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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

you learn something new every day

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22 Mar 2014 21:02 #1 by anglecichlid (ciaran hogan)
Just a few observations from myself,
I bought some plants from a member a good while ago,
Also in a separate sale I bought a tank and an external filter from another member,
Now with the plants there were some snails not sure what type but they were dark colored and the shape of the top of an ice cream cone,
The ice cream part, with brass colored specs on the shell,
Wasn't to keen on them so put all the plants ina small qt tank and dosed it with snail killer,
Left them for a few weeks,
When I did get around to planting them the killer had worked for all the snails but one,
Around the same time I had been having good successes with my corys,
So I decided to put the lone snail in with the bare bottom Cory fry tank,
Anyway it turns out from that one snail I have over a hundred now in 3 fry tanks,
And surprising enough it turns out that sterbai Cory are very very good snail killers
Now they are (the snails) doing 2 things eating up left over food and them selves providing food for the young Corys,
I am constantly finding empty snail shells in the tank,
Imo are a vital tool for fry tanks and I don't think I would have had such a good yield without that one snail!

Anyone with a aquarium can keep fish,
But it takes real skill to be a fish keeper,


And it's spongeBob,
SpongeBob lives in a pineapple under the sea
BLANCHARDSTOWN

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22 Mar 2014 23:59 #2 by JohnH (John)
Sounds a bit like the Malayan Livebearing snail - nowadays abbreviated to the acronym - MTS.
They are the most innocuous of the regular 'intruder' snails, mostly living in the substrate - coming out after 'lights out'.
They can be very useful when using undergravel filtration (I'm showing my age here - hardly anyone uses that method any more, well apart from me) since they help to keep the substrate 'on the move' leaving less chance that there are dead spots there.
They don't seem to demolish plants at all - although there was a thought years ago that they did eat the plant roots (I was never convinced myself).
They can also be a good indicator of the tank's general well-being - if the water is in any way suspect I have seen them all crawling up the glass in daylight, presumably to reach the highest level where the water oxygen level is at its highest.
People seem to either love 'em or hate them.
One last thing - and this is something to be wary of in tanks you might be trying to maintain a lower pH level in - the snails will extract hardness, probably in the form of calcium, for creation of their shells (good thing) but if too many are killed or die naturally the shells should be removed as they can degrade and increase pH and water hardness.

Just a few personal observations.

John

Location:
N. Tipp

We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl - year after year.


ITFS member.



It's a long way to Tipperary.

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23 Mar 2014 08:11 #3 by Gonefishy (Brian oneill)

Sounds a bit like the Malayan Livebearing snail - nowadays abbreviated to the acronym - MTS.
They are the most innocuous of the regular 'intruder' snails, mostly living in the substrate - coming out after 'lights out'.
They can be very useful when using undergravel filtration (I'm showing my age here - hardly anyone uses that method any more, well apart from me) since they help to keep the substrate 'on the move' leaving less chance that there are dead spots there.
They don't seem to demolish plants at all - although there was a thought years ago that they did eat the plant roots (I was never convinced myself).
They can also be a good indicator of the tank's general well-being - if the water is in any way suspect I have seen them all crawling up the glass in daylight, presumably to reach the highest level where the water oxygen level is at its highest.
People seem to either love 'em or hate them.
One last thing - and this is something to be wary of in tanks you might be trying to maintain a lower pH level in - the snails will extract hardness, probably in the form of calcium, for creation of their shells (good thing) but if too many are killed or die naturally the shells should be removed as they can degrade and increase pH and water hardness.

Just a few personal observations.

John[/quote

Very interesting thread guys....thanks for the info....

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