doktor zhivago

I just let the poop go into the gravel and the detritus worms and scuds and copepods and everything else goes to town on it. The surface gravel itself is clean from the snails and shrimps and pleco. I don't think I've gravel vacced since I started the tank.

If you buy aquarium coop plants you're gonna get ramshorns 😄

Yeah this is probably what's happening. I was thinking your ph was much lower than 7.2 and was falling into the 5s or 6s which would indeed cause a cycle crash as the enzymes in beneficial bacteria stop working efficiently at those levels. I think you're doing everything right just gotta wait on that filter to catch up. Studying how pH interacts with water chemistry and microorganism biochemistry is like communicating with a Cthulhian old one. Its so complicated it leads only to insanity. Every aspect of interacts with every other aspect of in this giant web of cause and effect. That's why I just go the easy way with pH adjustments and buffer buffer buffer.

OK I see now. I'm assuming the water is just very soft from the tap and the ph is crashing as the snails use up what little hardness there is. Maybe a buffer solution with aragonite or crushed coral would be more useful than chasing exact numbers? I just feel like that's a path to madness as raising pH naturally uses up alkalinity which lowers hardness which eventually lowers pH and the cycle continues forever...

2 things: First: I think your filter will catch up and you'll be fine soon just some water changes as noted above. Lower pH is actually good for ammonia toxicity as it gets protonated easier and forms less toxic ammonium salts. Second: Why is your ph dropping so much with a water change? What is the pH in your tank? What is the pH of your tap water? pH forms a complex with hardness and alkalinity. It's tough to move one without moving all the others. I would be very hesitant to try and chase ph around with baking soda without more context here.

I've had good luck floating pearlweed it sends roots out all over its stem. Not sure what you mean by messy tho? I've never had any issues with hornwort other than having to take out a couple handfuls every water change

It's more about variety than one particular food. Same as your own diet. If you just eat potato chips all day everyday it's not very healthy but eating a bag every now and then isn't really problematic

Fish will eat until they become constipated and sick, especially greedy pig betta fish. The digestive tract will become swollen and press on their swim bladder making it hard for them to stay properly oriented. Frozen brine shrimp are not particularly nutritious either. You want a wide variety of foods, some combination of flakes and pellets for the betta would be better than feeding the same thing every day. Frozen foods are a good treat once a week or so but not an every day food.

Java moss is very slow growing. It's not gonna do much for your nitrates. You really want fast growing floating plants for a refugium. The access to atmospheric co2 really speeds up growth and therefore nitrogen take up.

Smaller fish and especially live bearers are only gonna live for 2-3 years or so. Circle of life and all that. I think some of the larger livebearers like mollies may live a little longer. In the wild these live bearers do a boom and bust cycle with seasonal floods in wet and dry seasons so there's no real selection pressure to make them long lived. They pop out a bunch of babies when conditions are good and hope that enough survive until the next wet season to start the cycle again.

I usually do 25-30% once a week or so. I find the nitrates climb too high if I let it go for two weeks. I try to stay between 20 & 40 ppm nitrates, even tho it's fine to get higher, that's the sweet spot I try to keep the tank in.

Not scuds. Scuds are more shrimp like with their segments. An ostrocod has a bivalve shell which seems to be what those are. Some fish should eat them up if you're having a problem.

I think it would be best to use a professionally formulated dechlorinator that is properly ph buffered and everything else rather than try and home brew some chemicals.... They're not that expensive

I run a coop sponge for bio but I found it had basically no mechanical filtering. Upside is I basically never clean it and it chugs away just fine. I got a sicce shark internal filter for mechanical filtration with a fine polishing sponge and it seems to do exactly what you were describing where the sicce filter is filled with gunk after a couple weeks and the ac filter is pristine. I find it's easier to clean the internal one cuz it just pops off a magnet and I can wash it out without all the crud getting back into the water like when you try and pick up a sponge filter.

If you have ammonia and nitrite the tank isn't cycled. Three weeks seems pretty quick for any kind of cycle. The API test uses a salicylate based ammonia test, if I remember right, which is what fritz complete recommends. However I think prime, as noted above, has issues with that test. Sachem recommends using their test kit instead.

I have liquid rock water and high ph and it doesn't read well on the ac test strips. I find test strips not really helpful if you're looking for actual exact numbers. They're good for just checking on things and making sure nothing has gotten too crazy in there. I highly recommend a liquid test kit like the API one for getting actual numbers out of your nitrogen cycle especially for your first tank. The test strips really aren't helpful for new tanks at least in my experience. Almost every fish bred and raised in the US is on hard water. The exception being the pacific north west because they get their water straight out of glaciers with no dissolved solids. Most fish are perfectly fine in hard water and higher pH. A couple leafs in your tank are also not going to move your ph with all that alkaline buffer you have in there.

You will never get rid of them completely without major chemical intervention. Just learn to accept your new pets.

I just wait until mine starts pulling back some leaves and then feed it again

It exists in the wild. The one bred and kept in stores and by hobbyists is semicincta. It's just called kuhli loach for whatever reason.

The actual species p kuhlii isn't the one in the aquarium hobby. P semicincta is the fish commonly known as kuhli loach

I'm still not convinced it's the ramshorns. Only the lilly is getting damaged but they're all over all the plants, so I suspect it might be my scuds nibbling on the leaves and the snails just taking advantage of the damage already done. I recently switched from feeding only dry foods to feeding bbs several times a week and I think the lack of flakes and pellets hitting the substrate has made all my inverts unhappy. I had some shrimps suddenly die and the water clouded up and I had to get an extra filter to clean it out. I switched back to feeding bbs only once a week and my tank seems to be doing better already in the past couple days and I see the shrimps being much more active and hiding less. It's endlessly fascinating how fragile these mini ecosystems are and how hard it is to balance everything right

My patties made a baby

I went from two to probably over a hundred now. They don't seem to bother anything. Most don't get big for whatever reason. I usually just take a bunch out every time I water change.

I take about half my hornwort out once every week or two. You gotta prune it back hard or it will take over the entire tank in a month or two. It will grow back fine

It's just diatoms. Water changes only make it worse. You just have to let them run their course