MattyM

Do you have calcium in the water and in their diet? I had to put some cuttlebone in my tank to help add calcium to the water, and toss some Crab Cuisine pellets in there every day or so, which contain calcium. No more deaths since I did that.

Had a similar experience withy my crypt tropica and wendeti green, after a year or so they were breaching the surface of my 20g and 10g - now they are my background plants in my 100g, and gave me off shoots so now I have more crypts! Gotta love the plants.

My LFS hardly ever has danios, when they do, they go pretty fast. My hunch is either they are hard to get or the owner not happy with the quality. Hitting up a local breeder/event may be the way to go. Glad I got my choprae danios when I could!

I do something similar - but I up the crazy factor and vac seal half of it and put in the freezer (I already had the vac seal so why not!). For the food I don't freeze, I do as you do and put some in a pill bottle so I'm not opening the main container much, and keep it all in the fridge. I would also contact the company - can't hurt.

Maybe try getting a small clay flower pot, and putting a deeper substrate in along with some root tabs and see if that does it. I agree that vals have pretty big root systems that need space. You can also try just floating the val or gently putting a plant weight on it and putting it on top of the substrate - I do this in my hospital tank and they still grow.

I've had mixed results with stem plants and eventually just stopped doing them. The ones that worked were a pain to upkeep - trimming and replanting the healthy tops and all that. I still have -a lot- of plants, just no stems and life is good - don't miss them at all.

In my experience, the bacteria that process nitrites take the longest to build up in a planted tank. So if something happened to cause a spike, it may take a week or two to build that up again. I add some Fritzyme or API Quickstart to help out.

Is it soft, like it's melting, or it firm like the rest of the leaf? How's the rest of the plant doing?

In my experience, fish that are used to swimming a lot will sometimes jump in a smaller tank - my research pulled up some articles that thought they hope to land in a larger body of water. Or if the water isn't to their liking, they may also do this. Spawning female fish may also jump when there are floating plants, with the hope of landing their eggs on/around the plants for a higher survival rate.

If you have a hospital tank, I would pull the guy and treat with a 2-3 tablespoons of salt per 10 gallons - maybe he's just a bit bloated/backed up.

I think your PH is your PH - I don't use that kit so not sure what your results are. I always add Fritz with fish, and keep an eye on the nitrites - ammonia has never been a problem for my planted tanks. If the nitrates get above .25 (light purple) I'll do a water change. A couple days later, after the Prime/dechlorinator wears off, I might add more bacteria. It looks like all your plants might be slow growers, so I would consider adding a fast growing plant to help out.

Once I moved mine to a 100g with good flow, heavily planted, all I have to do it feed frozen bloodworms right before lights out, and/or do a water change but use water that is a few degrees cooler - I think this is supposed to simulate rain fall, which triggers them. I'll wake up to a bunch of eggs on the glass.

NP - great seller. If you have a lid, you might need to let him know so that the baffle fits under it.

Get all snooty about food - "Oh, these uber fresh flakes just aren't what I'm in the mood for this morning, bleh (spits out)"

Sorry to take this slightly off topic, but as a new canister user I am just curious what you use for this 🙂

Hmmm... Googling I found this: https://www.reddit.com/r/Aquariums/comments/qdca2y/getting_really_low_flow_rate_on_my_oase_biomaster/ If that doesn't help, the only things I can think of to try are: Gently shake it to see if there's any trapped air Take all the trays out and run it completely bare. Make sure the distance from the tank and filter are within the filter's limits, so you're not trying to push higher than the pump is rated for. Remove the output hose from the connector that hangs over the tank, and see if you get full flow. And lastly, contacting the manufacturer. Good luck - I have the 600 version of this filter and would love to know if you figure it out!

Bloodfins are a fun, hardy, underrated fish in my experience. Almost like a danio - constant movement, lots of personality. And a giant appetite!

What if you leave the sponges off of the prefilter?

I have them in a sanded tank - don't overfeed and you'll be OK. I have other snails, corie cats, amanos - they all get the vast majority of food before the MTSs emerge. If I'm siphoning the tank and see some, I just suck them up for further population control.

Check out the 3d printed baffles from GalaxyGlowStudio on Etsy, they can direct your HOBs flow so you get better circulation in the tank. On my 20L I had an AC30 mounted in the back right, with the baffle directing left across the tank.

I believe live bearers enjoy the harder water. Your numbers are in my ballpark and my platies bred like crazy.

That doesn't look too bad to me. If you're getting fry that might cause some more bacteria to grow. What does your filtration look like? Do you use anything like a polishing pad and/or Purigen? You may just have some fine particulate matter that needs to get filtered out, which is common in new planted tanks.

Pinholes relate to Potassium deficiency - you could try dosing extra Potassium, I have to. Some kinds of plants are Potassium hogs. https://www.aquariumcoop.com/blogs/aquarium/plant-nutrient-deficiencies I also use root tabs here and there, mostly for heavy root feeders like Crypts, and if any rooted plant looks like it could use some extra juice.

If you have a pot you don't care much about, you can boil as much of the driftwood as you can. I have a cheap enamel pot for this, it's like 3 or 4 gallons. Just be warned any pot you use will have a tannin ring around it. Snails, shrimp and other critters will keep the film in check once you have them. If you added bottled bacteria, it won't really do anything w/o an ammonia source, or "food" for the bacteria. Part of the cloudiness you see could be bacteria die off. If possible I would get a bunch more plants in there (sounds like you got that covered), and start working on supporting life: I might also do a water change if the conditions look really bad, hard to tell w/o a pic. But the bacteria you want lives on surfaces not in the water column. OR, get your plants in, wait a few days, and then introduce a light bioload of hardy fish along with your bottled bacteria. I've had good luck with Fritz and API's Quick Start. You got this 👍

That could be staghorn, which I've had many battles with. In my experience it is very fast to uptake excess nutrients - new plants need to establish themselves before they really start uptaking nutrients so maybe you OD'd. Staghorn also loves lots of light. I don't have the coop light, but I would dial the brightness down quite a bit. Carbon-based algicides like Easy Carbon and Excel make pretty quick work of staghorn until you get the tank dialed in, especially if you spot treat. Once it's dead your cleanup crew might eat it.