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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

Replacing T8's with T5's

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08 Nov 2007 00:49 #1 by komalley (K OM)
Hi folks!

I'm setting up a 36\"(L)x18\"(W)x22\"(H),(volume ~220l)tank which historically had a T8 providing light. Ambition is to grow plants as well as keeping a selection of community fish. For the purposes of light, I am considering replacing the T8 tube with T5's. My understanding is that lighting requirements for growing plants is about 3 watts per litre (assuming substrate and CO2 fertilisation are optimised) hence will probably have to go with a double T5 option to deliver the ~70 watts required.

My question......which products should I be considering? I'll need a ballast unit, a mechanism to mount the tubes into the hood of the tank and the T5 tubes themselves. Any advice is welcome.

Rgds

kom

p.s. in an ideal world I'd just go for an arcadia luminaire but the funds don't stretch that far at the minute.....

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08 Nov 2007 11:16 #2 by KenS (Ken Simpson)
Converting a tank to T5s isn't cheap. The running costs are cheaper, but the ballasts/tubes are dearer than the T8 equivalents.

The cheapest way to convert would be two purchase a twin Arcadia T5 ballast. This is assuming that you have enough room inside your lid to mount both tubes - the ballast comes with mounting clips. If you have the bar and flap arrangement for your lid (a la Juwel), arcadia do a T5 unit that essentially replaces this bar.

Interpet also do T5 compact units which are well priced and give off a lot of light for their size. They are especially useful if you're tight for mounting space. Downside is that they create a lot of heat at the higher wattages.

Regards,

Ken.

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