Jessica.

Oh wow, thank you! What an unexpected surprise. I'm very grateful, can't wait to open it up. 🙂

I love the piece of driftwood! Looking good so far. I'd mess around with moving the driftwood a little more off centered. I did some sloppy photoshopping to show you what I mean. The "rule of thirds" can be helpful for scaping. Current: With the driftwood moved:

Got any clear rubbermaid tubs? Or a bucket? Submerged would be safer, less risk of drying out.I know I'd forget to top off the water on that, and I'd find some crispy moss at the end of the day. You could also put some plastic wrap over the top, to help with evaporation.

Found some very tiny babies today!

Sunday maintenance day update! I did a big trim today and replant. I pulled out and trimmed val, replanted the hairgrass background plant to extend it further to the left, and removed some java fern and replaced it with stauro to extend that carpet. Before and afters: It took about 8 months for the val in this tank to start growing well, but now (1.5 years of being in this tank), the val gets huge, wide leaves. This is giant "americana" val.

Hi Rudd! The tank is 120Gal. Thanks for the kind words. I appreciate it.

Crypts are heavy root feeders. You probably need to add some root tabs. I know you said lots of mulm is there, but hearing they did well for 10 months then slowed sounds like the depleted the available nutrients in the substrate. Edit to add- assuming nothing else has changed in the tank, like if you changed your light, or increased the temp, or bought a fish that's started eating it.

Looks like fungal/mold growth, new driftwood gets a similar thing when put in water. In my experience, when bulbs get this it means they're dead, rotting, and won't grow. You might want to take it out and give it a squeeze to see if it is rotting/dead - if it feels soft/spongy, it's probably rotten all through and never going to grow. If it is rotten, it was probably not viable when you got it, so it's nothing you did wrong. (not to say anything bad about the seller. Most sellers note that they don't guarantee the bulbs will sprout. If you bought this from co-op, I've no idea what their policy is) Some bulbs just don't make it through the dormancy period in the bag they're sold in, just like when you plant tulip bulbs, they don't always all grow come spring time. If it doesn't feel rotten (as in, it still feels firm when you squeeze it), I would give it a rinse and a scrub to get the mold growth off, then put it back in the tank and leave it alone for a few weeks.

Hey Steve, welcome! I'm over on the other side of the state in the Pioneer Valley. Any good aquascapng stores out your way? I've been wanting to drive out and hit up some stores in Eastern Mass. Your tank looks great.

Do you test nitrates? It would be good to know what the tank runs at, nitrate wise. Since your dosing easy green 2x per week, that would tell us if the plants are using it all up (f your ntirates test low). Some of the rotalas respond well to extra iron. If that were my tank, my next step would be adding easy iron and seeing if that perks it up. Easy green contains some iron, but not enough for iron demanding plants. It's also possible you got a particularly difficult/high light demanding rotala, like h'ra, and it's just not getting enough light. The UNS contrasoil is a nutrient rich substrate, and since you just set up the tank this year, I doubt you've depleted the nutrients in the substrate, so I don't think root tabs would solve this. Could we see a picture of the whole tank? Do you know the GH/KH of your water, and what temp is it running at? On a side note- That's a long time. I might cut that back to 8-9 hours, you might see a reduction in algae with a shorter light period.

Hi Alan! What type of substrate are you using? That will affect what you need to dose for fertz and root tabs. Not necessarily! Hydrocotyle tripartita, marselia crenata, and staurogyne repens can all carpet low tech tanks. Even monte carlo can work in med light and up. Dwarf sag is also an option. Seachem equilbrium is a good choice, which the co-op sells. I personally use GH Booster from Nilocg, as it's a better value than seachem and I remineralize a few hundred gals a week (my well water is basically RO). You can also run crushed coral in your filter or use wonder shells. The powered equlibrium is my preference as it's easy to measure how much Gh you're adding. This is an algicide, the active ingredient is glutaraldehyde (any product you see as "liquid carbon" usually has this main ingredient, I can think of 4-5 different brands of it) . Seachem excel is a very similar product, also with glutaraldehyde in it. The amount of carbon it releases is debated, but it's somewhere between very little to none. I personally prefer not to use it in my aquariums, but I'm the sort of hippie type that also is scared of pesticides on my food. Cory talks about excel in this video (the excel is discussed at 54:30). I'm actually curious why he developed and sells it, after highlighting the issues of it back in 2016 in this video. But lots of people use it and like the algae inhibiting benefits. The iron is shrimp and fish safe. Copper is what you want to look out for with shrimp and other inverts. It's good to add some iron, your tiger lotus will appreciate it. Basically to make a liquid all in one like easy green (or any of the other all in one ferts out there), they can't add very much iron to the mix or it precipitates out. So, many people like to dose extra iron. Iron, light, and nitrate levels play a role in giving red plants their color.

I'm not usually a swordtail person, but I saw this trio at the LFS and had to have them. Something about a solid red fish always gets me. One of the females recently dropped 60+ fry. These guys aren't colony breeders, though. They love slupring up their fry as quickly as possible. The parents in this video are hanging out in my guppy colony tank while the fry grow up in this tank.

I've kept these for a little over a year and raised several dozen fry to adulthood. They are probably my favorite nano fish, and I think I'll always have a tank of them. Their behavior is so much more intelligent compared to a tetra. Your female looks super healthy and plump. I bet she's full of eggs. Mine like to spawn early in the morning, and they like to spawn in dense plant mass. A cup of moss or carpet plant works well for this. The female will swim around and scatter her eggs, and the males will swim behind her and fertilize. The males seem to do lots of "shimmy" dancing during this. If you want to raise up the fry, you could put moss in a breeder box and scoop the female and a male into it in the evening. In the morning they'll spawn, then you can out the parents back in the tank later that morning and wait for the eggs to hatch in the moss (about 48 hour after spawning is when I see fry). The parents will eat their eggs and the fry, so if you want to raise them up it's important to separate them. I notice when one of my females is laying eggs, almost every male in the tank is trying to chase her. The males do seem to chase the females, but I've never noticed them doing it enough to distress the ladies. The females seem to just ignore the male if they're busy picking at a leaf or doing other fish stuff. I try to keep them in female heavy groups, 2 females per male at least. I think I've got about 15 in a 75gal community tank right now. They spawn every morning but I rarely see fry. Occasionally I'll see one fry, but then can't find it a few days later. I'll try to see if I can spot one tonight and get a video of it. I've also got swordtail fry in this tank who are getting big, and I think they've started eating the CPD fry. Over the summer I put the CPDs in a greenhouse tank with green water, and they bred like crazy. I scooped out 40 at the end of the season. Mine spawn every morning for about two hours, around 8am (before my tank lights come on). Watch for the two that go behind the rock and "hug" 😉 at :04 for about 10 seconds. Then the male lingers to finish fertilizing the eggs that she dropped.

Possibly colunmaris. From wikipedia: "An [columnaris] infection will usually first manifest in fish by causing frayed and ragged fins. This is followed by the appearance of ulcerations on the skin, and subsequent epidermal loss, identifiable as white or cloudy, fungus-like patches – particularly on the gill filaments. Mucus often also accumulates on the gills, head and dorsal regions. Gills will change colour, either becoming light or dark brown, and may also manifest necrosis. Fish will breathe rapidly and laboriously as a sign of gill damage. Anorexia and lethargy are common, as are mortalities, especially in young fish." Source: http://en.wikipedia.org//static/favicon/wikipedia.ico Columnaris - Wikipedia EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG You can find people on the internet recommending every type of antibiotic for columnaris, from erythromycin to kanamycin/metronidazole/nitrofurizone combo. I don't have first hand experiencing in what could work for this. I've lost fish to what I think was columnaris, but without a microscope and diagnositc testing there's no real way to know. Hopefully someone else can also chime in with experience successfully treating this. Simply discus forum lists some options for treatments written with discus in mind, but would work on many fish)- SimplyDiscus.com: Columnaris by Al Sabetta WWW.SIMPLYDISCUS.COM Columnaris spp. is a simple pathogenic gram negative bacteria. It is commonly found in soil, water and on healthy and sick fish. It's an opportunistic bacteria attacking sickened, weakened...

@PennyWow, those tanks are gorgeous!! Beautiful work, love the drift wood centerpiece in each, and how they all work together as a set. The mossballs and the round rocks work well together. Very very nice. I wouldn't be able to resist stock them, I'd do one color of shrimp in each - like red, blue and yellow neos, with a matching colored beta in each. Your willpower to hold off for a few months is impressive.