Weekly Water Change

This week we're joined by Evan Johnson, founder of Ivan the Angelfish — a youth-led 501(c)(3) that installs therapeutic aquariums in senior living facilities, teaches ecology in schools, and is quietly proving what every fish keeper already knows: watching fish is genuinely good for you. The twist? Evan is a high school junior, and he's already the youngest presenter to ever take the Aquashella stage.

The story starts with a five-gallon tank, one red betta, and an Anubias — a gift from an eight-year-old Evan to his grandfather Ivan, a Soviet fighter pilot who carried PTSD from five years of war in Afghanistan. That little tank by his grandfather's bedside became the seed of something extraordinary: today Ivan the Angelfish has 55 chapters in 25 countries, roughly 300 volunteers, and over 900 therapeutic ecosystems installed — impacting more than 23,000 people.

This week we're headed to Kentucky to hang out with Jonathan of Jonathan's Jungle Tanks — structural welder by day, discus and angelfish breeder by night, and father of six (plus dogs, ducks, horses, goats, and whatever else finds its way home).

Jonathan's story starts in a greenhouse with an 800-gallon stock pond, a chicken swap, and an impulse koi purchase — and ends with a nearly 300-gallon planted tank full of angelfish, discus, a stingray, and 50+ angel babies. In between: a Facebook Marketplace tank deal so good he took the next day off work and drove three hours each way.

This week on Weekly Water Change, we're hanging out with Kayla from Burgess Finn and Shell — and it gets real, fast. From a 20-gallon tank her toddler filled with Lunchables (yes, really) to a U-Haul full of 40+ abandoned tanks and fish, Kayla takes us through the gloriously messy journey of going from casual fish keeper to full-on breeder.

We get the full AquaShella debrief — how she and Austin packed an SUV with tanks, fish, and coolers, sold nearly everything on-site (tanks and all), and drove home with nothing but fish and a week of beach vacation ahead of them.

In this episode we chat with Lumi! She's neck deep (literally) into ponds, has a heart for all wildlife and has a floating platform on her pond. Be sure to listen in!

This week I sat down with Sarah Walker from Dageti Design and MY local fish club (Music City Aquarium Society) to talk about Killifish. Why are they awesome? Why should everyone have one? She's been all over the world collecting them and won't stop talking about it, it's infectious. You should listen in!

This week I sat down with John Tyler from Selectpet — hobbyist, breeder, former fish store owner, club founder, and the guy who once drove 14 hours one way just to bring fish back to share with his local clubs. John's been through it: a 2005 house fire that melted his 55-gallon into a puddle of glass, dumping hundreds of feeder goldfish on the carpet in front of a shop full of customers, coming back to find his entire shipment of plecos had jumped tank overnight, and leaving a fill pipe running long enough that his fish room floor became a shallow pool with albino plecos swimming through it. We get into what he learned running a full-line pet store (including why he keeps one tank on a hang-on-back filter and how sponge filters save him $100 a month), his conservation work getting endangered Limia livebearers onto the CARES list, and why the Lexington club he started in 2019 — after other clubs said it would never make it — is his crowning achievement. Plus: someone once stole a $200 snake from his store in a McDonald's coffee cup. You're gonna want to hear this one.

Episode three with James Brown from Dad's Fishroom, and this one covers some ground — from a childhood where he asked for puppies and his mom came home with guppies ("it sounded the same"), to the $300 lionfish that died 24 hours after he threw it in a saltwater tank and made him quit fish for many years. We get into how his daughter's five-gallon tank pulled him back in, the townhome era with 22 aquariums (nine shrimp tanks in the walk-in closet — no clothes, just shrimp), and the absolutely unhinged week-long move where he hauled every tank with fish still in them and bought RO water from the grocery store many, many times. James also tells the story of resuscitating his Jack Dempsey back to life after finding him covered in spider webs under the stand, explains why he thinks tank busters like alligator gar shouldn't be sold in the hobby, and gets real about how this community gave him the sense of belonging he'd been missing his whole life. Plus an update on Charlie, his six-year-old betta who's currently fighting a fungus volcano on his face.

This week I hung out with Jackson Jones from Fin and Filter — he and his fiancée are only two years into the hobby and already up to 44 tanks, so yeah, we spend some quality time on multi-tank syndrome. We get into the zebra pleco biotope that inspired his whole brand, the PetSmart comet goldfish he impulse-bought that's now holding his 40-gallon aquascape hostage (turns out goldfish live forever), and the summer heat wave that nearly cooked 28 tanks in his uninsulated garage — 40 frozen water bottles were involved. Jackson also walks us through shipping his very first order (celestial pearl danios, and yes, he checked the tracking every four seconds) and drops some genuinely useful fish photography tips, including why you need way more light than you think and how 200 photos becomes one good one. Plus he tells us why he ditched Shopify for AquaFindr Nano. Good stuff — go give it a listen.

On this episode of Weekly Water Change, I sat down with my buddy Jason Reusch — you might know him as Fishman Jason — where we talk about his award-winning fish, mistakes, and his superhero persona. We get into how a broken leg and a 20-gallon tank from a legendary Philly fish store kicked off a lifelong obsession, the angelfish tragedy that taught him about temperature shock the hard way, and why patience is the one piece of advice every new fish keeper needs (and never takes).