TUESDAY CHUM with Father Fish

Welcome, Father Fish and the Natural Aquarium. Well, good evening. Hello, hello. Happy to see you all. Great to have you here. We have J.D. the Thursday. Now, now. Now, now. Now, now. You're right on the edge there. You may very well lose your rights. We're going to delete that. We will have no obscenity here. Okay, well, I did do that, didn't I? That was horrid, just horrid. Chum, chum, right, chum. That's it, chum, right. You don't know what it means, you need to learn, right? Matt Madison. Hello, Matt. Let's see if there's anybody new here. Yes, Matt is, I thought so. Get Matt a wrench here. Get him in the club. This is a 100% membership club. That is to say, there are no conditions to membership other than showing up. If you show up, you're a member. You can choose not to be a member by not coming back. But if you come back, you're going to be considered a member. Unless you cross the line. You don't want to cross the line. Adam, how come you don't have a ring? It's on a new email or something. I don't know. But we'll get it right now. Hello, hello. Good to see you. Petra Mann. Neil C. Vids. J.D. Christian. There we go. New account. Right. Got it. Gotcha. And you're covered. Matt Madison is covered. This is everyone else, I believe. Great to have you all here. I need to talk to you, Adam. I've got some really exciting news I want to run past you, chat with you about. Maybe later in the week, I'll give you a call. Ah, you're very welcome, Matt. So this evening, we're going to do the fourth in a series of four lectures on the natural aquarium. Now, this started as a series on AquaFred, the supplement. And while it remains essentially focused on that, last week we broadened it to include plants. This week, we're going to talk about living organisms of the animal variety as opposed to the plant variety. So, microfauna, macrofauna. We will get into the bacteria a bit, although that won't be the major focus. and essentially the effects of all of this on a natural system and all of it based on the AquaFred supplement. Let me get the mint out of my mouth so I can talk, and we'll dig right into this. One second. I will take questions. This will go on for a bit. It's pretty involved, and then we'll do questions afterwards. The true food web in a microcosm, by combining a massive buffet of trace elements, such as azomite, basalt, and structural components like biochar and clay with wild microbes, the system is not just feeding plants, it's fueling a bottom-up ecosystem. So we have the fish and inverts creating waste, the detritus and microflocs in a mixed substrate, wild microorganisms, bacteria, protozoan, fungi that are fed by the azomite basalt minerals, macrofauna, microfauna rather, infusoria, and then the macrofauna, rotifers. and worms, the microfauna, including microworms, rotifers and tunicaria. Mineral-fueled microbes are wild microorganisms which require a vast array of trace elements in rare earths like the lanthanum and cerium and the zeolite to synthesize specialized enzymes for waste breakdown. let me say that again wild microorganisms require a vast array of trace elements to synthesize the specialized enzymes that are required to break waste with their breakdown waste so breaking waste down does not happen in a vacuum it happens in an environment an environment that is rich enough to facilitate the the full process now anything breaks down but if it breaks down purely through the action of bacteria that it creates a foul condition because the bacteria virtually explode in the environment draining it of oxygen creating a condition in which life cannot survive. So to break down the waste properly requires a broad array of enzymes and other active ingredients in order to be able to support and nurture the myriad, the literally millions of microorganisms, both species and individuals that are required in order to facilitate this process. It is a community, microbial community, not a few isolated elements. So you cannot drop a few paramecium in a tank or a little vial with a couple of organisms in it and expect that to really be able to satisfy the biological needs of the system as it is breaking down waste. It requires not only a broad spectrum of microfauna, it requires also a broad spectrum of mineral and elementary content. So the principle that I have espoused from the beginning of this is the principle of diversity. With diversity, there is balance. There is harmony. Each element learns to coexist with each other. Now, to be sure, in the early stages of this, there is a process by which certain elements are in open warfare with each other. But once that breaks down, as it will break down, there are new compounds that are created. It's called the chelation process, in which compounds are created that are fundamental to a natural system that is growing plants and feeding microorganisms. So all of it works together. What are the structures? There are two main structures to this. One is the mineral-fueled microbes, wild microorganisms requiring all of the chemicals, and the other is biochar. Now, biochar creates a living city. Biochar acts as a permanent microscopic apartment complex for these wild cultures. I was talking about this the other day in the context of charcoal and what to do with the charcoal that no longer is active. Leave it in the tank. Leave it in the tank. Unless it contains something so dire that you have sucked out that it would pose a threat. But if you were to have such a condition, you ought to, number one, not put it there to begin with. number two get rid of that charcoal don't keep it you don't want it you don't want to go flowing back out into the system but the critical thing to remember is that once it has absorbed on an atomic level on a microbial level or beyond that on on a on the tiniest of levels on the atomic level or the molecular level uh to be more to the point once it has absorbed certain molecules that are deleterious then it begins to provide a home for microbial activity which is able to course through it like in a maze or an apartment building and build its own little nests and homes wherever and being able to feed on the the water as it is drawn through now the water is drawn through by virtue of i don't know if you all got this but my microbes they move by virtue of cilia cilia are like a thousand feet or more to the point a thousand paddles that allow it to swim And you can see this, if you look under a microscope, at certain such animals like paramecium, you'll see these tiny little infinitely numbered little tiny, I don't know what to call them, cilia. They're called cilia that are pulsating and causing the animal to be able to move around. Well, while they do that, they're also moving water at that infinitesimal level. Nevertheless, that water is being moved, and it's being moved through whatever the substrate is, which would include the cell structure of the biochar, allowing it to further filter and further break down a waste and also feed the host of microfauna that are living in it. So this amounts to a perpetual cleaning crew. This thriving microbial web serves as the primary food source for tiny, tiny microfauna like infusoria, rotifers, microworms. These tiny organisms crawl through the mixed sand and mud, constantly eating detritus and keeping the substrate from compacting, effectively doing the mechanical maintenance in the system. This approach completely redefines the rigid rules of traditional aquarium keeping. keeping. Instead of relying on pristine artificial separation of layers, the infusion of microorganisms allows biology to take the wheel, creating a self-filtering, self-assembling ecosystem that mirrors wild riverbeds and lakes. Most of you who are here are very clear about this. There are many who are completely bewildered by this notion. They cannot even conceptualize the idea that you can have something in the tank which would cause the system to be self-cleaning. They're devoid of such knowledge as to be incapable of understanding the foundations of all biological life, which is microbial. Now, we hear that, but what does it really mean? Well, it means very simply that the waste, the waste that large animals produce is broken down into tinier and tinier and tinier particles by microbes that are feeding on it and releasing their own waste to feed others. And so it's food after food after food after food to the bacterial level, to the fungal level, which then converts those very basic elements into nutrition for plants, which take up those nutrients and create the food that the larger animals consume. in one form or another. If these larger animals are strictly meat eaters, they are eating animals that themselves are consuming the vegetable matter. So whether it's FOF1, F2, the reality is that all of animal life depends absolutely for its very sustenance on plant life, on, if you will, vegetable life, either directly or indirectly. The dependence is absolute. What does this mean for the aquarium? It means that there must be a balance of animals and plants. Now, the reality is that many people claim they can't keep plants alive. Here's the truth of the matter. If they are not keeping plants alive, they are not keeping fish alive either, at least not in the healthiest way they can. They are, in fact, constantly, continuously, and persistently trying to adjust the environment that the fish are living in mechanically by taking it out, putting new water in by this constant process of water change, water change, water change. And the only reason they're doing it is because they are fouling the water. They're fouling the water. They don't understand that fouling the water is not a law. It's not required. It's rather something to be overcome. and you overcome it with a food web that is able to cycle everything in the tank on a continuing basis. Now, that's not to say that that food web is going to feed a dozen 12-inch fish in the tank. It will not, unless you have an extremely large environment. A 12-inch cichlid, an Oscar, requires the food web of probably as much as a quarter, an eighth to a quarter of an acre of biofirm, bioform of biological material in order to generate its food requirements. Keep in mind, you see, when you see a large school of large fish, they're living in a vastly larger environment, but that environment is generating microfauna, generating small fish, feeding all of them up to the level of the Oscar's food, which is going to be, at all times, fish, shrimp, other inverts, other kinds of small fishes. They have to be fed in order for them to be there. What does it take to feed enough of them to provide nutrients for that Oscar now that that eighth to a quarter of an acre is a wild estimate and may be absolutely off the wall whatever it is however is what it is and i give you the the reality that if you have half a dozen large fish in a 125-gallon tank, your food web, regardless of how magnificent it is, will not be able to produce enough food to feed those Oscars. You are going to have to put food in it. Follow this now. When you do that, you will be overloading the food web in the system. You will be creating more waste than the system is able to manage. Now, it will do a heroic job. it will probably be able to control all of the detritus to the point where there will be very little detritus left on top of the sand surface. And in fact, if you build a food web on that, there will be even less of it. But regardless, it will not be possible to build a food web that is powerful enough, strong enough, diversified enough, big enough, large enough, substantial enough to be able to manage all of the waste of a large number of big fish in a restricted environment. So what happens? Well, you get a very slow but very gradual buildup of organics in the water. You begin seeing this in a couple of ways. You begin seeing it in the water becoming maybe not murky, maybe old, kind of yellowish, beginning to take on a tint. You will see it in detritus building up. You may see it in an algae buildup that is kind of out of control, that you can't get control of. You can't get it all out because it keeps coming back so strong. When that occurs, that is the time to do a water change. So with a number of very large fish in an aquarium, water changes remain, even with this system, they remain critical. You may need to do so once every three months or once every six months. Certainly not. once every week. So I hope that allays some of the concern and expresses more clearly what we're really offering here, what we're providing and what the real nature of this system is. In point of fact, while there are a few tanks, I have done no water changes in at all. They're really pretty rare. And they are, by and large, tanks like Lucas Bretsch's tanks that have very few animals in them. And so they're producing very little waste that is easily managed by the microbiota in the system, leaving the water pure. And that can, in fact, go on for years. More commonly, a larger number of fish in a smaller tank, which is what I have in my store, does require occasional water changes. Once every three months, once every six months is about average. there's some aquariums where i want the water to be far more pristine such as in the discus tank well i i will do a 10 percent water change once a month once a month and that will restore the condition of the water to one in which the discus will will will be flourishing so all of that now here's the thing this approach it as i said it redefines the rules of the traditional aquarium instead of relying on a pristine artificial kind of cleaning and water changing all the time it creates a self-filtering self-assembling ecosystem now we we quarantine and we screen the wild culture first to avoid introducing unwanted macro predators such as dragonfly larvae so the system is set up once the substrate is in place and it's properly capped it's planted and some fish are put in it we then put macro and micro fauna in the form of mulched leaves from a body of water, which will contain a mad diversity of all of that organic life, all of those microbial critters. That creates the fundamental foundation that can and should be added to routinely, initially for the first three to four to five months, once a week, small amounts once a week until it gets built up. As it gets built up, it will allow the rest of the substrate to function at a much higher rate to be able to carry through much more rapidly all of the nutrients, and it will increase the ability of that tank to maintain larger numbers of macro-organisms, if you will, of fish and invertebrates. It will nurture those plant roots to such an extent that they will grow more rapidly. They will subsume the waste in so doing and be able to sustain that cycle at a more rapid and a stronger and a greater rate. Our book, let me talk about the book here second. The Natural Aquarium. This is what I'm talking about. All of what I've discussed is in the book. Now, it's not in here in near the complexity that I've been describing. It's much easier to read, much more straightforward. I've tried to give you the science. While this does give you the science. It does it in a way that is readable by the average non-scientist, by the person who does not understand biochemistry. So while it touches on that, deals with it in some rather substantial ways, it does so in a conversation in a language that is easy and simple to understand. It's written by some excellent writers, researchers who understand very deeply and very clearly exactly what's going on. And it's sought in 400 pages to put it together so that you will have a resource, frankly, beyond anything else that's available anywhere. We have two professors now who are looking at using this as a textbook, one on a college level and one on a high school level. So we anticipate that's going to happen. It's really put together by chapters in such a way as to make it a very effective teaching tool. so there's that the book, buy the book, it's available on amazon um we have signed copies available uh at FatherPritchAquarium.com so this then is the definitive multi-decade substrate formula the foundational recipe that in fact has revolutionized how thousands of hobbyists approach natural fish keeping we have reached just with our store 20,000 we have a 20,000 customer base we know just in the U.S. there are 20,000 people who who are using this system right now how many others beyond that there's no way we are anticipating uh while we're in at Aqua Shell this weekend talking to some wholesalers about carrying the Aquapreda substrate in order to make it available to a wider range of stores so that you'll be able to get it without having to pay shipping and maybe even able to get it a little less, although some of our deals are a little over the top, shall we say. But it will be available, and we will then be working with those local stores to help them understand how they can implement this in their own fish keeping, and at least to create an aquarium that shows how it's done. There will be printed material that goes out with it, so we're going to be in a teaching format as we move this out. The book bridges the gap between everyday hobbies and deep biological science. It elegantly explains how a complex, wild microorganism food web transforms what conventional hobbyists think of as dangerous ingredients into a completely closed-loop, crystal-clear, perpetual ecosystem. The Aquapretta formula makes it completely clear why it perpetuates without deletion. The flocculation secret. This is the key. The massive amount of diatomaceous earth paired with clay powder is the structural secret of this system. Once the wild microorganism's culture introduces its biological glues, its EPS, this mineral mix aggregates perfectly into the sand, preventing any cloudiness, even as it integrates over the first year. The massive doses of azomite and volcanic basalt aren't just acting as plant food. They're fueling the wild bacterial and fungal cultures that are housed in the biochar. Microbes require those 70 plus rare earth and trace elements to build the specialized metabolic enzymes that are needed to break down heavy organic matter over decades. carbonite engine. The ratio of dolomite limestone to baking soda provides the exact chemical wall needed to shut down hydrogen sulfide production while keeping the deep substrate environment perfectly buffered for the macrocolony. This is one of the major crises that occurs In so-called Wallstead systems, there are inadequate buffers, maybe inadequate buffers in that system, which cause it to become acidic, creating hydrogen sulfide, which is deadly. It kills everything, and you wind up with a dead tank. AquaPrada contains a buffering system that is self-perpetuating, that does not break down, does not deteriorate, remains strong and primal as a fundamental component of the system, permanent, permanent. Nothing is permanent, they say. Well, give it 100 years. It may break down in 100 years. it's not going to break down in 10 or 15 or 20 or 30 or 50 years you plan to have your tank up longer than that i hope you do i hope you pass on your aquarium to your children and they to theirs and then we'll learn just how good we really are because we don't know we've only been doing this for 25 years we do have a tank 25 years old that is going strong producing all kinds of life will it continue for another 25 years? Well, I won't be around to find out, but there are those who will, and you'll be part of that if you're still around, so you'll know. So here we go. We're on a journey here, you see, a long, long-term journey. This system that we've put together rebuilds the rigidly, overly mechanical status quo of the modern aquarium hobby. So we are, in fact, offering an alternative to what has come to be the modern aquarium hobby which is to the best of my ability to understand it a death cult it is the system that is wholly dependent upon the energetic and muscular activity of hobbyists on a continuing and persistent basis without stopping it goes on and on and on and at some point it doesn't go on and at that point the system fails the fish die and it's all over how many people do you know who have quit the hobby because they could not sustain all of that effort infinite at some point something failed it broke down crashed and all was lost now that is not to say there are never any problems in a natural system certainly there are but by and large they are easily managed with relatively minor effort they don't require tearing it all down throwing it away and starting over that should never happen the reality is if the system completely crashes somebody throws a can of food in there, fouls everything, all the fish die. What do you do? You take all the fish out, take everything out with a net, everything that's dead, and at that point you have a choice. You can either let it sit there for two to three weeks, or you can change up to half of the water. If you change the water, it will be pure in one week. If you let it sit there, it will be pure in two to three weeks. Once the food for all the bacteria is gone, the bacteria disappear. They're gone. And the tank returns to its original state. Now, you will have to reculture because the microbiota will be lost. The fungi won't. The bacteria won't. Anything living in an anaerobic environment, which is all the deep stuff, will still be there. So replace the superficial stuff. you go back out to that creek and you've got a big jar full of microbial activity of leaves and mulch you bring it home and you dump it in the tank whole thing throw it in replant the tank with new plants and it'll be back in a week it'll be healthy and growing and thriving in a week that substrate cannot be destroyed it can be messed up but it cannot be destroyed it is a permanent condition, just as the earth, the soil on the earth cannot be destroyed. It is a permanent condition. It can be affected, to be sure. It can be deprived of certain nutrients, maybe many of them, to be sure, but it cannot be destroyed. It remains there as impoverished as it may become. it nonetheless is capable of coming back from with some adequate husbandry the same in your tank don't throw it out let it sit there let it catch its breath let it begin to come back how are we doing here we've got about 15 minutes i'm getting weary the carbonate the ratio let's see did we do this okay let's do um one more this would be the end of it now we're going to do four little phases here. We're going to do rare earth catalysts, structure lockdown, micrometropolis, and chemical shield. Rare earth catalysts, azimuth, and volcanic basalt supply over 70 trace minerals and rare earth elements like lanthanum and cerium. These do not just feed the plants. They fuel the metabolic enzymes of the wild microorganisms that are introduced into the system. Number two, the structural lockdown. Clay powder and diatomaceous earth provide a massive cache and exchange capacity. They act as a molecular net, binding the nutrients tightly under the sand so the water column stays crystal clear. Number three, the microbe metropolis, biochar, and whatever carbon you leave in there, acts as a permanent, non-degradable habitat for wild-cultured food web, allowing the microbes to process fish waste into plant food indefinitely. And the last is the chemical shield. Dolomitic limestone provides a permanent carbonate buffer that prevents the deep substrate from going acid, completely neutralizing the threat of toxic hydrogen sulfide. So that's it. That's the lecture series. I am having a bit of a problem right now. Maybe I can relieve myself. I don't know if you picked up on that, who's a stone working on a shallow indoor pond for some dwarf crayfish and snails that a box turtle won't have access to. What my fish friends recommend for plants. What kind of turtle? Really interesting. Anything. Any at all. Box turtles aren't going to eat aquatic plants. He will eat terrestrial plants that you might want to grow some for him. He'll eat grasses, so any kind of grasses will will work wonderfully well and I would recommend doing that I would recommend not just for the aquatic section plants and that but also put soil based on you can use the same soil foundation you can use aqua preta both in water and out of water you can use it for potted plants for atriums for for vivariums for gardens for that matter uh and it really doesn't cost that much to do it If you buy the material in bulk and just use the supplement to supplement that bulk, you can do a very large garden area for maybe $100 worth of material and have it sustain itself in a way that is relatively permanent. Let's see, we did this outdoor pond twice. One could become a fish pond. Well, I can see there's been a lot going on here while I've been away. You do play while the cat's away, don't you? All of you. Yeah, do join the Discord channel, those of you who have not. It is magnificent. It's just a remarkable, remarkable resource. Now, truthfully, it's nothing like it anywhere on the web, not even close. It's a source of knowledge that's manageable. manageable. It's accessible. You can find it. You can get to it. You can get help doing it. It's there as a library, and more than a library, as a community center, but a community center of fish keeping. So just magnificent. You must join. You must be part of it. I think we're at about 25,000. There are upwards of 1,000 people on it at any one point in time, so it's a pretty popular place. I'm going to have to shut down. I'm sorry. My bowels are complaining to me. I ate too much for dinner before I came on, and it is working its way through. Praise the ecosystem. So we're going to call it a night. Sorry to shut off a little early. I'm done here. If I don't make it quickly, I may not make it at all. God bless you all. Love you all, and see you in the morning Bye for now.