Father Fish in the Morning |03.09.2026

Good morning, good morning. How's everybody this morning? That remix is from five years ago. That was done by Aquatic Conquest, who disappeared off our radar five years ago, and we've not been able to track him down since. He was an immense part of our daily lives when we began them, again, five years ago. He was doing just so much that was so wonderful. And then things hit the wall in November during the elections, and he was from England, London, I believe, but was so distraught by the results that I think he wound up getting himself kicked off YouTube, and apparently never came back, at least not under that name. Now, he had a business. He was enamored of us and became very much a big part of us, but then just completely disappeared. I don't know what happened to him. Lee looked for him in England. We had some other folks in England looking for him. We were never able to locate him to find out what happened and to invite him to come back and join us. We discontinued the daily lives soon thereafter. It kind of took the heart out of it because he had become such an important part of what we were doing. So it's a tribute to him. I assume it's a guy. I don't know. I never talked to him. We communicated by email and just in the chat. But he developed these wonderful, wonderful mixes that were just terrific. And he put a lot of effort into having people send him clips and then putting those clips together. That really formed the foundation of what we began doing in our Fatherhood Soul in the Discord server. which makes it possible for folks who join to be able to have their own channel with their own videos. So his heritage continues and continues to this day. I'm very thankful to Naresh for finding that and updating it so that we can use it here. Let's see. Let me get over. it's easier to read the comments as i'm in youtube so let me do that christian daniel daniel and another fish thank you daniel christian good morning jay peplum creek foxy's fishes uh fish and tactics lee still has some pop-ups uh yeah i think the piece we did yesterday was no that was his today wasn't it that was his uh good morning oh well thank you rush debush be doing good doing good christian rush me christian poxy pox christian tactics brenda brenda is here christian poxy christian brenda rebecca hello rebecca let's see rush new buzzfeed i did give him a wrench just now i believe i did jay hello jay all right jay was first into then all righty let me get back where i can see myself if i see myself i'm more easily able to talk to myself it just as opposed to a blind screen or words on a screen it's very strange uh who is this oh foxy enjoyed dina and brenda's live stream last night i knew you would i knew you would it's so similar to to to your live stream just very chatty and very friendly and personal and that they go on for hours though my word just they just they they're in it's like a competition a marathon they do marathon live streaming there was a number of years ago there were some folks who were doing like 12-hour live stream that's going on forever we thought about doing something similar to that with live tanks but have never really been able to get it together It means having a dedicated server, a dedicated computer, really. Or maybe we might be able to do it with a phone. I don't know about that. Might be able to. If it's not, I'm getting an old phone that's out of service. If it's out of service, I guess you can't do it. But I wonder if you could plug it in to a processor. I don't know. I'll have to look into that one. That's interesting. Let's see. Rebecca says, thank you. The 29-gallon went up September 25th last year. Oh, okay. With the father fish substrate and a rock. It's come a long way for its very first anniversary. Yes, it has. i was very impressed with your tanks rebecca for in one year they're showing really wonderful grow you you certainly do have you do have the touch not everybody can do that and i think in large measure it's because most people want to mess around with it too much and if you just leave it alone we had a good example here in this let me see if i can do this i'm probably going to screw up again i usually do this has a maneuver right there it's been sitting in there for six months and you can see it has attached to the rock and you can't tell but it has been growing There's also, you know, that's, I don't know, something along the side of it, so the point is, nobody did anything to that. I mean, nobody did anything to that. It sat there for six months without any, without being touched, and that's probably all it took. Plants are that way. Here's some sub-spots of plants. We've got a plant with sub-spots which I'm in here. This is, we've got some pistos and scarlet banners. There's a scarlet banner that we're trying to get a food web going in here. I mentioned before that we really have not done food webs because it's difficult to do them in tanks where you're catching fish all the time. We do have some tanks where we can do it. This is going to be one of them. We have it sitting in a jar over there. This is our ram tank and other specials. I can't reach this line right now, but I'll try to do that so we can get to the 25-year-old 55 cat, be able to show that all. All right, and we're there. We're a little low. We'll come up a bit. I bow graciously with your words at my heart. Yeah, the vadas are wonderful. I think I'm down to a pair, but we did spot what looked like a baby yesterday, so we may have some fry in there that would be nice i've been trying to breed them forever i think i'm also going to get some more of the clown killings and put them in that tank i think they'll do well in there the critical thing is just to keep up with feeding is that italian fail uh yes it is there's corkscrew and italian in there uh and i think the italian right it's not jungle it's italian good eye fox and good eye see uh who says anita get over on youtube where i can read things better i was wasn't able to get on the live yesterday but i watched the replay i heard you say you're getting a shipment from singapore that's where i'm from originally oh my yeah i did receive a very nice shipment from singapore about two months ago and we were we still have a few fish from that the apistos i don't remember uh but we still have some fish left from that shipment it was quite a nice shipment we did a shipment from columbia about a month ago And it wasn't a complete disaster, but it was certainly a mess. Just one thing after another, you went wrong with it. The first thing was, I did not realize that everything was going to be wild caught, because I'd never dealt with a wild caught supplier before this. But it was a pretty large shipment, and everything was wild-caught. Now, there's a fascination with that, but from a shipper's standpoint or a retailer's standpoint, a reseller's standpoint, there are some problems. The primary one of which is that anything, excuse me, let me get over this. I went out and had breakfast this morning, and I don't think I had it all down there. The problem with wild caught anything is acclimating it to tank life, and there are always losses. The losses usually run, in the best of circumstances, the losses are about 25%. And that's about what we lost, about 25%. There were a couple of things, everything in the bag was gone. And in one or two cases, it was really unfortunate because it was some very nice animals that would have been that we would have been delighted to have the other issue was i got kind of greedy and i over ordered something normally you can order in a full bag half bag or quarter bag and there were some things i was so excited about i ordered them in full bags not realizing that was going to be a full box so i wound up with an order that i thought was going to be reasonable I estimated my shipping at double the cost of the purchases and sent the order in. I got the bill back after they were delivered, and the shipping was triple, no, it was, yeah, it was triple. It was triple the cost of the fish, and it about fell on the floor when I saw that because I was expecting $1,000 for shipping, and it was $3,000 for shipping. So I learned a lesson. I learned an important lesson to order in moderate amounts, or order fewer things in larger quantity if it's something I really want a larger quantity of. I was just kind of being gluttonous, that's the word. I was being a glutton, and I was a glutton for punishment. Karuna Koresh. Karuna is Naresh. Karuna is from Sri Lanka, and in Sri Lanka, the family name is in front of the personal name. So Naresh is of the family Karuna Karan, and his name is Naresh. Very confusing. I've always known him as Naresh, and I've met his family. We've communicated on Discord video any number of times, so I've had a chance to meet his family. Lovely parents, and he's quite an amazing young man. He's in college, working on a college degree. um a little story about Naresh that you'll appreciate I think how old are you Naresh I think he's 25 he started out with us at about 19 and produced a video the first I really paid attention to him he sent me a gift which was a video of our old shop we'll need to play it sometime uh it has licensed music on it so we can't play it without losing uh whatever earnings we have on that video but it's a great video and he did such a mind-boggling job of pulling links and pulling little little b-roll from a hundred different videos in order to make this absolutely wonderful video of our florida shop and it really is amazing well once that happened he was my friend for life uh and he began doing some things for us and i began sending him a little bit of money so he could buy some nice clothes and maybe get a little gift for himself for the family nothing big nothing significant just small amounts of money roughly once a month after about a year he said would you like me to show you what i've done with the money you've sent sure what have you got he walked into what had been a garage shed kind of building building at the front of his family's property he had rebuilt it into a retail business store he started out by selling computer services uh like email services or um i don't know that sort of thing uh some supplies school supplies he had initially well that's been nearly five years and that store has grown to the point where it has become a mainstay in his community in the meantime he's gone to college full time and he's here puttering around with us just doing stuff every day every day absolute joy absolute joy yeah i know i am dark and quiet hello hello so naresh is a very very special friend let's see uh blind bike trail says i was going to visit you over the weekend but couldn't make it so ordered online now you can do pickup um if you can get down here you can order online and then come pick up if you want to do that contact brenda you can do that on discord or you should be able to find the number or email you can email fatherfish aquariums at gmail.com uh and ask us to hold that uh for pickup happy to do it unless you really want it shipped if you do we'll ship it uh you presumably have paid the shipping if you pick it up you'll get the refund you'll get the shipping refunded or we can convert it to a credit cinnamon is here hello cinnamon else we have here oh boy father fish aquarium on tiktok yes we now finally are on tiktok and they're hopeful that's going to have good results stationery and printing shop wonderful rebecca i want to get into college googled it and father peter's about 22 hours from my location totally planning out a little road trip to go see the store yeah i i we had i think i've mentioned before we had a woman and i'm sorry i don't remember her her name She and a friend drove here from Louisiana to visit the shop, spent about an hour and drove back home. It was, of course, a delight and a real honor and privilege seeing them and quite humbling to have someone drive that long a drive just to visit. So we have had some folks, we frequently have people drive in from D.C. or down from northern Jersey or even New York to come visit. Two, three-hour drive, sometimes a four-hour drive one way. So it is our privilege to do so. We got a new piece of equipment that prints photographs right away. We take a picture on our phone, or I think it's on our phone, and it prints out a four-by-six. So we're going to be doing that at Aquashella, but we'll be doing it here as well so that people can go home not only with a picture on their phone, but with something they can paste on the refrigerator door as well. Let's see. michael noel the noels i happen to know a little bit about the family they settled in southern maryland below annapolis in the late 17 early 1800s now there may have been others that came into other parts of the country but there was a clan that settled there um that has roots now still in southern, I guess it's southern Anne Arundel County. I'm not sure. It's below Annapolis, so it's considered southern Maryland. It might be St. Mary's County or Calvert County. I'm just not sure. But I'm wondering if you're part of that clan, Michael. He is saying on Google now, you can ask AI to compare Father Ridge style to others and ask what's the best for low cost low maintenance and longevity Polyfistallis clearly the best well there's nobody else doing it no one else doing an augmented supplement the only stuff is the commercial product that is really not well it's not a dirted substrate I guess that's the main thing It's it's a composite, a composite clay material that is infused with some fertilizers. Excuse me. I didn't need to do that on camera, did I? I didn't have myself on camera at the time where I would have had better sense. My apologies. Yeah, we're really the only thing. Family goes back to the 17th, 1776. Well, that's the right time frame. Where, do you know where the family initially settled here in the States or in the colonies in this case? My family settled, they were settlers. They weren't colonists. My family came over to the Richmond colony in the 1650s. Actually, both sides of my family, my mother and my father's families both. uh of the earliest um people in this on this continent were two young men teenagers who came over uh independently of family or anyone else came into the Richmond Colony and then they used to what they they used to take little punji boats um uh small sailboats up the bay from Richmond and stop off at various places and look at the land and people would come who were looking to settle and they would find a piece of land they liked and jump off the boat with their stuff and they would be there. That would be it. presumably they did that fairly early in the season. I got a client who just is falling in love with me and it's going to cost him his life. Because I don't tolerate flies landing all over me. It makes me feel like I'm missing one second too late. It just bugs me. I don't like bugs crawling on me. I love bugs. I just don't like them crawling. New England. Oh, okay. There was also a clan that settled in there. I don't think that happened with my family. I think the Foxwells, at least, only settled there. I don't know that any others came over. Now, there may have, and I may simply not know about them. My mother was a Parks, P-A-R-K-S. That clan is still here on the shore. Both of them settled here on the shore, not 50 miles from where I am right now. So it's coming back to this part of the world, this part of the country, this part of the state, coming back to the shore, the eastern shore of Maryland, is really coming back to my roots in a very profound way. because my family is here now six nearly three no more than 353 almost 400 years almost it was 1650 1660 and we're 400 and roughly 75 years after that nearly that's not right is it 400 that's not right no 426 uh wait 6 375 375 16 to 29 yeah three about three roughly 370 i guess anyway long time best fish for a high pH and a one foot cube tank i'll tell you imx there's not much that would be appropriate size for that tank that you could not put in a high pH tank high pH is extremely desirable um 8 to 8.2 you get much above that you're starting to get into soap territory so that becomes somewhat problematic but anything anything hovering around 8.0 is not too high for the average tropical fish keep in mind most of these fish are bred in on farms that have dirt ponds and there's those dirt ponds leach minerals so the water in them is hard it's not acidic it is hard water most standing water is hard water and so they're being they're being being born and growing out in hard water they may be historically uh in their heritage a soft water acid fish But once they're brought onto a farm, farms don't maintain soft-acid water. None of them do. Anywhere in the world, they maintain hard alkaline water. Now, when they're bringing brand new fish in from the wild, they may accommodate them in softer, more acidic water in order to be able to keep them healthy. But they will acclimate them. And that acclimation may take up to a year. It's a slow process. While I'm on the subject, the whole issue of acclimation is something that, while it's promoted, it's not understood. And it's generally, I can't say it's undesirable, but it certainly is unnecessary. the fish that are coming in do not need to readjust to your water so long as your water is alkaline if your water is acidic then you already know you have a problem and frankly the best way to deal with that problem is put some baking soda in there and get the pH up so you won't be stressing out your fish all the time. There are fish that love acid water. If they're in the hobby and are domestically raised, they also love hard alkaline water. I give you the discus, the most commonly misunderstood fish in the hobby. There are still plenty of discus breeders and discus importers who put the fish in soft acid water straight off a farm, straight out of a breeding operation. Now, wild caught discus, that's a completely different issue. They are coming out of salt acid water. But the fish that are bred in captivity, it takes about four to five generations. Some would say less, but my estimation based on my experience on breeding farms is four to five generations for a fish from the wild in soft acid water to come into hard alkaline water. It's done generationally. The babies that hatch, let me do it this way. When a fish comes in, like a discus, from soft acid water and is kept in soft acid water, it will lay eggs and they will hatch normally. Now, if that fish is being acclimated to alkaline water, it will be done very gradually. But once it flips to alkaline, initially, in the first few generations, the eggs won't hatch. There will be too much osmotic pressure on the surface of the egg for the baby to be able to break through. As the adult continues to spawn in alkaline water, by the second or third spawning and or the second or third generation, those babies will not have any trouble at all hatching in that water. So the fish adjusts. And if you think about it, in the Amazon, the soft acid water occurs during the rainy season, during the monsoons, if you will, where it rains daily for months. and the water is rainwater. The entire plain is flooded with rainwater. Rainwater is soft and acid. Once that season ends and the water begins draining out faster than it's precipitating, the water level goes down and the pH rises. And the pH gets up into alkaline territory without injuring the fish so the reality is that these fish now it's not true of Borneo fish that's a different issue but these fish go through a transition every single year in the pH of their water swinging from 7.2 up to 7.5 all the way down to 6.2 6.3 that's a substantial swing and they're perfectly healthy doing healthy doing it for one thing it happens slowly it's a gradual process doesn't happen overnight it takes months for these transitions to occur so they're happening very slowly and the fish are adjusting very naturally give you an example of how this works in your fish tank i think i mentioned this in the last day or two we had a customer come in who bought a dozen of our largest umbones spent a lot of money for them beautiful fish big four or five six inch fish that we'd had for a year or more some of them two years took them home put them in his tank a week later he came back in the door and said of the of the i don't know how many he bought i think actually it was 16 of the fish i bought 12 were dead and the other fish looked terrible well i was shocked and dismayed he showed me a picture of one and it looked like it might have it so i told him to go home and raise the temperature meantime we sent bryce out and matthew to see the tank he wanted us to do maintenance on the tank they sent me a picture in fact they got online with uh through our discord server uh through the fatherfish show got online audio and video so i was able to look at the tank they were three or four fish swimming around that were perfectly healthy i can't remember whether i asked about about them or whether they told me about them but what i discovered is that those were fish that had been in that tank when he added the new fish to it and they were unscathed they were untouched by by any disease, any problem at all. So I knew instantly the issue was not it. Had it been at that level where there were literally millions of parasites, nothing would have gone unscathed. There may have been a few that would have kind of managed, but in eight to nine days, that's long enough for fish to die twice over with it. It only takes about five days undetected to pretty well wipe out everything. If you catch it early in the first three to four days, you can stop it cold by simply raising the temperature. Beyond that, you're going to take losses because the parasites are so deeply infested on the fish that they have already drained it of sufficient fluids to prevent the fish being able to stay alive. So at that stage, there's literally nothing you can do. It's a dead fish swimming. in any case i looked at that and i said wow that's not it and then and and i just realized immediately what it was i said your tank it looks like your tank is toxic all these new fish that died because the tank is toxic i said we can test it we put a few more in and see if the same thing happens but that's that's my belief and he said well i'll tell you i bought some fish earlier before i bought yours and the same thing happened so i said all right we're gonna have to change that tank what has happened is over a period of time because there were no buffers in the tank the biological activity gradually lowered the pH now they did it gradually just like these fish in the Amazon so the fish that were in it were able to adjust perfectly normally but you put a new fish into that and they they are shocked by it many fish would die immediately these took days or a week to die showed you how hardy the African Malawi cichlids are so what we're going to do now is we're going to set up a further fish tank that'll have buffers in it that'll be able to last without that pH shifting he asked about what happens to his fish I said, well, we can put them in a bucket, and then once we get the tank set up, just put them in it. He said, but it's toxic. Isn't it going to kill them? I said, no, because fish can be taken out of an acid tank and put into a base tank and be able to survive without any difficulty. And the reason is it's a factor of the barometric pressure. I need to use that term. I don't have a better term. The pressure of the water in an acid tank is substantially less than in an alkaline tank. There are more dissolved minerals in it, more buffers in it. So it's going to be harder water. Salt water is never acidic. it is always base it is always 80 plus always anywhere on the earth so like by taking these fish that are in soft acid water in which the pressure is very low putting them into hard alkaline water the pressure will squeeze the cells but they are springy enough to be able to sustain themselves it'll tighten them up and then gradually expand normally putting them from alkaline to acid the cell expands and it ruptures and that's what kills the fish every cell in the body ruptures think how horrible that would be same thing happens in space the cells rupture because there's no pressure on them and they just and everything goes like that kind of infinitely so it all you put a body in space it will disappear it'll expand and expand and expand to the point where you can't even find a particle next to another particle that's the expanded beautiful if you will well not exactly but anyway let's see where else we are what's the best size tank for angel fish depends how many you're keeping if you want just a few a 29 is a really good size tank for angel fish that or bigger i'm not fond of keeping them in smaller tanks if they're smaller fish it's fine not a problem at all uh once they hit two to three inches They ought to be in something bigger. Well, a 20 tall, you can do it. A 20 tall or even a 20 long, you can keep angels in that. I don't like to do it personally, but that's really a personal thing. I prefer to have large angels than bigger tanks. I just think they look better and seem less crowded. 120 with baby guppies I got from Tank Bros. Wonderful. Wonderful. Well, that'll be fun. you'll enjoy growing them out and that's a great tank to grow babies out in to the 20 long they will thoroughly enjoy that and you'll enjoy seeing them grow out you could grow out a hundred baby guppies in a 20 long or a 20 tall for that matter and not miss a beat they would be fine they would grow naturally they would grow to their full size let's see let me get back up here yeah foxy's saying they successfully keeping them 29 i think it's a great tank to keep them in a 29 is really a wonderful tank i i know discus breeders who keep their breeding pairs in 29 gallon tanks living in impermanence. The big long conversation about the angels, best fish for a high pH and a foot cube tank. Did I do a wrench for IMX? I did. Okay. Well, long conversation about pH, but it is something that's important to understand because we run into the issue, not frequently, But when we do, we need to understand what the real issue is. And I guess what's critical is to never put fish from alkaline to acid water. Now, you're not likely to ever run across it. But here's the problem. Here's the issue. And this comes up fairly commonly. Came up here today, Thursday, I think Tuesday. We had a fellow in who was having a terrible time keeping his fish. And I said, well, why is that? He said, I have acid water. Well, he lives on the shore. All the water here is hard alkaline water. It's all deep well water. And even if it's rainwater, there's alkalinity at the surface. So it doesn't make sense. And I thought about that, and I said, do you have a water softener? He said, yeah, I live in a trailer park, and they run it through a softener system. Well, that's the problem. The softener is taking all the minerals, including the buffers, out of the water and leaving it acidic. So he's got, I said, what you need to do, there is code on the installation of water softeners. There must be a faucet available on the delivery side, that is, on the incoming side of the softener. water going into the softener must have a faucet before it goes into the softener so that you can get untreated water and and you would want to do that because you would not want to use treated water on your lawn for example or to fill up a swimming pool or whatever so i said go to there's a faucet there find it and get your water from that source you're going to have to bucket it in but he only has a few tanks it's not a big deal so that solved that problem very quickly that's happened several times recently water softeners are very popular here on the shore because the water is hard and alkaline now i happen not to like softened water because when you take a shower or a bath you can't get the soap scum off with hard water you can but it's And I don't think it's a bit safer to drink, frankly. I think it's worse to drink. But people don't like the iron, the discoloration. So they use a softener to get rid of the iron. And in the process, they're getting rid of everything else. Better to have a deionizer that'll get that color out and retain the natural pH and natural KH of the water. Nevertheless, you don't ever want to use water from a water softener for your aquarium. Find the faucet on the other side of it and take your water from there. Very well. Oh, listen. Yeah, I got to go. I've got an 11 o'clock doctor's appointment. I'm going to be late. i gotta get out of here i'm just gonna say goodbye i'm running late my apologies what time is it oh god i'm late now let me get over here and sign off i hope i can still get in to see him see you in the morning bye guys