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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

Media for sump

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05 Aug 2012 18:31 #1 by johnportman (John Clarke)
Hi folks,

I will be setting up a new tank soon with sump and want to know what's the best media I can put in there.
It's a freshwater tank for my Malawi cichlids.
I'd like to get everything in before the tank gets here.

Thanks
John

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06 Aug 2012 09:01 #2 by igmillichip (ian millichip)
You'll probably get as many answers are there are people answering to that one as each person has their own favourites.

With a sump, you're certainly not limited to shaped branded media packs......so I would exploit that and go for variety of media to tempt the most colonies to settle.
There are more than 2 species of bacteria that work on the nitrogenous biological filtration, different species prefer slightly different media: and the more bio-diversity doing biological filtration you have the better it will be.

Those bouncing balls will help keep a nice buoyant environment in parts; you have the option to add an effective 'overhead' filter (albeit underneath) using a large sponge; you also have the facility of exploiting the localisd buffering capacity of crushed coral (in bags...or low denier rated tights to stop the stuff dispersing everywhere) as a media to help accelerate the growth of nitrifying bacteria (that is much like the use of an undergravel fulter in coral gravel beds.....very effective system), it may even help to develop a denitrifying bacterial colony as well; then ceramic rings; or a few bags of the JBL micromec (I find that to be rather super) hung near good water flow.

ian

Irish Tropical Fish Society (ITFS) Member.

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