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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

Rain Water: A close call

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15 Nov 2008 23:02 #1 by Puggy (Fergus Cooke)
Living in north county Dublin means my tap water is 7.8 to 8.0 ph, but with some bog wood in my two 70 litre tanks I can get it down to 7.4 ish.

Bought a water butt from Final Co Council a while ago and started to collect rain water. Tested some last week and it looked good. Put 10 litres into a bucket today to do a water change and had warmed it up to correct temperature and decided to check it. Ammonia was 8ppm:ohmy:

Checked inside the water butt and there were some dead leaves. Which I assume were the cause of the ammonia levels.

Anyone else had a close call like this or used rain water?

Apart from the ph, I wanted to use rain water as the Nitrate and Phosphate levels are very low compared to tap water.

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15 Nov 2008 23:26 #2 by Acara (Dave Walters)
Its an often discussed topic,and when water meters arrive,I guess we will take it more seriously.You really have to be careful what the water runs off before it goes into the butt.If you live in a residential area,you will have all sorts of pollutants settling on roofs,etc.If you live rural,you could have various chemicals and sprays drifting in.Believe me they can drift,I spent nearly 10 years spraying them,you'd be surprised whats on your food.It is essential to heavily filter any rain water,and use carbon.I would anyways.
Another thing to consider,is the butt made from food grade plastic?If not,I would be very careful about using it,anything else can leech plastics and toxins into the water,remember plastic is made ultimately from oil.Have a look on some of your tupperware type kitchen containers,the wee knife and fork symbol on the bottom indicates food grade plastics.
Some of us use leaves of various types in our aquariums,indeed oak leaves are commonly used,but mostly types from the tropics.
I live in West Dublin,Blanchardstown,and have very hard,high ph water.However my tanks are generally in the low 6's for ph.I use ro water from Aquatic village mixed to various ratios with tap water(with stress coat)and theres a reasonable amount of bogwood in tanks.Also collect tap water from Stllorgan in 2ltr bottles,as its quite soft,to mix with the ro,but lately using my tap water to raise ph a bit.

always on the lookout for interesting corys.pm me if you know off any!

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17 Nov 2008 23:25 #3 by Puggy (Fergus Cooke)
Thanks for the info Acara. The butt is getting water from the roof of the shed, plastic. I had thought of that, but was only concerned with bird droppings on the roof getting washed into the butt.

Also considered taking it from the house roof, there is plenty of moss and lichens, thought that might be acting like a natural filter:) But I noticed during heavy rain the gutters would foam up:huh:

Acara wrote:

Also collect tap water from Stllorgan in 2ltr bottles,as its quite soft...


:unsure: Whats in Stillorgan?

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