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Real aquatic carpeting plants don’t grow stems when left un trimmed. These seeds are always advertised as such but then they would try to outgrow the tank like the one photo you showed. I’m not saying this to discourage you but I’ve seen plenty of posts from other groups and forums that use these seeds and it always ends up with them redoing the whole setup. If you’re certain that they’re aquatic then you could’ve been lucky but I only know of three carpeting plants that have seeds (DHG, dwarf baby tears and glossostigma).

i feed a mixture of north fin and NLS pellets as my staple. Really good ingredients in both brands and the colors on my fish are always vibrant.

This is the stand. Was planning on drilling on the back part or the sides. I do prefer the sides so I can adjust the light from left to right.

99.9% of the time those seeds aren’t truly aquatic. The reason for that plant growing tall is because it’s trying to break the surface. If possible I suggest taking all those plants out and replace them with actual aquatic plants. Ludwigia, rotala, myrio green, hygrophila corymbosa are some easy stem plants. If you wanna try keeping the plants you currently have there’s a risk because those plants can melt and affect your water parameters, and can even crash your cycle.

Thank you @johnnyxxl @tolstoy21 and @Tony s Im not really sure about the rpm of my drill. I do remember that it’s not the best one because when I bought it, I opted for something on the cheaper side because I didn’t have much to go by before. If I remember correctly i got it around 2014 or 2015. It’s the RYOBI brand and the color is like yellow green. I looked at Home Depot and found one similar to it and it said that it’s 600 RPM. Assuming that I’m looking at the same drill that I have, is 600 RPM enough? I’m having trouble visualizing this in my head. Where do I hang it? I have the hanging kit for the light but I do want to avoid drilling in my wall because I live in an apartment.

If you're dosing liquid ferts, you don't really need root tabs since all plants feed through the water column. I stopped using root tabs because when I was using flourish tabs before and I broke down the tank after a year, the tabs were still there, still a bit hard and didn't break down as much. Figured that it didn't really do anything for the plants so I focused more on dosing the water and I still got the same growth. I do have some very old aquasoil in mesh bags that I have on the bottom of the tank. I'm not sure if it's helping because I'm certain that the aquasoil has been depleted of nutrients but I like to think it helps in other ways.

You could still make it look more natural without it looking messy. I’d move those plants in the front towards the back since they’re growing taller then add some anubias, buce and maybe dwarf sag in the front. You could also get other stem plants to give the tank some variety and different textures so it doesn’t look flat. You can use echinodrus bleheri (amazon sword) or red tiger lotus for the corner if you want some shade for your gourami.

3 pairs will be fine for that tank. They don't look stressed anymore and has actually colored up nicely. Do you have pics of the others? Maybe I can help sexing the others so we can see if you have enough females.

This might be a dumb question but can I drill into this stand? I want to attach conduit pipes so I can hang my light but not sure if I can drill into metal. I have an old cordless power drill but I've only used it for dry wall and wood. I'm not planning on making a new stand and want to use the one I currently have. If drilling into the stand is not an option I would greatly appreciate other suggestions to attach a conduit pipe or even PVC pipe (light isn't heavy at all) to this metal stand.

I bought astaxanthin powder before when I was making my own fish food. Not sure if you can feed those to daphnia but my fish liked it 🙂

I had grown it before when I kept a mini greenhouse. I had all the floaters in different tubs. They're my top 2 favorite for floating plants and RRF will always be my top 1 lol

I've seen this in my fish before I changed my light. It really helps if the lights would dim down instead of going from fully on to completely off in a split second. The ACO light actually has this feature. I think what happens is that when the lights turn off right away the fish would try to swim towards the closes light source. The lights I'm using now has a dimming feature as well and when the lights eventually turn off my fish don't swim frantically towards a light source but I do see the top dwellers swim down a little bit when that happens, and after a few seconds they're back on the top.

I'm not denying that it's easy to make but OP did say that budget is an issue that's why I referred marketplace instead of buying from Lowes. If OP can find a glass lid for free or extremely cheap (I've seen lids for a 40B being sold for $5 in the marketplace) then that's 100% better than buying polycarbonate. OP also is looking for a new light which can add to the cost and he's specified plenty of times that budget is an issue. A regular 10g tank is 20" long and the cheapest option I see at lowes for polycarbonate is $6.98 for a 10"x8" sheet. OP would have to buy two sheets to cover his tank or get the bigger sizes which cost more and probably not in the budget.

I just got a response from Ron and he informed me that they have also fed their medicated food while medicating the tank and it didn't affect the cycle. My tank has already cleared up and no nitrites are showing. I feel like I just overdosed on the ich x, then the medicated food does make the tank cloudy and I just rescaped a few weeks before this. Had the canister off for several hours so that might have contributed to the cloudiness as well.

If budget is an issue have you checked facebook marketplace? If you're lucky you could get some free or really cheap stuff on there. You can also check facebook groups that do trades for fish stuff in your area. I'd also check for a glass lid so that you don't have to worry about gluing the light underneath your current lid

My female swordtail that recently gave birth looks very similar to yours. I noticed that when she was giving birth, the male wouldn’t leave her alone. I was able to catch about 25 babies but I know she gave birth to more of them which was probably eaten by the male and other fish.

Indostomus Paradoxus or Crocodilus

Anubias might be able to grow. Not sure about the crypts because I’ve never tried crypts in low light setups. Anubias, buce and moss will be able to grow in low light

Plants require a certain amount of PAR to grow. If a plant can’t grow with 5 PAR, keeping it on longer isn’t helping anything even if you have it on for 24 hours.

Where did you get it? That’s really cool

I think I finally have some Japanese trapdoor snail babies! Their shape is very similar to the adults. Theres also some MTS and ramshorn snails in here but I know how they’re babies look like and these ones look very different. Hopefully someone else can confirm but I really do think these are baby trapdoors. These photos are the best I could do. It’s hard to photograph them because they’re so small and the camera is having a hard time focusing.

I think this is a buttikoferi cichlid. Can’t help with sexing sorry.

Blyxa japonica and downoi if I’m using co2. If I’m not using co2 then it’s anubias and buce.

Yeah but if the light isn’t helping your other plants grow, some of the ferts are not being consumed. If you’re noticing some growth from the other plants and don’t have any algae then you can keep it at your regular dosing schedule. I suggested half the recommended dose to avoid any algae issues while you’re trying to figure out your light situation.

Do you have driftwood in the tank?