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
Conditioners / Other Water Care Products
Of all the conditioners I have tested, my preference is for Sodium Hydroxymethane Sulfinate based conditioners. But some conditioners have only that as an active ingredient, and I would want more.
That active ingredient will remove chlorine and chloramines and react with ammonia to form aminomethylsulfinate ions that will not affect the fish: however, that temporary locking up of ammonia is really only intended to "mop" up the ammonia produced from chloramines.
The active ingredient is a redox agent and acts as an anti-oxidant.
Some conditioners.........especially the best conditioner on the market from all that I have tested at home and under lab conditions......use Sodium Hydroxymethane Sulfinate and have added components as active ingredients.
If I look at Tetra AquaSafe (the very best conditioner on the shelf of aquatic shops), the chelating agents, slime coat protector, vitamin B1 addition, and the Sodium Hydroxymethane Sulfinate place it top of my list of all I have tested and used.
Now, in recent years, JBL have produced a product that really does compete with Tetra AquaSafe: JBL Biotopol (especially the one for shrimps etc). Really great dechlorinator, chelator and has vitamin B1.
It is also so much cheaper than Tetra.............and has been my conditioner of choice for a good few years (in a large variety of fish tank types and fish).
Some conditioners make claims that mislead fishkeepers: no conditioner is a magic potion.
In a tank, I favour making sure the filter system is mature enough to cope with the fish and with water changes.
However, I am also a big fan of emergency solid phase means to remove ammonia/ammonium or nitrites or nitrates.
Bulk water phase systems to "lock-up" ammonia/nitrites and nitrates are really not good when used as such and rely on the tanks filter being capable of removing the ammonia/nitrites and nitrates in the first place.
Products such as purigen, ammonia removing zeolites, PolyFilter, or JBL NitraEx (nitrate removing) are all solid phase and I strongly favour them and suggest that they should form part of the emergency kit.
I won't do a survey here on all conditioners I have tested............that would take too long
ian
Irish Tropical Fish Society (ITFS) Member.
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