Father Fish lost me when he argued to never do water changes…. And the proof of its danger is talking about how he had a tank that he just did top offs and after years did a water change and fish died…
Sounded like old tank syndrome to me…
And on one video he had footage of waves crashing on a sand beach and claimed the oceans filter is all of the sand.. waves crashing on sand beaches…
Now living here on the Maine coast, sand beaches are somewhat rare…. The vast majority of our coastline is rocky bold coast….
And given the ratio of the water in the ocean and the volume of the worlds sand beaches, I sort of doubt waves crashing on sand beaches are the driving force of the oceans biofiltration…
There are several things that Father Fish talks about that give me a pause. For instance, avoid using water conditioner, raise food supply from a mud from river/lake (and what about leaches and other uninvited creatures?? even if fish diseases were not a concern, that is), no water changes, the amount of fish feeding (very low) and adding baking soda to substrate are some of the things that I am not comfortable with. That said, when I got into this hobby at age 15, back in 1992, still back in Russia (where I am originally from), water conditioner was not a thing, and I was advised by multiple Russian local fish breeders and hobbyists to avoid water changes as much as possible as "old water" was said to be very healing and beneficial. So, I had my share of no water conditioned water changes (the water was let sit in buckets for about a week though), and very infrequent water changes. My first tank was heavily planted with common easy plants (e.g. hornwort, anacharis), no filter (as I did not know anything about filters... assuming it was also not a thing back then), rarely any water changes, grossly overstocked tank with completely incompatible fish that I never QT'd, and I never dealt with any disease outbreak or deaths in numbers. Go figure. It was not until I moved to the U.S. back in 2003 and started a tank with a filter, heater, water changes, compatible fish that I got an ich outbreak for the first time.
That said, my current choice is to go with regular water changes and Prime. And I am not about to dig mud by a lake. But I still feel that listening to Father Fish' videos made me hit a huge growth spurt as a hobbyist, and regardless of the fact that I am not comfortable with everything that he says, I am very grateful for the many things that I did learn from his videos that I'd love to implement next time I get to set up a tank.
