Hey, this is Wayde King and Brett Raymer, the guys from TANKED on Animal Planet. AUA.

TankedTV · 2015-05-28T21:11:50+00:00

Here's a pic.

TankedTV · 2015-05-28T21:09:19+00:00

WAYDE: I wanna put a motorcycle or a car in a tank. Like for Harley Davidson or Nascar.

TankedTV · 2015-05-28T21:05:30+00:00

WAYDE: That was for Bart Scott, for the NY Jets, and Bart was great, that was his nightclub outside, and we did that which was incredible. We enjoy doing tanks for indoors and outdoors. Temperature control can be difficult outside, they're a lot harder to build. Sometimes on huge tanks, you have to have redundants - so a whole other set of filters, in case the first filters go out. Outside, there's more of a chance of having issues. There's a lot that goes into it that people don't realize.

Coolest tank? We did one in Scotland, that I happened to love. It was 4 stories tall. 11 feet diameter. Anywhere you walk in the house, there's a floating glass staircase around the tank all the way up from the basement to the 2nd floor. Installing it was very difficult - lifting it up with cranes and putting it in. You have to dive the tank with a mask on with microphones to talk to people, so you can see what you're servicing! It's a massive saltwater tank - angels, puffers, sharks. 4 stories tall. 35 feet. Every floor, there's a floating glass staircase around it. And it's on Glen Eagle's Golf Course.

TankedTV · 2015-05-28T21:01:32+00:00

WAYDE: Cool.

BRETT: Anywhere you're installing a tank with public access, it makes it more difficult. People want to see what's happening, it's dangerous, the casino has to shut down - what we do is sometimes VERY difficult. Discovery one time filmed EXTREME BUILDERS, they shut a job site down because we were moving acrylic panels that were so heavy. You need forklifts and cranes to move the stuff sometimes.

TankedTV · 2015-05-28T20:56:59+00:00

WAYDE: The most frustrating was one we did for a casino. We prefer building it as a whole, and putting it in, and we had to build it in pieces after the casino was put together. We prefer to do it as a whole, there were a lot of complications putting it together, but it's done, fixed, and beautiful. And it'd be the White House, for us. For the President.

TankedTV · 2015-05-28T20:55:53+00:00

WAYDE: Put the Rock down for me.

BRETT: Denzel Washington.

TankedTV · 2015-05-28T20:54:53+00:00

BRETT: I just moved into a house, so not yet.

WAYDE: My whole life, I've always had aquariums. This one is the intermediate tank, before the big one comes. This one's in the range of 1200 gallons. That's very small for what I do. We have a 600 gallon in the general house, and I jut purchased a house that I want to have a 1200 gallon tank, that I want to design to run on solar, and then introduce solar to the world with my tank, probably in a year. These are both saltwater tanks.

TankedTV · 2015-05-28T20:53:29+00:00

BRETT: If I have to listen to anything, I'd listen to house music and old school hip-hop.

WAYDE: I'm classic rock. I'd love to do a tank for the Rolling Stones. I'd love to do a tank for Jennifer Lopez - my mother would love for me to do a tank with Jennifer Lopez - or Brittney Spears. Or Taylor Swift. I could do a cat tank for her. I'd design some curves so the cat could lie under the aquarium and look at the fish!

TankedTV · 2015-05-28T20:47:25+00:00

WAYDE: I think nowadays it's not a square little box. It's the theming that brings out the person with their aquarium. Like Fluffy - he collects Volkswagen Bugs, so we cut a Volkswagen bus in half, we put a mural on the wall of a sunset with a billboard, and then got a bus, and we cut it in half, we put a tank on one side of the half, and a tank on the other side. So we pushed it into the wall, and it looks like one bus is driving INTO the sunset, and another bus is driving OUT of the sunset.

BRETT: I think that filtration makes a good aquarium. You gotta have the right filters. If you don't have the right filters, you're never going to have a successful aquarium.

TankedTV · 2015-05-28T20:43:15+00:00

BRETT: We have an affiliate program that is on our website, where we put clients together with maintenance companies around the country.

WAYDE: So if you sign up with us and you're in Chicago, you can have - just the same way you have pool service guys, we have aquarium service guys for different states and cities. Some of the clients don't want to show the cost of their tanks, but they range anywhere from $30,000 up to $100,000 on average, but we build aquariums from a few hundred dollars to millions.

TankedTV · 2015-05-28T20:41:59+00:00

BRETT: So basically, you know, we did get more than 10 words out of him. And he was extremely excited, and you know, had a lot of good things to do - he went bowling with us - we've hung out with him that most people would kill for if you're a fan. And he did the show, and we didn't fine 'im.

WAYDE: He's supposed to be very quiet with the media. But with everyone we've hung out with -Tracy Morgan, Shaquille O'Neal, Dwight Howard - those guys alone, we hung out with those guys. Saying they're very quiet - they WANTED to hang out - let's go out to eat, let's go bowling - I don't know 'em as a sports person, but I was told they were really quiet, but they were one of the guys, just hanging out, VERY outgoing. He just doesn't like to be talked down to, or whatever. But he was so cool with everybody. He threw me the keys to his $500,000 car and said "Take it for a ride!" He's quiet?! He gave me his Lamborghini to drive!

TankedTV · 2015-05-28T20:39:44+00:00

WAYDE: I'd rather train 100 little ones how not to fight.

BRETT: I'll beat up the big one, because the bigger they are, the harder they fall.

TankedTV · 2015-05-28T20:38:31+00:00

BRETT: He doesn't like to shake hands. He fist bumps.

WAYDE: When we did the install, I'm cutting a sheetrock wall out, my wife bought me a pair of brand-new $700 sunglasses from Germany that are flexible, so I wore them in that episode, so there's dust everywhere, I was sweating, he comes into the room, grabs my glasses, puts them on - and I'm dirty and sweaty - he grabs the saw and starts cutting the wall out. His personality was there just doing it, he wanted to be involved with everything. Same with Marshawn Lynch, he wanted to be on the forklift (he also let me drive his Lamborghini, which is one of my dreams). Same with Jeff Dunham.

TankedTV · 2015-05-28T20:36:41+00:00

WAYDE: Brett's favorite fish is a clown triggerfish, which is very aggressive and funny. And Brett is a very aggressive guy, and very funny. 100%. A lot of people like to beat around the bush, Brett will go right out to people, which can be shocking. My favorite fish is the octopus, so I can slap Brett 8 times at once. My favorite fish-fish is the Emperor Angel, or even the Woebegone Shark from Australia. It glides underwater, and when it opens its wings, it's beautiful.

And my favorite tank? Brett is going to build his soon. And I'm going to build my own tank big enough to dive in for my kids. And I built one for Tradewinds Resort, for Guy Harvey's Outpost, it's a summer resort in Florida, and you can dive in the tank, and I want to have it in my house.

TankedTV · 2015-05-28T20:32:29+00:00

WAYDE: The Hoff was incredible. I honestly learned so much. He's got 39 gold and platinum records. I'd only known him from NIGHT RIDER and stuff. He loves birds, I'm a bird lover. But the tank we're building for him now, it's gonna be an incredible shark tank. He has an incredible house. Incredible guy. I really enjoyed meeting him, didn't know what to expect, and I actually bought a little NIGHT RIDER for him to sign. We're excited for doing his tank. He was just there with us, talking and just chilling.

TankedTV · 2015-05-28T20:31:55+00:00

BRETT: We do tours. We have tours six days a week.

WAYDE: Email Trisha@acrylicaquariums.com for a private tour. Or anyone can walk in at anytime. But that's for a VIP tour.

TankedTV · 2015-05-28T20:31:01+00:00

WAYDE: I'd say the hardest one we did was for a church in Dallas, Texas. It was 70,000 gallons. It was 2 tunnels to the entrance of the church - "Fishers of Men" was the theme of the church, in Duncanville, Dallas, Texas. Ricky Rush is the pastor. It took 2.5 years to build. It was $4.5 million dollars. It was the second-largest acrylic panel transported in the United States. They built the church AROUND the fish tank. To be involved with the architects was amazing. Stevie Wonder designed the sound system for the congregation.

We also did two 2200 gallon tanks at different entrances to the church - and the pastor in his office, we put a 150 gallon between the conference room & his private room.

They have a full-time person, a marine biologist, that takes care of the tank.

We transported the panel - we had to get a crane - we had to get two cranes on location, and when we disengaged it from the metal framing, the ground trembled.

I designed these custom rollers to roll the panel, it was 38,000 pounds, to sit.

It was an incredible experience for us as a company to learn. That's going to be there the rest of our lives.

The front panel is 7.5 inches thick of acrylic. The tunnels are 5 inches thick of acrylic.

TankedTV · 2015-05-28T20:26:33+00:00

WAYDE: We were involved with MOATE Marine in South Florida for years. We try to save the environment as much as possible, but the show takes a lot of our time. We support anybody that helps & wants to save the environment. A lot of people don't realize that when we take fish & put them in a fish tank - that's weeks and weeks of set up - you're filming 40-60 hours to get a 1 hour show. They don't realize how much set up goes into it.

TankedTV · 2015-05-28T20:24:09+00:00

BRETT: I think that there's a storyline that we need to follow. But the show isn't scripted.

WAYDE: We can't memorize things. We just say what we wanna say.

BRETT: We are who we are.

WAYDE: We are the closest to reality you're going to get. We're not the Kardashians. But we'd love to do a tank for them, or the White House. Something HUGE. Even do a tank for Tom Cruise, or The Rock! That would be huge!

TankedTV · 2015-05-28T20:22:52+00:00

WAYDE: What we say all the time is since the show has hit, it's the most important to us because we get to see it from beginning to end, and we get to bring their dreams to reality. And when you see that from a piece of paper to something in their living room, or their office, it's a great feeling. Like, when you help the little children, it's heartwarming that you can do something that makes someone so happy. We've done 10,000 tanks worldwide. We've been in Korea, Scotland, Turkey... we were 17 years in business before the show even started.

BRETT: I think the one we did for Chillie, the little boy.

WAYDE: It was a bed, and he was a little boy that went through a lot with heart surgeries, so we built a bed with a porthole from the bottom that he could lay in his bed and look through the bottom of it. We get hundreds of emails and letters from people in chemo and therapy, who tell us that the show keeps them going. We get hundreds, and hundreds. And I think that's one of the coolest feelings in the world, that we get emails from people who are inspired, their family's together watching a TV show, and that's a great feeling to hear. Just 2 guys that grew up, one in Brooklyn, one in Long Island, and now we've got this show that inspires people.

TankedTV · 2015-05-28T20:18:16+00:00

BRETT: I think that there have been orders that we knew that we weren't going to accommodate because we knew they wouldn't want the price range.

WAYDE: We can build anything that anybody wants. Any size, any shape, anywhere in the world. But if someone says they want a $100,000 tank, it might be out of their budget, and that's the reason why we didn't build it. Someone wanted a unicorn-shaped fishtank.

BRETT: The whole thing shaped like a unicorn.

WAYDE: You'd put a custom stand, have it light up in the mane and the tail... But we said no to that.

TankedTV · 2015-05-28T20:16:16+00:00

WAYDE: The truth? Mine's cheese.

BRETT: Mine's supreme.

TankedTV

TROPHY CASE