is home to my four whites tree frogs and these guys have grown a lot since you last saw them too. Here’s Ducky, this is the super snowflake. I love him. Then, where’s everybody else? It’s hard to find them, sometimes you got a look. Here’s somebody. I think that’s Gazoo. Look at how big he is now.
Lentil is up there. Can you see her? That’s like their favorite spot. They like to hang out back there. Hi Ducky, are you looking for food? Look at you, you’re so cute. Look at him, isn’t he beautiful? They’ve really gotten a lot more friendly too. The longer I’ve had them, the more friendly they get. I open up the cage and they all look like, are you going to feed us? I don’t know where Petrie is but, he usually hides around here. Hi, he just croaked at me. Petrie usually hides around the corner back there.
Did you croak at me? You think I’m going to feed you? You want some crickets? All right. What are you doing? You just lunged. All right. Anyways, that’s them, they’re doing really well. Then I finally have this terrarium setup now too and I have a new animal in here. I have my new crested gecko in here named Simba. I named him that because he’s got this like sandy yellow color and the new Lion King movie is coming out pretty soon I think. I think in a month or two, or three, I don’t know, pretty soon.
I’m really excited for it, so, yes. That’s Simba’s enclosure. He’s got all kinds of bamboo sticks and vines to crawl on and then, he has that fake rock background from Universal Rocks. You can see his little foot there. He’s way back there. There’s his tail. I’ll insert a clip here of him out a little more so you guys can see what he looks like but, I’ll do a more detailed video about him and his enclosure setup in the near future so you guys can see him and his setup a little bit better.
That completes my reptile and amphibian rack. Then, I’ve got my desk with my computer and my microscope and my collection of goldfish stuff that I have a lot of now. I did finally hang up all of my goldfish art, well, most of it on the walls and I’ll probably just keep filling in all the empty wall space that’s time goes on with other animal art and stuff. Those are the storage cabinets, the fridge and sink area and we’re back to Palmer. Palmer, hi. You’re tired.
I try to make this video as brief as possible but, it’s probably long because there was a lot of things to get you guys up to speed on out here because, it’s been a while and a lot has changed in that time. That’s the fish room. I will do like more in depth videos about like the chameleon cage for example when I get around just setting that up which I’m probably going to try to start setting that up this weekend, at the soonest.
Then, I want to also do like a more in-depth video about Simba, my new crested gecko and an update video on like the frogs and the leopard geckos and stuff and the new fish. All that stuff will be upcoming with more information about like the specific animals. This was just a brief overview of everything that’s going on out here lately in the fish room. Thanks for watching guys, I hope you enjoyed this update video. Once again, thank you so much for all of your support and encouragement, it means the world to me.
Let’s just jump into this New Year with some new fresh energy and motivation. I’m just happy to be at a place where I’m genuinely excited about all this again. Thank you guys so much for sticking in there with me and, I’ll see you in my next video, bye. I guess I should say, stay gold. See, it’s been so long since I filmed that I don’t even remember my outro. Until next time, stay gold.
