The Research Group - Staff Meeting #2

Today, you ready? Here we are. Well, hello, hello. We are live. We are among the living. We are here. Hello, first class fish. Christy, Glitch, and the other five people who are here. Nice to see you. Yeah, drop us a line. Say hi in the chat. Really, do by all means. This is, I do have a bit of feedback, but it's not, it's not even understandable. Yeah, I see the, But, yeah, I see the feedback. Don't fret with it. It ain't worth all of this. Let's see. This is the second in a series, and the series will go on until it no longer is going on. But we're anticipating a long series, a couple of years maybe. Because what we're doing is researching the natural aquarium. in in in minutiae in detail looking at areas first and the very first one we're looking at is leaves what is the impact of leaves which leaves have what kind of impact and what can we recommend in your tank for leaves based on whatever it is you're trying to do the next unit will be the substrate. We'll be looking at all of the material that I've been putting in the mix that goes in with the dirt to determine its efficacy and importance and relevance to anything. We may determine that it has no relevance at all. I don't know yet. There's some interesting things that are already coming to the fore. So this project is something we are just beginning to figure out how to share. There's a group of people, about 10 people, who are working diligently with each other, doing research, sharing ideas over on Discord, much of which is available to sponsors. If you would like to sponsor this project, simply go to Patreon and make a pledge. Whatever kind of pledge you want. It's not being paid. It's based on ability to be supportive. And then let me know or let someone on Discord know. You follow the link over there. Let us know you've done that. We will give you access. to as much of the research as we possibly can. And even if you can't support us financially, the next best thing you can do is to click that like button. And if you haven't done so already, click the subscribe button and please do share this video. Thank you, Becca. One other thing that's important. YouTube has been doing what's been referred to as shadow banning. What that really means is that for smaller channels And the Father Fish is a small channel relative to big channels. The algorithm does not promote to even a substantial portion of the people who are subscribed to the channel. It's really a small portion of the people subscribed to the channel who get notification that we're doing this, for example, or that a video is up. What you can do about that to help us is, as you are in other live streams or watching videos of other fish tubers, make a comment and mention Father Fish. That's all you need to do. And that will give us more traffic because people will see that. They'll click on it. You don't need to put the link in. Just mention Father Fish. some meaningful context and those who are interested will follow through many people discover us through other channels chat rooms on other live streams or someone someone has mentioned father so be sure to do that that's probably the best way we have of being able to reach out you've all met Laura before and Luke. Tommy Denda is not showing his face over his voice. He's going to be texting with us. He's here, here and among us. Tommy is an absolute delight. There he is, right. Laura and Tommy have put together this project and thus far they have attracted the interest of another half dozen or more uh scientists or researchers or artists or other uh creative people to participate in in this project and it's coming along so let me let let me let Laura take over here because he has an agenda based on what she's been doing this week Laura all righty so um hello everyone. Good evening, good morning, good afternoon, as applicable, and best of the holiday season to everyone. Yeah, it's been a busy and eventful couple of weeks. Largely, we've been doing a lot of administrative stuff in the past couple of weeks, so I'm sure if you joined us for our last meeting, you know some of that was administrative in nature, just talking about organization and structuring things and I think though we're going to in January be making a big push forward particularly with the leaves guide project which is Tommy's baby and he'll be talking about that hopefully next time we meet but this week I had something of an epiphany and the my epiphany was that um it might be a good idea um since Father Fish has been uh active in doing live streams of natural aquaria if maybe we could collaborate with um a person or some people and have um something similar to that but with a large live stream live streamed natural aquarium following the Father Fish method which would also help us implement some techniques and test some theories that we're coming up with in the national the natural aquarium research working group so that group that Father Fish has mentioned that talented group of different scientists and researchers and and artists and so what we would do is we would hopefully be live streaming this 24/7 and then providing also providing it would provide us with some video clips or say some YouTube shorts and some regular YouTube videos where we could talk about certain aspects of setting up a natural aquarium using the father fish method so for example we could talk about setting up the substrate we could talk about adding the leaves and what you can expect to see and not only talk about that but see it in real time and we can watch the aquarium mature you know a lot of times when you first start an aquarium it's kind of a scary process because as the aquarium is is just starting out and you're trying to get all those those wonderful cycles started you know unexpected things can happen and this might give us an opportunity also to talk about troubleshooting some things um as they occur let me let me stop you a minute Laura because this is a good point for Luke to describe the technical aspects of what's involved in actually being able to do this so unfortunately i didn't hear much of that because i was working on getting your Patreon links and stuff and uh my brain was completely occupied. Lauren's talking about people being able to share their aquarium. I thought it would be helpful if you could explain a little bit of the technical aspect of what's involved in doing that. Yeah, so we're trying to come up with the easiest way to do that and the most cost-effective way to do that. There's a lot of different ways for us to do it. I think what we're going to do is find a low cost to use the android phone that we know is high enough quality resolution wise hold the charge because that's been our biggest issue with the android phone or or stays on long enough and doesn't overheat so our goal is to find something in the 50 dollar range and for the people that participate as far as their live streams go or their aquarium we'll probably just send them a phone to use and the whole setup um it's only going to be a few probably anyways and it'll be cool that way no one has to come out of pocket to do that but that's why it's good to support us with memberships or patreon uh the youtube membership just because it does take a little bit of effort and money to do this stuff and a whole lot of time so definitely so if you want to participate you can drop a link here in a youtube video i read all comments or come over to discord and engage in a conversation with us that's really where the action is uh luke is there i'm there lars there tommy's there there are a bunch of us there all the time every day uh it's a very active dynamic community that is welcome to new folks to plug in and become a part of. And then Luke will guide you through the steps of actually getting set up. And that's Kenny, right? ABC. Yeah. He said he'd be willing to do something with his 180 or something. Yeah, he's got a new thing. Yeah, he'd be another good one and he's already got a lot of experience. Yeah, Kenny, that'd be cool if you want to participate. We're looking to have at least three that are related to this research group so they can test different methods and different things. Ideally also, if it's possible, if we could kind of start build an aquarium kind of from the ground up, that would be great so that we can really showcase the father fish method in particular. One of the things that would be helpful is if someone has a tank, a well-established tank that is not the father fish tank we can work with you to bring about the conversion and that would be very interesting i think for everyone as well how do you take an existing tank without tearing it down and starting over how do you build on that to be able to to make it a natural aquarium and we can do that with virtually any tank if you have a tank that's been set up for year or more that that uh you want to be able to convert into a living aquarium we can do that it's not a complicated process it is one that would be very worthwhile to document so don't feel left out in this project if you've got something that you'd like like to work with because that would be ideal as well but by the way also for anyone out there who's kind of new to aquarium keeping prior to a little over I think about a month ago I hadn't had a fish tank since I was child and the tank that you're seeing in the pictures in this presentation that's my current tank I set it up literally a few weeks ago and it's been going strong the parameters are stable and as you can see all the inhabitants in the tank are pretty happy pretty healthy pretty healthy pretty happy um so yeah even if you this is an easy method even if you um are new to the hobby um it's it's an easy method to follow and you can get some very very good results yeah that's one of the benefits that you know everyone thinks oh well that sounds like a lot of work and a lot of the whole purpose of this is for it to not be a lot of work create a natural aquarium yes let nature do its thing but you have to put all the pieces in there for it to do that so and i think um once we get this uh hopefully get this live stream project underway it's going to give us a lot of opportunities for engagement so a lot of opportunities for us to engage with you and for you to engage with us um so for example we we could ask um general members of the community um so anyone watching the live stream on youtube for example to make some share share the observations of their life of the live stream tank um with us and we can talk about those with with everyone um we could talk about the progress that the tank is making in our weekly meetings um we could even take clips from from the streams and maybe edit them into like for example um maybe some relaxation videos for example to target a wider audience right nope you're saying no i said right oh i was like oh no it's a really good idea yeah because i mean that is something um there's a lot of people out there who maybe even if they aren't interested in having an aquarium themselves um they do like to watch fish and like to see um a nice tank set up um so it's it's an opportunity as well to engage with that even wider audience um and we can also if the interviewer if if the tank owner um is interested we could even maybe have them join us for some meetings or some interviews and share their thoughts with us and of course also if you aren't comfortable with that we're perfectly happy um we can we can just talk with you privately and um you know like tommy and i are happy to do voiceovers i think uh i'm volunteering you tommy um on uh on some some um videos say of the clips and stuff from the from the live streams um and let's see we can also use the stream to kind of creatively engage with our patreon donor base for example um i was thinking maybe we could sort of set up kind of levels within um the the page within patreon so that um it's almost like people are kind of sponsoring uh sponsoring a fish sort of like what um you see aquariums and zoos doing with their sponsor slash adopt an animal um you know we could have like say the tetra level and the danio level um you know for example if there's tetras and danios in the tank and so that could be kind of um a fun way for people to um to engage with us on on patreon as well and um one thing that we as as previously mentioned um as well that we're interested in is possibly having multiple tanks um if we can if there's enough people interested in sharing sharing their tank with us i think it would be really nice to be able to see several tanks in this live stream yeah and one of the things in relation to the patreon um i hate to make it seem like a money grab it's not that we expect to have thousands of people paying you know but if people can participate in the dollar a few dollar level um what we're thinking is get possibly you would sponsor a tank so if we have three or four different setups you sponsor that and through the rotation we can list uh the donors or the sponsors as sponsors of that aquarium too um if people were interested and then i think what we'll probably end up doing is if we get three or four of these set up we'll include them in the live stream rotation but we will also probably give them their own dedicated 24/7 stream on the Father fish channel so you if there's one aquarium in particular that you either have sponsored or that you like and you know you want to keep it on as a background thing on your tv or whatever you want to do you can just have that up um online so i think that's what we'll probably end up doing something along those lines yes i'm sure as as probably just about everyone who is watching this is aware watching an aquarium can be a very relaxing and rewarding pursuit. It's really fun to watch the different aquarium inhabitants interact with the environment. It's just, all in all, it's just a lot of fun. I know that I frequently spend time sitting in front of my own aquarium. I'll even turn off the TV so I can go watch what my shrimp are doing, for example. Much more relaxing than about anything else we do oh yeah for sure um at any rate this is the conclusion of the presentation that i had planned um so thank you very much for your attention and again best of the season to you and your family um and and to your friends as well thank you laura and we do have a 24/7 live stream that is running currently i think it's offline right now what's that it was offline this morning it dropped off the camera or the the the screen i'll double check it um so also at the same time jackson simpson says i have a 55 gallon deep substrate but he's bottom to top eco planted gravel right well Rio Escura I don't know what that is uh one inch one inch sand cap and that'd be considered would that be considered the father it's it's really close i think another inch of sand uh it would would provide what that does is the sand cap one of the functions is to prevent nutrients from emerging from the substrate into the water column it creates enough of a barrier at two inches so that The nutrient level, the dirt, if you will, stays down in the substrate and does not come into the water column. Now, one of the principles, there are two basic principles that separate the father fish system from the Walstad method. The one is we add nutrients and minerals to the substrate in order to provide some longevity, enough that the system will sustain itself for two to five years. number two to build a substrate that is compact enough to prevent water from flowing through it and washing nutrients it back into the water column that's the function of sand and the function of two inches of sand so those two considerations are really key to the father fish system so i would say uh jackson you're you're on the right track but you ain't there yet um part of the difficulty is adding adding supplements to a system that's already established there are some ways to do it but the reality is if you get that sand cap another inch and just let it run and a year or so the nutrient level is going to build up in it such that it will begin to operate as a natural processing system and we'll be able to create that that cycle of life that is so important to what we're trying to do let's say Grand Wood Branch and Lake Oh nice to have you here i'm glad i've also updated that so the live stream is back up we've had a lot of issues uh with our 24/7 streams pushing them to youtube lately in the past i'll have to start happening the day after thanksgiving so outside of my control apparently um we just try to keep an eye on it and make sure they're going yeah so the live stream is active you can click on it And it'll be there. Right now, we've got about five or six tanks from, oh, the Netherlands and Canada and the U.S. I think there might be an Australian tank. But it's open to anyone, really, who wants to participate. Get in touch with us on Discord. The link will be below, and we can post it here. and just chat with us about getting online. We'll help you do that. You're going to have your tank broadcast to the world. Well, thank you, Luke and Laura and Tommy for being here. Nice to be with you this Sunday. We're not going to be here on Christmas Day. We will be back on New Year's Day, however, and we'll be a little further down the road on this, so we're likely to have more information uh and uh more things happening by then join us on Discord please you'll find it's a it's a wonderful experience it's an opportunity to delve into a myriad of of topics there are i don't even know how many 30 or 40 topics we have one for people who are interested in mushrooms another for people who are interested in horses yeah like me yeah you know it's just taken on a life of its own it's become a real community and lots and lots of opportunity to talk about fish in detail as as well as It's a natural aquarium. Tommy is complaining we're done. It's up to you, Tommy. Keep on. I hate that he's running out of things to add. So real quick before we go, you know, Laura, where did you get most of the things in your aquarium? I'm assuming that's your aquarium in that final picture there. Yes. So, yeah, let me pull that. Let me have a look. So I got literally all of the rocks and all of the branches from my local stream. The sand is just pool filter sand. I actually, of course, you can't see it in this picture, but I actually, when I mixed up the substrate layer, the mud layer, which is underneath that sand cap, I actually used some substrate from the local river, the Ammer River in my area. I'm in southwest Germany and um and yeah so a lot of that came from my local my local river the plants of course most of those I I did order from a from a supplier here in Germany but I also um got some from um other hobbyists locally we have in in germany we have ebay clan and which is like our version of Craigslist kind of and so I was able to get a bunch of stuff like the floating plants and a few of the stem plants from other local hobbyists the shrimp have all come from local hobbyists and and also my my snails and my um my fish which are Heterandria formosa um which are a species of itty bitty little live bearer fish which come from North America U.S. oddly enough um and they're actually one of the world's smallest live bearers um which is pretty fascinating so they're similar they're similar to a guppy but I I have been having a blast just watching them um as they explore the the aquarium and interact with the shrimp and come out when they think that I might be giving them food Actually, it's funny. They'll sometimes come out, even seemingly not because of the food. If they see my face, they'll kind of come over for a moment to kind of stare at me and then wiggle their way back into the foliage Isn't that awesome? Yeah, it's cool And it's funny because you think, like, oh, well, they're just hungry but they have a different behavior when they think you're going to feed them and they're just checking you out and saying hi, basically So it's pretty cool Yeah, for sure. But, yeah, going back just for a moment to collecting stuff from, you know the local rivers and stuff, you know, aquarium keeping doesn't have to be a really expensive proposition. I know that generally keeps – that's something that I hear a lot of people citing as a reason why they're a little bit leery about starting their own aquarium, you could literally go out into a river and get most of the stuff for your aquarium. You can get a lot of things, like the aquarium itself even, you know, from other hobbyists in your area if you want to. You can buy it secondhand. It doesn't have to be a really expensive setup for you to get a lot of enjoyment out of it and for it to be a successful setup. Yeah, and that's, so some of you might have seen the streams, but Kenny, which is the ABC Aquatic, that's what he does. He goes out and goes to a specific area and sets up an aquarium based off of that, you know, plant, you know, substrate to some extent. And the fish and stuff that he put in the tank are very specific to that biotope, a river, a lake or something that he visited. so really really easy to do really cool he's got a ton of cool things i'm sure we'll see some more of them and he'll be on semi regularly here with uh cool stuff to show us it sounds like so moon boots i i suggest you add some grapes and bananas and you might cut up an apple uh and mix it in with that pineapple the pineapple is really not going to provide sufficient diversity you need more fruit in order to have greater diversity in your uh your your fruit salad tank there but pineapple is always a good first step it's uh it's one of the i think one of the only if not the only bromeliad that you that you can find at your local grocery store to eat so and yes tommy you you were required to put leaves in the tank i wondered if anybody caught that like it or not, oh shoot, very hello nice to see you, delighted to have you here so so what's the plan here as far as the the next time what are we looking at after Christmas or what yeah new year's day we're thinking don't party too hard on New Year's Eve if i could get myself in gear we may do some more before that um i've just been running dry for about a month here but i've been excited about this project because i really feel as though it uh is going to define the direction of the channel for a long time to come and it's something that is it's really profoundly significant for the last two years i've been shooting from the hip just gone off the seat of my pants based on what i think and what i feel and what my experience tells me and now we've got a group of people who are going to hold me to task on this and find out whether what i'm saying is really valid or not so it's a little harrowing but i'm open for it i really am open for it i mean if they decide for example if they decide that the whole idea of adding supplements in the form of minerals to the to this to the substrate is meaningless then that's going to work just fine for me because it advances our knowledge and that's really what this is all about It's in the knowing. It's in knowing what to do. We all learn what to do based on our experience, based on what we've learned. But rarely do we have an opportunity to be critiqued and delved into with quite the depth and perspicacity as these fine people who've come on board with the commitment to find out just what it is about the father fish system that seems to make it effective. So we're going to be learning a lot. We already are learning a lot. For example, did you know there is proof in the pudding? Well, there's more than proof in the pudding. And the real issue is, what is it about the pudding that we really like? And what gets it there? And those are kind of the issues. What I was going to say is there is an entire kingdom of light that has been referred to in this research process that I and most everyone are wholly ignorant of. It's called Archaea, A-R-C-H-A-E. You know, when I was in school, they were only just beginning to even mention it. So it's very new from a scientific perspective. It's been less than 50 years that anything at all has been known about this. And the reality is there's virtually nothing known about it except that what the researchers are now believing is that the whole process of nitrification occurs not by virtue of bacteria affecting ammonia, but archaea, which is a bacterial-like material, but it is not bacterial. So little is known about it that we're really shooting in the dark. So it's just part of what I mean when I say we're learning so much that is creating far more questions and far more need to investigate than has really ever been the case. Garlic pudding, Moonboots. Garlic pudding. If you'll make some pineapple in that, it'll be particularly desirable. We miss Moonboots. Moonboots was active with us on Discord until he had to be thrown out for being just too irascible. But he was a joy, and I loved having him. It was him or everybody else. And for a while, I thought he and I could just enjoy holding for him, but I got voted down. I'm trying to sneak you back in the door, Moon Boots. I'm not quite sure I can do it yet, but we might give it a shot. I'd like to see some informal meetings between the research group of just discussing the things that they've been working on amongst themselves where we get kind of an inside peek at those conversations and it's just a little bit of a learning thing instead of a formal presentation um because i see the conversations that happen on the discord and they're pretty informal um but there's a lot of good information there that would be good for other people to get along the way i think people would enjoy you know hearing some of that i think you're right there is a conversation that's a a text chat conversation that goes on daily um we probably we probably could uh do something with that i'm not quite sure what it would not be audio or video really it would simply be text right i like the idea and you're absolutely right being able to get this gang together and talk with them is remarkable right yeah there's a lot of good conversations that happen outside of the streams and outside of videos so i like the formal update but it would be good to periodically just have kind of a almost like the forum where we get you know together and just discuss some of the things like you were just talking about in a little bit greater detail um and go off on some tangents i'm sure people would appreciate that yeah yeah i think i think that would be very doable maybe um maybe we can kind of set up like a few small group one-to-ones with people yeah that'd be cool sounds like a plan to me interesting idea yeah i'd like to do that i agree with you yeah maybe where we just pick a pick a topic that we've been um finding a lot about right and just have a little chit chat yep grab grab some coffee or a beverage of choice and talk about it talk about something we found that's exciting to us even if it's not always you know 100% relevant you know sometimes we find out some really kind of fun little tidbits here and there right yeah the yeah and those conversations can go on for a little while so it'd be fun to to have those you know where other people can participate so um might learn something they might learn something and they might have something to add So, soon, I want to get the live streams a little bit more regular, you know, get everybody back in the habit. I know that everybody was bummed out because YouTube stopped. Hopefully they didn't hear that. I think after the holidays, we can really start to kind of bring things up a little bit. I think, you know, really up until New Year's, it's going to be a little quiet. Right. Yep. I agree. but yeah starting in january we will be um doing much more um with the with the writing project as well so it should start to get really a lot more lively and a lot more fast-paced yeah so we've got the multimedia kind of approach here we'll be doing videos live streams we'll also be doing written text um in essentially book format with lots of illustration we've got some really talented artists on board we're already cranking out stuff that is extremely high quality uh the first uh the first portion of this as we mentioned is the leaves of trees what is it about tree leaves that that are so vital to our aquarium we're digging into that even now a lot of it going to be available that the detail of it will be available in text will be available in book format that's going to be on discord i mean on a patreon behind a paywall uh so you'll you'll need to be able you'll need to join um patreon in order to have access to that material but i guarantee you it's material that's got not going to exist anywhere else that will provide enormous detail to how how these systems actually work what it is about them that makes them so unique so remarkable cool stuff so what time and day are we going to be back here New Year's Day, New Year's Day one o'clock, all righty so make sure you're able to get up yep, same time the day before and remember to like and subscribe if you haven't done so already and to please share this video with your with your friends and as Father Fish said please mention us in in a meaningful way in comments um as well yeah if you want to become a you know a subscriber if you're most of you are probably already subscribers but you can also join the memberships are I think a couple dollars to five dollars somewhere in there you get an icon next to your name there's different levels and just help support the stream and keep it going so if you got anything good out of the stream it's worth a few bucks and i'm sure that you you've gotten enough information to justify that so bless you all wonderful Christmas 2023 we'll see you see you the first day of the new year bye for now