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
Best Tip For Newbies
This involves the following advice:
(1) Cycle your tank correctly before adding the bulk of your stock. Alternative is to go with an Organic Aqua setup which lets you add fish immediately
(2) Invest in a quality liquid test kit that tests for Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrate & PH. Test regularly (especially early in the tanks life) and do water changes for any readings over 0ppm for Ammonia or nitrite.
(3) Do a 20% water change at least every 2 weeks & preferably weekly. Try to do a gravel vac here too. Remember to treat any new tap water added to the aquarium & make sure it's at aquarium temperature. Every second water change, i.e every month, alternate cleaning one of the sponges in your filter with AQUARIUM water (NOT tap water). Don't be too hard on the sponge just rinse it in the aquarium water to get rid of the heavy soilage.
(4) Monitor your fish for any unusual behaviour. You will soon enough learn the signs of when your fish are stressed, ill or, indeed, about to die. Check your water when you spot anything unusual.
(5) In general feed you fish less (often a LOT less!) than you think you need to. Overfeeding is a much greater problem than underfeeding as it contributes greatly to poor water quality which....... well you know by now
Good luck.
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