hi

Well, that was kind of interesting. I was attempting to go live on Streamlabs, and I'm locked down, nobody's here. And there were 50 people at any time at all. 2, 1, 2, 8, 2, huh, NC, SuperSonic, Shark, 1, 1, Mark, okay, hail, hail, the gang's all here. Why is it showing only two live viewers when there are easily 20 people? Oh, there we go. It's up to 55. I was trying to get into Streamlabs. I hate Streamlabs. I got to tell you. It is sufficiently complicated that it completely overwhelms me. There are too many options, and you have to get, whenever you have a whole lot of options, you have to activate them in the proper sequence. So if there are 20 options, this is what squared means. If there are 20 options, 20 squared is 400. That means there are 400 possible permutations before you can find the right one to get the sequence right. And I just can't do it. I couldn't get the mic turned on and could not figure out how to get the mic turned on. And they couldn't figure out how to shut it down. I think I finally shut it down. It seems to have been shut down. I don't know. It may still be out there somewhere running. I have no idea, but I'm pretty sure. I got a flyer from Streamlabs, the new Streamlabs. Live stream, it's easy, it's fun. You can live stream on any of your platforms. And I figure, well, maybe they fixed it. Maybe they actually made it so a dumb cop like me can get on and use it. uh-uh it was i not one single change to the formatter structure not one if anything it's more complicated because i could not figure out where the microphone was so i gave it up and i'm not going back i don't want to deal with all these a's what is a everybody is a a oh that's That's what he's writing a book for. From India. Love you, sir, from India. Over and over and over and over. Well, thank you, Ashtal. Love you, too. And I'm not in India. in the States All right, I'm finished doing that. Jim's Fish. Is he a explainer or it's a scam? I know. Everything is a scam. Greetings from Romania, says one. on that where i always learn something new okay i do have something to talk about this is kind of cool i was watching steven uh steven is a youtuber he's got about i don't know how many 14 000 subscribers something it's respectable he has a respectable following i was at 14 000 after I don't know, two, three years, something. It took a long time to get there. It's a lot of work to get to 14,000. Anyway, he had Tom Barr up. Now, if you don't know Tom Barr, and I don't know Tom Barr, but I know Tom Barr and Diana Walston share a website that's called The Plant Summit. It's all about plants and it's been up for a long time and there are a lot of people on it a few hundred thousand it's a very very popular very busy very active website i get announcements from it every time i go on it i get kicked off uh they just they really can't tolerate my mentality which is funny I think. And I did not really understand why. Now, I think I understand why. I sat and I listened to Tom Barr for about half an hour. And he's much like me in one respect, in that he goes on and on and all, but he does so with little or no inflection. It would be like, you know, talking about the intricacies of the violence having to do with the machinations of plants. All that entails, whereas the science depicts for us and makes clear that all such things that are in this venue are absolutely true. And he used that kind of mentality over and over again. Absolutely true. There is no doubt, there is no question, there can be no debate. And that was what I got from him. Now, he is, for all intents and purposes, a bona fide scientist. He has a PhD in science. something. And one of the women, one of the two people was a young woman, was on with them. She has a PhD in science something. So these are science something people. And they're on and on and on about this is what is true. And this is not true. And that's not true. And that's not true. Because this is true. And it's true because it's absolutely true. It's true because we have proven it's true and therefore it is absolutely unequivocally true and there will be no debate there will be no discussion this is true and i'm listening to this and i'm hearing the accusation come back to me Father Fish is so insistent that his way is the only way and i'm thinking to myself i have never said that i've never said that i said this works try it it works i've never said it's the only way i wouldn't have that be ignorant to say that so i don't say that i mean if i've misspoken at some point then that's what it was but i can't recall having that in my vocabulary And so I heard that. I heard them. I watched them. I listened to them. And then I began to understand why they make the accusation that Father Fish says his way is the only way. And it's not that I say that, it's that I deny that their way is the only way, and I do deny that. And by denying that, I'm denying, in their minds, I am denying reality. I'm denying science, because science is absolutely true. Science proves what is true. And here's the thing. That's not my understanding of science. Science doesn't give us a body of facts that we go down and live our lives and function in terms of. That's not the scientific method. The scientific method, as best I understand it, is this. You take a thesis, an idea, a concept of something you think may be true, and you try to make it fail. You try to poke holes in it You try to disprove it. And if you can disprove it, then you have to come up with something else that explains whatever it is you're trying to do better. That's, I don't know, a poor man's understanding of the scientific method. I don't do the scientific method. I don't. I do the chaos method. That's what I do. I do the chaos method. And the thing about the chaos method is it's actually a very sophisticated methodology because you do it over a period of time. And as you do it, you sort of drop off the ends, all of the things that clearly don't work, that clearly end in chaos, chaos here, chaos there, until you get down to something that actually, where's my, there it is, down to something that actually works, that actually is practical and functional and you can operate in terms of. And that's kind of, I think, that's kind of what I do. I do a trial and error sort of thing. Now, I do take information. I take in information. Like, for example, we just started using Leonardite in our supplement. Now, I only recently heard of Leonardite. And before I got some, ordered it, I had no idea what Leonardite was. I'll tell you, it's strange stuff. It's an extremely fine powder that if you put your hand in it, it sticks to your hands. It's not like glue, but like a fine powder that sort of latches on. And you don't get it off by doing that. You have to watch it. It is a sand, a material. It's a volcanic material from an ancient volcano that contains an inordinate amount of mineralization, including some minerals that are pretty rare and uncommon like for example uranium i'm led to believe it contains uranium now this is not the sort of uranium that's going to make your body or cause you to get cancer it's not like that it's wild natural in the ground one part for 50 billion, whatever the ring, that has a salutary effect on plant growth, wouldn't you know. And all of the gardeners who have discovered this are suddenly buying it up. There's one mine, I think in Utah, that's mining it, and everybody's buying Leonardite from this mine. Well, I bought some. It comes in a 50-pound bag. I got it in a 50-pound bag. I'm mixing it in with my supplement. I mix in a quarter of a cup in the mix, and that contains, I don't know, I think it makes 16 portions. So 1 16th of a quarter is 1 64th. It has, The supplement contains one-sixty-fourth of a cup of Leonardite in it, which contains one-millionth of a part uranium. So there's now uranium in my supplement. Well, the reason I mention that is because I'm open to that kind of chicanery. I hear about something that's fascinating and interesting. and I'll adopt it. And then I'll put it into use and I'll see if anything ensues from it. Now, I really don't expect, frankly, to see any functional, practical difference with this tiny amount of Leonardite that I'm using. But one never knows. One never knows. So when you buy your current bag of Father Fish's Miracle Growth Hormone material. Doesn't have hormones in it, I think. Where's my phone? Kevin Thomas, D.P. Father Fish. I have an appointment with Dr. Asma Jaffer on Tuesday, October 8th at 8.45 a.m. at our Southbury office Suite One location. Please arrive 15 minutes before your appointment time. And remember to bring any updated insurance information, photo ID, co-payments, and a list of current medications. Tuesday. If you need to cancel or reschedule this appointment, please call our office. Okay, good. Tuesday. Let me see if I got it. I think I do. I've been having trouble with my feet lately. And so I'm trying to keep up with that, because it's important when you're diabetic to keep up with your feet. So I'm told. October, November. Me, dear, cancer. How come I'm in the last week in November? Month, November. Oh, dear. Look at that. I got one line. Month, month, month. There it is. November, October. October the eighth. The eighth foot. 1.30. This says 1.30. That was 8.30. Huh. Didn't it say 8.30? Did you hear that? I thought it said 1.30. Did anybody hear that? It said 8.30, I'm sure. Special strength. Impromptu, right? 8.45. That's what I thought. Yeah, right. It was 8.45. Thank you, son of a... I'm going to change the time. 8.30. 8.30. We'll make it 8.30. 8.30. Good. Now I need to do 10 minutes before and then 1. I'll turn it on, alert, save. Anyway. Right. That's exactly right. This is impromptu. And part of the reason I'm doing this is because I want to get into a more informal kind of chat. And I want to move on to, I think, a different platform, or at least a different YouTube channel to do it. Okay, we were in the Tom Barr thing, and I was explaining that Tom Barr's approach is, for my purposes, rigid. And this is the reaction I was getting when I went onto his website. They could not tolerate my flexibility. I was not adequately rigid, and they became enraged with me. I mean, the people on the channel who were monitoring it became utterly deranged about, i couldn't say that i was not allowed to say that if i brought that up one more time oh i know what it was at one point i was talking about water memory and they and they were all oh this has been totally debunked and and disproved there is no such thing you're not allowed to talk about that here that's not true science and talk about well you know that's not unfair i mean there are things on our discord channel that we won't talk about because they're not what the function of the channel is and the function of the channel is to help people get to a natural aquarium and if you want to talk about a high-tech aquarium with all the hoopla and equipment that's not what we're about so we don't permit that conversation although there is a channel on technology You can go have that chat there, I guess, if you insist. But Tom Barr and Diana Wallstead's channel, The Plant Boowa, is all about science, you see. That science with a capital, great, huge S that has stars on it, and an old beard, an old man's beard, and a cane, and it is the ultimate universal truth. And Father Fish ain't into it. I just ain't into it. I'm into the joy of fish keeping as opposed to the rigors of fish keeping. And they're into the rigors. You do this and you do that. And you have to do it this way. And if Father Fish says you don't, it's because he insists that it's only his way and not our way. So that's what I got out of that whole half an hour of Stephen's live stream or chat or whatever that I got with Tom Barr. That he is a science fanatic. He's a, I don't know what to call it, a small-s maybe, science fanatic. His mentality is that science gives us the true way. It is the truth. It's a religion for him. Science is his religion, and he is devoted religiously to it. And I don't think science is a religion. In point of fact, the scientific method derives from Christian pastors, Christian priests who were working with the natural world 300 years ago and came up with this approach to trying to figure out things. So, if anything, science is founded on Christianity, for God's sake, for God's sake indeed. And too many scientists have lost track of that, and they want science to be the new religion. And it doesn't have, it doesn't deserve that. It's not, it's not the source of absolute truth. it is a quest, it is a yearning for, it is a searching for. And if you treat it as any more than that, I think you're being dogmatic. And I guess that's what I came away from that conversation with, is the notion that these guys are dogmatic. So I left a note, I left a note in the chat from Father Fish, you should try my supplement. What am I going to say? And they, but the reality is they show, I mean, they give kudos to Amato. Amato was the one who started with the supplements. He was the one who came up with the little packets for these things. Put these little packets in there. Supplements. They don't do supplements. They don't believe it. At least they don't believe in Father Fish's supplements because Father Fish is not a high priest in their temple. And I'm not. And I really don't ascribe to be. I don't want to be. I'm not reaching for that. I got my own temple troubles. Anyway, that's kind of the thought that's been on my mind for the last year or two. It's a new sort of insight and understanding of what Tom Barr is all about. And I hope he watches this. I mean, I hope he catches it. Somebody mentions it to him. And he watches it. Not a big reply, because I could be dead wrong. I mean, that was my impression of watching him and listening to him. I'd never watched him before, never heard him, didn't know what he looked like, really didn't know. I thought he was an old fart like me. He's not. He's a strong, husky 50-year-old or thereabouts. Not even husky. Very, very, a guy who works out and builds his abs. He's an athlete. Looks like an athlete. Kind of hard and strong and vital and all like that. That's Tom Barr, I think. So anyway, there's that. So the book is coming out. We are within days of a final edition, our first final edition, and it's 8 1⁄2 by 11, 8 1⁄2 by, is that right? 5 by 8. Maybe it's 5 by 8. It's Kindle size. I guess that's 5 by 8. 5x8 sheets with hundreds of graphics and pictures, it's 500 pages at that size. Bigger, it might be, I don't know, 300 or 350 or something. I don't know what it's going to be. But it's sizable. It's not a little 50-page brochure. It's not even the 100 pages that we were guessing a month or two ago. It's 500 pages. This is a tome. You know what I mean? Tome. Not tomb, let's say, but tome. This is a real serious book, and it is a serious book. I mean, I am minimally involved in the writing of it. I might have 10 pages tops. I don't think it's that much, frankly. But almost all of it is based on things that I've been working on, things that we're teaching, things that we've been doing for the last five years or so, really 20 years from the shop. So it's based on the whole concept of a natural aquarium and what it is, how to get there, how to keep it going, what makes it work, all this. It's pretty remarkable. And there are just hundreds of pictures and comments in the book from people who have done this and achieved immediate success. In fact, I bet I read that single comment a dozen times every single Father Fish. I didn't know what to do. I had failed. I was miserable. I wanted to give up, throw up my hands, and I watched your channel, and it gave me hope. So I tried this, and it worked. It's only been one day, and already it's working. It's been six months, and it's working. It's been two years, and it's working. Father Fish, I've been doing this as long as you have for 25 years, and it's amazing. So with that kind of authentication, I honestly believe we've got hold of something that can turn around people's experience in the hobby. Now, it's not going to be effective or helpful for the guy who's in there 16 hours a day with his test tubes and his measuring devices and all of his equipment lost in his laboratory doing all of his Einsteinian processes. This is not for him. He ain't going to be happy with this. This is for the clod who knows how to pick up a jar and dump it in the tank. And maybe a little more than that. Guys like me, you know, keep it simple because I'm stupid. So what we have done is learned how to keep it simple to a level that literally, I used to say a three-year-old. Three-year-olds lack adequate consciousness, but certainly a five-year-old, a five-year-old can do this successfully without any difficulty at all and make it work and be happy and have an aquarium that most people who have aquariums would die. That's what we've got. That's what we've got. We've got thousands of aquariums that are the best aquariums out there. They may not be the most beautiful. One or two, I think, can run that race. They may not have the most spectacular plants or fish in them, but by God, they're stable, and the fish are healthy, and the plants are growing, and they're there week after week, month after month, year after year, going on, moving forward. And the people who own them, once you got one, you got to have another. It is the foundation of multi-tank syndrome. Lucas was absolutely right. You keep it simple and you can't stop doing it. And that's what we're doing. We're keeping it simple. And you do it, you're not going to stop. You're going to find another place to put another fish tank because it just is so effective and so absolutely wonderful. Wonderful. Try it. That's all you need to do is give it a sincere try. Don't try with a bottle of formaldehyde in your hip pocket that you're ready to surreptitiously dump in there in order to make sure everything dies. I mean, there are guys who have done that in order to prove it doesn't work. They deliberately sabotage. I had one person come to me, your tank is an absolute disaster. I set it up and it is a complete mess. It's muddy, it's yucky, it's completely disgusting. I don't believe a word you say, Father Fish, you are a fool. And you know, I didn't even need to talk to them because they knew what they did. They put dirt in, they dumped sand on it, they took the hose and shot it straight down and just made a mud pile. You know, the thing is, if you let that sit for a week, it'll be perfect, perfect. But there it'll go right back down in the sand. It'll be absolutely perfect. One week. You can put plants in it during that week. I wouldn't put many fish in. Fish have trouble if they're in an extremely turbid environment with a lot of material in the water. It clogs up their gills. Now, they shake them rapidly to clean them. But I've had fish die from being in water that was just so loaded with fine particulate matter that they couldn't keep their gills clear fast enough to be able to breathe. So they suffocated. So if it's bad like that, don't put fish in it. Don't even put labyrinth fish in it. I mean, you don't need to crawl to anything. Let it clear up first. It'll clear up. It will clear up. And this is the other thing about having a tank that crashes. What do you do when you have a tank that crashes? Well, I just had one. I had a brackish water tank that crashed. A big one. A 135-gallon tank. Crashed. Everything dead. Everything dead. Plants dead. Fish dead. Microfauna dead. All of the shrimp and crabs dead. Everything dead. overnight in a matter of a few hours. A pump cracked out. Somebody had topped off the tank. The sump was not splashing water in. The sump delivery was under the water, so it was moving it but not adequately. The circulation pump quit. The water stopped flowing. The CO2 level built up from the bottom up. It's just starting at the bottom. It just worked its way up, killing as it went until it reached the top. After about six hours, everything was dead. So I turned the pump, the circulating pump back on, and I dropped the water level a couple of inches so that the canister could spit water in the tank. There were very few fish in there, maybe 10 or 15 little ones. I didn't even go after them. I just left them in there. In two days, water that was milky white was clear. In four days, it was crystal clear, and the plants were coming back, doing absolutely nothing, absolutely nothing, doing nothing other than getting the water circulating, it came back. All of that dead material was broken down. There was a deep substrate in it, plenty of bacteria. It broke it all down. The water was circulating, getting oxygen down in there. It came back. We have since decided we're not going to do salted rock. We're just going to do fresh. So we have broken it down completely, cleaned it out, And we're going to do fresh water. We'll use it for big fish and probably for mbunas or other more aggressive kinds of fish. I need a fish. I need a tank for big fish. And it's really the only one I've got at this point. That's what we're going to do with it. Anyway, all that is to say is that these systems are absolutely idiot-proof. And you can't beat them. You cannot defeat them. If you just leave it alone, it'll be just fine because once you get a food web in there, once you get the system manufacturing food, and the easiest way to do that is with tree leaves, dried tree leaves. That's food. That's the fundamental food of every freshwater system on Earth, is tree leaf, minus perhaps a higher alpine. But even there, that water flows down, and when it gets down low enough, it goes through forests. And it's the tree leaves that provide the nutrients that build the life that thrives in those water systems. tree leaves. You don't need Tetramin. Tetramin is a manufactured tree leaf. Actually, actually it is. It's a manufactured tree leaf. And the problem with it is that it breaks down too fast. The leaf of a tree breaks down very slow. These manufactured tree leaves, they break down basically within the first five minutes you put them in the tank. They're already deteriorating. They're rotting from the first second they get water. They're rotting. A tree leaf takes a long time to rot. In point of fact, it'll go through the winter without breaking down hardly at all until the spring comes and it's adequately softened that all of the microbiota begins to feed on it, and that's when you get this huge rush of life that causes fish to spawn and everything else to spawn, and this tremendous upswell of baby everything feeding on these tiny particulates and the tinier little life forms that are growing out of those particulates. that are feeding on them. That's spring. That's what spring is. And that happens in your tank. That really does happen in your tank. There are some ways you can trigger it. We haven't gotten much into that. A few people have. We're really not focused on it a lot. We're frankly at a point where we're trying to find effective ways to get this food web built up, because that's really the key. Find ways to get a strong food web in your aquarium. I've got 40 aquariums set up in my shop, and that's what we're working on right now, trying to get the food web built in all of those little aquariums and mid-sized aquariums in order to be able to build up all of this fauna, all of this material that's going to provide for our tiny fish and for all of the small fish that we have They're feeding on macro fauna, feeding on Daphnia and Scuds and so on. So I'm on my way in the morning. We're leaving six in the morning to get up to Morgantown, Pennsylvania, to the Keystone Clash. We're going to be there one day, getting in around nine when it opens. we're going to leave at six when it closes earlier if it dies off and drive back we're driving up we're driving back it's about a two and a half hour drive so we're going to spend the day traveling going up meeting people chatting with people if you're in the area please come in we'd love to meet you love to have a chance to talk we'll have some product there and we're going to have special prices for all of our products. Special show prices for everything. The Dirt Day, we'll have plants there. The supplements, t-shirts, everything. We'll have all of it there. We're even going to have the natural sabs and ointments that are made by Brenda that are just miraculous. She has a hand lotion that does not dissolve in the water. it dissolves in your skin you can put it all put your hands in the water it doesn't go in the water amazing stuff so for the fish keeper we have hand washers um see you there please come in Please visit if you're at all able to get in, well I guess I've shot my wad I kind of did what I wanted to do, let me check the comments and the beard is coming back Just sitting here, having a beer, let me get down to the bottom here. I don't know, Stan Pittman, Dave was talking about the lunch. The students said, check out Father Fish. Young girls, all natural foods. I absolutely know. If there is no filter and no water movement, how does water... I do water movement. I do water movement. I do, I do sponge filters. So, I have sponge filters in every single tank, and I'll have any tanks with no filter. And I do it mainly for water movement. Now, if ponds don't get stagnant, they're quite as easy, although they can and do, for that very reason. But I'm totally in agreement with you. There's a pick I'm using, the Father Fish project, for contagion, there is. And more and more of them are picking up on it, Lee is here. Hey Lee, nice to see you. I think Father Fish just called me an idiot. I called me an idiot and you're identifying me. Shame on you. Regie, Iron Wolf, Fish House. Oh, Lee's got new tanks set up. Wonderful. Oh, and the 10th of June, I'm about to take a crash. Yeah, right. Out there, a piling of gravel and sand. and grass Everyone should do it. Everyone should do an outdoor. Everyone should. Can you DIY and see? Look at this. 273,000 games. Told you, told you. Yeah, you did. We were on our way to a million. Yeah. and then it just went took a nosedive but i've got one video that i've had it up for 18 months it does 2 000 views a day it's doing it today it's been doing it every day for a year and a half two thousand it's up to almost two million views one video and it's driving i think everything i don't have anything else close to that the next closest to that is about about a half a million I don't have a lot of big videos, I've got a few, maybe half a dozen, over, over a quarter of a million, if that, nice to see you Jim, Japanese or Chinese writing on packet, no dear, that's the truth, Lucas was right, yep, yep, yep, this is great, okay, you guys have got a good time, magic powder, oh dear, yes, do pray for the losses, pray for those who are suffering, this horrible horrible storm these are people who do not face this kind of problem and it's they're not prepared for it they're not they're not capable of dealing with it and they're drowning drowning and uh there's no help coming there's just no help it's so sad so sad okay we're gonna shut it down here guys thank you so much it's been fun Kenny D is here. How is he, Kenny D? Davina Savage from New Zealand. Followed your instructions. I have my guppies, whiptail, and neons. The dirtier type of stress-free tank owner here. Thanks, buddy. You bet. All right. Well, I'm going to be broadcasting tomorrow from the clash. So we'll do a walkabout and give you a chance to see some of the booths that are there. maybe chat with some of the some of the folks who are there so look forward to that that'll be throughout the day you know kind of from say 10 to 3 or 4 or so uh it'll probably be off and on i'm not going to go on and stay on for six hours i'll be on for 15 minutes to half an hour and then off and then back on again so we're gonna we're gonna jump around some but it should be fine so So if you're around, I've got nothing better to do. New video posted today. It's a welcome. I have a new AI that Dina's working on. We're going to start doing some AI stuff. We want to try to get it customized before we do it so we can kind of put it out there. And we now have in place a new channel, the Natural Aquarium, which is a branded channel. So we're going to be doing some things with that. Keep an eye out for it. There's not much happening there yet. Hopefully soon there will be. Love you all. Bye for now.