alex

We've got to know each other, we've streamed live, we've done calls, we've done tech videos. But in the morning, we used to stream every single day for, I think, like, a year. Oh, a year. I did every day, seven days a week for a year. And there were a number of months where it was twice a day. So, small enough or slow enough to chat. Oh, yeah. Whereas now, both our channels get to the point where sometimes chat, oh, yeah. Father, they say you're live, sir. Yeah, I am live, and I'm holding my phone up in front of the camera so they can see you. The other thing I can do is I can open your channel and then copy it to my StreamYard. That'll get us both on mine as well. I'm going to do that in a minute. I'm just still futzing around some. what is this i guess oh wait i've got it i've got it you're watching alex okay that's that's the live stream right that's not the two of us though okay and there are two people watch no it's 26 that's what i'm gonna do yeah and then just like verb on you or whatever well Yeah, I'll have to mute it somewhere. Let's see now. Search Alex. Chat, folks. Jeff, Carrie, Ian, Aquarium Magic, or IAI. Psycho Plant Lady, hello. First Class Fish, Skedinona, Idiosyncrasy, Outside In Aquatics, Shaq, Aquatic Moose, Bethany, Duffy Gal. Good to see everybody in here. It's great to have folks in here. uh if you want to hit that like button to help spread the stream uh we're just getting a couple things squared away so he'll be live on his channel as well and then we'll we'll start talking about things because you know we've got some things to talk about you know i want to clear up the questions all the time i don't want to answer for him you know i'd rather hear it from the mouth of the man himself so i'm trying to get your uh i'm trying to get your oh here it is trying to get your channel i got it okay wait you got a two in there okay now let me shut the volume off there go back here and do settings not settings wrong it is i think people say they're seen it on the preset well i just went live on stream yard yeah okay now where am i i got i got you i got me see if i can um well it's sort of working i don't know what do you have are you seeing why is where are you getting that door i don't know where it's pointed it's pointed at the wall by a computer it looks like it's got set down maybe it's not well i've got it looking at me unless there's a camera i'm not aware of flipping the screen switching arrow on the on the at the top right it might just be your front camera instead of your back camera oh right yeah that's right you're on yeah you got me on the phone i've got you on a little in a little box this is all very peculiar. Let's see. I'll tell you what we can do now. We can go there. What about if we go there? We're there. All right. I think we sort of have it. People watching on this side. Yeah, I've got about 50 so far. Okay. Okay, awesome. What I have, I now have your screen on my who's he was? StreamYard. StreamYard, yeah. And we just got a $5 donation from Darren and Tony. Thank you. A five pound, I should say. When's your next sermon? My next sermon is already in the works, and it'll be posted as soon as I can get around to it. Danny is here. Kenny, rather. Kenny is here. Hey, Kenny. Kenny's in my channel. Hi, Kenny. Yeah. Kenny. Is your phone charged, Father Fish? oh yeah it should be okay why just when somebody somebody was like are your guys's phones charged and i was like oh well after all this yeah no i think so i can actually i can plug it in or can i but if i if i unplug the microphone i can let's just get going i'm ready i'm ready we're just we're just gonna go we're gonna go from here this is cool Oh, glory. We've been trying to get together for weeks, at least, and probably really longer. I was happy to see Kenny pop in. Kenny is putting together a conference for next fall that'll be in Northern California, I guess. Is that right? Oh, in Oregon. Okay. To be in Portland. And to which he has invited as guest speakers, Alexander Williamson, Lucas Frantz, and Father Fish. Ain't that a kick in the head? some other people too eventually so definitely stay tuned yeah he's looking for a few others you know Phillips would be a good one they're a bunch of guys they're a bunch of guys who are doing natural channels now who are really really very good one of the things I've noticed is the people who are coming on doing natural channels they're not doing what I'm doing and they're really not doing what you're doing either they're they're really doing aquascaping which is a place i've not been able to take my channel and and you've not gone in that direction not really i mean i have videos on it but most of them are pretty old now like six or seven years old i haven't done anything i've got uh a couple of people on discord who are working on a chapter in in our book on aquascaping uh tisha is working on that and she's she's an absolute genius so yeah we're gonna have some pretty good stuff available but it won't be coming out of my fish but it's exciting to see that you know it's exciting to see a whole a whole state of new people coming in with channels that are based on natural aquarium what was the one some kid came up he did like three videos three or four months ago each one of them hit a million views that's right that's right yeah and he's doing he's doing very little but just absolutely killing it he figured out the algorithm and i haven't figured it out i mean the fact that i got a hundred thousand views i think it's more due to the fact that i lucked out with one video and that video has carried me for now since april that seven eight months definitely it can definitely make a big difference that's for sure and i mean let's let's talk about that though i mean a lot of people will want to hear what your method is but that we get here at YouTube was. So what was the video that, you know... Stop cleaning your tank. Stop cleaning your tank. Stop cleaning your tank, right. Sure. I think the other thing is that a lot of people, you know, in YouTube, now they do the shorts too. And so I think topics are pretty hard to cover in shorts because you don't get the nuance, right? Oh, yeah. I get more flack over shorts than anything else. You can take a clip from a live stream where you say, don't feed your fish. You're overfeeding your fish. And that doesn't mean don't ever feed your fish or don't feed a giant monster fish you're keeping. Right. But that means if you've got little nano fish, you don't need to feed them every day. You know, but everyone is saying that means never feed your fish. So that's what I think I wanted to talk to you about is to kind of clear up. What is the father fish method? You know what I mean? What is your belief? Is that the only way you should keep fish? Or, you know, are you a fundamentalist? Or can people do whatever they want? And this is just like what you're doing. Well, you know, I'm of multiple minds about this. Yeah. And I've gone through a process over the last... I've been doing this now for five years. It doesn't seem like it does it, but it's been five years. Yeah. And I kind of have been doing the same thing pretty much from the beginning. I had somebody recently complain, why are all your videos the same? You talk about the same thing over and over and over. And my response to him was, because you haven't tried it yet. Yeah, that's kind of what it is. You know, it's like I'm a, what's the term? A one-beat drummer or a one-instrument symphony or some such thing. Whatever the expression is. One-trick pony, right. And it's true. It's true. You know, I am saying one thing, and I'm saying it over and over and over in any way I can say it. And I try to say it in better terms all the time. But what it is, is you can have nature in your aquarium. That's what it is. And people will say, oh, no, you can't. It's a little glass box. You can't have nature in there. And I say to them, the same laws that are going on in the lake outside are applicable to what's happening in my fish tank. Same principles, same laws, same processes. Nothing is different. Just the space. But what goes on in the space is based on all the same chemical processes, all the same laws of nature, everything. so yes you can have nature in your aquarium and if i'm right that's it right also where people then also criticize like what's going on with this when we mentioned both you and i have videos on in micro flora and fauna leaves and bacteria from the wild right that's another option. But, I mean, so, like you're saying, there are biotopes out there, for instance, like where bettas live, that you can actually recreate and attempt almost completely after. Oh, yeah. Just, you know, a couple feet deep. But if you're going to keep a big school of angelfish, that would, you know, what's actually out there. You know, there are frogs, like poison arrow dart frogs, lay their eggs inside bromeliads in the little two ounces of water inside the plant. And those baby tadpoles grow into frogs and live in those bromeliads waiting for something to come down into them. Pardon? A water drop. Yeah, right. I'd like us to just kind of talk real quick if I could ask you, you know, if somebody said what is the father fish, method i mean it's really not one thing you can do things a couple different ways but you have a version that over five years of doing youtube you kind of recommend yeah i have a formula that's right and and the formula the formula is really there for the for the beginner it's there for the person who's starting out for the first time to make it easy for them so they don't screw it up day one you know it's kind of it's a bulletproof system that'll get you started one year two year five years ten years down the road you've already made modifications to that maybe major modifications but it's been it's been organic it's been systemic and it's allowed you to improve what you're doing along the way so yeah the formula is very simple the formula is based on a layer of soil that soil contains four things it contains humus in the form of peat moss or choir or or leaf mulch whatever you can get it contains soil and if you can do terra bite of That's great, but any kind of soil, it contains... Now, does aqua soil also, like, people use aqua soil? Yes, absolutely, yeah. Although aqua soil really is a composite material. It is. It's primarily clay balls that are saturated with fertilizers. Yeah, you know, I did a video on that because Dr. Tom Barth did a virtual spheres and actually have a lot of filtration going on in the center of the arrow. And that's what the normal nitrogen cycle takes place on the surface area of the outside or the top layer. So it's interesting that in that small of a space, like they took the sample from the center of those pellets. Or same thing with the smalls you use for... Right. Well, that's the nature of clay. I mean, clay is sand that is so dense that it packs together and roots can't get into it. They'll grow around the outside of it. If you have a clay ball or find a clay strata anywhere, you will not find roots in it unless it is cracked. And the roots have grown in the cracks. It's too dense. That's another thing. I'll stop interrupting you in a moment. but i was gonna say a lot of people have been going back and forth and saying that you can grow in sand grow in sand and here's my opinion real quick which is sand itself unless it's crushed coral is inert it's a stone that's right it is an excellent place that is 50 percent void Yeah, it's immediate, right. Yeah, substrate can build in there. You bet. Or you could reload it in there. Well, and each one of those grains, each one of those grains has bacteria growing on it. So you've got a very rich bioenvironment in a handful of sand if it's coming out of a living environment, like out of a body of water. it's live it is it is live sand yeah exactly that's right it really started there i had a comment today somebody said boy we really need you on the saltwater side and i was surprised and i said that i said you know i started there that's where this came from it started with garf It started way back in the 60s with, golly day, Merle Cohen, who discovered it in Singapore with a little old man whose name escapes me, who was maintaining natural saltwater systems for hotels near the sea. And he was running basically open systems with no filtration and a deep substrate. That was picked up by GARF, the Geothermal Research Foundation, in Idaho or Iowa, wherever it was. And they built a coral farm sitting on top of the thermal vent using deep substrate. And that's where I discovered deep substrate. I'm getting a little. It's not coming. Don't think it's coming from me. I'm not hearing anything else. let me i've got volume oh wait a minute maybe oh wait wait wait i've got my channel open if i unmute my mic now if i go back to my channel let's see i gotta wait for the lag okay that's why people have been dropped and no volume that's why i've only got 35 okay i'm gonna shut down my Thank you.