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Taylor: Hey guys, Simply Betta here. I'm here at Aquashella today. This weekend Aquashella is going on in Dallas. It's freshwater and saltwater convention. I'm having a blast so far. Right now, it's Saturday, I'm in the first day, it's really busy. There's a lot going on. I've been wandering around a lot today and just exploring and having a lot of fun.
I'm at the fishtube booth right now. Everybody's busy signing things and just chatting with people. I think I'm going to walk around for a little bit. I've been really excited about something in this convention and that has been my shoes. Look at those shoes. Watch what I'm going to do with these shoes. Oh my goodness. These are my favorite shoes guys. I've been waiting to wear them for so long now, and I'm so happy because I can do it here and it's socially acceptable.
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I'm really enjoying the whole vibe and all the cool artwork here. I really like it. It feels less corporate like some of the other conventions I've been to. It feels a lot more cozy may be. The vibe is a little bit different and I really like it. Look, all this really cool graffiti type art behind me; it's really neat. They have this entire little room dedicated to all this really cool artwork. Look at this behind me, it looks like I'm under the sea in this crazy neon rave ocean. I love it.
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I'm here at the Brightwell Aquatics booth. These are my sponsors. Behind me, we have the freshwater line and then the shrimp line behind me. These are all the products that I use. My last convention was the aquatic experience, quite a while ago if you remember that video. I became unhealthily obsessed with flowerhorns. I've never had a big fish before. Usually, I just do to little tiny nano fish, but I feel like if I got to choose a big fish, it would be a flowerhorn because look at this fearless, little, weird, very pretty little guy. It's just right up my alley. It's so cute.
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Where I live, I can't find hardscape anywhere, I have to go order individual things off of the eBay and have them shipped to me, which is a huge pain in the butt. I'm hoping at the end of this convention near the end I can go around and get some good deals on a bunch of hardscape. Look at all this. This is amazing.
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There are a good amount of people selling Bettas here which is exciting. I just wish that I could bring some home with me on the airplane. I probably won't, but I sure am eyeing them up. I like this vendor's setup; they have nice big display jars and tannins in the water. That's a pretty cool set up. I'm going to be ogling them for a while and maybe trying to figure out how I can get one, or two, or three, or four home.
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George: I reckon I have a stronger aquascape but I reckon if it's public vote he might win because he's quite a popular guy.
King: I don't think I can actually beat George legitimately, but this is a crowd vote and I'm going to win for sure.
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George: It sounds cheesy but it's not really about winning or losing, it's about promoting aquascaping, which is what I'm all about. It's really a privilege to be able to work with Zoey and Davis on collaborations.
Taylor: It's really early in the morning, we're doing a Dunkin' Donuts Run. We're going to grab 200 people worth of coffee and some doughnuts. I'm pretty excited. I don't have good doughnuts where I'm from, so I'm looking at all these. They look amazing.
Male Speaker: Taylor's going to try to to eat them all before we even get there.
Taylor: I've never had a Dunkin' Donut sandwich before, I'm about to be blown away. Cheers. It's still early right now, we're waiting for people to come in. We're signing cards. This is my little card, I've been signing my name on it. People are so sweet, they've been stopping me and telling me that they enjoy watching my stuff, which blows my mind and I love it.
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There's a booth here that has leopard geckos. I think they're so cute. I'm highly considering just surprising my family with a couple new pets. It's a great idea, right? It's probably a great idea. Naturebox pets, let me hold one. Look, do I need a leopard gecko guys? Do I need one? This is a blizzard leopard gecko. I think they're so beautiful, I really love the white ones. White Bettas too, they're fantastic. Something about just this beautiful white little lizard makes me love them.
I'm over here at the Custom Aquariums booth, and everyone knows who Custom Aquariums is because they did stuff for Joey for the King of DIY, and they did stuff for solid-gold. They're here at the convention, which is me showing off these sweet seahorses. I think it'd be so fun to have a seahorse just mainly for bragging rights, but I feel like they're fairly high maintenance and that's a little bit scary. They also do custom cages too, and reptile enclosures. They do reptile racks. It's been this little dream of mine to someday work with some genetic project in leopard geckos or crested geckos. So, I'm over here daydreaming about doing reptiles.
These kinds of racking systems, they're generally used in reptile bleeding setups where you might be dealing with a large amount of animals at once that have to grow out, that have to be separated from each other, that have to be taken care of individually, and you really need to go vertical in order to maintain that many little creatures until they grow out.
They're lightweight, like plaque rack like this with interchangeable buckets in it. They come in bigger sizes than this too and it's all modular, interchangeable and in low. Stuff like this gets me daydreaming about all of my future projects I could be doing. Don't tell my husband that I'm here looking at reptile racks and getting way too many ideas.
Do you know how many cool animals I could have if I had these big modular cages? It'd be a dangerous situation for me. This is one of my favorite tanks here. I just love that it's this huge circular shape and all of these beautiful little neon tetras, they go in a circle and they just never stop. It's not stop circle and it's so neat, and mesmerizing, and really peaceful. I wish I had this tank at home.
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There are so many great saltwater displays here and people selling corals and saltwater fish. That's not really something that I've ever considered doing before, is actually maybe experimenting with saltwater and having a saltwater tank. It's something that I'm thinking about more and more. It's like, "Gosh, how fun would it be to try this whole other little world of fish tanks that I've never even considered trying before?" I'm seeing everything here and it's just so magical to somebody who's never been in the saltwater realm and doesn't know a whole lot about it. It's all just so pretty and so cool. Maybe I should try it.
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I'm thinking more and more about how trying just one little saltwater tank, the little beginner tank, would probably be a lot of fun.
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I've had a lot of fun so far walking around. I hope I was able to show just how interesting it was. So much fun to be able to come to these big conventions. This is only the second one I've ever been to. I hope I was able to show you just how much fun it was. Thanks so much for watching guys. Be sure to like and subscribe and have a great day.
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[00:11:48] [END OF AUDIO]
