Retirement and forum shutdown (17 Jan 2022)
Hi,
John Howell who has managed the forum for years is getting on and wishes to retire from the role of managing it.
Over the years, he has managed the forum through good days and bad days and he has always been fair.
He has managed to bring his passion for fish keeping to the forum and keep it going for so long.
I wish to thank John for his hard work in keeping the forum going.
With John wishing to "retire" from the role of managing the forum and the forum receiving very little traffic, I think we must agree that forum has come to a natural conclusion and it's time to put it to rest.
I am proposing that the forum be made read-only from March 2022 onwards and that no new users or content be created. The website is still registered for several more years, so the content will still be accessible but no new topics or replies will be allowed.
If there is interest from the ITFS or other fish keeping clubs, we may redirect traffic to them or to a Facebook group but will not actively manage it.
I'd like to thank everyone over the years who helped with forum, posted a reply, started a new topic, ask a question and helped a newbie in fish keeping. And thank you to the sponsors who helped us along the away. Hopefully it made the hobby stronger.
I'd especially like to thank John Howell and Valerie Rousseau for all of their contributions, without them the forum would have never been has successful.
Thank you
Darragh Sherwin
Hillstream setup
- LemonJelly (Johnny Cowley)
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The rocks were "borrowed" from Killiney beach, the sand is JBL Sansibar black and there's some bogwood too. As for plants, I went with Bolbitis since it's supposed to do best in fast flowing water.
So far I only have 3 Amano shrimp and a dozen Vietnamese White Clouds in there but I'll be adding some bamboo shrimp and, most importantly, some Sewellia lineolata hillstream loaches.
I'll film something over the weekend, maybe after I've built the additional filter.
"The only thing that burns in Hell is the part of you that won't let go of your life; your memories, your attachments. They burn them all away. But they're not punishing you.They're freeing your soul."
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- Hicker12 (Stephen Hickey)
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- LemonJelly (Johnny Cowley)
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I love fish that have really specialized adaptations, which is why I also have a tank full of blind cave tetras. And in evolutionary terms they don't come much more specialized than hillstream loaches

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- Hicker12 (Stephen Hickey)
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- swai (Simon)
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- Eric (Eric Corcoran)
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- LemonJelly (Johnny Cowley)
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I've been waiting for this lj!
Me too!

It's as much an experiment in filtration as it is about keeping fish.
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- LemonJelly (Johnny Cowley)
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Great project. Looking forward to the video. There must be some serious flow in that tank
Eric
Thanks. Yeah, the flow is pretty forceful but the rocks break it up quite a bit. The flow doesn't look too wild until the fish make a dash against the spraybar. They never get closer than a foot until the force sweeps them back. Curiously, the algae is growing first on the side of the rocks facing the spraybar.
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- Kmd (Keith mc donagh)
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- LemonJelly (Johnny Cowley)
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Looks great. Really like the substrate. Can I ask you what it is and we're you got it?
It's JBL Sansibar "Black". I got it in MaxiZoo.
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- paulcavan (Paul Gileoold)
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- LemonJelly (Johnny Cowley)
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Any updates on this tank? Would love to see some photos
Paul
All was going well until my 3 1/2 year old grandson decided my minnows looked peckish and dumped a whole container of flakes into the tank! With the very high flow, the whole think turned into a flake soup in seconds and I had to start over. Due to a few other considerations, I decided to redo it in a smaller tank, 60L instead of the 80L+ of the original tank. Because of that, I couldn't used the 2000lph pump I'd used originally. In a smaller tank it would have caused some backblast and the flow would have been so strong everywhere in the tank, the minnows wouldn't have been able to get any respite. At the moment it's running with a 600lph pump with the venturi connected to an air pump and and the airpump on a timer. All the shrimp and fish have been returned to it and everything seems fine for now. In the new year I think I'm going to get a 900-1000lph pump but for now the 600 will do. Still waiting on the Sewellias though...
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- anthonyd (Anthony Debesne)
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Are the filters doing the job for you ?
Anthony
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- LemonJelly (Johnny Cowley)
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Both filters are great. One is running on my Trigon190 Thorichthys ellioti tank with a big, big sponge. The other is running alongside a small HOB filter on my 80L panda cory tank. Getting the first of those today

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- anthonyd (Anthony Debesne)
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It s gonna be quiet a sight all these pandas swimming in the same tank

Anthony
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- gunnered72 (Eddy Gunnered)
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Just wondering if the JBL Sansibar needed much rinsing before putting it in the tank..Thinking about using it myself on a new setup..Thanks!
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- LemonJelly (Johnny Cowley)
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Beautiful tank! Lovely substrate and rock formations! Great overall layout!
Just wondering if the JBL Sansibar needed much rinsing before putting it in the tank..Thinking about using it myself on a new setup..Thanks!
Thanks. I'd like to thank Killiney beach for it's contribution to this tank

I started trying to rinse it but I found it was so light that I was rinsing away more of the sand than I'd like. I ended up just putting it into the tank as is and letting the filters do the cleaning. It is dusty and it clouds the water for a day or two, but even a sponge filter (which is basically what my hillstream manifold is) will clear it up pretty easily.
"The only thing that burns in Hell is the part of you that won't let go of your life; your memories, your attachments. They burn them all away. But they're not punishing you.They're freeing your soul."
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