Why Your Father Fish Aquarium Will Probably Fail

[@FatherFish]

EXCELLENT video. You have a good understanding of the process of cxreating a natural aaquarium. I especially appreciate your ability to explain this system clearly and simply. Thank you for a great video.

[@uncommonaquatics]

Thank you, sir. I’ve watched 100 of your videos over the last couple years. I think you have provided a great service to the aquarium community. I wanted to make sure that if I commented on your process, I did it with products ordered off your website

[@Boogerboys1990]

Some of my father fish setups "i have 16" are 5 yrs old full of plants and never done a water change. Only top offs. They are stocked lightly to moderately and get better and better each yr. Lue is the man. He got me back into the hobby with so much joy and excitement. Where big box store methods discouraged me as a child. And drove me out. Wish I knew then what I knew now. Always learning.

[@uncommonaquatics]

Absolutely. Thanks for sharing

[@Davenport901]

One mistake I've done was to water the soil and then immediately cap it with sand, not knowing that soil expands when you add water. So the next day I had to break it down and redo it. That's why Father Fish recommends you put the soil and put water on top of it and leave it for a few hours or even a day until you take it and place it in the tank.

[@joseph7105]

Have 3 FF tanks now. Best tanks ive ever owned. Low maintence and plants are thriving and fish are healthy. I think we are very close to finding the holy grail

[@shakinbottles]

Just dig a hole in your yard untill it fills In with water maybe add some native plants

[@thesolaraquarium]

Yes. The key to the ‘natural aquarium’ movement is a tank that you can walk away from and will not collapse after a few weeks (as long as you feed the fish of course). That is why I have fish-less tanks. I can walk away a long time and come back and they are still alive. The alternative is constant micro-management (liquid ferts, buffering… etc..). My tanks use the sun and no pumps so even a power failure does not stop them. They are basically indoor ponds. I used to feed my plants with chemicals once a day, every day. I will never go back to that regime. Far happier now. My tanks get about 3 minutes maintenance a week, but I could go several weeks without mintenance and they would survive.

[@Diet7he]

First off ❤ the video. I’ve found success by incorporating non-aquatic plants that can grow in water alongside traditional aquatic plants. I haven’t changed the water in years, but during the early stages of setting up a new aquarium, monitoring is essential before adding any fish. As mentioned in the video, starting the food web first-before introducing fish-is crucial. In my experience, the tank should focus on being plant-centric, with fish added later as part of the ecosystem, not the main attraction right from the start. It’s not the most exciting part of creating an aquarium setup, especially since the finished look with fish is what most people imagine. But once the plants and microorganisms are established, you can gradually introduce fish. This method has worked well for me. Approaching this process with the scientific method-observing, questioning, hypothesizing, experimenting, analyzing, and concluding-can really help. It might not be the right approach for everyone, but it *can* work for anyone willing to try it. P.S. To beginners: stop hating on snails! They’re not pests-they’re fascinating creatures if you take the time to observe them. Learn to appreciate them, and you’ll see how interesting they can be!

[@uncommonaquatics]

Thanks for all the feedback. I appreciate it.

[@markboyett2069]

I am so glad none of mine have failed.. thank you for your time.

[@uncommonaquatics]

Thanks for watching

[@Cowboy_Steve]

Howdy Braquaman! Having never really seen this dirt substrate planted tank method, what an excellent overview and break down of all the links needed to make the chain work. I agree with you - a well planted aquarium just looks better. More natural and warm, if you will. Looking forward to seeing how it looks in a month or two! Well done and thanks for sharing 🤠

[@moutaintopfish1597]

Great video. Running 19 tanks. Two have Dustin's method which is working well. Most of them I just use my creek sand which is basically dirt . And most of the time I don't wash it just put it the tank. It works very well and I have quit using filters. Not been keeping fish as long as father fish. But since 1976.

[@uncommonaquatics]

That’s a long time still. I was born in 1980 and I’ve been keeping fish since the late 90s.

[@mattbrennan647]

Fantastic explanation and tutorial. Thanks, keep fishing 😊

[@furiousstyles08]

Love this. I've been keeping fish for over 15 years. I haven't done a proper Walstad/FF aquarium (yet), but I am in favor of anything that gives newbies a good foundation.

[@uncommonaquatics]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts

[@AH-Aquatics]

I use pond soil as it has less nutrients so you don't have to have a really thick cap and don't have to worry so much if a bit comes up but you still get similar benefits.

[@darkshireaquatics]

Covered a very touchy subject, perfectly.. awesome video. tanks for sharing✌🙌🔥💚 sub✌✌

[@neutronshiva2498]

First and most crucial thing that will deplete in this (and pretty much any) type of aquarium is potassium. Potassium deficiency can be brutal on echinodorus, lotos, aponogetons etc. Even in FF method you will eventually have to add potassium-heavy root tabs least your plants get leaf necrosis like mine did after a year.

[@razinfishes1918]

Yep I have 3 father fish planted tanks and 5 other non father fish planted tanks and for my 3 FF tanks absolutely grow plants so well I have to keep cutting pails full of excess growth.

[@uncommonaquatics]

Thanks for sharing

[@humility-righteous-giving]

please define what makes the other 2 non ff planted tanks?

[@razinfishes1918]

@humility-righteous-giving it's actually 5 tanks that are non FF style tanks meaning they are non dirted tanks they either have a store bought planted substrate or just sand. Where are a FF tanks has a dirt substrate with a sand cap

[@stevegee8010]

Just started a dirted tank myself. Added water, sand and media from another, well established tank, so hopefully that's a good start. So far just white clouds and various snails in there.

[@AQUARIUMFREAK123]

QUESTION about LEVALING foam pads under your aquarium... Should you place the tank directly on the FOAM LEVEL PAD or should you place a 3/4 inch sheet of plywood on top of the PAD and then the tank on the BOARD ? its a 75 gal tank.

[@dustdevl1043]

Great video! Now I'm getting more fish videos recommended than tractor and equipment videos!

[@uncommonaquatics]

Sorry

[@dustdevl1043]

@uncommonaquatics It's all good!

[@AmazonasBiotop]

Nice video. I am a planted tank guy and fishes is secondary. I have started with shrimp only tanks to breed them. There is a lot of micro organisms that is coming from "nowhere". And i guess that they are actually always there in a standard fish aquarium. But the fishes is eating them up before we are able to see them.😂 Anyway depending on how many fishes you put into that tank that is determined by the amount of plants. To achieve your goal with no water changes. Right now in my opinion there is not so many plants so it will not support that many fishes. I think like this. You got your dirt and that is feeding yout plants if and when you use plants that are root feeders. But your gole is to remoce N and NO3 from the water column.. Then fast growing stem plants that take nutrition (N) from the water column and dont has a lot of roots. Will help you more. And fast growing ones.. So when you throw out a lot of plants in trimming sessions it is actually a way of removing N! Consider floating plants that are at the surface and can access CO2 more easily from the air but takes all the nutrients from the water column (your N)! What we want is fast growth and fast increasing plant mass that us the same as that maximum N (and all the other nutrients) is consimed and picked up by the biological"plantfilter". Therefore to use CO2 is a way to give the plants the upper hand and in some cases as important as giving plants light.😂 So CO2 is in this case to PROMOTE N absorption (biological filtration) by the plants like as turning on the light.. we need that the plants to grow and thrive. If they just is sitting there and doing nothing then nothing is filtered or worse if they melt and die they release nutrition BACK to the water column and increase the bio load! And as also a shrimp keeper i have learned that we can give them leaf litter (Catappa for example and others). Everyone is talking about how good it is for the shrimps that eating from those botanics.. But looking at it in a bigger picture as with the food web then as the Leaf is slowly deteriorating it is actually releasing nutrients that the tree has put into the leaves and releasing it back to the water column. In other words we are indirectly fertilizing our aquarium plants also! As a example i have a tank with only shrimps and two types of mosses. The mosses have LOW requirements of lightning, nutrition and grow (or survive) as they are "easy". But i have put a CO2 pressure tank with a co2 diffusor 29 July. When I had to struggle with to high NO3 levels and a lot of water changes when i want to feed shrimp babies and build up a bigger and bigger colony. I were on the losing side of the battle and needed to constantly and often do water changes that were rather big and I were constantly on the higher side of the NO3 levels.😢 Yes i could feed less but then the growth and the breeding will suffer of the shrimps.. The time went on and i also had a lot of light with the CO2 (that were set on minimum as . The mosses is growing and the plant mass is increasing! And now 17 October i messured 0 ppm NO3 for the first time! (Did not see that coming..) At 3 november still 0ppm NO3. This means I could have more feeding and bigger colony of shrimps OR less water changes and still have better than conditions for the life stock than before! In short we can use CO2 not only that we love plants and want to promote plant growth. We want indirekt make conditions so that the plants are CONSUMING harmful nutrients from the water column for us as a biological filtration!❤ So nuber one priority is to make the plants to grow and thrive as fast as they can! If that means that we take help of light, CO2 and so on to achieve that biological filtration. 👍

[@aarondavis8224]

Great video. I'm going to set up a 55 like this and was wondering if one plant pack was enough. Now I know I will need more plants

[@uncommonaquatics]

The 18 stem plants were not enough for my 55 gallon. If you give it enough time, they would fill-in and it would be enough, but if you want it fully planted right away you need more.

[@pubwvj]

I was doing “dirt” planted fish tanks with both fresh and salt water starting back in the 1960s. I simply was mimicking nature. It works.

[@humility-righteous-giving]

capped with sand?

[@uncommonaquatics]

Absolutely. For me the more natural the better, even if that means it’s not quite as aesthetically pleasing. Although I think these really can be beautiful The sand cap and the soil mixture are refinement that make it easier

[@greymage5335]

soil in a salt water tank? Macros don't need soil.

[@prockallday]

would black worms live in this kind of setup with corydoras?

[@akmalpratama_]

Good explanation 👍

[@uncommonaquatics]

Thanks

[@baum8981]

Ive got one set up in a ff sorta style for like 4 years now and if anything, my plants are growing too much for my zero maintainance preferences But the start as in the first half year plus was a utter pain in the a** I will admit that i used some counterproductive ingredients for the dirt layer, but certain things he talks about such as just adding water on top of dry sand, which in my case just trapped lots of air in the sand, basically moving the anoxic zone about half an inch below the surface of the sand due to limiting even the minimal diffusion happening in the upper sand layers to the point, that i had surface dwelling trumpet snails, that just refused to dig into the sand It would just eat any root that was deeper than about half an inch Until this tank was fully settled in and the tubifex had dug through the upper layers of sand, i learned so much about my fish tank and its by far my favorite tank now Even had to move recently and managed to roughly seperate the two layers of substrate, so it kicked right back on in the new spot

[@uncommonaquatics]

Thanks for sharing. Mine has been set up for 5 weeks All good so far

[@PatriciaPerry-p1m]

Thanks. I learned a lot.

[@darkehorse71]

So what you are saying is that once you place one of these plants, it can never be disturbed otherwise the soil will come in contact with the water?

[@uncommonaquatics]

I wouldn’t say never, but you want to minimize it. Your concern is also the reason that you’re not shoving the plant all the way down into the soil. You actually can pull it up the way I planted it as long as you do it before the roots have not spread across the tank.

[@jimboa1254]

Great video!

[@uncommonaquatics]

Thanks

[@Gastronomer2024]

Have you thought about doing kilifish in that tank? They’d bring some awesome color to it 😀

[@grant5293]

Cam you make a video showing how you keep your micro live food cultures?

[@uncommonaquatics]

I’ve already made that video, but I made a couple of mistakes in the video and I will be redoing it at some point Mainly the mistake is that you need to set those up and age them before adding the microorganisms Here is a link to the first video on how I did it. These tanks are thriving now exactly the way I wanted them to, but I had to order more microorganisms after the tanks aged. Breeding Aquarium Micro Organisms - Setting Up a Food Web kzbin.info/www/bejne/eWLRpICFmsedqrs

[@JTW3159]

Never do this with large gold fish, unless you run a good canister filter and plenty of co2.

[@uncommonaquatics]

I set up a 125 gallon Koi and goldfish aquarium yesterday. It is not a planted tank. Have to adjust based on what you are going to Stock

[@joek5205]

"bring the soil in contact with the water column. You can't do that." --- why? The soil will eventually settle, so is there another reason?

[@uncommonaquatics]

Nitrates and ammonia poison the fish. You want that organic material in the soil to break down slowly Overtime. The plant roots can access it by going through the sand. It can’t be released into the water

[@joek5205]

@@uncommonaquatics Organic material whether plants or soil, with its bacteria will break down the fish's ammonia into nitrites then nitrates. (Nitrates are less harmful, maybe you meant nitrites.) So you advise against ever moving a plant because for minute or two, a fraction of soil might stir up in the water before settling again? "It can't be released" ...this sounds as if the soil itself would harm the fish.

[@gayefanner731]

Thanks so much, Brock, I was so hoping you would start one of your latest tanks using this method ! I started work on my new 4ft tank two weeks ago and am roughly at the same stage as you, except I only have epiphytes and floating pondweed type plants at the moment. I’m quarantining half a dozen White Clouds to put in asap God bless your endeavours 🙏✝️. ✌️🇷🇺☮️🇺🇦✌️. 🙋‍♀️🤍🇮🇱✌️

[@gayefanner731]

btw I believe you meant Alder cones (from deciduous trees) definitely not pine cones from conifers ✌️

[@uncommonaquatics]

Yes

[@greymage5335]

Hmmm...Hard to vacuum and one aggressive powerhead will make a mess of it.

[@uncommonaquatics]

I’m guessing you’ve never watched father Fish? Part of the methodology is that you never vacuum the aquarium or change water You don’t want to remove anything. These types of systems are generally run without a filter or with only a sponge filter.

[@greymage5335]

@@uncommonaquatics Why wouldn't i manage nutrients? Even with as much of an ecosystem as you can manage it will still be beneficial to keep some nutrients from accumulating forever.

[@greymage5335]

Also many fish dig.

[@uncommonaquatics]

It’s a very specific way of keeping fish that is a lot less work and less expensive and more natural. Some people love it some people hate it. I’m not telling you to do it. It’s popular, but it’s also kind of controversial. The detritus is food for your microorganisms that most aquariums don’t even have. I’m talking about black worms and scuds and isopods. You don’t want to vacuum those out. You don’t want to vacuum out their food source. If father fish has an a fish die in his aquarium, he just pushes it into the substrate as fertilizer. The system works if you choose to work it Some fish do dig. I don’t put those fish in my father fish aquarium. I have Geophagus in another tank but I wouldn’t put them in this one because of the way I set it up

[@greymage5335]

@@uncommonaquatics I'm a reefer. I have scads of microfauna and algae. Detritus is still an issue and provides fodder for cyano and dino blooms and elevated nitrates are not good for organisms. Even freshwater fish are affected by enough nitrates. Having plants take them up is a great method to lessen them, but they still accumulate. I'm suggesting monitoring them and capping them at a certain level via changes.

[@kylefinnegan985]

Great video.Just some constructive criticism.You might want to get a microphone so you don't have to yell for your voice to be clear.

[@uncommonaquatics]

I appreciate your feedback. Just an honest response is that I have top-of-the-line recording equipment from cameras to microphones. I’m a full-time KZbinr in another niche. I’m using a $3500 camera with a $400 microphone for this recording That is just how I talk I guess.

[@kylefinnegan985]

@uncommonaquatics I guess I was just sensitive to noise since I was up all night following the election. Please disregard my comment, and God bless you and your loved ones!

[@uncommonaquatics]

@kylefinnegan985 OK comments like yours as positive. If people feel like I’m yelling and I need to change the way I talk. I occasionally get that comment and I think I’m just too excitable sometimes.

[@toddcaskey9984]

Morning you guys 🤪

[@uncommonaquatics]

Morning!

[@NotSure876]

That only works under certain circumstances

[@uncommonaquatics]

Yes, that is the point of the video. People were trying to make it work in circumstances where it won’t. By that I mean, only halfway following the process. However, if you follow the father Fish method, it will work 100% of the time.

[@NotSure876]

@ So how would this method work in my mbuna tank? For example it’s setup to mimic their natural habitat with about 80lbs of rock and 100lbs of Argonite to keep the water hard with about 35 mbuna that would absolutely destroy plants. I think it’s good for lightly stocked tanks with smaller fish. I don’t know if it’s following your method but my betta tank is maintenance free, it’s packed with jungle val and has 3 small fish and aside from feeding and topping off, I do nothing.

[@uncommonaquatics]

I may not have worded that very well. Essentially, you can’t do the father fish method in an in an Mbuna tank. It doesn’t work with fish that destroy plants. At that point all you can do is some hardy floating plants maybe. Right above my father fish aquarium. I have an African Cichlid tank and I’m trying hornwart in it. They’re not eating it so far

[@NotSure876]

@ Hopefully it works for you. I tried hornwart in a rift tank, tanganyikans and while they didn’t eat it, they ripped it up

[@chrisrusso4512]

Stocking up on supplies, the dictator’s tariffs might put new tanks out of reach

[@uncommonaquatics]

Up being a lot cheaper in the long run because you’re not buying all those liquid fertilizers