🔴 LIVE - FF WHEW

Do me a favor when you can. Give me a goldfish from this tank. The young man probably. I saw it. He had called me about that. Yes. You know, the two he's looking at. Just two of the three reds. He doesn't care. Oh, OK. We'll give him the females. Well, the tank's not ready. OK. So he just wanted to make sure that we don't sell them on him. OK. Well, Herb Diversity and Sand Creek Aquatics. Thank you. this i'm a little late getting going i've been uh in surgery all morning got all wrapped up had a very successful surgery so uh i'm peddling creek so i'm i'm back glory actually i would have been on half an hour ago but my ride to walmart to pick up sweatpants because i can't do zippers and buttons got separated and distracted let's see we have a goldfish coming carolyn thank you so anyway i've made it aquarium thoughts sand creek oh man yeah it's been a little dramatic i did want to get on today because i've got a commitment to be here wednesdays at two so here I am albeit 15 minutes late uh and fresh out of surgery they did not put me under uh they gave me uh lidocaine a big dose of lidocaine right in the hand and I sat there and watched the whole procedure as he as he uh ferreted out the tendons the two cut ends and pulled them together and then and stitched them together. It was rather amazing. They got 10 stitches in, which I guess is pretty good. He felt good about the surgery. But I'm immobilized now. Look, see that? I can move it. I couldn't move it before. I can move it. It's like three months to get full recovery on it. Let's see who's coming in. Caleb. Hi, Caleb. Oh, well. i'm back back i had surgery all morning uh but they did not put me out so i was able to watch it uh to observe and to participate in the process we had a little running conversation with uh the doctor about fishing line and whatnot Sand Creek hey Bob let's see oh everybody's saying hello put a bread bag over it yeah i've got a fish bag that'll fit perfectly so i'm going to do that i can use my thumb and i've already he recommended i don't but i kind of have to so i'm using my thumb and it's not putting any pressure on the rest of the hand i don't think the main thing is to not pull the tendons apart i'm supposed to be in therapy three days a week for six weeks so we'll see how that goes who else is here do we do like i said a little late getting going, and I was not able to announce this, so I just mainly wanted to keep my word and to show up and to be able to be here. So I did a video yesterday on seahorses that a lot of people have looked at and seem to enjoy it. I don't know what I'm up to, about 200 hits on it, I think. They're miraculous creatures, seahorses are, and i've got a bunch of them i've got probably a close to two dozen um so uh close to two dozen turn that off thank you okay i also have started the um hi don aquarium cowboy hello i've i've begun to put more effort into the patreon account and it's helped me to focus i think basically what i'm doing here i've come up with a different format for that a more specific one i've been looking to set a goal or a or a focus a philosophy uh the natural tank has been key and a critical one and one that i very much enjoy doing but i'm kind of running out of steam on it i mean i've done i've done something with it i i now need to go back and redo uh and start doing starts actually setting up more tanks but it leads into another area of thought that has a lot to do with the video I did on called Return to Eden and it's all about what we as fish keepers and as human beings are doing in relation to not just our fish but to all of the natural world the theme that I developed for excuse me I'm having a little difficulty here I need to get back to my main account The theme I've developed for Patreon is creating illustrations of humans as nature's gardener. What it's really intended to do is to focus on the things that we do as human beings on the earth that are consistent with the charge we were given in the Garden of Eden to care for the garden, to care for the earth. And there are many, many, many, many, many things that humans are doing to care for the earth. I would say, truthfully, that 90% of what human beings do on the earth is beneficial to the nature system. There clearly is 10% that is not beneficial. But if there were much more than that, we would not be able to breathe. The system would have shut down or shut us down long ago. So my focus is to accentuate the positive, if you will, to talk about those things that we're doing that are beneficial and positive. Now, in reality, creating a natural aquarium is kind of fundamental to that, because if you're not able to figure that out, how to create a natural aquarium, then frankly, you can't garden. And it's the gardeners that do best at keeping fish, which leads into one of the first focuses that I want to have, which is a book that Tommy discovered in Sweden, written by a gardener in the 1860s. it's a 64 page volume on setting up and maintaining an aquarium as a gardener and of course this is all free electricity so as i get as he translates that and i get copies of it i'm going to look for ways to illustrate that this is clearly a setback because i can't get my hands in the mud the way i need to and it's going to set me back on being able to set up tanks with this hand as well so i'll do the best i can with that and look for creative ways for the next couple of months to do it without exacerbating this thing i can i can move my finger normally which i couldn't do before he told me not to do it much but i'm kind of doing it routinely just to check it out so anyway that's some thoughts on where i'm headed yes tommy tommy denda is here um just logged in as i was mentioning it that's funny uh it it just it just fits so perfectly with the theme that i want to be able to focus on namely what we're doing as aquarists as gardeners as as uh keepers of the earth that are in some ways customizing the earth to meet our needs, which is a legitimate and an appropriate thing to do, creating wholesome whole systems that are amenable to human involvement. You know, one of the things I'm very deeply opposed to is the very idea that there should be vast swaths of a wild nature that no human being is allowed to trespass on. I think that is a violation of the fundamental agreement that our creator had with us when he brought us to this place and those who those who support that notion are not only opposing that principle but in their own personal lives are failing to come to grips with nature as creation and we as part of creation so i think it's vital i think it's vital that we get perfectly clear about what we're doing as human beings on this earth what our legitimate and rightful role and responsibility is and to demonstrate ways in which we are performing that and support those who seek to do more so that's my little that's my little rant Now, I'm going to look at comments here and see what we're doing. Let's see. I want to move this monitor, if I can, where I can see it better. Excuse me a minute. And then, oh, now I need to enlarge it. Let's see. If I go to YouTube, I can do it there. All right. So, it's come down. Chewy is saying it could be too late. I don't think so, Chewy. and if it is so what if it is that doesn't mean we stop it doesn't mean we give up through our hands up i and frankly i don't believe that nature is really all that delicate i think it's pretty robust if you look at the catastrophes that have occurred over the millennium and the way in which it has bounced back and nature is pretty robust Kaler says never closer to god than we are in nature. Amen. I believe that. I believe that firmly. I believe that that's the message of Eden, that when we're walking in the garden, that is to say, when we're in a right relationship with nature, we are with God. We are with the creator. And losing track of that, I think, is the essence of everything that has gone wrong in our society. We cannot afford to lose track of our relationship with the creator. To do so is madness. Madness. And we see that madness. We see it around us. And we see it especially among those who have lost that essential relationship. So let's just get straight about some things. Pebble and Craig saying nature will be here long after humans. Well, likely so. Nature nature eats. Nature is what it is. We are a function, however, of nature, and as a function of nature, we belong here. We belong here, and we need to be clear about how it is we belong here. But to take the notion that nature would be better off without human beings, I think, is outrageous. Just outrageous. 23 watching, 9 thumbs up. Well, let's see. I got to do one. there's mine have you ever watched the band by government documentary the tipping point by suzuki no i have not i will i'll check it out can all the humans evolution will take over and change us to adapt yeah i expect that's true i wish you can care fish gets might be good Sean i think that's right i think our role is is not just it's certainly to protect species but to learn what it is that makes it possible for species to flourish backing up a little don gallagher everywhere i go in nature i try to leave as little trace that i have been there as possible kind of the the plains indian way if you will although they didn't i mean that's a fallacy because they were uh they were uh cutting slash slash and burn farmers um but they moved on and allowed that land to recover from uh slash and burn gnarly fish tanks hello hello nathan caleb colonna is saying it's powerfully intriguing, I've been musing on how container garden has to do so much to mimic nature that an aquarium is capable of on its own, despite functionally being another container. Yeah, really interesting, isn't it? And I think you're absolutely right. My notion is that that's really a function of the deep substrate. Deep substrate, I'm sorry. I think a container garden would achieve the same thing if it were in a very deep pot. uh and a very large pot in other words a way if you're going to put a tree in it for a small like fern fern type plants, small plants I think it could be done it would just take an outsized container to be able to do it, Chewy saying the education never ends, now Chewy as I thought through all of this I thought how important it would be to link up with you because you're doing something really remarkable. And I've spoken about this before. You're not able to keep fish at this point, but you're acting as researcher and you're bringing to us so many different environmental and cultural and aquatic kinds of interests that's really creating quite and education, I would like to challenge you to find, and I know you've done some of this, to find more ways in which humans are landscaping the earth in ways that are beneficial to the earth and beneficial similarly to our place on the earth. And that's really the story that needs to be told. You know, you look at the farming techniques in the Far East, in the Orient, particularly in places like Japan and Thailand and Vietnam, where they scape entire mountainsides. That certainly is transforming the earth, but it's doing it in a way that's not in any way destructive of the earth. Rather, it's contouring it and coaxing it. to function in ways that are beneficial to us and to those things we care about. Sam Craig says, crazy what you dream, isn't it? Kaler listed the link to Return to Eden. I encourage you to watch that video. You may not agree with it, but it is a vigorous attempt to try to explain exactly what it is I'm talking about And what it is that those of us who are serious about keeping fish are really all about. Sand Creek Aquatic says, hello, Don Gallagher, I just woke you from a nap. And during my dream, somebody walked through the background and someone asked me who it was. And without missing a beat, I said, oh, that's Don Gallagher. Funny stuff. Funny stuff, you guys. let's cut to the bottom here Tommy Delinda learned not long ago that some trees excrete some volatile compounds into the air when they need water the compounds react with the atmosphere and rain clouds are created gotta love nature amen amen I'm backing up a little Aritra is saying hello father I'm about to start a dirt tank, and I need to know how do I calculate how thick the soil and gravel cap on top of it should be so that the nutrients in the soil last for a long time? That's really an excellent question. I recommend supplements to the soil, and the reason I recommend them is because they do precisely that. They allow the soil to last much longer than it otherwise would. Iron oxide is a good case in point. Iron oxide takes several years to break down and to become viable in the aquarium. So by putting that in, that extends the life of the soil by several years now in several in that length of time the detritus and waste that has built up that has developed rather through the natural cycle of plants and animals living in the tank will precipitate into the sub into the the sand down through the subsoil and into the aerobic layer where it will break down and create more of the minerals that the plants need in order to continue to thrive. That's very much a long-range process and can be augmented with fertilizers if they're injected deep into the sand bed, deep into the soil bed even. Now, as to depth, my practice is to do a one-inch thick layer of soil. I mix peat, potting soil, and manure. Two to one to peat and potting soil. Two to one peat to peat and potting soil. So two parts peat, one part potting soil, one part manure. um four cups each for a 20 gallon for eight four four twelve sixteen cups plus uh one cup of supplement for a 20 gallon tank i sell the supplement in quantities sufficient to uh uh to do 100 gallons that's on get gills for 20 bucks and i'm mailing them out routinely now So you can buy that and add it to your soils. One inch of soil in anything under 50 gallons. Anything over 50 gallons, I recommend two inches of soil. Anything under 50 gallons, two inches of sand. Anything over 55 gallons, three inches of soil. If you get up into the hundreds of gallons, then increase that accordingly. I have a 500-gallon tank that has four inches of soil and seven to eight inches of sand. I have a 200-gallon tank that has three to four inches of soil and six inches of sand. Um, I've realized that that's not aesthetically pleasing, but there's some things you can do to make it more effective. Number one, you can block it off with tape so you don't have to see it. Number two, you can use, um, a pencil or a piece of wood or a spoon or something to press down against the glass and go straight down into it and kind of move it back and forth to clean it so that you have clean sand the third thing is you can study it you can look at it and observe what's happening in the soil in that tank and there's a great deal that can be seen see Chewy was talking about the poisoning of the Athabasca River from the oil tar sands in Fort McMurray. See, that came right before Areech's comment. So I hope I've answered your question, Areech. To make that last a long time, I recommend you use the supplements. I'm going to pass for the moment on Chewy's comment about oil tar sands. Not that I don't think it's important. I think it's vitally important. But it opens up a whole other area of the relationship of petrochemicals, which are naturally occurring in very large bodies of water. going down here. Punchy Paints is here. Hello, Punchy. Marina Gonzalez Marina Gonzalez de la Hoya Cardinal is here. Friday Fish Facts is here. Aquarium Thoughts is here. Don Gallagher, I've said hello to. So, hello, everyone. How are we doing here? What do we have? We've got, how many are with us? Can't find the number. 21 thumbs up. Let's see. Let me change this. I've got top chat. I'll change it to live chat. Not real sure how much difference it makes. Punchy said YouTube took 12 subs from her overnight. I lost seven last week. Four in one day. 12 is a bunch. You've done really well, though. Since you hit 1,000, that you've jumped up pretty quick i kind of slowed down uh i'm at about 120 since i hit a thousand and that's three weeks i've ever made a have i ever tommy's asking me if i've ever made a paludarium i have a modified a paludarium i've made some haven't liked what i made so i didn't keep them um but i dream about it a lot and i've got some animals i really want to keep in a paludarium so i'm working on it i've had some with uh poison dart frogs but i'm working on it hi alice alice has made has made it welcome see uh punchy says don't use small gravel Bob, they can get it in their throat and choke. Yeah, sand is always advisable. The problem with gravel is that water flows through it, and you don't want natural water flow. You want the water to flow at the rate that the cilia on the bacteria and the other molecules are moving it. The currents that are created by the life living in the sand is the speed at which you want water flowing through the sand, not the speed at which it would otherwise naturally flow if it had more space to do so. Alice, you did not get a late notification. I did a late start. I started out at like 2.15 because I was in surgery all morning getting this. And now that everybody's here, I'll explain it. Last week on Thursday, I was working in a tank with a large heavy pump, water pump, and it started spinning. So I jerked it up and hit a piece of glass that was laying on top of the tank. that i thought was well out of the way but it wasn't now this is a piece of glass that had a sharp edge because it had been broken recently and my hand hit right there and it cut all the way through the tendon just literally sliced the tendon so this morning i went into surgery and They got both parts of the tendon, pulled them together, stitch them up with 10 stitches, and wrap me up to immobilize me. But if you'll see, I can move that finger, which I couldn't do before. So that's kind of exciting. But I'm not supposed to use it except in therapy for the next six weeks. So I'm going to be a little hamstrung, as it were, until this thing heals. so that's why i was like getting back it looks bad and it i suppose it really is bad but they did an amazing job of stitching it up he got he showed it to me i was awake the whole time so i was watching what he was doing and he stitched up the tendons tight together he said they were clean it was a clean cut he got them tight i was able to get all the stitches in that he wanted to and then covered it and he said that it really takes about three months for the fully healed to get full strength back but i've got to go to therapy three times a week for six weeks so it doesn't freeze in place to keep it moving properly anyway that's that story that's why i was late i was late actually because i went to walmart immediately after leaving the surgery clinic to buy sweatpants because I can't do buttons and zippers. And my ride got lost. He was waiting for me inside, and I was waiting for him outside. Half an hour later, we found each other. So that's why I was late. My fault. My bad. Let's see. Medical High TV says, do you do saltwater or just freshwater? I do saltwater. Did a video yesterday on seahorses. you might want to look at it i will also be doing more on saltwater and i do deep sand beds in saltwater as well for the same reason taylor been using larger gravel just to give them something you sand over the gravel plenty of bags still um yeah you could now if you really want the look and the feel of the tiny river gravel is really pretty, and I really like it. If you put like half an inch or so on top of the sand, you can also use aggregate material like broken rock, broken driftwood, leaves, multiple sizes of gravel. You can use all of that as a topping on the sand in order to create more hiding spaces, living spaces for animals that live down in that kind of substrate. And that, I think, tremendously improves the quality and the value of this system. So I haven't done much of that. I've done a little. i will do more and we'll show how that works uh it's a really effective effective tool why can't i go back here we go let's see i have a video of the paludarium oh that's tom's oh right, been streaming for 30 minutes, have i really yeah i guess i have a retra i kept shrimps in the past and they died whenever i made water changes as part of the weekly routine when in a planted tank, so what i should i switch from water changes to just top ups yeah i think that's smart um my theory about water changes is if you have a deep substrate if you've got gravel or bare bottom, then you have to do water changes routinely. But if you have a deep substrate, you don't need to do routine water changes. Track pH and track nitrates. If the nitrates get over 100 and the pH drops below 7, then do water changes. Now that pH, of course, is relevant only if you're keeping your fish in hard alkaline water which most fish should be there i have some fish back here such as um clown killifish and some guppies and some bettas that i keep in softer water i actually keep it in ro water that has uh been sitting for a long time that i don't do water changes in. So it's water that has built up some solids. But I do watch the nitrates. I don't like nitrates to get too high, because it can stress delicate fish like cardinals and neons. Medical High TV, check out the video on seahorses. I show a few of the other tanks in that. And I've got more besides. Fish Rich. I'm assuming, oh, my God, it's relevant to the hand. David Arn. Great name. Thanks for the healing prayers. I appreciate it. Draw lots of fish on the bandage. Great idea. I'll have to get somebody to do that. And Marina is making comments about my middle finger. I know. I thought for a while about just having a lazy middle finger. And then I thought better of it. I mean, I would not have minded going through the rest of my life with a lazy middle finger. But I suppose I won't need to now because I'm getting fixed. Fixed I will be. Let's see. Amber's going to be on my stream tonight. We should get together with Haley and see if there's an idea. Women fish keepers, you bet. All right. So I want to reiterate for anybody who came in late. that i'm refocusing uh my channel here and on patreon to look at ways in which uh we as fish keepers are doing a better job of keeping natural systems and on patreon of looking at ways in which we as human beings are are gardening the earth in ways that are healthy and wholesome oddball Aquatics. Well, I'm doing better now, but I'll be a whole lot better in about three months when I get full use of my handbag. Thank you, Oddball. Oddball is trying to sucker me in here. Oh, Oddball's saying he's got a big surprise for his live stream next Wednesday. All right. Well, if he tells you, it won't be a surprise. Right. You'll have to wait and see. All right. So we're good thank you all for coming by and participating in this relatively spontaneous uh stream um sorry I was late getting on, I got, I got delayed but I did, did want to keep my word and make sure I was here, thanks for being part of it. Back to work everybody, love you guys, thank you all. Both my hands are going to get better, thank you. Medical, hi, nice to see you too, bye everybody, love you guys Tommy, I'm looking forward to getting some material from you, I need to work on how I want to, uh, how I want to use it, I, my idea is to try to create a visual of what he's talking about, I'm not sure what I can do with this, but we'll see how it works out later, everybody, love you, bye for now Get back over here. You're welcome. Thank you. Closing in five seconds. Four, three, two, one.