• You are viewing the forum as a Guest, please login (you can use your Facebook, Twitter, Google or Microsoft account to login) or register using this link: Log in or Sign Up

Welcome :) Tell us about yourself

Status
Not open for further replies.
Oooh,this is exciting.Darn,I've been lurking on APC for about a month before I discovered this site today!!And you can't lurk here without registering so I may aswell go the whole hog and do the formal introduction thingy!Ok:

My name is Thorna (yes,Thorna,or if you want to get technical,Thornton,though mum & dad only discovered it should have been this after my Gran actually died!!).
I'm a 35 year old mum to Jaime,daughter of 18,and the holy terror Grant (Grantyboy),almost 3.I have a little giftshop,which fortunately,allows me to spend huuggee chunks of time online during the day 😀
I am sitting with an empty Fluval tank on a beech stand in my living room,after a break from fishkeeping of about 15 years.Gads,before,I'd have thought nothing of chucking in gravel,plants,heater,filter,fish,Bob's your uncle,but now...

I'm hooked.The fish shops round my way are,let's say,basic.I've had my tank for two weeks now and it hasn't even smelled water,I'll get there.Got a bargain bag of laterite on it's way,a 25kg bag of grit to wash,then I can start getting artistic (hopefully).
As I say,been lurking on APC for a while(that's how I found this place),there are some truly jawdropping and inspirational tanks there,will spend some time over the next few days perusing this site.First impressions,wow,you have a great photographer!!And I'd also be very pleased with your web designer.And how happy am I to discover a UK forum?Very,very,very.
 
Heeeello and welcome on board 🙂

Glad you found us eventually, Im sure you'll find this place full of useful tip-bits to get you inspired for your own tank. How on earth did you have a tank for 2years without at least fish in it?!! I run tanks with just water cos I'm so excited about setting up a new one!!! :lol:

Sam
 
Themuleous said:
Heeeello and welcome on board 🙂

Glad you found us eventually, Im sure you'll find this place full of useful tip-bits to get you inspired for your own tank. How on earth did you have a tank for 2years without at least fish in it?!! I run tanks with just water cos I'm so excited about setting up a new one!!! :lol:

Sam
Click to expand...

Naah,two WEEKS!!!God,I'm desperate to get it started but I can't do nuffink till this darn laterite arrives!!I'm mighty excited,and so glad I've found some folks I can actually talk to about it without watching them glaze over before my very eyes!!
(Thanks for the welcome 😀 )
 
Hello!

Oh dear - I'm back into tanks!

Had a 60l/2' tank for about 7 years with some reasonable success, but had to put it on a back burner for the last few years whilst at university. Now graduated and got a little 20l cube (in my equally tiny flat) and am itching with ideas - found this place whilst trawling net; what have I been doing all these years??? Suffice to say that I now feel woefully inadequate - some of the posted tanks are superb, very impressive. May be force to dust off the old tank and get some serious planting going.......

It may take me a little while to assimilate even a fraction of the information on here, but hopefully this'll be a daily hit for my green fix. I apologise in advance for all the dumb-ass questions I am yet to ask!

Adam 😀
 
Ello abates fellow noob!!This could be possibly the best and worst site you could have come across.Best cos it's just so inspirational and the depth of knowledge is astounding.Worst,well,after a break from fishkeeping,I found it before I started setting my tank up and have spent £80 on bleeding substrate that I would have been blissfully ignorant of otherwise 🙄 Cost more than my tank :lol:
 
Well Hi all I have been using this site for a few weeks now and really gotten to like it. So here is a bit about me.

Started fish keeping in july 2007 when I got a fish tank for free and i convinced the other half it would be a cheap venture and would be cool. So i build a new stand as the metal one was ugly and started my cycle.

After trying to stock it i found no fish i liked would be comfortable in the tank due to max size. so i vowed to keep the small tank till i could afford a bigger one...

Well I started trying to plant real plants but got it a bit wrong and bought some non aquaric plants and to be honest not to successful.

In january 2008 i got my new tank it was a bargin. £350 for a 5ft x 1.5ft x 2ft and by this point the other half was well on board so i was able to spend some money.

Sand has to be the most overpriced buy. she wanted a particular sand as the usual play sand was not good enough for here so £80 later i was full.

The move from the small tank to the large was fun and games. I pre ran the new filter for 3 weeks in the old tank with some media moved over to it

Using 3 Large bins one for the fish 2 filled and warmed up. i filled the tank with half old tank water to start followed by 2 large bins (About 80% fresh to old) This gave enough room just to transfer in my gouramis, baby bala's and gibb to then add the other half of the tank water and another 2 bins.

From this i left it for a 2 days before attempting to fill up the rest.

All went well other than a suicidle bala that jumped from the holding tank that is fine with no issues thankfully.

Since then i have upgraded my lighting buy adding a home made T5 Light bar for 40 quid (Including new 10K bulbs) and bought some real aquatic plant.

So far i have

Vallis (Grows fast and is really starting to fill out some of the tank
3 Amazon swords
2 types of Echindoras one is huge the other is not growing well
Java Fern
2 types of anubias (Unknown types)

From this im now awaiting delivery of my ne Tetratec EX1200 filter (To replace ex700) and all my CO2 gear to start aiding my plant growth.

My fish count at the moment is

12 Harliquins
6 Denison Barbs (3 adult 3 semi adult)
2 Bala Sharks (Both growing up well)
2 Pearl Gouramis (Male and female soon to be breed)
2 Opaline (3spot) Gouramis (Both female)
4 SAE's (Might be Flying Fox from the looks still not sure but do eat Beard/brush algae which is what i care about!)
2 Pictus Cats
1 Gibb

Future plans are to replace my Rena XP3 filter that i hate with another Tetratec EX1200 to give me 2 good filters that if one failed the other would manage fine. Im also tempted in the hydor external heater to remove the internal one.

Im also looking at 2-3 Reef/Rope Fish.

As also stated i have now got a new tank for breeding and im just setting it up now to start my pearls on.

Thats it really. nothing more to say.
 
Hello again!

After a few days of wading through the pile of posts on the site one thing I think may be missing (or I just haven't found it yet); what does every one read? - I mean appart from this site?! Is there a literature section here? :? I used to get PFK a few years back but that's really a "fishy" publication, is there an equivalent planty one out there?? Obviously I could probably glean any information I ever needed from here, but I do enjoy flicking through a mag, there is always the chance of stumbling across something I never thought of, plus there is the benfit of adverts, reviews, etc. Not to mention that I'm not sitting in front of a PC for hours - I do enough of that anyway!

Just ordered ADA and Tropica catalogues to add to my resources - a couple of quid each, if I only learn a few more latin names it'll be worth it!

Any thoughts?

A

P.S
Thanks for the link Sam (though I now feel even more out of my depth! :shock: )
Goodygumdrops - I feel you pain! my "cheap" aquarium is already costing way more than imagined; anyone like to buy a kidney???
 
:lol: behold,from zero tanks to three,how did that happen?(actually shh but don't tell anyone,especially my boyfriend,but I've already snagged another tank and my three year old also says he wants a fish tank in his room).

Abates,I'm getting damn PLAY SAND for my next tank,purely for experimental purposes of course. 🙄
 
Theres a number of international forums out there... Aquatic Plant Central (APC), Planted Tank, Aquascaping World (they do an free online magazine too), Aquatic Gardeners Association (AGA), and of course The Barr Report (Tom Barr is on our forums as Plantbrain).

Also worth checking out the Chinese Aquascaping Union (CAU), Aquatic Eden (blog of an aquascaper), PBase, Plant Geek etc..

I'm not linking to them as I can't remember if we're allowed to or not (I suspect I am but you know...) 🙂
 
SteveUK said:
I'm not linking to them as I can't remember if we're allowed to or not (I suspect I am but you know...) 🙂
Click to expand...

You are definitely allowed; please link away!


(Just no spam links anyone please.)
 
Goodygumdrops said:
:lol: behold,from zero tanks to three,how did that happen?(actually shh but don't tell anyone,especially my boyfriend,but I've already snagged another tank and my three year old also says he wants a fish tank in his room).

Abates,I'm getting damn PLAY SAND for my next tank,purely for experimental purposes of course. 🙄
Click to expand...

I now only have 2 i sold the old 3ft tank but i have been told when we move i can go marine. Thing is she doesn't want to get rid of the tropical so it means a new tank!!!! im hoping the new house will lend its self to a big tank!!!
 
Hi everybody
I've been lurking around on here for a while and i am well impressed with the site and knoledge available. I have been keeping tropicals for nearly 18 months and in the last 9 months or so i have started to get serious about plants my first set up is just a jewel 70 litre community tank with quite a few plants standard lighting and yeast co2 system. My 2nd set up is a roma 200 litre south american biotope with tetra tec plant substrate fine gravel standard lighting mig welding co2 bottle conected to a rhoinox 2000 deffuser (no solinoid) i have a few sword plants plenty of floating plants and camboma plants many vaiations my mane problem is identifying thease plants my local shop doesn't have labels on thier plants and i sometimes i can be in there looking through his books for hours before making a purchase, i would like to know if anybody on here knows of any good plant database or if UKAPS could put one together :?: .
Cheers paul b
 
paul b 76 said:
Hi everybody
i would like to know if anybody on here knows of any good plant database or if UKAPS could put one together :?: .
Cheers paul b
Click to expand...

The tropica webpage is a good start (www.tropica.com). the plant list down the right hand side links to details on each plant, which includes a rather beautiful, but sometimes rather stylised drawing of the plant. Their catalogue (which you can view online or buy in paper form) has both the drawings and photographs of the each plant.

All the online plant sellers have pictures of each plant they sell - although if they're selling tropica plants they'll often have the tropica drawings as illustrations.

What you really want is not a database, but a key - it's easy to find pictures of a plant if you know its name (google anyone?), but your problem is to go from an actual plant to finding its name - much harder. And made even harder by the variety of appearances that a single species can present given different conditions!

Look around on the web, also look in bookshops (usually in the pets section - it has to be a big shop) to see if you can find some good books.I'm not recommending Amazon here, because there is a lot fo dross out there too!

Basically, once you can recognise the various families of plants you'll have an idea of its requirements and growth patterns, but it's always nice to know how big it's going to get! A lot of books (and even Tropica's descriptions) seem to me to err a bit on the cautious side when giving maximum sizes - I've got small tanks only at the moment, and I've been disappointed at how large some plants I've bought grew - if you're giving them what they want they seem to be able to easily exceed the sizes given!

If you find any other useful databases/websites/books post them on here - or maybe start a new thread for it!

All the best,

Mark
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top