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
Pvc/perspex tanks.
A few quick points of note on acrylic before you think of starting, have done extensive research on the subject and also have experience of a few small acrylic tanks.
First on the materials you are talking about, ensure its acrylic and not PVC, while you can get clear PVC sheets, it’s not as strong as acrylic (perspex). Also on acrylic, ideally you want it t be cell cast acrylic rather than extruded for tank construction. There are at least 3 good reasons for this that I can think of offhand, the extruded acrylic is approx 20% more flexible than extruded for the same thickness of material, therefore you need thicker material for the same tank. The other reason is that extruded is more brittle than cell cast you get to figure this out the hard way when you try to cut it and it fractures on you
The third reason is that extruded acrylic seems to have a lower melting point too, so any attempts to cut or prep edges is a nightmare, constantly stopping to clear melted acrylic from the tools.The good news is that if its cell cast acrylic, it is relatively easy to work with
Most of the websites that go into details about the intricacies of building an acrylic aquarium are American and all recommend using Weld-On #4 acrylic adhesive. Its impossible to get the stuff this side of the pond
The best alternative i have found is no longer produced here
however it’s just Methylene chloride, so should be able to source from any good chemical supplier.Here are the links to a good series of videos on youtube and also another sire along the same lines as the link Kev posted
www.duboisi.com/diy/BNdiytank/bndiytank.htm
Hope this helps
Cheers,
Bill.
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