Ninjoma

Beautiful! I love the rasboras and the plant choices.

Bummer! I'm not familiar with that plant, but from the photos I've seen, it's not my favorite for that spot. I would personally go with a plant with smaller leaves and less space between the leaves. However, this is your tank, if you like it and it's available you should go for it!

I haven't panted in waters that alkaline before, so you may want to check compatibility, but here are some plants that might look good: If yellow arrow is behind the wood: -Nymphoides hydrophylla 'Taiwan' -Crinum Calamistratum (curved over the top of the wood) Here's a stock photo for what I am imagining. Blue oval: -African water fern -Ludwigia super red -Red melon Sword (I bet Flame Sword would look good too, but I haven't grown it before) Red square: -Anubias nana "petite" -Bucephalandra Kedagang -I like your idea of Alternanthera reineckii mini too Pink circle: I like your idea of a lily. Another plant with a long stalks could also look good, like Anubias hasifolia.

I took this photo of my crayfish "pearling."

Hmm, that doesn't sound right to me. When I plugged in those numbers I got 0.0039. 0.25ppm Amonia shouldn't be very toxic. Anyways, best of luck with your tank!

I honestly don't think I got any advice as a beginner. One of the biggest missteps I had was not realizing that the 6 in 1 test strips don't test for ammonia and that is one of the main things you need to test for in a new tank. So my advice is, make sure to buy an ammonia test kit. Also, don't buy goldfish unless you have a massive tank. There are many other easy to keep, colorful fish, that don't produce as much waste and don't grow as large.

My understanding is that this depends on your temperature and PH, but 0.25ppm probably isn't harmful using most parameters. Basically the API test kit is telling you the total amount of Amonia, NH3 (toxic) + NH4 (non-toxic), so you would have to use other parameters to determine what percentage of your Amonia is NH3 to know for sure. If you use this calculator https://www.hamzasreef.com/Contents/Calculators/FreeAmmonia.php and your NH3 concentration is below 0.05ppm, then it should not be harmful. This is the video I learned this from, for context. If you are worried about your current Amonia level, you can use seachem prime or fritz complete to "detoxify" the Amonia for 24ish hours at a time. It will still show up on the test, but it can't harm your fish. About 1 dose worth detoxifies about 1ppm Amonia. If you really want to try to lower your Amonia to 0, an Amonia absorbing pad, purigen, feeding less and gravel vaccing more might help.

My pleco was on the other side of the decoration just now and I got a clear picture!

There's nothing wrong with a shy fish! But if you want to see them more often, I had a lot of luck with super overgrown dwarf chain sword.

Here are the best photos I could get of my starlight pleco "phantom" The shyest fish I've ever had were my pearl gourami when I first got them. They would disappear into the void the nanosecond I walked into the room I also forgot to mention my freshwater pom pom crabs. I got 5 of them, and have only ever seen one, one time after the first week. I'm not sure if they are coming out at night, hiding amazingly, escaped the tank or deceased.

I'd give another vote for Dwarf sagarita and Dwarf chain sword. Some others to consider are pearl weed and baby tears. Lots of stem plants could also work, like water sprite, wisteria, and ludwigia, but you would have to trim them frequently to the desired size. Lastly larger rhizome plants don't grow quickly, but when I've gotten them they have started a decent size. If you attach them to a decoration, that also adds some height. Some that I've used for midground purposes: African water fern (my favorite if you can find it), anubias barteri and anubias hastifolia. Windelov Java fern is another one I've been meaning to try in the midground, but haven't yet.

I purchased three bristelnose plecos recently, two of them are very active and I see them all over the place all hours of the day. The largest one, an adult starlight, seems to live exclusively inside my coral decoration on the left. I occasionally see him peeking his head out of the hole in the back, but haven't seen him leave the coral except for the one time I lifted the decoration to make sure he was okay. Maybe there is a ton of algae in there *shrug*. I'll try to get a photo of him tonight.

Wow, what a difference! I've never had background before, but now I really want to try it.

My 29g has 1 angelfish, 2 honey gourami, 3 platys, 6 khuli loaches, 6 otos and some snails.

That looks really great! I just added a bottom shelf on mine, but maybe I'll try something more ambitious like you did at some point. It's always nice to have extra storage and shelves are a great thing to hide cables behind.

Couldn't get the Dwarf baby tears to work on the left cave, so I redid it with monte carlo and I'm liking it. I also added some Dwarf hair grass, but I'll need to trim it because it's blocking my center cave. How Bonus picture of a cory sitting on a leaf

Does that mean there is no merit to these experiments conducted by MSU, concluding that red light grows plants faster than green or blue? https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/green_light_is_it_important_for_plant_growth#:~:text=Green light is considered the,for photosynthesis%2C they reflect it. I also might be completely misunderstanding what you're saying.

I'm working on a similar setup, so I've been following along with this thread. How would you take the hinge on the glass top into account for positioning the two lights?

Some plants, like Dwarf baby tears, are really hard to plant if you remove them from the pot because the roots are so small and thin. For those you might want to plant them in the pot. Most plants I prefer to remove the pot and rock wool right away before planting them.

The bottom ones kinda look like the Venezuelan orange corys I've seen at my lfs. Just googling them now, it looks like Venezuelan orange corys are a variant of bronze corys. So that seems to add up.

I almost find this to be a feature. If they aren't buried very well, they will float to the surface. As long as you push them to the bottom of the substrate with planting tweezers they stay put. At least that is my experience planting in seachem fluorite and caribsea moonlight sand.

How thoroughly did you rinse the gravel? Even well rinsed gravel can have dust on it that will make your tank cloudy. I would try a water clarifier and add filter floss to your filter. If that doesn't fix it, it could be a bacterial bloom, which you can't do much about other than wait it out. What heater/ thermometer are you using? It sounds like your heaters aren't working or your temperature reading is faulty. Does the water feel cold? How do you know the gasping isn't oxygen related? Do you have an air stone?

I'm trying to grow plants without having gobs of algae everywhere this year. I just did a massive trimming of most of my algae covered plants, and I'm hoping as they grow back I can keep things under control this time.

I don't have any specific knowledge on that, sorry.

My guess is limpets or bladder snails.