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Hello, I’m just providing plant updates about my tank, and some concerns I have: pH: 7.8 Ammonia: 0ppm Nirite: 0ppm Nirate: 40ppm (Mainly Easy Green) KH: 7dKH GH: 13dGH Also, I dose 2 cups of Flourish Iron 3x a week (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday). -Amazon Swords, with the exception of one have been growing well, despite my mistake of fertilizer burning them. The one in question hasn’t grown any new leaves or shown any signs of decay/death. -The Red Tiger Lotus continues to excel and has 6 lily pads I wanted to keep (I cut down 8 so far, which goes to show you how fast it has been growing within 2 months), as well as growing more leaves closer to the bulb. The lily pads are starting to take on a pink-spike core appearance now as opposed to the green-pac-man shape they had to start off. I guess that’s the Flourish Iron at work with the colors. - Hygrophila Corymbosa are continuing to grow and shed off the emersed leaves, but my fish continue to feast on the leaves, and some of them are looking like they aren’t recovering too well. Should I get rid of them? They do still look nice for the most part, and are a lot fuller compared to when I first got them. In addition, I did cut off a lot of the decaying/unhealthy leaves (the photos of them aren’t updated). The Hygrophila Angustofolia has grown in height (some more than others), and the leaves aren’t being munched on as much by my inhabitants as the Corymbosa are. -Anubias are staying their courses with a leaf here and there. Nothing to really report on, as well as the Bucephalandra. The Bolbitis, however are propagating. -Ludwigia Arcuata continues to shine and has oddly has all of its emersed leaves still. The stems are having new stems grow throughout the plant, rather just from the top only. Ludiwgia Super Red on the other hand, have been growing leggy and is starting to lose the submerged growth it has been experienced since being added to my tank. -The Green Bacopa has shown significant growth, most noticeable on the left middle side of the tank. - The Java Fern and Cryptocornes have recovered well from my prior disaster with this tank.

It took a while to get pictures of her but here she is in all her gravid glory. Also with more sun comes my plants out of hibernation. These are plants from Clemson area so I am unsure of the species but we got a fern and maybe some sort of bog violet? Had a caterpillar in the tank somehow and it did quite a bit of damage but it was too cute so I let it loose on the neighbors vine maple

I have 2 rattan cushion rolling chairs for the room. Gup’s movin on up from buckets.

Hi, My name is J and I call Sydney, Australia home. I am currently about 5 weeks into cycling my first ever planted tank, a 20L, 45cm shallow tank. Trying my best to be patient. 🙂 Have about a decade of experience on the marine side of things, but wanted a small system in my home office and decided to pursue something different. Looking forward to being part of this community and learning more about this amazing side of the hobby. Pic is from a day or two ago. Tried my hand at a rock only hardscape after finding the cool looking rock (I believe dark seiryu stone) on the right. Dark start method for the first few weeks. Then LFS had a sale on plants and so added my first plants a bit earlier than planned, about 2 weeks ago - Monte carlo carpet (eventually), staurogyne repens for green accent plants, alternanthera reineckii mini for some red accents toward the back of the tank. Then a local seller had some floating plants for sale a week ago and I grabbed a few of them too. J

When it’s warm out and you want to keep your food cold

I didn’t think I was going to post the ugly, but what’s a journal without it? Algae phase is beginning now, diatoms showing up along with GDA. I will make no changes as I know it will pass. I’d like to thank @Burr740 for the ongoing support with nutrient help. Basically, I’m dosing his formula on Macros but add/front load 12ppm K. Micros are BurrAqua per directions. I’m still using the ARC prototype reactor but will either build my own @Yugang reactor, or be testing the ARC V2 reactor, this depends on Tommy though! I had a 20 gallon QT tank shoved full of plants and crammed them all in here. I can’t believe non of them melted, but you can see how pissed off they all are. Either way, the tank is progressing and will become the competition tank in 2025. I filled the tank with tap water, 9GH and 7KH and doing water changes with mineralized RO water as I type this. I’m sure the plants are freaking out. The plants are looking better but not growing like the 120. Either way, tank is being cycled plants only. Pond snails doing work! I embrace them! Here’s the 120, I guess I’m getting there, I refuse to touch the Velho in the center because it’s actually growing. Left and right sides need to be reworked, Difformis still converting, but liking the direction much better now.

Your tank looks great; especially that piece of driftwood. Sorry to hear about the Corydoras and Tetras.

Hello everyone. Just joined this after doing a search for a picture.. I found schools of these fish swimming in the creek here at the house.WhitecloudDynasty. read on your thread that you were trying to breed to get the white fins more defined. Look at this if you would and tell me if this is a green head shiner. thanks

I agree despite being no moss expert. It looks most like Christmas moss to my eyes, too, @Guppysnail. 😉

Use hydrogen peroxide. Just buy it from the grocery and pour it on straight on the tank. You don’t need to fill just hit all surfaces well and let it sit.

@beastie And ,honestly, you could go up in size with fewer tanks. Get more of what you like. Much less of what is just meh. It doesn’t really take that much more time to maintain fewer, bigger tanks. One really big tank filled with your favorites is enough.

Looks like Christmas moss -Vesicularia montagnei Had to look up binomial 🤣 @Odd Duck is the moss guru…addict 🤗 and would know better.

Got this tank and stand off marketplace a little while ago. And I finally got around to setting it up today. My daughter and I went on hikes to gather the rocks for it. And after hunting all the local fish stores we finally found a good piece of driftwood for it. So I got that boiled last week and soaked it for the past week as well. But today all the plants came in and we filled the tank up No fish as of yet since the tank is needing to go through it's cycle. But I know I would like angelfish and some kind of community tank to go with it. Hopefully in the next few days the tank clears up and there are no more tannins relieved by the driftwood. But only time will tell. There's a powerhead in the tank with filter floss in it to catch the small particles since I've read canister filters aren't really good at getting those.

Hello everyone! So I LOVE to write. Seriously. I have tried several times to write a book of some sort, but my self-doubt and criticism have killed any ideas past page 12. Novels, Informational guides on nano aquariums, you name it. Once I had a novel more than halfway complete and decided to scrap it. (I know, I have some problems) But...I have a new inkling. What about creating a practical aquarium guide... as a community? Not just me trying to do it all myself, but a community, with everyone playing a part. Those with expertise in different fields, coming together, to create a guide from a practical standpoint! If you look at some of the best written aquarium works (Brackish Water Fishes by Neale Monks and several others, for example), they call on the expertise of several other learned aquarists, with or without degrees. We could make a project like this into an actual publication, or preserve it as an online resource, or both! Now I know that this idea is crazy, and I know that I have not been on the forum for that long, but I really just wanted to get my idea out there. I want to collaborate with others more, and together, I think we could create something to help out entry-level aquarists. I think everyone has a problem that they ran into early in the hobby that they wished someone had told them about. If you think this is crazy, a consideration, or both, by all means, shoot your shot and let me know your thoughts!

My husband is supportive of my hobby. Because we (he mostly) are housebound for the most part, he knows it brings me joy to “fuss” with my fish. He is ok with it if I were to want another tank, but I’m currently in my sweet spot with 3 (10g, 29g and 75g). He likes to help me decide on fish, is genuinely curious about each of the fish species I keep and will occasionally ask questions about what I’m doing when I’m cleaning or maintaining them. He doesn’t care much about hand plants. He likes to sit in front of the 74g with me I. The evening and just watch the fish.

I had it on my Anubias leaves a while back. Unsure what causes it but my Nerite snail does a great job cleaning it up. I doubt the algae was the reason your shrimp passed. Algae is usually beneficial to tanks. It doesn’t look pretty but it has several benefits. I bet there are other forum users out there who can tell you what causes it/other ways to get rid of it 🙂

Probably not the reason you lost shrimp. Nothing harmful about green spot. Actually has some benefits. Most algae’s do. Just unsightly for us. I’d keep an eye on your nitrate levels. Around 10 should reduce some of it. Nitrates act as fertilizer for green plants. Including algae

I wouldn’t go full father fish. I do believe in water changes and they can be big ones. I haven’t used leaf zone so no comment there. I’ve tried a bunch of setups from high tech, high light, co2, auto dosing ferts, mixing my own dry ferts, water change 50% every week. Now I try to do less. No co2 , lower light, lots of emergent plants, occasionally does ferts depending only on what the leaves look like and if I have <20ppm nitrate, water change like every month or 2. I’ve had hillstreams jump out of the tank when temp was too different during water change. Luckily I heard his little splat and got him back in the tank. ive had city water full of ammonia even after dosing normal dechlorinator and killed one hillstream and definitely made the other lose a couple of years. hillstream don’t like new tanks. Cost me a Borneo. hillstreams are not great with meds. Some will react badly and get really stressed out. basically my advice for hillstreams is a low maintenance tank. Lots of oxygen, don’t change to many parameters. Established tank. Lots of big smooth river rocks. Helps Keeps down aggression. Then play with light to control algae. Also keep the tank around 72-75f . Don’t put different species together unless it’s a big tank. The little Borneo can’t compete with the reticulated

I used fritz while Cycling my tank but I was super slow with adding fish because I was establishing my plants because cories and kulhi loaches root in the substrate. I wonder if you may have had another issue especially if the paint was coming off your decorations?

My wife enjoys having the aquariums around. She doesn’t care how many enter the home, she knows it’ll all be taken care of. Personally, I’d have a giant problem if my wife wasn’t supportive, super giant problem.

@Markp2483 Thanks for the advice! I saw a couple of videos by Father Fish on youtube that really go by that "less is more" method. It was interesting to see how well his tanks were operating with minimal water changes, and I think I want to adopt some of his teachings going forward. I've always used leafzone as a fertilizer, and I would always dose right after a water change. Do you think that could have been contributing to ammonia?

I love mystery snails but would not recommend them for a 5 gallon tank due to their high bioload. That’s liable to cause more ammonia issues. I really like this product and always keep it stocked. It helps if bacteria slow or die (due to using medications etc) or when starting new tanks.

Nitrate should be present, and ammonia and nitrite need to be zero because they are quite toxic. I’m sorry for your losses.. Do not scrub things down. Water changes are ok. The goal is to breed the beneficial bacteria which eat the ammonia and nitrite. These bacteria live on surfaces of ornaments in your tank, on your gravel, and in your filter. Ammonia is the most toxic, followed by nitrite. Nitrate is fine if kept under 40 as a general rule of thumb. I’m not sure if Amanos would clean glass? I think they mainly clean objects. We can ask @nabokovfan87.

Oh man, so sorry. I’ve had issues with temp and treatments before. And nothing sadder than sick hillstream loaches. Only advice, get a new trash can, preferably on wheels. Fill the trash can with the new water. Check the temp, add dechlorinator, run an airstone to add back oxygen lost by dechlorinator. Check for chlorine and ammonia. Then change water. I’ve taken it one step further by getting a carbon filter inline so don’t need to worry about chlorine or chloramine or adding dechlorinator. I also try to add the least amount of stuff to a tank. No flocculents, no conditioners, no algaecides . Some fertilizers are ok but some turn straight to ammonia. Less is better water is fish air.

2nd edit, forgot to mention. GH6.2 degrees and KH near 0 degrees. pH this morning 4.77.

For those interested, both tanks are kept at 30ppm NO3, 10ppm PO4 and 40ppm K. Micros are .45Fe as proxy and per dose is as follows A 2 ML per 10 gal dose adds the following: Fe DTPA - .12 ppm Fe gluc - .03 ppm Mn - .025 ppm B - .023 ppm Zn - .02 ppm Cu - .0021 ppm Mo - .001 ppm Ni - .00011 ppm I double dose both macros and micros immediately after a 50% water change. I water change every 7th day. I forgot to mention, Ca is at 35ppm and Mg 5ppm. Final thoughts, chase those numbers!

My girlfriend doesn’t care how many tanks I have or what I do, as long as I take care of it. She enjoys watching the tanks, and I enjoy all aspects of the hobby so it works out great for us.

My husband has helped carry water buckets (especially when I've been injured) and has gone on some fish store trips. He encourages me to go to the fish store whenever I express interest, and has occasionally suggested it himself. He asks questions now and then, but usually regrets it when I go more in depth than he really wanted to know (I'm working on giving simpler answers, he's also working on that when it comes to electronics). But he doesn't particularly care either way whether we continue to have fish or not.

Again, Ill need the manual to take it apart. Im mechanically not inclined..... So much so, It literally took me a good part of the morning to figure out how to remove the sides of the UGF plates. In my defense they were not well marked or perforated..... As for the co2 defuser, I went with the flux v2 & of course the packing says 'not to use with bubble counter fluid. Ill replace tubing ect, thanks for the heads up! But what about the check valve? Entry level priced 119.99 if memory serves

Yeah, that’s the beauty of a cycled aquarium. Use to be you’d completely take apart and scrub clean the stuff in an aquarium. With a cycled tank, you really never do that. You use algae eaters and they help keep your surfaces clean. You’re really building a self inclosed ecosystem. The majority of bacteria live on the surfaces of your tank. So it’s self defeating to scrub surfaces. You’ll have to learn about algae prevention. Remembering that most algae in some ways is beneficial also. Even brown algae, which snails love and disappears over time.

Follow the instructions to a T on all the test. When testing the nitrAtes you need to shake that # 2 bottle for at least 1 minute even longer if it is cold. It separates while sitting and does not mix very well and use a timer. If you think you miss counted one (full) drop start over. Just my 2$ ( inflation)😉

I just can’t get over how well this tank is turning out and how well all of the fish are doing. Out of the 70+ fish, shrimp and snails in this tank there’s only been one loss. Everyone is growing by leaps and bounds. I’m so deliriously happy with it.

Good luck with your new huge tank. I can't wait to see pictures of it. 🤗

I have tons of pond snails that my Tiger Barbs love.

It's very good! My only concern is all of the headings. When we put it into formatting, is it okay if I were to put some of the text under more generalized labels?

I could be wrong, but I would add a secondary dose and let it "soak" to help keep infections from popping up. The major one would be fin rot. So your water change as mentioned, then just redose the med and let it sit for 48-72 hours.

Lowes now sells LIFEGARD Decorative rocks and stones 44-lb Brown Garden Rock for $140. A few years ago, a company selling landscaping rocks had dragon stone very cheap but no more.

I have a 5 gallon pail I keep for infusoria... snail overpopulation goes in there, along with all plant trimmings. As I don't actually feed that pail, the snail population only increases when their numbers are 'culled' from other tanks and deposited in the pail. The lid sits on top loosely, if that makes a difference. Occasionally, dirty filters are shaken in it at cleaning time (as I have huge amounts of biofiltration, this happens maybe every 3 months per tank) which seems to be enough of a food source. That pail has fed hundreds of nano fish fry for a couple years and the snails do not breed beyond their available food source (there's an inch of empty shells on the bottom) and the water is clear... except under my hobby microscope, it's teeming with paramecium, rotifers and the like. I keep the snail population in check, they feed the microscopic food for my nano babies... win-win. Just my long-winded 2 cents

A few changes in the past couple weeks since the last update. A couple of the corys didn't make it. We still have 6 that seem health. My guess is it was stress as the tank parameters are fine. Last week we had recieved an order from aqua Hauna of 24 cardinal tetra. However also due to stress is my guess they have slowly been dieing as well as we are down to only 10. Today we went to the lfs for 7 angelfish to add to the tank. Next week depending how many cardinal are left we may try some of there's. Unless anyone has a reliable source for some please let me know.

I do the same. And then use the opportunity to re-think the now freed up tanks. What kind of fish will I try? Something I've never kept before, or maybe a single species, giant school of something? How a I going to re-scape this? Minimal rocks and sticks? Lush water jungle? This kind of gets me excited again cause I have something to day dream about until I actually pull the trigger on starting a tank over.

Depends on the dimensions! If it's taller than wider, a betta would be great! Even a pea puffer if you'd like a challenge. If it's wider than taller, a school of true nano fish would be great, like chili rasboras or endlers; white clouds might be okay too, kinda small but it would work, my main concern is temperature, they like temperatures cooler (maximum 72 f) and most of the plants you selected are tropical. Maybe green neon tetras too! You could also consider non-fish stocking, like some smaller snail species or cherry shrimps! The plants seem great! If I was you, I would also add in some pearlweed to the foreground. It would add in a bit more color variation; as pearlweed is a lime green and the rest of the plants you've chosen are darker or more 'true' greens. But that's just me!

Well, I finally took it out of the aquarium. After several weeks it neither grew or shriveled… was just kind of… there. Didn’t add much. So removed it.

Cc @AllFishNoBrakes is another person who loves the blackwater side of things. I do too! It looks great, keep at it. Well done!

Most solid advice I have ever seen.

I experienced burnout for roughly 6 years. Story time (skip ahead of paragraph for what I did to reinvigorate my love): When I was 2nd year college student I stepped up to a big person apartment. I bought a 128g custom acrylic tank for a steal. It was going to be an amazon biotope. I already had baby angels, neon tetra and some very expensive at the time phantom plecos. By this time I was already a decade into the hobby so felt comfortable with this tremendous undertaking…. Anyway blah blah blah skip ahead 4 months my tank gets a nasty algal bloom and kills all my fish save 2 by depleting the oxygen in the tank. Overnight. Devastated at losing my fish I was done. Lost all passion completely. Left the hobby on read and went on with my life. I still visited my LFS and worked at one, but with no passion left it didn’t stimulate any feeling. 6 years go by and it was genuinely engaging with this community that brought me back. When I came back in I decided to do what I love again but only allowing 1 fish tank at a time to devote myself to. Yeah the passion still ebbs and flows but having one project to maintain and watch slowly grow over time has kept me interested. I have other projects I want to do such as a brackish mangrove with figure 8’s but I got nothing but time now. I will outlive my fish and when I do I can start anew. I have also stopped taking my mistakes so seriously. Anyway despite my ramblings I think each keeper is different and each keeper will have to do different things to maintain passion. Or don’t. Let it die and take a break. Sometimes thats what people need too. You will come back with a different perspective and outlook.

Texas cichlid is a no go. You are outside the freezing zones of the north but San Fran area drops to 40’s too consistently for the cichlid to do well. Best bet is sunfish or minnows. But still keep the heater at its lowest setting so it’ll turn on during the cold spells.

I second the notion to add plant biomass, especially fast growing plants like floaters and stems. You can always put fast-growing plants in now and remove them later, especially floaters, if you don't want them there long-term or don't like the way they look. And there are a fair few stems that can grow floating, too: Pogostemon stellatus "octopus", hornwort, and I think guppy grass counts as a stem.

This is me too.... My fish will eat pellets, flakes, frozen brine, and when the mood strikes them they like repashy. The hikari wafers are known to be great with corydoras far and wide, but there have been concerns about what's in them. For me, the vast majority of my choices are based on the following: The most recent documentary made on the topic and specifically applicable to this issue is going to be FIN by Eli Roth. I watched in on HBO Max app. I would point you to the above thread and or movie club link in my signature for discussion off those sorts of things. What this ultimately means is that my preference is to limit fish meal and fish oil. I prefer to use krill meal and krill oils as well as spirulina (and chlorella) algae based foods. NLS has probably the "best" recipe with their algae based wafers, but they have a lot of other things available too that I wish I could try. Northfin is similar where they have a lot of the same things and the public perspective is quality ingredients in the food. Aqueon nutrinsect is something I will shout about because it's very affordable and the ingredients are great. For my corydoras they can be anywhere from little ones to big chunky 4" fish and they prefer nano pellets for their food. The nice behavior I want to see when feeding them is this... and it's always fun for me to watch. This is where the substrate matters as much to me as the food choice because I want the fish to be able to get to the food in question. Have a half-sand tank for feeding if you wanted to is an option as well. I won't say it's required, mine are not on sand currently, but it's just all back to the above behavior for me. If I was to send someone a kit of "foods" for corydoras I would tend to look for: -pellets that are 0.5mm in size (1mm works if you had to use it) -krill oil as opposed to fish oil -alternate sources of protein: algae, bugs, shrimp and krill -frozen and gel foods Things that have worked well for me is the typical "community blend" styles off food where it's a mix of protein and veggie foods. This comes in forms of pellets and flakes from just about anyone as well. I tend to buy them separate and make containers of them on my own ratio. Usually it's around 70/30% up to 50/50 range leaning towards more of the krill based foods are the staple. Bug foods you kind of want to make sure they don't go stale on you or rot (so I've heard), but I never have them ever last long enough for that to be an issue. My favorite thing is probably frozen brine. I thing it's one of the most underrated foods out there for corydoras.