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
BBA all gone - what worked for me
a bit of history,
I keep discus so generally its advised to keep a good source of new water in the tank.
All my water goes though a charcoal and sediment filter.
At the start I was pushing about 1,000 litres a week though the tank
And the BBA started to grow, so i lowered the lights , then lower and lower until all my plants died and all that was left was the "still growing" BBA.
So another approach was needed, I decided to try and starve it out, I upped the light power and left them on longer. using a sun-rise / sun-set controller they are on for 12 hours now with a supplement of fert and easy carbo + Co2 @ about 20ppm.
Plants started to grow again (but so did the BBA), so much so that i felt the number of plants completely out weighted the number of fish so that a more natural cycle could now take place.
I lowered the water input to 130 litres per week. (1 tenth of what is was)
After i did this the BBA stopped growing. After i noticed this a added 8 SAE to clean up the rest of the tank. For the last 2 months I've been BBA free.
other notes ,
at about 4 months ago i lowered the food i feed the fish (by about 1/3)
Replaced the UVC bulb about 4 months ago also
All could have helped.
Steve
Please Log in to join the conversation.
I guess without correcting the underlined issues, the algae will return (doesn't kill spores)
Anyone else use this?
Please Log in to join the conversation.
I know it looks like a lot of wires in the first photo, but keep in mind the tank is completely automated.
I just need to clean it every few months and trim the plants every week or so.
Please Log in to join the conversation.
