🔴 LIVE - FATHER FISH IN THE MORNING 9/5/20

I had too many tabs open, and I couldn't, the last one was, was the last one I clicked off, for goodness sakes. Well, good morning, everybody. i'm gonna get back over to youtube here and see if i can keep keep current with the um hello hello hi lee are you gonna come up today live chat all right oh well yeah i don't know what's going on with the song lee it's I'm jumping all over the place. I'm getting a lot of gaps in it. And it's been happening all week. And I don't know why. I took it off your channel. So play it and see if the gaps are on the original. If they're not, then there's something wrong with what's going on here. You'll call up from when you both mess up again. Yeah, well, I've already done that. Tommy Denda, does Father Fish have a Facebook community group? Yes, it's called Father Fish. But it's really not a group. It's a page. I guess, yeah, that's the answer. It's not a group. It's a business page. So probably don't do that. It's funny to make an appearance, I guess. Let's see if he's here. What's going on? Ben's here. We were chatting offline on text. before we came on uh tommy denda and aquatic conquest and jay roe were uh engaged in a conversation about where well about the what we're trying to do with this um with this channel and tommy kind of put his finger on it early so i'm trying to see if i can find his comment um here it is um if you go back to 758 on the text he says it's occurred to me that what father fish is actually doing is creating a movement about how misunderstood the whole aquarium hobby is and he's suggesting we should write a book about that uh call it everyone can have a natural aquarium or whatever. He really feels inspired to help a lot of people learn how to have an aquarium. Then he made a comment a little further on that this type of aquarium is uniquely appropriate to the increased interest in environmental issues of the current generation. I thought that was a pretty astute observation. So it's a way to be able to kind of you know, get in, get in there in a way that's, that's sympathetic to, to a more youthful perspective. Jay Rose talking about, like to see better quality products for sale. And then Cassie B, what was the comment you made about that, about Corey? I was saying how Corey from Aquarium Co-op has been doing that and trying to work with manufacturers and get a product and um that he's tried and he knows what he he does what he thinks he can do to make it better and he tries to work with them to make those changes and they either work with him or not i think some of them he he's been able to work with them about but i'm not sure how much the big manufacturers care about the hobbyist needs well they give lip service of course but i've known i've known a lot of them over the years i've known a lot of the guys when they got into it started uh making products um it's hard to in the current market strategy which is Walmart Amazon eBay the big box stores where price is is the primary concern It becomes impossible for a manufacturer to create a quality product. They are required, in order to market the product, to use less expensive products or less expensive materials. And less expensive materials and more shortcuts on the manufacturing process simply means a lower standard product. So I think the real issue is that, and, you know, Corey could go a long way with this if he would be willing to only sell high-quality products. But I know with the food, like, if he's not going to use it, he's not going to carry it. So he does that, I'm sure, with that and other things. I think he tries to only sell what he would use himself. Well, I've seen him use some things that I wouldn't use, so I don't know. Well, things he uses. I'm sure he uses things you don't use. Yeah, I dare say. His video was one of the first videos I watched on how to gravel back your aquarium. Oh, really? Wow. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, I had a go-round with them months ago where I was talking about, you mentioned gravel. I was talking about my opposition to gravel. And I don't know how he found the comment, but he came back to me and said, you know, as a shop, your responsibility. is to sell people what they want. And I responded to him in saying, well, if they don't know what they need, how are they going to know what they want? That was the end of that conversation. You know, I felt for a good while that the guys who are sitting on top of this pyramid we've got have very little interest in what's happening at this level, at the level all of us are on. I was on a channel last night, I won't say which one, who was on about the same level, not certainly as big as Lucas, but upwards around 10,000. And he had live chat with about 50 people on. I did not recognize one, not even one of the people who were on his chat or people whose names I recognized. And that was kind of interesting to me because that means that we really are divided into tribes, even at this level, and maybe especially at this level. I don't know. And I hadn't really seen that before. So, you know, breaking that down is interesting, too. And that was the, let's see, Aquarium Conquest got into that this morning. He was saying he felt like we really ought to get him to come back on, try to get him to come on, and he won't do it. Try to get Tommy Dender to come on, too. Now they're both chickens. Tommy said Hearing him speak Just think of the sweetest chef From the Muppet show Well I think that's kind of delightful But nevertheless I think we would enjoy the accent I do too Absolutely Unless it's a translation issue I understand that But if it's just an accent I think we can handle the accent Well, I think he's just being a little shy. Aquatic Conquest, and I've got a comment at 808. It's not the one I was looking for. He said only at a level where the numbers are relatively low. And that's really critical because when you've got a stream with comments flying by with, you know, 5,000 people online at the same time or even 1,000, there's no way to keep up with that. Right. And I don't think that's one thing Corey doesn't do on his live streams. He just he'll take a subject and talk about it. And I think he's got, you know, his his person in the background telling him, you know, here's a question, you know, that maybe you should answer, you know, who's watching this stream for him. You know, a lot of the guys will look at the super chats, you know, pull out the super chats. Yeah. Well, those are easy to see. Yeah. Aquatic conquest says, what I mean by that is you become to know individual people and what their needs are, and at the same time, create a social network. But increasing your knowledge, you also create bonds with people you would not otherwise come across. And then he said, like, I'm now aware of Caspian. And that's certainly true. I mean, I feel like I've developed friendships on here over the last year of people I would never otherwise have a chance to get to know. And, you know, they're not physical friendships. They're not sitting in someone's living room or having a meal across the table. But I think you still get a sense of who you're dealing with, even in text conversation. And I want to be able to do more of what we're doing, Caspian, more getting people up here and talking with them and having this kind of conversation, because I think that helps introduce people, too. Yeah, I really wanted you to see my fish tank. That's why I came up. Right. i was like there's too many questions for me that i can't just put in a chat let's see tommy's saying that um you can make your own aquariums that would come with your own substrate and a tutorial on dirted tanks and sell that, sell the aquarium and the substrate with a tutorial, yeah, really well, I'm selling the the supplements, that's about as much as I've been able to figure out how to do, I'd have to say when I um was trying to research the planted tank, you know, I knew that was the direction I wanted to go because to me, just I had a feeling that that's the way they should be done, not with the gravel, you know and if you want plants you got to do it with with the dirt and the sand so I was just trying to figure out what's the best way to do it, and I think a lot of people have that question because when I see that come up a lot in the chat, people are like, what dirt can I use, what, you know, they want to know what dirt should they be using, and I think that was the same question I had, you know, can you just use any dirt um, you know, and then I kind of did a lot of poking around and researching and watching your videos and I saw you adding all the additives to it and then you know I mulled around with that and was like, okay, I think I'm just gonna come do the simplest method and get the organic potting mix and go with, you know, go with that, um, and then my husband was like, we have garden soil in our backyard that we used for our garden and and then we just kept the dirt and it had like black cow mixed in with it so it was all organic and for vegetables, and that's what we ended up using, but I think that's the biggest question is what, what can you use, what should you be using Yeah, that works perfectly well. You will deplete after about a year, but if you've got pretty good biological activity, the waste product is going to restore that mineral content over a period of a year. So just a really interesting comment from One Dirty Platy. He says he feels confident enough to say we all respect your methods. That being said, you're not on the side of the most conventional or mainstream methods. And that is certainly true. What I've noticed, however, is that an increased number of people on YouTube who have bigger channels are converting from bare bottom and gravel to sand and deep substrate. So whether it's me or whether it's a trickle-down effect, it is impacting, and more and more people are looking at it and cannot find justification for opposing it. I know there are die-hard gravel people out there, but the people who have tried and failed are the people I'm interested in helping. And they're the people who the deep substrate is going to solve the problem for. So they'll be able to keep their fish and then learn about feeding and learn about plants and so forth. There surely are people who do gravel tanks very successfully. Many of them have under gravel filters. And the under gravel filter, if set up right and used properly, will create anaerobic pockets and will function as an effective balanced aquarium. But it takes effort to do that. And it takes the knowledge of how to set it up. and not everybody is able to pull that off. So, yeah, I appreciate what you're saying, One Dirty Platy. My hope is to impact, to continue impacting. And that was kind of Aquatic Conquest's issue, I think, that we're having an impact on the hobby. What's interesting to me is the effect of the fish fam channel or the fish fam segment of YouTube on the hobby at large. And I think that's growing exponentially. I think they're increasing numbers of people keeping fish who are finding the fish fam and getting into the culture that's establishing there and learning how to do their tanks more effectively, learning about fish, just, you know, using it as a resource for their hobby. I was wondering when One Dirty Platy was talking about the mainstream, you know, what the mainstream is doing in my head. I think like aqua green and, you know, doing it that way where they're using expensive topsoils. And that's not something that's like the everyday hobbyist is going to want to do. Like me, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to spend the money on that. So I wanted to find a way that you can do it that is affordable, it's attainable, it's something you could do tomorrow. Their aquariums look beautiful, and I think that's why they're mainstream, because they're doing all this high tech, and their aquariums are rimless, and they look really nice, and they've got the CO2. So on YouTube, it looks gorgeous, and it's nice to watch. The green machine is another example of that. The green machine probably developed more effective techniques and taught those techniques about setting up cultured tanks, cultivated tanks. But they were built on the same principle of using a lot of very expensive products. And they sold those products in their store. They lasted about 10 years and then went out of business. It kind of went as far as they could go with that without being able to really substantially impact the market with the product line. And I think that goes back to the earlier question, the earlier issue we were raising that Jay Rowe brought up about having better quality products. I mean, there's a point at which, let me just say it this way. In my shop, I have the least expensive products that I can find and make available. So I'm bottom price on everything. Give you an example. Prime. I don't sell Prime. In fact, I don't sell any liquid dechlorinator. And the reason I don't is because I buy sodium thiosulfate, which is the active ingredient in Prime, by the 25-pound bag. I'm not going to tell you what I paid for it, but you can find it online. A 25-pound bag of sodium thiosulfate is extremely inexpensive, and it will do millions of gallons of water. So I sell little packets of crystals for $10, and that packet will do several thousand gallons of water. And that's a good example of kind of how I do everything here. I buy in bulk. I don't buy in the industry. I buy outside the industry. I don't even have an account with the big wholesalers in the industry. I work with a local cooperative fish farm, cooperative to get product that is sold to farmers that people buy. People who buy the products, buy them in very large quantities, by the ton sometimes. the same with my food with a single exception of omega which i've continued to carry for convenience sake because it is and has remained a high quality product at a low price other than that all of my fish food is bulk and it's all bulk product that's that is manufactured for farming so i'm selling products that that are that are made for people to feed millions of fish with the same with the soil same with everything i don't sell new fish tanks i sell used fish tanks and the reason i sell used fish tanks is because i cannot buy a used i cannot buy a new fish tank at wholesale from my supplier at a lower price than pet smart sells it on their dollar sale yeah so what's the point why should i even bother with it i sell used tanks i get them on trade or or buy them or whatever and that's what i I just sold a 600 gallon half oval tank that I got that's in mint condition, and I got a couple of grand for it. It runs about $10,000. Normally, it would sell for $3,000 to $4,000. So I don't think the answer to better products is necessarily higher cost. I think it's looking at products that do a better job, that are a less expensive product. For example, sponge filters. Sponge filters are far more effective, frankly, than hang-on-the-back filters. They filter more water, they do a better job, they're less expensive, you're not buying replacement cartridges for them. They're only made by the manufacturers in order to get repeat business with cartridges. If there were no cartridge and a hang-on-the-back filter, they wouldn't sell it. They would sell sponge filters. I do my hang-on-back the way Corey taught me. So I take, he doesn't use any cartridges. that's one thing like i got that like all running smoothly to act like a sponge filter where you're not replacing cartridges um and i just i think i bought a separate sponge to go inside it on the bottom and then i bought um the bio orbs and i put that on top of the sponge and then i just use um and i don't get the filter floss like that's the expensive part is buying filter floss i i went and got the pillow filler and i just take a handful of that at a time and put that on top to polish the water and it it turns brown and when it gets gunked up and stops flowing i take that out do my little clean in the aquarium water and put the new batting in i have a huge bag it's gonna last me forever so that's what i do i don't have to buy anything for it and i just keep that i i make sure the motor is cleaned i think people knock the the aqua or the aqua clears because they stop running and i saw a couple comments about that and i was like mine when it stops i take it outside and i spray the hose in there take all the pieces out and clean out all the gunk and then it's still running so i haven't had to replace it never taken them apart so they haven't cleaned that impeller yeah you know i get that hard to do all the time people come in with water pumps and the only thing that's wrong is the impeller's gunked up so i take the part clean it put it back together charge of 10 bucks because they don't have that knowledge it's like that little lid comes off you can just it's it's magnetic you just take that impeller out yeah that a good cleaning too and you're back in business big secret either show people how to do that i sell um uh air conditioning filter material for the hang on the back filters that's pretty cheap and works works real well um one dirty platy said there are some youtubers who want to adopt this method of a deep substrate but uh do not have the knowledge you possess and i would agree because that's what brought me to you well they need to plug in i went from so my story is i basically i found cory and was watching him and he i listened to him for you know his whole hour spiel on he goes deep he'll talk about pH and GH and KH for an hour and i will listen to it because i want to learn um and then i went to LRB and i i think he must have mentioned you and i i was also cory went to the San Diego fish store and honest to god that that video is what changed me wanting to do what i was doing with my aquarium and gravel i was like i want that tank i want to know the secret to how they're doing their tanks and i can't remember the store name right now but i was like this is what you should be doing you should be teaching how to you can have this aquarium and like how nobody knows how they set up their aquariums and they have walls of Swardertang and it's just it's beautiful yeah it's the ocean in San Francisco the couple from uh they're from oh i can't remember the name of the company name of the country it's a country that was uh it was closed until pretty recently uh won't come to me um they now they do CO2 which is interesting but they do it in a very primitive way they don't have they don't have aerators they have they have two liter bottles inverted that they fill with CO2 and it dissolves in the water yeah and the video shows them them filling that up but i'm like i want to see how are you setting up your aquarium well yeah and they're but they're doing deep substrates they're doing four inches of deep substrate but i don't know what that substrate is they've not had anybody in there with an interest in it doing a video about it and to me that's what Cory should be doing he should be going back to that store and saying how do you do this show me i want to learn well up to this point he has not wanted to admit that that deep substrate is of value in a fish tank i mean he's pretty adamantly opposed to it i see him transitioning more and more though to doing planted aquariums. And maybe that's because he's visited LRB and he's like, wow, what you're doing is working. Really? And LRB's taking out all his filters and maybe not all of them, but he gets it up and running to the point where he doesn't need the sponge filter anymore. That's my goal, because I want to go on vacation and not have to worry about my aquarium. right lucas lucas is really i think one of the one of the really key figures in in on this channel and increasingly in the hobby you know he's he's been doing things now for some years you're getting coffee you gotta call me no lee is joking i'm like i'm responding to lee it's coffee he said i'm not drinking coffee yeah we're missing a lot of a lot of conversation nah i think we're good let me see um steven sent a video about um a tank that has gravel in it i don't i think maybe he wants you to play the video deep gravel many plants many fish it's a jungle that was at 8 48 i got one from colored guppies oh that's Father Fish something is wrong with my Get Gills account they they i've been dropped and i don't know why um it just kind of all fallen apart the uh um the the the financial end of it is dropped off everything is is kind of gone upside down let's see jay rose says are peat plates useful for anything i found a bunch of them which i bought many years ago to put in my gravel bed he was hoping he could grow peat plants um peat plates p-e-a-t yeah you put them yeah just cap them with sand you can do peat loose in the tank but it tends to cradle on them all uh if you put it under if you cap it with sand um you can put it like on dirt or what or wet it first and put it in uh it just peat moss all it is i cannot find that video that steven's talking about i'm at 8 48 he sent i sent you i don't know if he emailed it did you check your email i don't i don't think he sent a link i think maybe saying he emailed it oh i don't know maybe they were they were talking about mystery snails for a bit and how they like to watch them and they're entertaining. Lee said he watched a Jack and Dan video where their snails were jumping. Yeah, Lee just saw that. Yeah. Who else? Thunder Aquatics replied to One Dirty Platy that some products are useful, but certainly most are unnecessary and overpriced. I wonder which ones he's referring to, because I don't use anything, so. i did buy a TDS meter i got that TDS meter that um our friend was using for a low price and i started using that and looking at all my water parameters it was interesting i was at 209 in my 40 gallon really yeah see i found that my beta bowls were the one i just set up that's in the video with my son it has um dirt sand and it has a little crushed coral because i ran out of sand and it's got the lava rock in it and that was at 270 so i i expect that one to be a little bit higher because of the mineral content here's the video that steven sent and now i can't get back i like that plant right there that's water sprite water hyacinth probably water sprite what's the one in the back the long the tall one like a jungle val or corkscrew val didn't see it that's an aponogeton that rippled kind of leaf that's an aponogeton it's a bulb plant it's nice yeah they're pretty so don't know what what they've done here i think he was just saying it had a deep gravel substrate just gravel yeah don't know how deep it is i think he said four inches did he yeah there's no question but that somebody who knows what they're doing can use marbles to build a balanced fish tank i don't think that's the issue i think the issue is that 90 plus of the people who try to set up a fish tank fail and never go back and try it again and then their tank is out on the curb and the reason they fail is because they're given gravel to put in the tank or told to do it bare bottom and that's that is unless you know what you're doing and obviously the person who put this tank together knows what they're doing i was afraid to get into plants i felt like you had to know a lot to get into plants exactly you Isn't that a gorgeous plant? That's the Pogostemon Crispus, I think. One of my favorite plants. If you'll notice, though, that's the main plant in the tank. He has little sprigs of other stuff, none of which is doing particularly well. Now, maybe it's not been in there very long, but even the Anacharis looks pretty skimpy. Could that be because the lighting looks a little low? Because it looks dark on the sides. There's a tank on the right here, a water wisteria that's growing out at the top, which that looks like a light issue. I think this is a ledwejia that's really not doing much at all. That's the water wisteria that's growing out at the top. It looks like a fairly diffused light, like there's not a light in it. What tank are you talking about, Stephen? He says, let's see that tank, Cassie B. Which tank was I talking about? Probably yours. Mine or the San Diego store? I don't know. Oh, no, I don't know. I think he was talking about your personal tank. I think it was San Francisco, an aquarium store called Oceans. One Dirty Platy was talking about, I guess, my comment on the expensive topsoils that the green machine uses, saying it's a personal choice. It is more expensive and there's pros and cons. And I'm just saying, like, yes, those tanks look beautiful. And I guess, you know, it's proven that it can be successful using that. To me, they're like a little bit bigger than sand granules, though, and they're bigger than the dirt. So I was kind of questioning, is it really better because of that? It's not the same as soil and sand. They're different sizes. The Lodge guy has an interesting comment. He said he thinks people spend way too much time hyper-analyzing their tanks. I think we saw some of that yesterday. It's easy to get paranoid about it and not kind of let it be and let it go. Let it do its thing. Keys in the car. Oh, golly. Well, yeah, I'm going to have to sign off. I've got to take my car to the shop, and the mechanic is standing here. I'll be right with you And he's going to bring me back If you want to hang in there I'll be gone probably 15 minutes KCB I'll sign off as well But I just wanted to answer Do you have time to answer Tommy's question About using your name To start a Facebook group Yeah I'm fine with that Yeah I just wanted to make sure he got your okay Before we left the chat Or the stream today I'm going to be gone a little while my car needs a new radiator and the guy's here to pick it up and do it but I've got to go with them and come back so I'll be gone for a little while I may try to get back on later it depends on how long I am thank you for coming up Cassie be appreciated I'm still working on videos so when I get them up and going I'll share them thank you so much Take care. Bye.