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
New here!
I currently have a 80litre nano marine, 60litre coldwater, 60litre community and a 35litre baby molly tank!
I am hoping to get a 300litre marine tank soon with a 100litre sump - if money allows haha, so I'll more then likely be posting question about it haha.
In my 80litre marine I currently have:
2x ocellaris clowns
2x pacific cleaner shrimp
3x Blue legged hermit
3x snails
1x sand sifting starfish
And a whole load of hitchikers, good and otherwise. 10KG of live rock, 2inch sand bed, the lights are T5 25wat, so they're useless for anything bar easy soft corals! So I currently only have some mushrooms, clove polyps and some button polyps. Been running for over a year now, and my female clown will be in the tank for around 10months now, the smaller male will be in around 3 months (I had to replace the older male I had, who tured out to be female!)
In the coldwater, I currently have:
7x WM Minnows - currently starting to spawn!
3x Weather loaches
2x Zebra danios - they were sickly castoffs from a friends tank - they are now very boisterous haha
1x hillstream loach - was sold to me as a 'baby pleco' haha, was pleasantly surprised to find out I got him!
The coldwater has a 4 inch sand bed, and is filled with piping, caves and fake plants for all the fish to be comfy, I am currently hoping to upgrade to a 100litre or possibly bigger wide tank for this set up and do a coldwater planted tank - at the moment everyone is quite small, loaches do have some growing to do and I do not want to stunt them by putting them in such a small tank, I've had one of them for over a year now though, I will blame it on ignorance!
In the 60litre community - which is actually my mams there is:
2x Red Phantom Tetra
2x Xray tetra
3x Small bala sharks (there is a 350litre community waiting for them when they get too big, my mam loves them)
4x corys
1x Shrimp
2x Long fin zebra danios
This tank has a nice piece of bog wood, a gravel bed (would prefer sand personally), fake plants, air pump feature (that she stole from my coldwater
) the lighting is pathetic in the tank, you're basic stock florescent! But it does as she does not want a planted tank.For the 35litre baby molly tank there is currently only 4 2cm long baby mollys, all female, males got seperated a couple weeks ago when they finally matured. The tank has T5 lighting, so i'm trying to convince my mam to let me change the substrate and do a small planted tropical with a Betta, but no deal. This tank currently has some ocean rock, which was removed from the marine, fake plants and gravel, the tank is an algae machiene unfortunatly, due to the lights mostly, It's managable, and means the mollys can get away with 1 feedings every 2/3 days!
Well there you go! I'll tell you my plans for the new marine tank!
It'll be 300litres - with 100litre drilled sump. I will get a 3000l/h return pump for this tank, protien skimmer - preferably an internal, I've yet to look at brands.
I will also be looking into getting a calcium reactor - mostly due to the calcium levels in my Ro/Di water being pathetic, despite the salt mix!
Inside the sump I will use crushed liverock as filtration, with phosex, carbon and some ammonia and nitrate reducing agents.
I may also look into a UV steralizer, if algae becomes a problem - high nitrates over here.
As for lighting I'm considering getting a 1x150watt metal halide, 2x65watt T5 actinic, 2-6x1watt moonlight LED.
Would prefer a full LED fixture, but the tank is 28" deep, so lighting output may be a problem, why halides are the way to go for me, if I can find a fixture with a 175watt bulb I'd be happy!
well there you go!
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