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
Re: uv filter
Your plants will be affected by the blackout, but will survive for up to a week in total darkness (some plant species may be more or less this to a certain degree)
Regards the CABOMBA to combat the algae - well, yes I suppose ina well balanced tank with no extra phosphates, nitrates and potassium then yes, algae will be outcompeted; but usually, theres enough for everyone, and the plants and algae all grow happily together!
P.S. cabomba doesnt like alot of calcium in the water, and with a hardness at 10 its perhaps alittle hard for them. You'll soon know if you plant it as it will break apart in the water (as will any Elodea family) so perhaps some hygrophila or floating monoselenium (which has a natural algacide in it)
The mono should love your harder water, and it doesnt like alot of light so could be perfect?
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just saw your other post about reading test strips and remembered this thread that that I did not reply
The meter shown in the link would not be my first choice, unknown brand and strange claim of six functions:
CF - conductivity factor
EC - electrical conductivity
pH - alkalinity and acidity
PPM - parts per million
TDS - total disolved solids
Temperature
PPM is the scale for reading TDS the \"fifth\" item, not any measure on it's own. So a meter called \"Six in One\" that does not even do that is not a good buy.
CF, EC and TDS are all reading the same thing, but presenting the results in a different format. So essentially it is reading, TDS (dissolved solids in the water or hardness) pH and Temp.
I am sure you already have something for temp, so all you are getting is a pH meter and TDS meter, there are several available for less cost. Check your local LFS to see if they can supply one or failing that, check out stores.ebay.co.uk/monitors-direct
You can purchase nitrate meters, but they are extremely expensive, last time I researched them they were around 500 euro so unless you win the lotto I would try the test strips Platy252 mentioned in the other thread. I use them sometimes when I am lazy or checking a lot of tanks and find them quite reliable. I have not used the Tetra strips as I heard they were not great, but I have used eSHa strips and JBL strips and found them fine.
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