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
clean up crew for a barebum tank
- carlowchris (chris)
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what have ya got in the externals ????? was half thinking of putting one on,with just filter floss in ....just to polish the water abit....tangs are messy bastards
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- hammie (Neil Hammerton)
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In the filters I have, floss, microec, bio nitrate ex and some
How many tangs you got at the moment?
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- carlowchris (chris)
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just the two tangs..dory and the vampire tang
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- carlowchris (chris)
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have ya seen the bio cubes for nitrate????there supposed to be good for using in an external
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- hammie (Neil Hammerton)
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Changed the lights..... 2 Ai primes
Have them setup and to be honest I'm loving them....
{www.dropbox.com/s/ywhu2ywx1uo2t67/receiv...4088653946.jpeg?dl=0}
Also adding a 55w uv steriliser and I've finally gone and got myself a ro unit
Going to start mixing my own salt soon as it's a pain in the hoop driving to Dublin everytime I need to do a water change.
I've been kinda busy lately and have slightly neglected the tank over all so need to get stuck in and get the live stock sorted. Residents so far are 2 turbo snails, 4 blue leg hermits, 5 red leg hermits, 1 red velvet star fish 2 clowns and a yellow tang... all happy and healthy but the tank looks empty. And a bit green... phosphates were elevated for a while but that's all in hand now! I'm hoping that the addition of the uv this week will help remove some if the algae but the lower phosphates will defo be the big difference
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- Eric (Eric Corcoran)
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Eric
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- hammie (Neil Hammerton)
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Bit of a pain to get placed because of the size.... but it is a great piece of kit!
55watt uv perfect for if I keep tank the same or upgrade size in the future so it's future proofed kinda!should start seeing a difference to the tank in the next few days I recon!
https://www.dropbox.com/s/9d7a5nqymozg7l5/20151027_222755.jpg?dl=0
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- carlowchris (chris)
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what make is it???where did ya get it from?????ive the v2 600 on mine...its only 36 watt and always thought it was probly under rated....v2 is really awkward cause of the way its designed,,,,to make it neat in the cab (
like the look of that though.....and seeing as its 55 watt..almost double mine..think I may an upgrade
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- hammie (Neil Hammerton)
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Got it in Seahorse they have just got them in.....
I was lookin at one of the v2's but Keelan brought that one out to me to look at!!!!! Went with it on his advice / information!
I want to kinda future proof some of the equipment where i can
Im thinking about heading back down at the weekend.... need a lid and the wife wants a blue tang!!!!!
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- hammie (Neil Hammerton)
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Arrived home yesterday to find my 2 clowns, my yellow tang and my cleaner shrimp all dead!!!
Now I have done water tests and got the following results:
Ph. 8.4
Ammonia 0
Nitrate 0
Nitrite 0.1
Red sea tests
Phosphate 0.03
Salifert test
No real worrying issues there that I can tell!
Now here's the weird thing, all my inverts are fine.... hermit crabs, turbo snails and star fish flying around like nothing has happened!
Anyone got any suggestions? I'm kinda stumped
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- Bohrio (Alex Rodriguez)
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So sorry to hear that...
Crabs can resist almost anything, but snails are normally as sensitive as fish to nitrate/ammonia if not more.
So maybe it was something in the water? a temperature spike? pH swing?
I was talking to a guy the other day who lost all his fish in a matter of days, water was testing fine but fish kept dying. While he was cleaning the tank he stuck his hand in the sump and got electrocuted! So it turns out that his return pump had a dodgy cable and electricity was in contact with water.. go figure
Sorry again hammie!
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- hammie (Neil Hammerton)
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However what's more frustrating is the not knowing how or why it happened
I'll have to get to the bottom of it or it'll drive me cracked
Honestly tho,now is probably the best time for this to have happened..I was going to go this weekend and buy a few corals etc
It could have been more devistatingly expensive and harder to rectify
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- hammie (Neil Hammerton)
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Cyano bacteria, algae issues phosphate issues etc etc
I'm still struggling with phosphates, but it's coming from within the live rock! The rock is leaching like a mad thing! But there's nothing I can do at the min other than control algae and keep changing the phosphate removers!
So today to help with Algae control I added a sea hare! Talk about a hungry bugger!!!! He hasn't stopped munching since I put him in there... (well that is his job so all good)
I've also got a reactor to stick rowaphos into and see if I can get it working some way without disturbing the rest of the tank too much! Not having a sump works against me here, so I'm going to try it with a small but powerful (best I can) pump hidden in the back of the tank somewhere running to the reactor in a bucket down in the cabinet somewhere! If it works... happy days! If not - nothing ventured nothing gained! Nothing to loose by trying it anyway!
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- Bohrio (Alex Rodriguez)
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Wow that's some strange stuff going on in your aquarium man.
I have never had a barebum tank so I can't really give you any proper advice.
Have you ever consider building a home made algae scrubber? You can place them on the side of the aquarium and they will eat your nitrates, nitrites and po away - or so they said). I will be putting one on my as soon as I get started with it. As I have never tried it myself I can't recommend a already made one as they are expensive but a home made one can cost you nearly nothing and can be well hidden in the side on the aquarium (or the back)`
They look like this
Scrubber
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- hammie (Neil Hammerton)
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- hammie (Neil Hammerton)
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- carlowchris (chris)
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Think that was everyone after that.....me ...you..Jeff...
You shouldn't need a separate pump...t off you return from the canister and hanging off back of tank and return into tank.........I've got a few t's here in the house if ya want one......
if ya pump straight from tank you'll burn through the rowaphos in no time.....and it's not cheap.......
I don't really like rowaphos....I much prefer po4x4......but was round at Jeff's earlier in this week and he was siinging the praises of tritons po4 remover....so might give that a try....
Kind of mad though that ya cured the live rock for so long to stop this happening .......any ideas Alex how this happened??????
Been looking at algae scrubbers for a while too...little up flow algae scrubbber would work without a sump ...only problem is very expensive and if you do a cheaper dit version it's going to be hard to get the right spectrum leds...
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- hammie (Neil Hammerton)
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I'm a fan of po4x4 as well but was having trouble getting it for a while so switched to rowaphos and haven't switched bak as yet!
Might do a bit ta reading about tritons option too tho! Jeff hasn't steered me wrong yet!
If I was to t off the external I'd not get a constant flow... water would take the path of least resistance meaning I could have anything from 1200lph down to 0lph going thru the reactor! I'd rather put it on a small pump and blast the ship out of it for a few days than have it unreliable! (If that makes sense)
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- carlowchris (chris)
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You only need about 200 lph...maybe less for it to tumble...rowaphos need a long contact time to pull the phosphate out of the water.....
Lot of waste using rowaphos ....which us why I don't like it.
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- carlowchris (chris)
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Jesus that sea hare is a hungry little fecker
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- hammie (Neil Hammerton)
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He said a hungry f*** all right
Cleaned 1/4 of the tank since lunch time today!!!!!
www.santa-monica.cc/HOG5-Hang-On-Glass-U...ET-VERSION_p_21.html
Might be worth looking for an algae scrubber like this closer to home!!!!!
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- hammie (Neil Hammerton)
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- carlowchris (chris)
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cool
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- hammie (Neil Hammerton)
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Just a seahare instead!
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- carlowchris (chris)
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How's the phosphates doing????
Going to be draining my tank tomorrow. ..maybe Tuesday ..everything getting moved around and sump going in ...
They'll be a few frags there for ya.
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- hammie (Neil Hammerton)
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It seems no matter what I do my rock is leaching at a unbelievable rate! Nothing left to do except eradicate the source! I'm going away for a few days, so it'll be the end of the week before I can change the rock! I'd hope to be in a position to take the frags off you next week tho! Have a bottle of atm colony here, a lot of lads use it in the UK and north to seed and instantly stock a tank!
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- carlowchris (chris)
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- hammie (Neil Hammerton)
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Next time I'm getting it ordered I'll let ya know and order a bottle for ya if ya want!
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- carlowchris (chris)
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- tetdiscus (Maritess McCarthy)
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I also used dry reef rock in my tank, got them from SH. I also had high phosphates before from 0.156 down to 0.029 in five weeks. Its still in the process of lowering further...Im using Phosban reactor 150 (clumsy but it will do for now). Its connected to a 1kLr/hour pump. I put a Ball Valve on tube going to the reactor, to slow down the power of the pump and i adjusted it to "just simmering" look. I used rowaphos, i run it through a bucket of RO water for two minutes (pump/reactor and all) to remove some of the 'rusty colour'.
Im not sure if youve tried that. But it might be worth a try? Before you take out some rocks..
Also, i used the triton lab testing for my water. You can buy the water test kit online or from SH for €35. Which takes about two weeks to get official results online, as it is sent to Germany. I think this way is more reliable in my opinion. Hope you get sorted out soon.
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