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
Help: Whats this on my plants
- jeff (Jeff Scully)
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- SpiderMonkey (Mark O'Neill)
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Mark
EDIT: Sorry Jeff just couldn't do the "what's updoc" joke on ye!

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- jeff (Jeff Scully)
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- BillG (Bill Gray)
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sorry, meant to reply earlier after seeing the pics. I assume you are referring to the dusty looking material covering the leaves on the top of the elodia? Is is possible to get some clear close up pics of the affected area? you may need to switch to a "macro" setting on your camera to do this. Is the material dusty in appearance? or is it like tiny beads? I am wondering if its possible snail eggs

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Bill.
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- joemc (joe mc)
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- stretnik (stretnik)
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Kev.
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- igmillichip (ian millichip)
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The calcium oxide will react with the water to produce soluble calcium hydroxide.....and if you don't have a good buffering then that can cause a massive pH rise.
This is quite common on plants having a high photosynthetic rate and end up with limited carbon dioxide.
They try to extract the carbon dioxide out of Calcium carbonate (or magnesium carbonate...or any other carbonate in the water) to leave an oxide of a metal.....highly alkaline when hydrated.
ian
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- joemc (joe mc)
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yep Ian, that is what i was heading towards with my question on the ph ! anyway, now that you are posting on it i will leave it to the scientist to explain properly why it should be of concern!!!
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- jeff (Jeff Scully)
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- igmillichip (ian millichip)
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- igmillichip (ian millichip)
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aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh, !!!! it always gets confusing when a couple of people all start posting at the one time, !!!!
yep Ian, that is what i was heading towards with my question on the ph ! anyway, now that you are posting on it i will leave it to the scientist to explain properly why it should be of concern!!!
I had a feeling you were heading that way Joe.


Jeff, if your alkalinity is good and you tank is well buffered against rises in pH then this is just a normal thing that the notion of having good pH buffering deals with.
Where you run into problems is when you have very soft water and little alkalinity (or buffering), and where you have a very active and efficient biological filtration system.
Discus keepers having high photosynthetic rate plants in a tank that is soft, acidic and have the usually high turn-over biological filtration system are at most risk of an acid crash at night and pH massive swing in the day....ie a tank out of control, and the fish can't cope.
Having the right of carbon dioxide in the water should help this problem on the plant.
Ian
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- jeff (Jeff Scully)
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@ ian pm sent, and thanks
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- BillG (Bill Gray)
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did not think of calcites or carbonates, or diatomic algae for that matter based on the original pics, it appeared to be only on the tips of the plants. The additional details and extra pics make it pretty clear.
Handy to have a chemist on the site at times

Cheers,
Bill.
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