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
using cork in a fish tank
- platty252 (Darren Dalton)
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A lot of tannings came of the inside of it as i was cleaning it.
Has anyone any experience using cork inside an aquarium?
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- gm333 (gm333)
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- platty252 (Darren Dalton)
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I will have to take this into consideration.
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- gm333 (gm333)
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I used to do a lot of fishing and had to clean the water off the cork on the rod handles to keep the cork from seperating faster.
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- georgina (georgina)
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- Didihno (Didihno)
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If its a nice big piece of flat cork, like a floor tile, just put it against the back wall of the tank.I was cleaning some natural cork recently to stick to the back inside panal of an aquarium.
A lot of tannings came of the inside of it as i was cleaning it.
Has anyone any experience using cork inside an aquarium?
Cork is very nice as a background, if you have other browns in the tank itself (brown gravel, rocks etc).
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- platty252 (Darren Dalton)
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The idea was to stick the sheet of acrylic to the back panel of glass.
This was going to be a low light planted tank with java moss growing on the cork.
I was going to keep a selection of male killifish in it.
It turned out that the silicone gave way and the cork floated.

I had to scrap the idea for now.
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- Didihno (Didihno)
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Fancy that!the cork floated.
I would ahev some sort of mechanical securing there fella, like a couple of drawing clips.
A couple of whats?
www.springmasters.com/sp/images/drawing-board-clip.jpg
These. If you get aluminium or plastic ones great, if only steel they will rust, so coat them in plastic.
Either way they are useful little buggers.
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- Anthony (Anthony)
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Even bogwwod breaks up, i had to take out a big lump I had in my tank coz there was chunks coming off it...But my gecko is loving it now!
What type of Gecko have you got. I have a female Leopard Gecko.
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- platty252 (Darren Dalton)
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The cork was thick (roughly 4 cm), curved and very rough.
It was also in 3 separate pieces.
The idea was to have the back of the tank look like a cliff face.
Maybe next time i will use cable ties and hide these with moss.
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- Didihno (Didihno)
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- platty252 (Darren Dalton)
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I would have to do this on top and on the bottom.
Then i could fix the acrylic to the back of the tank.
I hope this makes sense.
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- zebadee (zebadee)
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Just an idea?
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- Didihno (Didihno)
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Plastic covered lead weights should be easy enough to find.
IMO the last thing you want to be doing is messing with the back wall of your tank!
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- platty252 (Darren Dalton)
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I can stick this just at the top of the glass so i can remove it with a blade at a later stage if i wish to. The tank would then be back to normal.
The bottom of the acrylic would be held with the substrate.
Cheers for the input.

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