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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

Mail - ordering plants from the UK

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02 Jul 2008 12:24 #1 by AndyT (Andy Taylor)
Has anyone had any experience of ordering from Greenline in the UK? Specifically, did the plants arrive in any kind of decent condition? Delivery can take 7 days, I believe.

I'm going to need a large amount of fast-growing stem plants to cycle a new tank in a hurry and Greenline would seem to be the cheapest way to do this @ 30 quid for a tank load of plants.
I've used JavaOnline before but the green mush I recieved wouldn't pass as value for money no matter how cheap they were....

Thanks,
Andy

170L Bowfront Community Tank : Heavily planted : CO2 : T5 lighting

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02 Jul 2008 13:06 #2 by CJackson (Frank Farrell)
I used Greenline recently. Ordered on a Monday. Plants were posted on the Tuesday. Arrived in Dublin on Thursday around lunch time. They were all in good condition. I had no complaints with mine and they even threw in a few small extras with mine.

You probably know this already, but adding a large amount of fast growing stem plants won't speed up the cycle. If you are getting them to use up ammonia then that will happen, which is probably what you are aiming for, but that causes the cycle to happen more slowly as there is less ammonia for the bacteria to use.

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02 Jul 2008 13:20 #3 by Peter OB (Peter O'Brien)
I've never used Greenline, i've always found Java to be very quick and the plants in great shape. Always got what I ordered and never any substitutes.

Maybe you caught them on a bad day.

Smoke me a Kipper, I’ll be back for breakfast.

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02 Jul 2008 16:08 #4 by AndyT (Andy Taylor)
No, I'm in no rush to speed up the cycle as such. I'm more interested in algae prevention from the start.
I'll have plenty of ammonia from the ADA Aquasoil II so the bacteria will be well fed.

Mass planting from the start does help to cycle to substrate though so that will help. I think I'll order one of the soft water collections from green line and see how they work out.
This new tank is only a step on the way to my 5x2x2 (feet) room divider so I'll need a lot of plants soon. I may as well start growing them now!

@Peter OB: I'm prepared to give java the benefit of the doubt as most people seem happy with them. Not one of the plants I ordered from them survived more than a week. It was early in my plant-grwing career so I suspect that was a contributing factor somehow!

170L Bowfront Community Tank : Heavily planted : CO2 : T5 lighting

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02 Jul 2008 19:51 #5 by phildevan2 (jimmy martin)
i used them last feb. or so i missed the tues.deadline so i had to wait till the following week .plants arrived in great condition individually bagged and tagged .

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02 Jul 2008 20:53 #6 by platty252 (Darren Dalton)
Andy not meaning to stray from the main topic but it is beneficial to put some mulm from a filter on the base of the tank before the ADA substrate. I made the mistake of not doing this on my last tank and i had to do a lot more water changes at the start to keep the algae away. Also use an established filter. I use carbon to remove the tanning's from the ADA substrate and it will also remove traces of Ammonia. Ammonia = algae.

Darren

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02 Jul 2008 21:51 #7 by AndyT (Andy Taylor)
Stray away. :) All advice is welcome as I've never used the ADA stuff before.... So.... How's this for a plan?
I have an established tank here running two decent filters. A fluval 105 and an AquaEl of some kind. I have a Eheim 2026 on order.
I'll set-up the new tank using the Fluval or the AquaEL (assuming I can transport one cross-country without killing it).
I put the 2026 on my existing tank for a couple of weeks until I have to move my existing tank too. This way I'll end up with 2 seeded and matured filters to use on the new tank. The existing tank won't be used for a while.

170L Bowfront Community Tank : Heavily planted : CO2 : T5 lighting

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02 Jul 2008 22:11 #8 by platty252 (Darren Dalton)
Sounds like a plan.
You wont be sorry you went for the aquasoil. The mulm under this will start off the biological activities in the substrate.
Plenty of water changes starting off will help keep the algae away.

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03 Jul 2008 11:39 #9 by zig (zig)
How much have people paid in postage with Greenline? People say good things about them although I have never used them.

I ordered stuff from Java before and it was a disaster, I waited nearly a month for the plants to arrive, and it took several irate emails, they were in good condition when they did arrive though, it seems that my order got caught up in a computer glitch somewhere. When they were sent eventually I got them within a few days.

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03 Jul 2008 14:33 #10 by AndyT (Andy Taylor)
Howya Peter, it's impossible to work out postage from the greenline site, as far as I can see. I'm going to take a chance on them in a week or so, whatever the postage works out at it'll be cheaper than Tropica from anywhere local.

If it suits you to order at the sam etime, let me know and I can throw yours on with my order?

170L Bowfront Community Tank : Heavily planted : CO2 : T5 lighting

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03 Jul 2008 22:42 #11 by zig (zig)
Cheers Andy not sure what I'm doing, probably going to have to start ordering plants from abroad alright can't seem to get what I want in Dublin anymore.

I was more curious about Greenline, I could never work out the delivery pricing to Ireland, the website information is a little ambiguous, it mentions a figure of £3.50 (I think) and then mentions another figure of £9.95, but cant really figure out which one it is you are meant to pay. It would make small orders expensive anyway if it was the higher figure.

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04 Jul 2008 08:01 #12 by AndyT (Andy Taylor)
I'm finding exactly the same at the moment. Wackers are supposed to have an order coming in today but my guess is that it'll be ferns and anubias with the usual side-order of fast-growing stems. The interest in serving the needs of the planted tank in there seems to have disappeared with the staff changes. Although I did get some Limnophilia from them last week that's doing well for me.

I'd like to try some Blyxa Japonica in my new tank once it's set up. Greenline stock it but don't seem to promise live delivery due to it's fragile nature, or something. The postage is the same up to a certain weight (1kg, I think) so we can always combine an order to save money, if it suits.

170L Bowfront Community Tank : Heavily planted : CO2 : T5 lighting

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04 Jul 2008 08:47 #13 by zig (zig)
I've grown blyxa japonica before, when you plant it first of all it goes through a transission stage where it dies back totally and then regrows, this seems to happen for everyone with this plant, so the condition it arrives in won't really matter tbh. The root stalks are fairly robust anyway so you should have no problems.

It does need a fair bit of light though and CO2, at least 2WPG or it just dies back totally never to reappear again:huh:

I will check out Wackers tomorrow, thanks for the tip off.

Got some nice Cryptocoryne balansae in aquatic village last week so it ain't all bad!

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04 Jul 2008 13:02 #14 by AndyT (Andy Taylor)
zig wrote:

I will check out Wackers tomorrow, thanks for the tip off.


Don't bother. I called in as I was passing to check and they've nothing coming in this week. They do have a few nice crypts left but they're not in great condition.

170L Bowfront Community Tank : Heavily planted : CO2 : T5 lighting

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04 Jul 2008 20:24 #15 by CJackson (Frank Farrell)
As regards shipping cost from Greenline. My order was over 2kg in weight (plants on bogwood) and I paid 25 GBP for shipping. However, it ended up costing less to post so Greenline added in some plants. They use Airsure and as I said before mine arrived in two days. If you have any queries it's worth emailing Andy beforehand, I found him very helpful.

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07 Jul 2008 09:37 #16 by AndyT (Andy Taylor)
I placed an order with them this morning. I'll keep ye posted.

170L Bowfront Community Tank : Heavily planted : CO2 : T5 lighting

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09 Jul 2008 14:27 #17 by AndyT (Andy Taylor)
For anyone thinking of using Greenline.......... I ordered plants on Monday morning, they arrived in Galway this morning safe and well. Postage was 9.95.

Highly recommended. Great customer service in terms of tracking numbers etc.

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12 Jul 2008 11:20 #18 by zig (zig)
AndyT wrote:

For anyone thinking of using Greenline.......... I ordered plants on Monday morning, they arrived in Galway this morning safe and well. Postage was 9.95.

Highly recommended. Great customer service in terms of tracking numbers etc.


Thanks for the info Andy it sounds like a great option now that I know how much it costs, 3 days is a great service, hard to beat that.

I think I will try an order in the next week or so.

On a totally unrelated note but interesting nonetheless (if your a nerd:huh: :laugh: )the variety of E. tennellus that Greenline sell is slightly more compact than the Tropica version and it goes a reddish colour in good light (much nicer) the Tropica version aways stays green, I should have some to share once I get it growing if anybody wants some;)

Not a lot of people know that!!!:blink: :P

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12 Jul 2008 21:16 #19 by platty252 (Darren Dalton)
It's interesting you should mention that about the tennellus. I have some at the moment that is longer than the last lot i got 3 years ago. It also has no sign of ever getting that red streak i have gotten before. To be honest it is doing badly regardless of substrate, light etc. I think i will have to replant it in the bin.:(

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04 Aug 2008 17:04 #20 by zig (zig)
Well I never did get that order in, the damn place has closed down now though, for good it would appear. They had some major storm damage to their premises sometime around 15th of July and have since ceased trading.

They had some goods still on offer even up to this weekend but it was the E tennellus I was really interested in and they had none left in stock, the rest on offer was just a hotch potch of different leftovers so I never made an order. Hate that, back to the old green tennellus so:S

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14 Aug 2008 19:21 #21 by slavik (Slavik Pieniuk)
I going to order plants from denmark in september. Web site tropica.com. If anyone wants something from list please contact me by mail This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

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