GOOD MORNING FRIENDS - a cold Dec morning at Father Fish Aquarium.

I've noticed when he eats large fish, he also eats them tail first. This is not the first mouse this animal has had. He came to me from a fellow We grew them up to this size by feeding mice. So when I found one in the trap this morning, I was curious to try it, and he certainly is interested. whether he can get it into his throat remains to be seen if he can't he won't accept it if he can it'll go into his gut it's a nice size meal for him here we go nope not yet he's trying to get it into his throat and it's i think he's getting it look at that look at that folks look at that he has to stretch the throat wide enough to accommodate it and he's getting there the mouse is all but gone that's a big mouse that's not a little a little guy big for a mouse all right coming in the back door it is all but gone Hey! Not at all. I just gave him a mouse. He's got all but the tail down. There he is. What is it? It's a mouse. Caught it in the trap. A big one. It's been about five minutes getting it down. I got it pretty much mostly on a bit ago. It was not alive so you know we didn't so that he's uh he's got it halfway down he's struggling to get the rest of it Jerry's their newest employee. She and her husband have been raising fish for a while. Come here, Jerry when i introduce you to my friends on youtube, jerry this is her first first full day by herself Official. She's official today. So we're real happy to have Jerry in. We also get her husband in the deal, although he works the full-time job and he's a pretty busy guy. But we certainly have his expertise. They've had fish for a while. Both of them love fish. We really need to get them set up on a channel. I think with her here now, we'll be able to do that. So he's going to sit on it for a while looks like. I don't think there's any chance he'll get rid of it. It's going to go down. So I thought everybody would enjoy that. So I'm going to try to get online this afternoon for an hour or so. I think I will do the Sunday, probably noon to two open shop. That could turn into something really nice. But I'll try to get back on for about an hour around one o'clock this afternoon i'm supposed to be on tomorrow uh with with sue um just follow her follow her channel to see where we're at with that but she had invited me to do that and i think i'm now equipped to be able to handle it so we'll see you a little later thought you might really enjoy this this uh arowana the predator video just had a couple come men who are looking to set up a saltwater tank and we're talking about doing it naturally so I've instructed them in going out into the Gulf or down at Boca in the bay to get a couple of couple of buckets of mud and then some uh some sea wash uh shell and um sand for their saltwater tank they're setting up a 120 salt what are your what's your name Jacoby Jacoby cool Jacoby's been in here before and his mom they're good friends and we're excited about this I'm going to help them do a a natural saltwater tank so don't think it's just a fresh water folks we can do salt as well we'll be following up thanks for coming in guys good thank you this is this is one of my favorite customers well let me get up close here she just came in to talk about her tank that she was having trouble with what tell me what you just said well I came by about a week ago I have a tank I've had at least five or six years and my fish were dying they weren't doing well they weren't thriving and uh so I came by and Father Fish told me to add more sand it uh it couldn't be a chemical problem it had to be biological so I did what he said I put in more sand and took out a few of the big rocks that were covering maybe some of the spaces and my fish are thriving they're doing very well I had thought I had lost my clown loach he didn't show up at all and now he's swimming all around and just as happy as can be lovely so a very good success story can't wait till I can buy new fish you bet well so what are you here for today i'm just here to tell you the good news oh well that's fabulous and wish you merry christmas love to hear it well thank you very much appreciate it tell me your name i'm sorry it's virgie virgie that's right i'm sorry don't remember names as well as that now virgie's been coming in for years and it's an old-time fish keeper you've had fish how many you had fish as a child did you i had fish since i was 15 years old my goodness and you're when you could and you're probably 35 40 now at least right well thank you virgie merry christmas to you i appreciate your help good well i i'm excited about the time advice thank you thank you take care it's it's spiritually it picks up here's another good friend who comes in all the time. Tell me your name again, I'm sorry. Sam. Sam, right. Sam has my phone is ringing. Sam has a pond as well as a real big tank and has brought some spectacularly beautiful fish in. Some ruby peacocks that were like six inches long. Just stunningly beautiful fish. Sam's an upholsterer. He does very sophisticated upholstery work. He's been keeping fish all his life. You're from Jamaica? Yes. From Jamaica, right? And kept fish in Jamaica as a kid? Yeah, we got them for free. Right? Just right out of the ditch. Tropical fish. That's right. So Sam's giving the wishes of Merry Christmas. What's going on in your fish room? They're there. Nothing much. I got tons of Tropheus babies out of the pond before it got cold. Oh, did you? Well, now did, have you still got stuff out there then? No, I had, I took everything. You took everything in? All of the South American water. Oh, okay. But they're really producing rainwater. Oh, yeah. Well, they love being outside. It's 100% rainwater. It's a constant food source, too. Yeah, yeah. That's the critical thing. There's food going in outdoor ponds continuously. And they prefer the algae over the feed that I put in there. That's something that most people don't realize about Africans. They're really vegetarians. Their dentition. Their teeth are made, their mouths are shaped, and their teeth are made to eat algae. They rip that stuff off. And they eat it off of rocks, that's right. so they'll eat at different levels you have the same two different fish or three different fish will graze the same spot and get different um different grasses off or different lengths or whatever based on their dentition i was amazed with you know the babies but i lost some because my pump went out huh for three days in the pond in the pond so Tropheus some of the africans some So you were really loaded up in there then. There was a lot in there. I have the barrel filter. Oh, okay. Yeah, that's what I use. I set up one. Do you see the one I've got? No. I set up one back here. That stuff works. Yeah, that's amazing, isn't it? Oh, yeah. Mine plugged up. I made the mistake of putting sand. I'm big on sand. I had gravel in, and then I put sand in, and the sand plugged it up. I have small and medium. Yeah, yeah. But it works. Yeah, oh, they're wonderful. Yeah, it still works, it just never flows. And I've got to use a vacuum to blow the air in it and bubble it up to clean out the gravel. Yeah, I can't do that because I've got mine sitting in the pond. It uses a lot of water to clean it. I expect it does. Tons, tons of water. So you backflow it, backwash it to clean it? No, actually it bubbles in the bottom underneath. Oh, really? I have, the brace is PVC, so I have holes in it. Yeah, yeah. And you shoot it. I have this plunge where I take the cap off, shoot the air in, and it bubbles up everything. All the muck, everything comes out. Right. And runs over. That's like a backflow. And then it's not in the pond, though. No, no, no. It's in the barrel. Oh, okay. So you can do that and let it run off. Yeah. Then when it clears up. That's cool. I like it. Maybe an hour or two. Yeah, yeah. It's still clear water. Yeah. Yeah, I had to set mine up because it's indoors. I had to set it up a certain way to be able to keep water off the floor. That stuff smells. Oh yeah, you bet. And you can drain it from the bottom also, where it swirls underneath the gravel. Right. I have a... You have a plenum under... I have a valve. Okay. So I open that and sludge comes out. Now, do you have a plenum in the bottom? Is it an open space or...? Yes. Okay, right. About 12 inches. About this much. Oh really? Wow. So I have it set up to swirl, so it swirls really fast. yeah yeah huh cool right right what's this neat and i have a UV also how big's the pond how deep is it deepest part about 22 inches it's not that deep so it's i have shots it's about 2,000 gallons really really huh 2 9 18 huh shallow part yeah neat oh you have a shallow area so it's like a like a wedge the bottom's like a wedge yeah so it's yeah the shallow area is real important too the koi is for the little koi is like shallow sometimes come up on the shallow do they really yeah but the uh real tiny fries they come up on the shallow right with the rocks to hide right exactly that's why i have so many babies because right because they're escaping predation yeah and they find a lot more food that way too I don't have them get sucked up they go through the chopper up in the swirl filter up and over in the overflow part you know yeah second part of the pond I'm like how yellow labs get here honestly yeah the bypass made it all the way through the system yeah yeah amazing I think there might be some underneath i don't know oh probably in the filters yeah probably i had that happen once with uh Tanganyikas can't remember what kind jellies i think they got into everything they got i had a plenum in the tank and they got they were under the plenum under living under the sand in the plenum. Half-grown fish. It was weird. I'm thinking can i put with the Trophius or will they get killed? I've been researching that. The babies, you mean? No, no, no. I'm thinking about shellies. Are they that vicious where they'll kill the other species? Well, the shellies are going to be able to hide it. I don't think it'd be a problem. You're going to do it in the pond? No, no. In your tank? You just have to try it and see. You know, labs are aggressive fish, but I don't keep them together. These are firecracker. The whole tank is firecracker. Oh, really? Oh, wow. They're trophius then. Okay. Yeah, that should be okay because they're all Tanganyikas. Nice. I do have some. I've got some Shelleys here. I've got two different colonies of them. Shelleys and... What kind of jellies do you have? I don't have them yet. Oh, okay. I've got some little ones, some Ornatas, that are still young. It would be great if I could put them in there, you know. Yeah, absolutely. Well, let's make a deal. We didn't do that. I've got to get my rent paid. Well, thanks for the interview. I've got to get this video done at some point. Well, I don't know how much longer this is going to go on with people coming in, but it was nice to see these guys. I think you'll enjoy meeting them. A couple of our loyal customers. Let's get this video up and out so you can enjoy it.