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
DIY wooden hood/ lighting...
Iv been looking online for cheap lighting systems and i couldnt afford any of them... So i decided to try build the hood around a large CFL i was already using. Its 45W, 6500K and only cost a few euro on ebay. I screwed it into a reptile lamp.
the hood was very easy to build... I made the frame using wood from a old bed and i attached the top and side pannels to the frame using wood glue and a hammer and nails, Its very stury. I treated the wood with wax so it doesnt rot.
The frame only sits on the front and the sides. I left a gap at the back for the wires (I messed up the measurments so the frame was too short and the gap is a little larger then i liked.. had to extend it so i could put on the back panel
).... Normally i would of just cut a small square in the back panal for the wires and completly cover the top but i grow spiders plants out the back of the tank with the roots in the water.
I used a Jigsaw to cut a hole in the center for the CFl and the lip of the lamp sits on the edge and blocks the light from coming up... i just covered the inside in tintoil and it lights up the tank really well... the light was pretty useless when it was open top.
This tank is square so a single CFL works well.... for a long tank you could just add two =d. i wouldnt use CFLs for large tank... they work well for small tanks. mine is 140L.
The hole for the light can be used for feeding so there is no need to make a lid.
Only down side is if you use a large CFL it goes down quite deep so i had to make large side panels to hide the water level.
(I dont have the light on during the day, gets natural sunlight)
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Cheers,
Andreas
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