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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

Please help afriad of losing some of my corals

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02 Sep 2011 18:57 #1 by iknowkungfu (chris)
Hi All
A few weeks back my chalk goby was so much bullied by my dotty back that he hid and think died. Now the problem I have that I noticed this wk is my nitrates are starting to rise I am dosing the tank with amqual every day doing water changes evey two days but the nitrates keep on creeping up . They are around between 20 to 50 ppm on the red sea test kit when i dose it with amqual it gets them back down to to around 5 but that again creeps up to 20 plus after 8 hours.
The tank has been running fine for the last few weeks have not added any more fish its just it went all over the place when the gobie went missing.
I have an internal skimmner running, external ehime with live rock and some carbon that has been in for a month, an enough of live rock did not cut back on the live rock.

Why are my nitrates creeping up only after a few hours of a water changes and dosing with amqual?

I was using the red sea no3 po+... but its crap

need some advise.
thank is running 8 months

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02 Sep 2011 19:35 #2 by andrewo (andrew)
Without a sump its hard to get your nitrates any lower than 20; this is what i found out when i had a smaller set up with external filter; nitrates around 20; if it is only soft corals if they are around 8 months in your set up they should continue to be fine. Fish is ok too at 20. I only changed water once per week though; what exactly is in your external? only live rock and carbon? no harm adding floss/pre filters/others; as long as you wash them out regularly. All the best.

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02 Sep 2011 23:39 #3 by iknowkungfu (chris)
tx the external is an ordinary ehime, I have floss in their as well I think my NO3 was lower then 20 I have a maze and a brain coral and they have been doing fine up until the gobie went missing, how easy it is to add a sump can you buy ready made ones think I will have to look into this I can get a nitrate reducing pack to put into filter are they any good...or is it just a sump?

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03 Sep 2011 17:12 #4 by andrewo (andrew)

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03 Sep 2011 18:23 #5 by iknowkungfu (chris)
tx andrew, I have been doing water changes for the past 3 days and planning to do some every day next week the levels are holding at between 10 to 20, also I have been looking at a deep bed canister to attach in line with the filter box are they any good, I have cut back on feeding "looking back I was feeding every day sometimes twice the forzen stuff I did not defrost the stuff just popped it into tank I have a funny feeling that I may have over fed the tank what do you think?

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04 Sep 2011 19:04 #6 by iknowkungfu (chris)
tx And, I will print this out and note got all the test kits got abit lazy because I also keep and breed poision dart frogs so my weekly animal duites are high.
How I think I managed to sort this rising nitrates out, I moved my filter box so I can get easy access to it to change it every week and I found out the floss was black and smelling did not change it for 1 month and this must have been leaking back into the tank I left the floss in a bucket of fresh water and tested it my nitrates were 20 now I tested my tank water today ...just now did not do any water changes today and my nitrates were .05 ...its true that these filters are nitrate factories if not cleaned out prop.
All my corals are opening up now ...one or two might take a couple of days to come back...might get myself one of the TCM difuser..ie the sand bed mixer to put in line with the filter...thank god I dont have to build a sump!

tx

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04 Sep 2011 20:40 #7 by andrewo (andrew)
You are welcome and glad you are sorted now :)

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