🔴 FATHER FISH ON FRIDAY NIGHT

Well, hi there. How is everyone? Nice to see you. Good to be here. Oh my, it's Friday evening. Gracious. Where is another week going? You know, I don't even care anymore. Since I retired half the time, I don't even know what day it is. A friend of mine was interviewed just last week to determine whether or not she is competent to live alone. She's 91 years old. And they said to her, what year is it? Oh, I don't know. I don't pay any attention to that. Well, what day of the week is it? I don't know. I don't pay any attention to that. How old are you? Oh, I don't know. I don't pay any attention to that. Do you know where you are? Yeah, I'm home. Where is home? Here, right here. This is home. Well, she had it all right, but they determined she was not competent. Oh, dear. In order to be competent in this world, you've got to be willing to accept certain fundamental truths. Well, we here at Father Fish are the aquacultural revolution. We are indeed. We stand forthright against every bit of popular wisdom there is in the hobby. And Lord knows there's plenty of it to go around. I want to show you something. Let's see. Let's do, I'll tell you what. Before we do that, let's give some shout outs and hellos to all the folks who are here. Let me get over to my YouTube screen Because that's the easiest way to do it And as soon as it pops up, there we go Excuse me Let's see, first in this morning, this evening Was Brad Hobbies, hi Brad Natural Aquariums Mermaid Chorus Fishin' Tantics Hey Fishin' Garby Animals Rescue is here Mermaid's Chorus Xanadu, how are you? J-Dog J-Dog's been working on my Excuse me Website It is going to be up this weekend It is FatherFishAquarium.net FatherFishAquarium.net We're going to have all of the Fish and plants that we're selling And other goodies And I hope to be able to do a little bit of um videos on there and some other fun stuff as well oh let's see Chris Trap hi Chris Trap Chris convinced his friend to cap his gravel with sand amazing wonderful all right we have another convert one at a time uh who else is here Mainstays Fer and fins hi Jess good to see you Jessie's been having trouble getting on the Discord, and I don't know why, because she gets on the DM just fine, but then can't jump out of that onto the, so I don't know. Somebody needs to help, girl. I've tried to help, and I can't seem to get through. Aqua Negro, hello? Aqua Negro. Kevin Rosenberg. Hi, Kevin. Craig Broderick is here. Fortier. Fortier is Fish and More. Hello, Fortier. And Mark. Mark, where are you, Mark? Mark Croswell. I saw you. There you are. Mark Croswell. Hello, hello. Ashley, hey Ashley And Derek Did I say Derek Thompson? I don't think I did Amber Gruball Hello Amber, Emily Stevens Emily is one of the jewels Over on Discord With us, we have about I think we're up to 400 people On Discord Come on over if you haven't visited yet Somebody will post the link Get over there And jump in the conversation And the water is fine It is a magnificent community of people We're just so blessed It's wonderful Everybody's thoroughly enjoying themselves Maple Street Aquatics Hello, hello Happy to see you Good to have you with us Alright, I'm down to the bottom I think Let me see how many people are here We got 21 watching We got 16 thumbs up We're perking right along here. All right. So, J-Dog said, I actually know what building back better means. LOL. Yeah, he had to rebuild our entire website because we put it up and somehow neglected to pay the annual fee on it. And it was disappeared. It was trashed. It went away. Lock, stock, and barrel. So Jeremy has had to completely rebuild it Thank you, sir Natural Aquarium, saying hello to everybody All right Ooh-18 Ooh-ooh-ooh-18 What is ooh-ooh-18? Oh-oh-18 I don't see that Natural Aquarium said ooh-18 Then it said 20 What? I think I'm missing out on something 17 thumbs up Oh, I got it Okay He's doing thumbs up 17, 18, 20, 21, 21 watching, 21 thumbs up. Whoop-dee-doo, all right. Housekeeping, I'll be on Sunday night at 5.30, and I think Mary Page will be with us. We're going to do a family show. We want to do children's stuff, so help us out a little bit. We're going to try to find ways to appeal to and entertain children. And then Monday morning, I'll be back at 9 o'clock. And I'm thinking about also Wednesday, Monday at 9. And then I'm not going to step on Jess. I'll be off by 10. And then I'll be back on Wednesday at 9. And then here again on Friday night at 8.30. So, I was saying, my son and I are making a video right now about bulb plants, natural aquariums. I love bulb plants. I love, no, I mean, I love bulb plants. I got a bunch of them here. Let me see if I can show you. Got a bunch of them. Aponogetons and Madagascar Lace. There's Madagascar Lace, the little one. That's, that's not a bulb. That's a bulb, right there. There's an Aponogeton. There's a Madagascar lace. What else have I got? There's another one. There's another one. I've got a bunch of them in. It's not one. That's not one. It's a leaf. Let's go over here. I have more some there, but I can't get close enough to see them. There's a big one, the Crispin's. That's a pretty one. Look at that. Got some algae on it, too. I need to clean it up a little. My snails are not doing the job. These are the new Sudamagil Paskai just came in. They came in weird. They came in tail down. They were at like a 30-degree angle, but they have straightened down, and they're doing pretty well. I bought 10. I can find about 7. Well, I guess I'm back. I don't know what in the world happened. Am I back? Can you hear me? Am I there? Hello, Richie. Paul C. Joshua Miller Tory, I don't know what's going on I was not offline the um apparently what's going on now apparently the um um stream yard link dropped to make a sense of me am i back can you hear me can you see me am i here hello hello live it says live live from florida J-Dawg, you happened is what happened. I'm back. Well, good. Thank God. Paul Byrnes Thank you, Derek. Yes. Oh, dear. Madness. John Sua. Hello, John Sua. So, and we picked up, while I was offline, while I was offline, we picked up 20 more viewers. Amazing. Rainer Trofer, 3G. Tory I said Derek Richie Paul C Joshua Miller okay so let me get into a little bit of instance here i was showing my fish tanks off i hope you chose awesome I don't know we did this when was it sunday night we got just totally wiped out never did figure out what went wrong um talk to my technician he didn't know what went wrong eventually came back just as this has come back you happen this what happened i guess all right where were we we we were in we were in uh the cult the the aquatic cultural revolution patricia powers hello hello so the latest we're working on is the food web there are a lot of questions coming up about the food web a lot of uh uh and and it's all rather preliminary frankly because frankly no one has done this so here's where we're at we were on we are now on the most advanced level of aquatic fish keeping anywhere in the industry anywhere in the world there is no one trying to do what we're trying to do which is to create a nano tank and i specify a nano tank because that's the only one that's going to be practical for us to work with a nano tank that will be utterly and absolutely and unequivocally self-sustaining. Now, how are we doing this? Well, we're doing it very simply by adding to our deep substrate. Adding to our deep substrate leaves, Patricia Powers says, I've never been on the cutting edge of anything. Well, here you are, Patricia. You are in the midst of it. You are caught up in the throes of it. You are in the majestic moment in which the crisis of chaos ensues and out of it comes the zenith rising from the ashes and becoming a fully, thoroughly, utterly balanced aquarium? Is there anything in this world that could be more magnificent? Well, yeah, probably. But this is what we got, so it's what we go with. Alright, so here's the deal. Boy, nobody's commenting. Your favorite stem and root plant i don't want to talk about it i want to talk about something else chris pay attention here's what we're doing we have a deep substrate we all know about that now what's missing in that what's missing is the food web what's missing is the and we've we've been on the edge of this for a long time we've been close to it we've been knocking on the door now we're opening the door and we're going in and it begins with something very simple it begins with why can i not but there it is it begins with fungus fungus fungus is the absolute key fungus what fungus allows us to do is break down, break down the biomass in our tank, making it available to the microscopic animals in our tank as nutrition. And I'm trying to find, and having trouble doing it, here we go, maybe I'll find it here, trying to find a picture that Patrick Paulson posted on discord uh recently in the past day or two and i thought i knew right where it was and i'm not finding it because what he has done is he has started at the other end of this process he started it at the end of creating of his where in the world is it is it under memes creating, I think it is, is it? I don't know. Somebody's got to find this for me. I'm having trouble. I want to get Patrick's mud tank. Where in the world is it? Tori, tell me where it is. I can't find it. Terry, Susan, hi, Susan. Fungus Key, right. Patricia Powers, still 10 years younger. All right. Where is what I'm looking for? Somebody help me out here. Photos and videos, got to be there. But Patrick posted a video yesterday of his mud tank, his pond tank. And I really want to show it to you, but I can't find the silly thing. I'm scrolling all over the place. He posted some stuff where, well, it probably is on Instagram. I don't know if I can find it on Instagram. It's posted on Discord and I wanted to use it because it's a bit longer. Should be photos and videos, shouldn't it? This is nuts. I should have looked this up before and had it in front of me. I was sure I was going to be able to jump right to it. Video ideas. Maybe this is it. No, I know what it is. It's submissions. I got it. I'm in the right place now. There we go. I got it. I got it. I got it. All right. let's bump this up so we can look at it. This is pretty extraordinary. What Patrick has said, it's like two and a half minutes long. Alright, we need to get it up. Share screen. There it is. Coming up. Okay, this is going to look like nothing, but bear with me. Is it on? It's on. I don't know what we're looking at. Here we go. Check this out. Check this out. Look at all of the life in this got little bugs running around it's got worms all over the place it's got there's a nymph that's what this is that's a nymph on a leaf this is all the little microscopic animals working their way daphne working their way through the plants now look at that isn't that a mess and that awful that is brilliant i'm here to tell you you need to go back and stop it right there so you you can look at this. I want you to see this right there. Whoops. Why can I not do this? It doesn't want to stop. Okay, I got it. Now, what he's done, obviously, is he's brought the entire substrate in and dumped it in the tank unceremoniously, I might add. This is going to clear up, and it's going to clear up beautifully. It may take a week, but it will clear up. And when it does it's going to be absolutely loaded with all kinds of microscopic life it will have the food web emergent in it no i don't suggest that anyone start where patrick started i mean you can if you want to i haven't done it and i probably won't if i did it would be in a little 10 gallon tank and i probably wouldn't anyway but you can do it and what you're doing when you do this is you're guaranteeing that you've got the entire food web in place. Okay, so what does that mean? First of all, it means that there are organic substances in the tank that are breaking down primarily leaves of trees. Most of the research that has been done on the health of flowing waters particularly, but also of ponds, demonstrates that the key to a healthy body of water is, guess what? Leaves. Leaves. The leaves of trees. Imagine that. Chris is saying Patrick is a madman. Actually, he is. And he would be the first to admit it. But he's also fundamentally a genius. because he's achieved what all of us are looking for and done it in a way that is utterly abhorrent to virtually everyone who keeps fish. Demonstrating, I don't know quite what again, but demonstrating that this really can be done. Patrick says, so he might never have to feed his fish again. That's absolutely right. If he's going to put small fish in it. Now, obviously, if he puts an 8-inch Oscar in there, it's not going to find adequate food. So, we're talking about, that's why we're talking about nano, nano fish, nano tanks, like this. These are all nano fish. They're all little tiny fish with a lot of plants. Now, I don't have in here yet the litter that I want because I frankly haven't been able to find it locally. I just got out of the hospital I've not been able to get out and do any collecting I'm looking forward to that it's just kind of day to day when I can get out I'm going to be making a trip shortly to collect some more pygmy sunfish and some other critters and I believe that that location will have the kind of litter I want I'm pretty sure it will it's flowing water it's very rich loaded with plants. There must be 25 different species of plants in there. So I'm going to be doing that and I'm also going to be getting litter. A madman who loves mud, says Tori. That's right. Okay, so the key here is fungus. Now a couple of people just today said, oh he put his half-beaks in. Oh, that's cool. His half-beaks are small And they're going to be able to feed on On those daphnia And probably even on the worms So that's going to work for a while Half-beaks will not work well In their long term Because they get too big But for now it'll be perfect Some confusion about The nature of The fungus There are different kinds of fungus There are some funguses that are terrestrial. We think of mushrooms as the fruit of those kinds of fungi. There are other fungi that are aquatic, and they're different. Let me illustrate the point this way. A terrestrial plant cannot grow in water. Why is that? If you take a terrestrial plant and put it in a bucket of water, what is it going to do? It's going to die. It's going to drown. Why? It's got water. Doesn't it need water? Yeah, but it needs something else. It needs oxygen in relative abundance compared to the oxygen level that is available in water. Aha! So, there we have a distinct difference. We have plants that will live on the land, that are able to live in soil that is heavily aerated, oxygenated, aerobic soil. We have plants living in water, living in a substrate, a mud, that is virtually anaerobic. They derive nutrition in two completely different ways. Now, when the anaerobic plant, the ludwigia for example sprouts in the in the mud in a creek it is feeding anaerobically it sticks its head up above the water and then what happens immediately those leaves begin taking in oxygen and begin sending oxygen through the body they begin doing photosynthesis they begin creating sugars they use the minerals that they're getting out of the water they put they they they uh they do photosynthesis using oxygen that they're getting out of the air and the plant takes on a completely different appearance it blooms it can't bloom underwater but it blooms in the air So there's one plant living in two radically different environments successfully by living in one and then moving into another, emerging in that other, and taking advantage of that environment. That's the issue with our plants. Our aquatic plants live in, that's why we do the deep substrate. The deep substrate gives us a virtually anaerobic environment. It's an environment that's very, very low in oxygen. It cannot get O2 to perform photosynthesis underwater, says Susan. Absolutely right. That's absolutely right. It gets more oxygen out of water than underwater. Absolutely right. But it can grow and thrive in the water, as we see. I mean, I've got 20 different kinds of plants here. They're all aquatic plants. They're all thriving underwater, and they're all living in, they're mostly stem plants, living in a deep substrate. That substrate is about five inches deep. What is it missing? It's missing the food web. It's missing the vital component of the food web. And the vital component is the leaves of trees that are being broken down by aquatic fungus. and bacteria both do that that provides nutrition then for microscopic life for the tiny little paramecium the amoebas the little tiny stuff that feeds on that that broken down leaf matter and then they are preyed upon by larger micro fauna which are then preyed in turn on by little fish going in the other direction this food chain the let's see the breakdown the breakdown of the leaves provides nutrition for plants as well so the breakdown of the leaf is feeding the plants and it's feeding the microscopic life waste from the microscopic life feeds the plants as well So it's a web. It's not really a chain. It's not a single chain with each link. It's a web of many different links all working together to bring about a web of life, a food web. web how do we achieve that in our aquarium what do we do to achieve it susan is saying ludwigia always melts in my aquariums um well we we need to talk about that because there's a reason that happens what we'll get we'll get to that susan i want to i want to not lose track of it i also want to not lose track of what i'm talking about how do we do this how to re-achieve this? Well, first of all, you have to have leaf matter that is breaking down aquatically, either from an existing tank or from the wild. Now, since no one is doing this and making the product available, we've got to go out in the wild and collect it. That's what patrick paulson has done he's gone out and collected it that's what we need to do we need to get out in uh in the bayous we need to get out in the ditches in the streams in the creeks in the rivers in the ponds and the lakes and we need to collect deteriorating leaf matter okay so what do we do with this we're bringing back a bucket full of leaf matter it's full of all kinds of stuff number one if you are queasy about dumping that in your tank because you think something dreadful might get in i point you to my last video in which i admonish people not to get overwhelmed by the nasties because the nasties are not going to survive in a healthy tank And if you see a big dragonfly larvae, you can easily take them out. Okay, you got these leaves. Here's what you need to do. This is a two-step process. Break it up real fine, half of it, at least half of it. Break it up real fine, cut it and emulsify it. Then mix sand in with it, wet sand. Mix sand in with it and pour that in to the bottom of your tank. If you've got it already planted like this, you're going to have to be somewhat careful. You're going to have to lay it in there more or less delicately. I will be doing that, and I'll show you how I do it when I do it. That's number one. Once you've got about an inch of that sand down, and if you're setting up the tank brand new, it's a lot easier to do that. You're going to put two inches of sand on top of the mud, one inch of which will have all the leaf matter mixed in with it. You put that down, and then on top of that lay the rest of the leaf litter. So the bottom of your tank is not going to look like gravel or sand. It's going to look like a bunch of dead stuff, dead leaves. it's going to look like any body of water that's healthy looks like in nature so if you don't like it then you got to decide whether you want to have a natural tank or not and maybe you don't and that's okay this is only for the most advanced among us who are also the weirdest among us so take it to heart lay that down and then you can plant you can plant in and among the leaves and that's going to settle down now here's the deal kevin said my kind of thing yeah me too you bet kevin here's the deal uh every three to six months or so you need to replenish the leaves. And the best way to do that is to where's my bag? I've got a bag of Catappa leaves here. That's not them. What is that? It's oak leaves. Well, you can use oak leaves too. Take an oak leaf like so. Scrunch them up and drop them in the tank. You can soak them first if you want so they'll sink. You can sink them in the tank. It sort of doesn't matter. Where's that other bag? Oh, there it is. catapulis. This is reputed to be the superior leaf for your aquarium. How do I, there, get it up there. They cost a buck a piece, Catappa leaves. I sell them. It's an Indian almond tree. I don't know if Naresh is here. He's probably got one growing in his yard, Lord knows. Alright, so there's that. That's how we do it. Now, do I have a video showing that? No, I don't because I don't have the material yet. I've still got to get the material to make this work. I will be doing that. I will be getting it, Chris says, the most advanced. Right. Got to love it. Almond leaves. Can I just cover my gravel with those instead of a sand cap, says J-Dog. Yeah, you can. You want at least an inch to do it. Kevin said, putting leaves in my aquariums. probably one of the most enjoyable things i do the fish absolutely love it what it does is particularly for little fish it provides a a home a uh what's the word i want a rookery that's not the right word a um place for baby fish what's the word for that whatever it provides that like that there a nursery thank you provides a nursery We'll be right back.