Mike Chesmer

Good choices, thanks everyone! Going to try Hygrophila Polysperma and christmas moss and water wisteria.

Anyone know what plant is good at absorbing nitrates? I know all plants do at some point, and some better than others. I have a 75 gal low tech planted tank, but I need more plants. I do not have enough. Mostly Java Fern and amazon sword, both of which are sprouting runners and new plants, and a few lily types that grow the pads to the surface. Java moss? Stem plants of some kind? And also, I have a couple large driftwood in the tank. Is it possible to get Java Moss to grow and spread all of the wood?

Thanks everyone, good info on things I never thought of:)

Anybody know what's a good calcium-based food for nerite snails? Not much calcium in my tank and the snails are feasting off each others shells.

All good advice, thank you!

Thank you, doing that first thing tomorrow.

PH really low, add some baking soda to the tank. It will increase the PH. What change in the water are we talking about? If anything, a snail dying in a tank will increase ammonia. Taking it out will correct that. Brown spots sounds like algae too, but at such low PH is not normal I would say. Snails have a life span, so how old was it? Did you have it long? Could have been the low PH. Not an expert, but I think snails need high PH. Like really high PH, around 8 or so. Yellow on PH readings is 6 or so, which is very low. I would water change about 50%, and fix the PH with baking soda (which works really good). Change in water? Did the ammonia level rise? Nitrite rise? Those could have just been the snail in the water when it passed. Taking it out would just fix that. I just recently lost a bunch of nerite snails myself, but my tank was still cycling and I think thats what did them in.

75 GAL tank running for 4 weeks now. Ammonia is now 0, Nitrite 2.0 and dropping. (was 5.0 four days ago), and Nitrate at 5.0. Have live plants, mostly amozon sword, anubis, and java fern. Not heavy planting, maybe 15 plants total. Problem is that when the ammonia read 0, string algae, hair algae or whatever it is called sprung up and is now all over the place and smothering my plants. Not sure to do a water change, or just wait out the cycling as its in the final stages before water change and adding snails and shrimp to eat the algae. Ideas???