STEM PLANTS BUNDLE SALE - Over 75 plants - 15 Species for $59! Limited Time OFFER so HURRY! father-fish-aquarium.myshopify.com/ For Special Soil Supplements, Plants, FIsh & Merch in your country: fatherfish.fish/
These explanations and analogies are what every fishkeeper (new and seasoned) needs to hear - thank you so much for this and for everything you do for the hobby!
@@FatherFish I also think people misunderstand beneficial bacteria in your tank vs a Nitrogen cycle.....a cycle is a self sustaining thing.....No Plants or Algae....no cycle They remove the Nitrates! Plant growth = completion of cycle...Right? Am I crazy?? I don't have nitrates I have plants growing like mad though... Everyone always state how often to do water changes vs do you do water changes and what is causing the problem..... I last did this 22 years ago, (Back into it now) but don't remember this being a thing save for Ammonia spikes if you overstocked
I think a lot of the fixation by aquarists to change water so frequently comes from a compulsion to interact with their tanks on a regular basis. Nitrates, even though not demonstrably bad, are an excuse for people to get their hands wet. More people need to internalize that more work does not equal a better result in this hobby! Love everything you're teaching. Subscribing and sharing the video with friends. Much love!
@@FatherFish Sharing the beauty, basking in the balance, and continuing the sacred web of life is the reward I seek. I use all the time i save skipping water changes to propagate more plants and set up another tank, lol!! I stock heavy, I plant heavy, and integrate terrestrial plants as "wetland" filtration. Willow cuttings will sprout red roots from barnacle looking nodes, so pretty covered in blue shrimp!
Greetings from Slovakia. I found your channel maybe about year ago and I re-did almost all my tanks to 2" of sand and 1" of lake substrate (stuff bought at hobby market in garden section). I was always looking to build an ecosystem not an high-cost, high-tech and high-maintenance display case. Now I can say I achieved my goals thanks to your debunking of most common myths in fish keeping. So thank you for providing all this usefull information through this platform.
The clip of those angel fish from 8.46 till the neon rainbow fish is mine😀. They are my free give away clips. I am really happy that the clip is been used to explain such an important discussion of the aquarium and fish keeping.
Emmanuel We are very grateful for your clips on Discord. They help us make videos that are interesting because they include tanks from around the world
Great discussion on a very important topic. Water is the source of our life and the life around us. Letting nature take care of our tanks has a way of humbling us to the great mystery of life on earth . Thank you Father Fish and the research team.
I watched this video a month ago and so much went over my head. This time after a month of enjoying my planted tank, everything now makes sense. Thank you so much FF❤️
Hello from Ontario, Father Fish! Just want to thank you for sharing all your knowledge with us. You have helped me make a deeper connection to my tanks, plants, and fish - and they have never been anywhere near as prosperous as they are since I have adopted the Father Fish ways. I recommend your channel to everybody that I speak to about the hobby and of course I am already in the Shoal. It took me 26 years to find a hobby that I actually enjoy, but you helped take my interest in fishkeeping to the next level, making me want to delve into the ecology of the tanks and also our natural water bodies and fish. I fully believe you are helping me to find more of a purpose in life and I sincerely thank you for that.
Oh well, it is official; thanks to this guy and his great thoughts about aquariums has made be started up with the hobby...again. Great video as always.
Thank you Father Fish. I'm making the leap into the natural way of keeping my aquarium like yours I will try my best, and Father Fish We ALL LOVE YOU.....THANK YOU
The new videos looks amazing! Love all the arts and music 🎶 !!! Super chilled 😌👍 even though its a pre recorded video I felt like I was right there watching a live stream 😅 love it 💕 😊 most importantly it’s kids friendly! I can watch it with my daughter and teach her about nature! 😇🥰
Hi from Scotland, I have finally found a fishkeeping sanctuary and endless natural imformation, if you listen and try to understand what nature has always tried to tell us all along, fishkeeping is a natural destresser and will bring us closer to the true nature that is all around us, follow what nature father fish is trying to explane to us, a 20 year old tank says it all, thank you so much.
Thankyou so much for the valuable information. This has helped me see water in a whole new light. I have just set up a new tank and was going to dispose of all the 'mature water' from my old aquarium. Now after watching this I see how crazy that idea actually is and I am now going to include the mature water into the new set up. I also really appreciate the information about nitrate. I have been over here worrying about 100ppm of nitrate 0ppm nitrite and actually now I can see that it shows that my old aquarium had found its own equilibrium which I should have been celebrating. Thank you so much for your valuable information. You have a future follower from me!!!
I was getting sick fish after sick fish doing the 20% for nitrates water changing. I decided a few months ago to try to just keep water hardness down by cutting ro water in to replace the evaporated water. To keep the hardness at 6 instead off gradually going up 12 So now I’m basically topping it up with rain water and haven’t lost a fish for a long time
you might want to be careful that you aren't slowly lowering your kH, which is the buffering ability of the water to maintain pH. RO water with proper GH can still have a pH crash if it doesnt have enough kH
@@Eric_Allen great point. nothing wrong with the RO, just need to watch the tests. I use only RODI water, remineralized with Equalibrium and Alkaline Buffer
Well. I've been following for over a week. Tomorrow is the big day I put all of my hard work into the tank and set it all up as you've said to do. I've mentioned you to all the fish stores I've been to too & they love you. I'm definitely spreading awareness of your holistic brilliance 🥰✨️💙
@FatherFish knoxville, TN. Aquatic Marine. Just tested my water today there & ammonia, hardiness, and alkalinity are extremely high. Gathered everything from a spring fed creek yesterday and set it up today. Bought more plants. I give it a couple days and I'll have fish 🫶
I just found your videos on UA-cam and I was about to just give up my tank as I couldn’t keep it clean because it was a large gravel substrate. Well…I went outside after watching one of your videos about the natural tank and put some sand that’s been in a bag for 3 years that my late husband had to mix with cement into a horse bucket and ran a hose and stirred it up for about 30 minutes. That was the beginning of my natural tank. So simple and really makes all the sense in the world. All I had in my tank for ever it seems is a red tailed shark catfish that is huge now and some kind of sucker catfish…they look so happy now. The only thing is after about a month I purchased 4 blue neons, 2 silver neons and 2 plecos…only 2 silver neons and 2 plecos are alive after 3 days. I do know the lady that was catching them was very ruff. I’m sad to have lost them. Thank you very much for all your knowledge Father Fish !
I like your ideas and am giving them a go atm. I noticed some of your tanks are not crystal clear, but wouldn't that be due to no water changes or maybe filtration. I understand your fish are happy and healthy, but I want to keep something pleasing to look at, scaped, crystal clear "art" if you get what I mean.
I never change the water, I always just top off. Only two of my many tanks are tightly closed, the rest have some openings or are totally open so I just replace what evaporates. Pothos and peace lilly grow out most of my tanks and all have tons of java moss and some other plants keeping everyone healthy.
Thank you Laura and Father fish!!! Literally throwing out the baby with the bath water 💧 😂😂😂 Dig up your dirt, clean it, put it back ahhahahahhaha😂😂😂😂❤❤❤ pure gold!
We have a flower garden & we have a crop garden...I need to go do a 90% soil change every day to keep all my plants. I am growing Discus & they are worse than Goldfish with the mess they cause! I love your channel & thank you & all that are involved so much. Father Fish = Common Sense has entered the chat!
lol. I have noticed more and more farmers are digging up their plants once a week and transferring them into new soil. Lessons from the toilet bowl philosophy of tank maintenance. SCRUB, FLUSH, SANITIZE. REPEAT WEEKLY. (Thanks to Lucas B. for this)
I’m old school and back in the mid 1980’s I had a 55 gallon aquarium along with a hang on back filter and used an undergravel filter. I had only one red Piranha but after 5 years it got to be around 8” or so. Never once did I have a problem with water quality and truthfully only remember doing a few 30% water changes and that’s because my ammonia levels reached around 1 ppm because I left uneaten food in the tank for a couple days. You could even smell the ammonia if you got close to the tank. I never checked for nitrites or nitrates back then because I can’t recall anyone saying they were harmful to fish. Then again piranhas are very hardy fish and can handle water qualities probably of lesser quality. At least short term. They are messy eaters so live feeding is something I stopped within my first year. Now I recently bought 75 gallon and still use the under gravel filter along with 2, Seachem Tidal 110’s. Been almost a year and I have very good water parameters and yes, I have a nice bunch of java fern and a good sized anubia species. I also bought a UV sterilizer that truly did a great job one time early on with algae in the water making it somewhat hazy green. Only thing now it watching my nitrates. I can never seem to get them below 40ppm but guess what? It’s not a big deal like so many make it out to be. I highly recommend using the undergravel filter and with the money I saved I was able to buy a really nice, bluetooth Fluval light and much more. I forgot to mention I have 4 red bellied piranhas living in the tank that are around 5” in length. They were only maybe 3/4” when I got them.
Hello Father Fish. Another great video. I definitely would love to hear this type of video of discus without plants. I hear so many talking about 2-3 water changes per week and even heard everyday water changes. But not to leave off planted tanks with discus and need or no need to change water would be interesting as well.
@@FatherFish Just so you know, I converted one of my tanks to your system tonight. Thank you for your videos as well as the advice. Since it was an established tank, it took a while to do. Appreciate it again.
I do believe in water changes while still recognizing how disruptive they are, I would still #1 say that taking out some dissolved or suspended material out can be good and #2 say that the system, depending on it’s maturity can be very resilient. And nitrogen stinks. Water is in a shape similar to the triangle forms that they put in the front of architecture like if there are pillars in front with a concrete triangle on top - same angles. It is in the shape of the golden ratio, 1.62 to 1 or so. The triangle has angles of 36, 36, and 108. Three of these triangles can be arranged/overlaid to form a five pointed star aka pentagram (which also inscribes a pentagon). My thoughts on pentagrams are that they can be used as a template for golden ratio and while I don’t really believe in a difference between white and black magick, I DO believe in the difference between empirical knowledge and strange practices. Sorry, too much, but I like fish tanks and geometry. Chlorine is a gas at room temperature, much more so at 78 or 80 degrees. It only stays in our tap water cause it’s trapped in pressurized pipes. Let it run over the filter a couple times and it is gone, and it has no chance to put much of a dent in the teaming mass of bacteria in a fish tank.
LOL Nitrogen is, of course, odorless. Maintaining water quality, that is, controlling the nutrients in the water is critical to maintaining a no water change system.
I was told the water change was to drop the bacteria load - i heard you mention cloudy water in betta tanks but i think the bacteria count in the water column can go up before that invisibly and suck oxygen.
1:35 Technically water actually can change from what is in it, and it commonly happens for example with acids and bases. Acidifying the water changes H2O molecules by turning the H's in the molecule into free hydrogen ions, and basifying breaks the H2O into free OH ions. Anyways, might be a bit nit picky, but yeah most water mostly stays water in the aquarium
Good day Father fish. I thought I would write this here, was not sure which video I should choose as all are so good and always link to each others in some ways as the aquarium is a close loop :) I always had a deep substrate, but sadly I only fell on your videos a few months ago, so I could not prepare the perfect soil as per your recipe, but it's been the same old soil for now about 3 years. about 1-2" of amazon aqua soil and lot's of sand on top of it. Initially, I had African cichlids with only a few anubias so I was running 3 canister loaded with Biohome, everything was perfect, always between 0 - 5 ppm of nitrate. Then about a year and a half ago, sadly my stock got contaminated with a parasite and I lost it all. Now I'm running New world cichlids and have been adding more and more plants. Initially it was great, but then I ran into a small problem, my plants started to look starved, even if I was adding fertilizer that contained nitrogen and other ingredient, plants were not doing well but BBA and other algae were happy... So it's been about 2 weeks, after watching so many of your videos that I gathered the courage to remove all of my Biohome and only run my canister with foam, I'm finally starting to see some nitrate in the tank and at the same time, my plants are starting to thrive again. I'm sorry for this long post, but in resume, what I'm trying to say, is thanks to you, I gain the confidence to trust nature, and let the plants and the substrate do the job instead of adding all these outside element that were removing the essential food preventing me from having an healthy aquarium. You are a blessing for the fish community and I hope your channel keep on gaining more and more popularity as you help me reduce the stress factor of being a fish keeper by such a huge amount :)
Thank you Olivier. Your experience is the same as so many others who have finally surrendered to mother nature and learned the joy of fish keeping. Thank you for the lovely post.
HELLO I DO NOW EVERY WEEK WATER CHANGE ALL THE TIMES IK DID THE THINGS YOU SAY I HAD BACTERIAL INFECTIONS AND MORE.... this is just my experience but i still like your channel
Hello, mister Father fish. Thanks for your wonderful videos very much. Because of you I stopped charging water in my 30 fish tanks and already see difference!!! I have a problem with Gidras . Maybe you have a secret how to getting rid of this annoying creature. Last time I used fenbendozole , but I not sure if I Have to change water after treatment..... Thanks again, best regards Alex
I have a problem with Gidras too. The Asian youth community is enamored of Marx. Why is this? Are they that stupid? Chemicals will not solve the problem. It is a hearts and minds isssue.
nice video now i can show people a video why i dont need a water chance every week. bu only to fil upm the water that vaborites. my nitrates anad nitrites are ver low. i dont only use plants in the thank. i use big bambo to form a indoor river with plants and that work great for man years now greeting from the netherlands
I look at a water change as a rainy day in nature. You need to recharge the system. I am my tanks keeper. I have to do what I feel is healthier for my inhabitants and control as it may be...it is necessary maintenance. I run a 50 Gallon acrylic tank and it has been running for over a year. I was doing the excessive water changes and have learned what and what not to do. Water changes every 2-3 weeks based on master test results and measurably 15 gallons per water change. I let the water sit for those 2-3 weeks before water change. I use 75% R/O and 25% tap blend. I don't keep plants of any kind. Just lacerock, spiderwood, and Aragonite/Imagitarium Sand blend. I have 2 large Angelfish, 9 tetras, and a Thomasoni dwarf cichlid. It works for my setup and my inhabitants. I am happy to also report 0 fatalities and 0 illnesses to this point.
Can you recommend books about water, fish, aquarium? whatever you consider important for an aquarist who left chemical aquarism to switch to natural aquarism.
I got a nitrite spike of 1ppm last week because my power went out for 2 hours. I noticed all my malaysian trumpet snails coming out of the substrate & climbing the plants.
Hi, relatively new to fishkeeping, i have an 80ltr planted which im enjoying so much i made a nano, trying to learn and understand about water parameters, as with most im told regular water changes etc I have a test kit but was wondering if you would perhaps inform or make a video on acceptable parameters and possible rectification for being out? Thanks
Yes but what's the long-term effects of nitrates I tested my Creek water and it's always at zero nitrates or close to it you have to remember to if you take a fish from one aquarium with low nitrates and put in an aquarium with high nitrates it might still do damage nitrate shock
About 5-6 months of FF videos digested now. Best free online course and I’m having fun setting up my second tank (40G breeder). My problem now is that I’m a lousy aquascaper.
I am very intrigued by the things you talk about. What about a cichlid tank where they tear the plants up? I tried to keep plants for almost a year, and they kept dying due to the abuse from the cichlids. I'm going to put some floating plants in their tanks (a 55 and 75) but is that enough to remove the nitrates? How can I effectively house cichlids wo changing their water? My community and neo shrimp tanks are highly planted... I'm going to attempt this for them. I would love to not do weekly water changes
Amen. You don't see lakes changing their water every week. The rain just replenishes the evaporation. Gotta build ecosystems not sterile display tanks.
right at this moment I tested the water today and it indicate the Nitrite is high. I will leave it as it is. I have a lot of plants and floating plants in the tank and good substrat with sand over it.. I have a 10 g tank with two nano fish and 8 shrimps only.
Had an ah-ha moment, While a fairly neutral PH and very low PPM for ammonia and Nitrite are what we want, having 0 ppm of nitrate would actually mean my plants would not be faring so well?
After this and some of my own research, Im definitely going to back off on the water changes, I've been doing 25% weekly water changes for the past 8 years to keep my no3 below 40ppm. I regularly take hand fulls of Java Fern out because of the level of growth, I'm going to stop doing that, also my pothos vine has no leaves on any of the lower vines, I assume because the no3 level isn't high enough I'm going to change to monthly water changes and just top up evaporation, I don't want to go cold turkey on the wc's just yet, it's something I'll need to work up to, gotta teach my brain to massive water changes aren't necessary...
I like your explanations on " Contaminants" in the water. I thought it sounded like when you take antibiotics, you remove all of the bacteria, then you should replace the good bacteria. So I don't know if changing water Actually benefits that much unless there's no other choice. Thanks guys
@@FatherFish unless you are a micro biologist I'm not sure you can. As I understood " Bad bacteria could just be a form of good bacteria that hasn't had the chance to mature". Maybe 🤔?
Ooops. I was messing things up by changing my water when I saw nitrites and nitrates show up 😫. No wonder some of my plants have been looking sad lately
The need for hard alkaline for live bearing fish has been an issue for some. When you keep a tank such as these how do you keep the tank water alkaline
So, these Tetra Easy Strips that every pet store & aquarium store tells us to use showing that your nitrates & nitrites are too high for my fish are fake and lie to us? Do I need to stop worrying about my fish because I keep fighting nitrates in my tank. They are always high.
I once made a mistake that killed fish, I set up a tank, did everything correctly, left the water to mature for three weeks before adding fish, did not over stock, then I got a test kit after a fish showed stress, maybe I was overfeeding slightly or something rotted but the Nitrites went high, so I did a water change, it went down, then after three days the Nitrites seem to shoot up again despite starving the fish of food. It ended up being the municiple water supply that was the problem. Instead of using dissolved gaseous Chlorine which dissipates rapidly from the water they were using Chloramine a chemical compound containing Chlorine bonded to Nitrogen what was happening was the water changes worked for the first two days or so, then all of a sudden the Chloramine degraded leaving the Nitrogen to form Nitrites, so it was the water changes that were raising the nitrite levels and killing fish, I should have use rain water and mineralized it or good spring water.
what does this mean? should i stop using the kits for testing nitrates? i mean this is what i understood from all of this am i wrong in any way? thank u
I very much appreciate your knowledge and work here. But I think maybe your advice is not the best for everyone. Why do I say that? Well I do not have a planted tank. I simply have artificial plants etc. So the big question here is, can I avoid 50% water changes safely? Plus there is a lot of other factors. How heavily loaded with fish is the tank? What kind of filtration & aeration ...so on and so forth. I would appreciate your thoughtful response!
It would be cool to see a video on your favorite fish and plants and different/best types of algae eater like Chinese algae eater vs otocinclus and bottom feeders.
Is biofilm and brown gunk in the bottom of aquarium fine? Though Nitries and nitrates are 0 on test strips... Basically nitrifing Bacteria is what saving the fishes? Do i need to siphon the bottom decaying food or plants and gunk?
STEM PLANTS BUNDLE SALE - Over 75 plants - 15 Species for $59! Limited Time OFFER so HURRY!
father-fish-aquarium.myshopify.com/
For Special Soil Supplements, Plants, FIsh & Merch in your country:
fatherfish.fish/
These explanations and analogies are what every fishkeeper (new and seasoned) needs to hear - thank you so much for this and for everything you do for the hobby!
Appreciate your support DC.
Which is why i'm here! To protect my $1000 Discus. I'm planted with alot of plant and floaters but I still want to learn more.
I think the main problem is that too many people over stock their tanks. Balance is key. Good discussion, very enjoyable.
Thank you Jon. I agree. Overstocking fish is not supportable unless plants are extremely overstocked.
@@FatherFish I also think people misunderstand beneficial bacteria in your tank vs a Nitrogen cycle.....a cycle is a self sustaining thing.....No Plants or Algae....no cycle
They remove the Nitrates! Plant growth = completion of cycle...Right? Am I crazy?? I don't have nitrates I have plants growing like mad though...
Everyone always state how often to do water changes vs do you do water changes and what is causing the problem.....
I last did this 22 years ago, (Back into it now) but don't remember this being a thing save for Ammonia spikes if you overstocked
@@FatherFishare marbled cat sharks good for ten gallon tanks or do they need a bigger tank
@@jennifermcfadden8713 They cost $300. and grow to upwards of 4 feet long. What is the aegis of you question?
@@Cougar139tweak Excellent study Watch This.
I think a lot of the fixation by aquarists to change water so frequently comes from a compulsion to interact with their tanks on a regular basis. Nitrates, even though not demonstrably bad, are an excuse for people to get their hands wet. More people need to internalize that more work does not equal a better result in this hobby!
Love everything you're teaching. Subscribing and sharing the video with friends. Much love!
True. Some have complained they have nothing to do after setting up a stable tank. I encourage meditation! lol
@@FatherFish Sharing the beauty, basking in the balance, and continuing the sacred web of life is the reward I seek. I use all the time i save skipping water changes to propagate more plants and set up another tank, lol!! I stock heavy, I plant heavy, and integrate terrestrial plants as "wetland" filtration. Willow cuttings will sprout red roots from barnacle looking nodes, so pretty covered in blue shrimp!
Greetings from Slovakia. I found your channel maybe about year ago and I re-did almost all my tanks to 2" of sand and 1" of lake substrate (stuff bought at hobby market in garden section). I was always looking to build an ecosystem not an high-cost, high-tech and high-maintenance display case. Now I can say I achieved my goals thanks to your debunking of most common myths in fish keeping. So thank you for providing all this usefull information through this platform.
Delighted to read your comment Niekto.
Im so grateful for the warm tone and unpretentious simplicity of these videos
The clip of those angel fish from 8.46 till the neon rainbow fish is mine😀. They are my free give away clips. I am really happy that the clip is been used to explain such an important discussion of the aquarium and fish keeping.
Emmanuel We are very grateful for your clips on Discord. They help us make videos that are interesting because they include tanks from around the world
@@FatherFish Happy to help, soon will post more such clips.👏👏👍👍
right Im convinced i will stop changing water
Long as u got deep substrate and plenty of plants. Not over feeding helps also
Great discussion on a very important topic. Water is the source of our life and the life around us. Letting nature take care of our tanks has a way of humbling us to the great mystery of life on earth
. Thank you Father Fish and the research team.
Thank you Geo.
I watched this video a month ago and so much went over my head. This time after a month of enjoying my planted tank, everything now makes sense. Thank you so much FF❤️
Nice to hear that Dash
Hello from Ontario, Father Fish! Just want to thank you for sharing all your knowledge with us. You have helped me make a deeper connection to my tanks, plants, and fish - and they have never been anywhere near as prosperous as they are since I have adopted the Father Fish ways. I recommend your channel to everybody that I speak to about the hobby and of course I am already in the Shoal. It took me 26 years to find a hobby that I actually enjoy, but you helped take my interest in fishkeeping to the next level, making me want to delve into the ecology of the tanks and also our natural water bodies and fish. I fully believe you are helping me to find more of a purpose in life and I sincerely thank you for that.
Wonderful comment Dylan. Very much appreciate you.
Oh well, it is official; thanks to this guy and his great thoughts about aquariums has made be started up with the hobby...again. Great video as always.
Thank you Father Fish. I'm making the leap into the natural way of keeping my aquarium like yours
I will try my best, and Father Fish
We ALL LOVE YOU.....THANK YOU
Great insight. Priceless facts every fish owner should know. I'll be ordering some plans from you soon Father Fish. Thank you.
Thank you Raul. Look forward to your order.
Did you hire an editor? Your videos have sure stepped up.
The new videos looks amazing! Love all the arts and music 🎶 !!! Super chilled 😌👍 even though its a pre recorded video I felt like I was right there watching a live stream 😅 love it 💕 😊 most importantly it’s kids friendly! I can watch it with my daughter and teach her about nature! 😇🥰
Yes. The new vids are your ticket to an easy 100k subs!🎈 -Scotty on Maui. 🌈
This was the very question I was asking about. This was a fascinating watch. Thank you so much!
Glad it was helpful Claire! We will be publishing on this in a few months.
Yep I'll have to ask around in my garden forum who washes thier soil for spring 😄
Get back to on that Gren. We could do a short. VERY short. lol
I'm loving this water series, thank you!
Glad you enjoy it tinger.!
Good topic and subject to discussion. Very interesting. Great job Father Fish.
Glad you enjoyed it Miagi.
Love the natural look of those tanks. The huge surface leaves in the Gillsinthegrove tank look cool.
The Grove is stupendous.
Bless you Father Fish!
Derlighted to have you in the shoal Sharon.
Hi from Scotland, I have finally found a fishkeeping sanctuary and endless natural imformation, if you listen and try to understand what nature has always tried to tell us all along, fishkeeping is a natural destresser and will bring us closer to the true nature that is all around us, follow what nature father fish is trying to explane to us, a 20 year old tank says it all, thank you so much.
You are wise beyond your years.
Thankyou so much for the valuable information. This has helped me see water in a whole new light. I have just set up a new tank and was going to dispose of all the 'mature water' from my old aquarium. Now after watching this I see how crazy that idea actually is and I am now going to include the mature water into the new set up. I also really appreciate the information about nitrate. I have been over here worrying about 100ppm of nitrate 0ppm nitrite and actually now I can see that it shows that my old aquarium had found its own equilibrium which I should have been celebrating. Thank you so much for your valuable information. You have a future follower from me!!!
I was getting sick fish after sick fish doing the 20% for nitrates water changing. I decided a few months ago to try to just keep water hardness down by cutting ro water in to replace the evaporated water.
To keep the hardness at 6 instead off gradually going up 12
So now I’m basically topping it up with rain water and haven’t lost a fish for a long time
Excellent content
you might want to be careful that you aren't slowly lowering your kH, which is the buffering ability of the water to maintain pH. RO water with proper GH can still have a pH crash if it doesnt have enough kH
@@Eric_Allen yeah that’s the only one’s I do gh kh and ph now
@@Eric_Allen great point. nothing wrong with the RO, just need to watch the tests. I use only RODI water, remineralized with Equalibrium and Alkaline Buffer
Somehow i missed this video. Alway's good too hear things from a slightly different aproach then one is used to.
Thank you Father-fish❤
Well. I've been following for over a week. Tomorrow is the big day I put all of my hard work into the tank and set it all up as you've said to do. I've mentioned you to all the fish stores I've been to too & they love you. I'm definitely spreading awareness of your holistic brilliance 🥰✨️💙
Where are your stores?
@FatherFish knoxville, TN. Aquatic Marine. Just tested my water today there & ammonia, hardiness, and alkalinity are extremely high. Gathered everything from a spring fed creek yesterday and set it up today. Bought more plants. I give it a couple days and I'll have fish 🫶
Thanks for this invaluable education.
Thankful that you are sharing your knowledge and experience with us.
Thank you Anabel
I just found your videos on UA-cam and I was about to just give up my tank as I couldn’t keep it clean because it was a large gravel substrate. Well…I went outside after watching one of your videos about the natural tank and put some sand that’s been in a bag for 3 years that my late husband had to mix with cement into a horse bucket and ran a hose and stirred it up for about 30 minutes. That was the beginning of my natural tank. So simple and really makes all the sense in the world. All I had in my tank for ever it seems is a red tailed shark catfish that is huge now and some kind of sucker catfish…they look so happy now. The only thing is after about a month I purchased 4 blue neons, 2 silver neons and 2 plecos…only 2 silver neons and 2 plecos are alive after 3 days. I do know the lady that was catching them was very ruff. I’m sad to have lost them. Thank you very much for all your knowledge Father Fish !
The red tail shark might have killed the neons. They are tiny fish to put with large fish. Try some cichlids like severums, or angels.
Amazing minds in the field of aquariums
It is a joy Pete.
I like your ideas and am giving them a go atm. I noticed some of your tanks are not crystal clear, but wouldn't that be due to no water changes or maybe filtration. I understand your fish are happy and healthy, but I want to keep something pleasing to look at, scaped, crystal clear "art" if you get what I mean.
I have tannins in several tanks. Ce careful what you wish for.
I love this real information! Thank you!
You are very welcome fran.
Great video Lou!
Getting better and better every week. It's amazing!
Glad you think so Iliuta. We are working at it.
How have I not known about you!!?? I’m obsessed with your videos! Sorry this is off topic! I just love you!
I never change the water, I always just top off. Only two of my many tanks are tightly closed, the rest have some openings or are totally open so I just replace what evaporates. Pothos and peace lilly grow out most of my tanks and all have tons of java moss and some other plants keeping everyone healthy.
Sounds very homey. Would love to see ome. Please join us on Discord and post pics.
Thank you Laura and Father fish!!! Literally throwing out the baby with the bath water 💧 😂😂😂
Dig up your dirt, clean it, put it back ahhahahahhaha😂😂😂😂❤❤❤ pure gold!
Hi Wing. Nice to see you.
@@FatherFish greetings Father fish 🐠 👋🏼😊
Such useful information. Thank you. This has definitely helped 👍👍🐟
I always learn so much from you. Thank you for all the great information! 🥰
You are so welcome!
10:33 great specimen of Plasticus Forkus....very rare indeed! 😀
Actually quite common in certain locales.
We have a flower garden & we have a crop garden...I need to go do a 90% soil change every day to keep all my plants. I am growing Discus & they are worse than Goldfish with the mess they cause! I love your channel & thank you & all that are involved so much. Father Fish = Common Sense has entered the chat!
lol. I have noticed more and more farmers are digging up their plants once a week and transferring them into new soil. Lessons from the toilet bowl philosophy of tank maintenance. SCRUB, FLUSH, SANITIZE. REPEAT WEEKLY. (Thanks to Lucas B. for this)
@@FatherFish
I’m old school and back in the mid 1980’s I had a 55 gallon aquarium along with a hang on back filter and used an undergravel filter. I had only one red Piranha but after 5 years it got to be around 8” or so. Never once did I have a problem with water quality and truthfully only remember doing a few 30% water changes and that’s because my ammonia levels reached around 1 ppm because I left uneaten food in the tank for a couple days. You could even smell the ammonia if you got close to the tank. I never checked for nitrites or nitrates back then because I can’t recall anyone saying they were harmful to fish. Then again piranhas are very hardy fish and can handle water qualities probably of lesser quality. At least short term. They are messy eaters so live feeding is something I stopped within my first year. Now I recently bought 75 gallon and still use the under gravel filter along with 2, Seachem Tidal 110’s. Been almost a year and I have very good water parameters and yes, I have a nice bunch of java fern and a good sized anubia species. I also bought a UV sterilizer that truly did a great job one time early on with algae in the water making it somewhat hazy green. Only thing now it watching my nitrates. I can never seem to get them below 40ppm but guess what? It’s not a big deal like so many make it out to be. I highly recommend using the undergravel filter and with the money I saved I was able to buy a really nice, bluetooth Fluval light and much more. I forgot to mention I have 4 red bellied piranhas living in the tank that are around 5” in length. They were only maybe 3/4” when I got them.
Cool fish. Donated the original school to the National Aquarium.
Great Discussion and Outcome. Thankyou Sir (Father Fish).
Love and Regards,
From, Vipin Pandey (My Hobby)
Thank you Vipin
Thanks
Thank You Father Fish
You are welcome JMartiniano
Hello Father Fish. Another great video. I definitely would love to hear this type of video of discus without plants. I hear so many talking about 2-3 water changes per week and even heard everyday water changes. But not to leave off planted tanks with discus and need or no need to change water would be interesting as well.
Coming soon.
Tanks that can't have plants can have emersed plants out of the top of the tank like a pothos vinee
@@ShiaShnaky that's correct indeed.
@@FatherFish looking forward to seeing them discussed
@@darnellfisher4148 In a few weeks we will have the opportunity to work with one of the top discus strains and breeding operations.
So grateful for this video Father fish.
Thank you Reza
@@FatherFish Just so you know, I converted one of my tanks to your system tonight. Thank you for your videos as well as the advice. Since it was an established tank, it took a while to do. Appreciate it again.
@@rgorji Please be sure to send some pics of your tank to Discord. Congratulations.
I do believe in water changes while still recognizing how disruptive they are, I would still #1 say that taking out some dissolved or suspended material out can be good and #2 say that the system, depending on it’s maturity can be very resilient. And nitrogen stinks.
Water is in a shape similar to the triangle forms that they put in the front of architecture like if there are pillars in front with a concrete triangle on top - same angles. It is in the shape of the golden ratio, 1.62 to 1 or so. The triangle has angles of 36, 36, and 108. Three of these triangles can be arranged/overlaid to form a five pointed star aka pentagram (which also inscribes a pentagon). My thoughts on pentagrams are that they can be used as a template for golden ratio and while I don’t really believe in a difference between white and black magick, I DO believe in the difference between empirical knowledge and strange practices. Sorry, too much, but I like fish tanks and geometry.
Chlorine is a gas at room temperature, much more so at 78 or 80 degrees. It only stays in our tap water cause it’s trapped in pressurized pipes. Let it run over the filter a couple times and it is gone, and it has no chance to put much of a dent in the teaming mass of bacteria in a fish tank.
LOL Nitrogen is, of course, odorless. Maintaining water quality, that is, controlling the nutrients in the water is critical to maintaining a no water change system.
Wow! Father Fish! Your channel is exploding! CONGRATULATIONS 🎉❤I'm so happy for you 🙂❤
Thanks so much Isabella. We are moving along rather quickly. Will see how long this lasts.
Loved this video it made so much sense.
Glad it was helpful!
I was told the water change was to drop the bacteria load - i heard you mention cloudy water in betta tanks but i think the bacteria count in the water column can go up before that invisibly and suck oxygen.
1:35 Technically water actually can change from what is in it, and it commonly happens for example with acids and bases. Acidifying the water changes H2O molecules by turning the H's in the molecule into free hydrogen ions, and basifying breaks the H2O into free OH ions. Anyways, might be a bit nit picky, but yeah most water mostly stays water in the aquarium
Intereting. So acid reduced water volume?
@@FatherFish possibly, but its obviously negligible difference in volume
Great insight video.
Glad it was helpful!
Good day Father fish.
I thought I would write this here, was not sure which video I should choose as all are so good and always link to each others in some ways as the aquarium is a close loop :)
I always had a deep substrate, but sadly I only fell on your videos a few months ago, so I could not prepare the perfect soil as per your recipe, but it's been the same old soil for now about 3 years. about 1-2" of amazon aqua soil and lot's of sand on top of it. Initially, I had African cichlids with only a few anubias so I was running 3 canister loaded with Biohome, everything was perfect, always between 0 - 5 ppm of nitrate.
Then about a year and a half ago, sadly my stock got contaminated with a parasite and I lost it all. Now I'm running New world cichlids and have been adding more and more plants. Initially it was great, but then I ran into a small problem, my plants started to look starved, even if I was adding fertilizer that contained nitrogen and other ingredient, plants were not doing well but BBA and other algae were happy...
So it's been about 2 weeks, after watching so many of your videos that I gathered the courage to remove all of my Biohome and only run my canister with foam, I'm finally starting to see some nitrate in the tank and at the same time, my plants are starting to thrive again.
I'm sorry for this long post, but in resume, what I'm trying to say, is thanks to you, I gain the confidence to trust nature, and let the plants and the substrate do the job instead of adding all these outside element that were removing the essential food preventing me from having an healthy aquarium.
You are a blessing for the fish community and I hope your channel keep on gaining more and more popularity as you help me reduce the stress factor of being a fish keeper by such a huge amount :)
Thank you Olivier. Your experience is the same as so many others who have finally surrendered to mother nature and learned the joy of fish keeping. Thank you for the lovely post.
I love my planted tank. Thanks for the video. I want to be the best fishkeeper I can.
Your tank will take you where you want to go TODubs. Join us on Discord.
HELLO I DO NOW EVERY WEEK WATER CHANGE ALL THE TIMES IK DID THE THINGS YOU SAY I HAD BACTERIAL INFECTIONS AND MORE.... this is just my experience but i still like your channel
Hello, mister Father fish. Thanks for your wonderful videos very much. Because of you I stopped charging water in my 30 fish tanks and already see difference!!!
I have a problem with Gidras . Maybe you have a secret how to getting rid of this annoying creature.
Last time I used fenbendozole , but I not sure if I Have to change water after treatment.....
Thanks again, best regards Alex
I have a problem with Gidras too. The Asian youth community is enamored of Marx. Why is this? Are they that stupid? Chemicals will not solve the problem. It is a hearts and minds isssue.
An intergenerational, transnational community and platform for radical and progressive Asian America facebook.com/gidramedia/
So good. 😊
Oh yes!
I have some water wisteria “dying”. Should trim and leave the roots in and hope it grows back
Yes. Try yo understand why it is dying. Join us on Discord we wil try to work it out.
Nitrates are not toxic yet you tube people tell everyone 10 to 20 ppm great video
I know. Interesting yes?
Great video FF.
Thank you TK
Thank you !
You're welcome!
Plants is a need in aquarium
Absolutely true TG!
Good evening father fish 👋🏽
Hello Cat Mit.
nice video
now i can show people a video why i dont need a water chance every week. bu only to fil upm the water that vaborites.
my nitrates anad nitrites are ver low.
i dont only use plants in the thank.
i use big bambo to form a indoor river with plants and that work great for man years now
greeting from the netherlands
Would love to see your bamboo forest. Join us on Discord please
@@FatherFish I just have join your discord. And post a little video of my bimbo river
I look at a water change as a rainy day in nature. You need to recharge the system. I am my tanks keeper. I have to do what I feel is healthier for my inhabitants and control as it may be...it is necessary maintenance. I run a 50 Gallon acrylic tank and it has been running for over a year. I was doing the excessive water changes and have learned what and what not to do. Water changes every 2-3 weeks based on master test results and measurably 15 gallons per water change. I let the water sit for those 2-3 weeks before water change. I use 75% R/O and 25% tap blend. I don't keep plants of any kind. Just lacerock, spiderwood, and Aragonite/Imagitarium Sand blend. I have 2 large Angelfish, 9 tetras, and a Thomasoni dwarf cichlid. It works for my setup and my inhabitants. I am happy to also report 0 fatalities and 0 illnesses to this point.
Totally understandable given your system. With a dirted deep substrate heavily planted these practices are unnecessary and detrimental.
Can you recommend books about water, fish, aquarium? whatever you consider important for an aquarist who left chemical aquarism to switch to natural aquarism.
Saludos, buenísimo todos sus videos, espero se puedan subtitular al español. Un saludo desde Uruguay 🇺🇾
Nosotras proporcionaremos subs españolas.
I got a nitrite spike of 1ppm last week because my power went out for 2 hours. I noticed all my malaysian trumpet snails coming out of the substrate & climbing the plants.
Probably over feeding and dependent upon mechanical systems to maintain.
Hi, relatively new to fishkeeping, i have an 80ltr planted which im enjoying so much i made a nano, trying to learn and understand about water parameters, as with most im told regular water changes etc
I have a test kit but was wondering if you would perhaps inform or make a video on acceptable parameters and possible rectification for being out?
Thanks
Yes. I will do that
So you need plants to avoid water changes? Many cichlids will eat plants so water change still needed.
Yea I have 9 Frontosa in a 125, they will tear up any plant and like to dig pits. Water changes needed for large Cichlids.
Many plants are effective with Africans, mosses and algaes in particular. they are the natural food for thee kinds of fish.
Whats the best pH for goldfish. I also have nitrates hard to get rid of thought I added some plants swords anubis plants
Yes but what's the long-term effects of nitrates I tested my Creek water and it's always at zero nitrates or close to it you have to remember to if you take a fish from one aquarium with low nitrates and put in an aquarium with high nitrates it might still do damage nitrate shock
Nope. Sorry. No such thing.
@@FatherFish no such thing as what nitrate shock.?
When to chNge water for bare bottom goldfish tank. Ammonia is zero, nitrites at 5 ppm and nitrate at 5 ppm.
hourly
@@FatherFishhourly
About 5-6 months of FF videos digested now. Best free online course and I’m having fun setting up my second tank (40G breeder). My problem now is that I’m a lousy aquascaper.
Me too
I am very intrigued by the things you talk about.
What about a cichlid tank where they tear the plants up? I tried to keep plants for almost a year, and they kept dying due to the abuse from the cichlids. I'm going to put some floating plants in their tanks (a 55 and 75) but is that enough to remove the nitrates? How can I effectively house cichlids wo changing their water? My community and neo shrimp tanks are highly planted... I'm going to attempt this for them. I would love to not do weekly water changes
deep substrate and overplant with heavy plants
Amen. You don't see lakes changing their water every week. The rain just replenishes the evaporation. Gotta build ecosystems not sterile display tanks.
Precisely David. Build systems, not pictures.
right at this moment I tested the water today and it indicate the Nitrite is high. I will leave it as it is. I have a lot of plants and floating plants in the tank and good substrat with sand over it.. I have a 10 g tank with two nano fish and 8 shrimps only.
Had an ah-ha moment, While a fairly neutral PH and very low PPM for ammonia and Nitrite are what we want, having 0 ppm of nitrate would actually mean my plants would not be faring so well?
Precisely Sarah.
After this and some of my own research, Im definitely going to back off on the water changes, I've been doing 25% weekly water changes for the past 8 years to keep my no3 below 40ppm.
I regularly take hand fulls of Java Fern out because of the level of growth, I'm going to stop doing that, also my pothos vine has no leaves on any of the lower vines, I assume because the no3 level isn't high enough I'm going to change to monthly water changes and just top up evaporation, I don't want to go cold turkey on the wc's just yet, it's something I'll need to work up to, gotta teach my brain to massive water changes aren't necessary...
lol. Your tank will appreciate being left alone. lol
I like your explanations on " Contaminants" in the water. I thought it sounded like when you take antibiotics, you remove all of the bacteria, then you should replace the good bacteria. So I don't know if changing water Actually benefits that much unless there's no other choice.
Thanks guys
Exactly correct. AMD How do you differentiate between good and bad bacteria?
@@FatherFish unless you are a micro biologist I'm not sure you can. As I understood " Bad bacteria could just be a form of good bacteria that hasn't had the chance to mature". Maybe 🤔?
I think a good word instead of "harmony" is equilibrium.
What floating plant do you recommend for a 3 gallon tank with only a beta. Your video recommended using floating plants
red root floater is nice
Ooops. I was messing things up by changing my water when I saw nitrites and nitrates show up 😫. No wonder some of my plants have been looking sad lately
great videos
Glad you like them!
The need for hard alkaline for live bearing fish has been an issue for some. When you keep a tank such as these how do you keep the tank water alkaline
It has adequate buffer. I top off with hard buffered water.
awesome video ff✌✌
So, these Tetra Easy Strips that every pet store & aquarium store tells us to use showing that your nitrates & nitrites are too high for my fish are fake and lie to us? Do I need to stop worrying about my fish because I keep fighting nitrates in my tank. They are always high.
Add more plants and the nitrates will go down.
I once made a mistake that killed fish, I set up a tank, did everything correctly, left the water to mature for three weeks before adding fish, did not over stock, then I got a test kit after a fish showed stress, maybe I was overfeeding slightly or something rotted but the Nitrites went high, so I did a water change, it went down, then after three days the Nitrites seem to shoot up again despite starving the fish of food. It ended up being the municiple water supply that was the problem. Instead of using dissolved gaseous Chlorine which dissipates rapidly from the water they were using Chloramine a chemical compound containing Chlorine bonded to Nitrogen what was happening was the water changes worked for the first two days or so, then all of a sudden the Chloramine degraded leaving the Nitrogen to form Nitrites, so it was the water changes that were raising the nitrite levels and killing fish, I should have use rain water and mineralized it or good spring water.
Good research. OR you might have not changed water.
what does this mean?
should i stop using the kits for testing nitrates?
i mean this is what i understood from all of this
am i wrong in any way?
thank u
nitrates are nutrition.
My tap water is bad, I just test water and NO2 and NO3 are very high, how can I lower it asap without having to change the water? I need help
Add plants. Install deep substrate.
What about plant "nutrient burn"? Do high levels of nitrates damage the roots of plants or any part of the plant?
no.
I very much appreciate your knowledge and work here. But I think maybe your advice is not the best for everyone. Why do I say that? Well I do not have a planted tank. I simply have artificial plants etc. So the big question here is, can I avoid 50% water changes safely? Plus there is a lot of other factors. How heavily loaded with fish is the tank? What kind of filtration & aeration ...so on and so forth. I would appreciate your thoughtful response!
There will always be those who are not interested in what I am doing.
@@FatherFish I thought you were trying to help us. Well I will unsubscribe as per your want.
It would be cool to see a video on your favorite fish and plants and different/best types of algae eater like Chinese algae eater vs otocinclus and bottom feeders.
Was just thinking the same Avery. Coming soon
you guys are awesome
Companies like Seachem have taught people that Nitrates are dangerous in order to sell their products.
Is biofilm and brown gunk in the bottom of aquarium fine? Though Nitries and nitrates are 0 on test strips... Basically nitrifing Bacteria is what saving the fishes? Do i need to siphon the bottom decaying food or plants and gunk?
add some sand a some fallen tree leaves.
Question:
If I want to take out some water to feed house plants, how much is acceptable?
Up till 25% every week?
How much do you need? It might be better to remove a small amount daily and replace it at the same time.
@@FatherFish A few liters every few days I guess. More interested to know how much I can get away with daily... 5%?
@@StreetArtistsOfTheWorld 10% a day should not create a problem.
Nitrates aren't the problem, nitrites are
They certainly can be. High Ph and nutrient control are key to controlling nitrites.
@@FatherFish How is high Ph key to controlling nitrites?
@@MattyP650 You need above 6.0 PH to control nitrates.
What if u have no plants? U only keep fish like flower horns or ciclids , what do you do?
There are plants that can be kept with large cichlids. Visit us on Discord to learn more.
Keep terrestrial plants with the roots utilizing the nitrates. Pothos, peace Lillie's are both good. Ferns are even better in lower light.