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
Hi - Quick background to me and the fish I keep
I used to live in Dublin, now live in Surrey in the UK. I have kept tropical fish (predominantly African Cichlids) for about 8 years. I currently have three tanks, a 240L 4 foot with 26 Duboisi fry and subadults, a 60L fry tank with F1 Tropheus Ikola and Leptosoma Unita and a 500+L 5 foot with 8 Tropheus Miloro, 5 Leftosoma Unita, a breeding trio of Compressiceps and a handful of ancystrus as a cleanup crew.
All the tanks are filtered by external canister filters (tetratec 2400, Fluval 4 and an Eheim 330 i think). I do 10% water changes once every week/ten days and clean the filter sponges on a rotation basis on one filter per water change meaning each filter gets cleaned once a month or so.
Water changes are done with a hose direct from the tap with water conditioner, marine salt and baking soda premixed in a seperate bucket. The water going into the tank is colder than the tank hence the small water changes (and the fact that the two larger tanks have greater water volumes hence the changes do not affect the temperature as much) but on the fry tank I use water from the big tank to do the change with.
All the fish are fed with New Life Spectrum (NLS) including the fry and since moving to this food (a little more expensive than some other stuff perhaps) I have not had a single issue, but that's my experience.
As you can see I am focussing on Tanganyikan fish but in the past I have kept Malawi, African Riverine and some Madagascar oddities.
My wife thinks I'm nuts but has learned to live with my hobby. And lastly yes, it is addictive, one tank will lead to many until she puts the foot down.
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