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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

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19 Oct 2010 11:10 #1 by dar (darren curry)
if collecting rain water, would the tiles on the roof have to come into question? could they alter the water? also if the gutters are full of moss would this be beneficial in some way or would you need to remove it?

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19 Oct 2010 12:13 #2 by igmillichip (ian millichip)
dar wrote:

if collecting rain water, would the tiles on the roof have to come into question? could they alter the water? also if the gutters are full of moss would this be beneficial in some way or would you need to remove it?


Hi Dar,

The answer to the tiles query is Yes……but how much depends upon the tiles.
New fresh tiles would be one that I would be cautious of though.

Really, moss should be removed from the gutters for the houses sake. But, if using for fish then make sure that any removal is non-chemical.

To be quite honest, though, I don’t see any harm in moss being there (and, depending upon the moss, it might be beneficial).

I would recommend that rain water is stood for a few days, and then aerated vigorously (as there are gases that need to escape, and you need to help stabilise the pH).
Then pass the water over activated carbon…..and if you happen to have some sphagnum moss then that will help condition the water.

Rain water will contain very little in the way of pH buffers (and very little means none to all practical purposes). Because of this, it is pointless measuring the pH as it will have no real meaning.
You may need to buffer the rain water with some additional things….unless, of course, you are using it to mix with normal aquarium or tap water (eg in topping-up or trying to make soft).

Ian

Irish Tropical Fish Society (ITFS) Member.

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19 Oct 2010 12:51 #3 by platty252 (Darren Dalton)
igmillichip wrote:

The answer to the tiles query is Yes……but how much depends upon the tiles.
New fresh tiles would be one that I would be cautious of though.


Tiles have die added to make them different colours. So as Ian mentioned i wouldn't recommend taking water from a roof with new tiles. The same for the artificial slates.
I would wait for them to be a exposed to the elements for a year or two first.

Ideally some pond liner over a flat roof would be best to collect rain water from.

If the gutters were really filthy and needed a clean anyway, then i would clean them out and wash them out with a brush and some water.
If nothing else this will stop you collecting dirt along with the water.

I wouldn't collect rain water around halloween. There would be plenty of pollutants in the air from the fires and fire works.

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19 Oct 2010 13:29 #4 by Acara (Dave Walters)
Replied by Acara (Dave Walters) on topic Re:rain water
It sounds great,and in an ideal world,it owuld be,but I would be very cautious about collecting rainwater in a city for aquarium use.Last year during the freeze,I had no tapwater,so experimented(absolutley futile,by the way)with melting snow.The resulting water had a layer of oil on it,and I had been very careful which snow I collected.This just goes to show what is laying on surfaces,if fresh snow had that much oil on it.To my simple mind,what the others mentioned wouldnt be as much of a concern,as the water would flow rather rapidly over it,I would be more worried what else the water would pick up.Thtas not to disregard their advice,I would also not collect off a new roof.
We have had very little rain recently,and if I were to collect off the roof,I would want at least 3 days of SOLID rain before starting to collect,thats not 3 days of light drizzle and intermittent rain.
Is it really worth the risk?I for one dont think it is,but maybe I'm just over cautious.

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19 Oct 2010 13:37 #5 by Jim (Jim Lawlor)
Replied by Jim (Jim Lawlor) on topic Re:rain water
I think also some tiles are made of concrete or similar - so presumably full of lime. Would lead flashing or anything like that have any impact?

The upside of a roof is that theres a huge surface area if you want to collect a lot of water.

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19 Oct 2010 19:39 #6 by arabu1973 (. .)
Replied by arabu1973 (. .) on topic Re:rain water
I use rain water in all my tanks to which i add tap water to make it a certain ph. I collect it from a shed wich has a metal roof in to 2 100L water butts that are connected between themselfs, when i do WC i have a rain water butt pump that pumps the water from the butts through a 5 micron block then a carbon block, like the ones from an RO unit, straight in the tanks and i never had a problem. When i dont have rain water i use RO water mixed with tap water

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07 Nov 2010 02:16 #7 by JustinK (Justin Kelly)
I would agree with Ian. Let it stand for a few days so the heavy stuff sinks to the bottom if the container and the light stuff floats to the top, then collect the middle portion. Running it through a filter then to remove any suspended particles.

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07 Nov 2010 11:55 #8 by igmillichip (ian millichip)
Plus AquaSafe to help take the edge of things and chelate some undesirables.

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