doktor zhivago

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

I turned on the tank light late last night after it had been dark for a long time and the plant was absolutely covered in snails. I knew I had a bunch of ramshorns but the amount that were out at night was staggering.....

Iron and phosphates are what grow hair algae for me but like the others pointed out be careful what you wish for 😂

The nitrite bacteria just take forever. Chemosynthesis of ammonia and nitrite produces orders of magnitude less energy than photosynthesis or carbon based heterotrophy, so nitrifying bacteria and archae just grow really really slow (think weeks to months). There's really no quick way to cycle without using filter media from another tank.

i put some root tabs in so we'll see what happens. i pruned all the pads back about 2 weeks ago and its already taking off again. i don't mind honestly if it struggles a bit i just don't want it to completely melt and rot. i'm glad i got the 'dwarf' bulb instead of the full size....

Got some new holes in my dwarf lily leaves. I have a mixed community tank of rasboras platys and cherry shrimp. There are also some scuds in the substrate but the platys brutally punish any that dare swim out in the open. Also none of the other plants that are much less exposed to the platys have any damage to them so I'm not convinced it's the scuds. The plant itself is enormous and very healthy so it doesn't seem like a nutrient issue? I don't give it root tabs even tho I've heard they're big root feeders because it's already so big I don't think it needs any help. Maybe I'm wrong about all of this and it is the scuds or a deficiency?

Harlequins are only shy until you get more than 10 of them. I will say that they are greedy little piggies and they give my platys as good as they get when it comes to feeding time. Harlequins won't seem very interesting or active until you get a bunch of them. After that you can't get them to chill out 😂 I've found my harlequins won't eat food off the substrate so I won't think they'd be a problem with any bottom feeding species. Unlike the platys they really only hit the food when it's falling and won't hunt for it on the bottom at all.

I'd be more worried about winning the lottery or being struck by lightning

Male shrimps are small and tend to be much less colorful. Mine are almost transparent. The females are largest and more colorful. Here's some of mine making babies in 20+ ppm nitrates

I'd say false julii too but I'm not an expert by any means.