Koi

For me anything under 20% I don’t dechlorinate. But this value entirely depends on how much chlorine/chloramine in your water. I usually dechlorinate during filling or after when I do bigger amounts but I know my water has very little chlorine or none at all.I have started and maintained tanks without it in the past but now I use it out of fear since the risk isn’t worth the savings. The quality of municipal water can change anytime so spending a little money as insurance gives me piece of mind. I would say put half dose at the start and the rest of the dose while filling the water or at the end to be safe.

Don't get me wrong, I completely agree with everything you said @Brandy. I just wanted to emphasize how important your point was. I have a tank that doesn't get water changes( except for when I remove plants and fish). I'm rather lucky that my gh is around the middle at 10 dGH so I don't really see much of the issues on both ends of the spectrum. Unfortunately for me I don't get to see any of my fish or shrimp in my tank. I have to push all the plants to one corner just so I can see 25% of the tank! The second part was more directed to @Angelfishlover and others. I can tell you don't need those kinds of tips from me!

I feel this is one of the most important parts that isn't talked about enough. This issue is often overlooked and becomes more apparent at higher stocking and higher plant mass. Not to say it's impossible, but I think there are a lot of benefits to change some water every now and again at least to replenish minerals. You might be able to get away with it by adding crushed coral so that when the tank gets too acidic it will dissolve the crushed coral and buffer up your water again. Other than that everybody has valid points and should be kept in mind.

Sounds like you have an ideal setup. I usually keep my guppies outside but when I have to pull them in for winter I keep them around 65-70 degrees, gh is about 10 dGH at around 6.4 ph. You'll have more leeway with water parameters if you buy assorted guppies/endlers which is what I did. I have noticed better coloration by increasing hardness but I don't it think its fully necessary. Regular water changes will replenish any used minerals and this is also a great option: If I read it correctly you keep danios in the tank, consider getting short tailed guppies or ones fast enough to keep up with the danios. Just how rambunctious danios can be, there is a possibility of fin nipping but not all the time. I feel guppies are literally bullet proof which is a curse and a blessing sometimes. Depending how you set the tank up under stocking may be the least of your worries!

Spirulina is said to help blues. I can’t say I see a substantial difference but I’m sure spirulina based food helps. I give my shrimp bloodworms which I think helps their coloration overall. Plus I think the extra protein helps during breeding.

Yes the plants do eat away at kh over time and suppose algae does as well. Ive also heard that nitrifying bacteria uses up kh but I don't really know if that is true. If you never did water changes you will see over time that both gh and kh starts to lower which is kind of the idea behind old tank syndrome. Also anything acidic will "eat away" at kh. So ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, and carbon dioxide will start chipping away at your kh if left unchecked.

I find that any kind of dipping is better for BBA or staghorn algae. If you are going to pull the anubias out of the tank. I think you might see better results spraying the leaves with hydrogen peroxide, you could even just pour a little on the leaves. You could dip the whole anubias in hydrogen peroxide for like 30 seconds but the key part is to wipe the spots off after. You could also soak old filter material or a sponge with hydrogen peroxide and scrub the leaves. I usually wipe the spots off with my fingers after spraying or scrub it with a soaked magic eraser/melamine sponge.

Have you tried using hydrogen peroxide?

With a little effort you can wipe it off. A lot of people might disagree with me but I add more phosphates to keep it at bay.

I have a guppy that has a black spot at the base of its tail (similar to an oscar) and a guppy that looks very close to yours. Both of their spots get really black. I could be wrong though, I've just never paid it any attention. Hopefully I haven't been killing my fish this whole time...

@tolstoy21 could you post the thread or give me a keyword so I can find it? Before I hijack this thread I'll just ask this. Does it waste water like a RO filter? Ive read somewhere that it takes 4 gallons to make 1 gallon of ro water and I don't think I can stomach waisting that much water haha

You've explained a lot for me Ive always been confused about that! My water comes in around 40 ppm nitrates and .5ish nitrite and Ive just been dealing with it. So far I can only get one of my tanks and my pond to bottom out on nitrates. I'm definitely gonna do some research on the resin filter I am a little curious now. Thanks @tolstoy21 @MJV Aquatics

My guppies do the same thing and I always attributed it to mating displays. When I feed or after a water change my guppies colors flash like crazy. Ive noticed the same thing when I add salt or minerals to a tank.

I can see some newish growth and it looks like there are some roots forming at the stem so your plant still can pull through. Without fully knowing how much you are dosing on the flourish, I would say you should up the dose if you are only doing whats recommended on the bottle. So maybe 1.5x or double the recommended. You mentioned your water wisteria was growing really well when you first added it to your tank and up until recently it has been dying back. I'm guessing this whole time you never changed your dosing and as plants get bigger their nutrient requirement follows suit. It could be something else but usually if a plant grows big and then later starts slowly dying off my first suspect is lack of nutrients. When there are no available nutrients in the water, the plant begins to consume its older leaves in attempt to create new ones. Later if you plan on getting a test kit and you are still having issues, come back with the water parameters and maybe we can try to solve the issue. But for now I would say adding more fertilizer into your weekly routine would be a good start. Give the plant some time and keep an eye out for new growth.

By far my favorite way of doing carpets, I completely bury my plants though. If you could...try to go for 2 pumps a week spread out or at least a pump every 4 days. Although your plant stocking is low I think the montecarlo would benefit with some more nutrients in the water. I always like to err on the safe side and offer more nutrients to the plants than try to walk the razors edge just cause its hard to determine how much a of a certain nutrient a plant will use. You are still well within range of time the plant needs to recover. Don't stress yourself too much about killing the plant best thing you can do now is to have a nutrient rich environment to give it the best shot of pulling through. It also sounds like you got a good bit of it under the substrate. That might be all you need, I often cut everything off down to the substrate and the roots will still shoot leaves up.

Hey @Juan colin a few things come to my mind as to what could be the issue, and I wanted to run some questions by you to see if we can narrow down the cause. Are you using fertilizers and can you give tank parameters? can you give a picture of the whole plant? It looks like you have some kind of sand which I don't think is a problem but could be a factor at it doesn't look like you have plant weights on it but let me know if thats the case. I'm thinking you either damaged the stem while planting or there is a lack of nutrients. You said there was a possibility that you might have damaged the plant during propagation which could explain the rotting stems. The first thing to address at this point is to take out the plant and cut off all the mush, if possible, try to cut one or two nodes above the rotting stem. I actually like to feel stems and cut it where its the most rigid that way you have a pretty strong base to plant into the substrate but the method entirely up to you.

Hey @JeffYouBetcha are you using any kind of fertilizers and can you post your water parameters? How long was the crinum in your tank before you considered it dead? Crinums grow pretty dang slow for me, everytime I move em it loses alot of its leaves. It takes me a few months for that plant to like me again and has gone a month without having any leaves too.

First I'm gonna say nice job on the planting! That is super flush to your substrate and I'm surprised you even got it to stick in between such large grains of gravel. So by looking at the monte carlo, scrap the propagating idea aside for now. It definitely looks like its still transitioning assuming that this picture is a recent one. It looks like there are diatoms but it also looks like its dying back a little(this part is to be expected). How long has the plant been in the tank? From the picture it looks like less then a month so the problems you are having are within the realm of issues you should expect to see if that is the case. It looks like the plant still needs more time to adjust so at this point I think all you can do is offer a suitable environment for the plant to thrive. Are dosing anything into the water column or are you mainly relying on the root tabs? Depending on how deeply you planted the monte carlo it could take a while for the roots to even reach the tabs. If you already using something like easy green in your tank then you pretty much have this part covered no need to dose. Until it reaches the root tabs, montecarlo will have to pull nutrients from the water so having some ferts available in the water will be helpful, but not necessary. Its gonna be rather hard to try to "clean off" the diatoms, I would say just leave it alone for a few weeks and keep an eye out for new growth. A lot of the runners will die/melt off too don't worry about that because new growth should be coming out of the gravel. This is the point where its crucial not to disturb the substrate in those areas. You want your montercarlo to get nice and established into the substrate so that way after a few months you can siphon mulm from there without worrying about pulling up plants. I would also say experiment with a couple of your other patches. I find that constantly cutting carpet plants promotes growth and helps train the plant to grow sideways. So in the meantime while waiting for the other patches to grow, I'll pick at least one patch where I cut basically down to the substrate leaving just the roots inside the substrate. You don't have to go that extreme but definitely cut anything that is dying so that the plant stops using energy to keep the leaf alive and grow new ones instead.

From just looking at the form of bacopa, I didn't really think I'd like it. But after keeping it for sometime, its become one of my favorite stem plants just cause its so easy to keep happy. Being that it is a slower grower compared to other stems, I find it much more forgiving if I miss a few days of dosing. Other stems I keep tend to stunt, or get holes if I ease up on my maintenance but the the bacopa always looks good and healthy. As others have mentioned I also think this is a very underrated plant and as I think about it I'm not sure why. The leaves and stems are a lot thicker and not as fragile as other stems when trying to move them. I'm more likely to prune/pick leaves on this plant just because it has this somewhat minty fragrance when you break it. And it seems like bacopa will grow to whatever height you allow it to grow (my tank is 30inches tall in this picture) Also, I was able to get this plant red without co2!

So Round 2! After realizing that maybe I didn't give my liliees enough dirt last year and my koi kicked up all the sand I cap I added, I decided to repot them again. This time I'm using 3 times the amount of dirt with extra fertilizer and red clay. From last year I noticed my lilies stopped growing around july and could only keep 2-3 lilies up till winter. A lot of new growth has sprouted since I repotted, hopefully this amount of dirt will be able to hold my plant over till the end of summer. This is in the bigger pots This is my solution to stop my koi from digging up the sand again. We'll see in a few months if adding all that dirt/ferts will backfire on me but I hoping that I can maintain a larger plant mass for much longer. Last year I got each pot to hold atleast 20-30 lilies and 3-4 lotuses for a good month or two until the plant stripped all of the nutrients out of my pond. Just two pots was able to keep my nitrates at 0 during the summer even with 5+ feedings a day to my koi. To add to that, my tap water comes in around 30-40 ppm nitrates which I find crazy that it got enough potassium and phosphorous from fish food/waste to deplete the all of that nitrogen.

I like to use a turkey baster to "dust off" my carpeting plants. After a month of two of letting it grow it and attach itself to the substrate you can go back siphoning it directly with the gravel vac. I won't go as far as shoving the vac into the substrate and let the rocks tumbling through it but I can put my vac directly over the plant and it will pull all of the mulm from the top. Could you post a picture of the plant? It sounds like your having hardships of a newer tank and your monte carlo is still within a transitioning period. To clarify what I mean, I give most of my plants 2-3 months as a transitioning window to adjust to lighting/ nutrient levels and for it to lose all its older leaves. If all that is true, most of that plant the came with the pot will eventually die off or get covered in algae due to different water parameters. If it is still growing I'd suggest now would be a good time to start propagating the new growth and get rid of some of the plants that are smothered with algae. As far as an alternative I've been really liking glossostigma elatinoides. I will say each kind of carpeting plant have their own quirks to keep them healthy and clean. Most likely you will be trading off one hassle for another so if you really like montecarlo over other carpeting plants It might be better for your to learn through trial and error with the same plant. But if its not growing to how you like, by all means definitely peep some other plants. Staurogyne repens is very cool carpeting plant. It is the slower growing side which has its pros and cons. The pro is, you don't have to maintain and trim the plant as often. In my non-co2 fish tank I haven't had to touch my s repens for atleast 6 months just because it has really grown. The con is it takes quite sometime for it fill out and it doesn't look too hot during transitioning. Another con I have for this plant is that it is a rather difficult to plant since mine grow really stubby, it doesn't offer much root to get anchored by the substrate. Compared to other carpeting plants where you just keep trimming the top and watch it fill, Ive had better luck by uprooting and splitting the stems off and replanting. so for this plant I feel the maintenance is a little bit more compared to others. Depending what is available to you look up hydrocotyles, pennyworts, and marsileas

Your light is working great. I’ll give more credit to you though, the tank looks super healthy!

Wait till you get a look at this hunk of junk I guarded one side when obviously I should have done both haha

You coulda fooled me man haha. I always felt that a bigger mistake was people confusing color temperature with spectrum. I'm not sure if I'm saying that right? Basically what I mean is as far as I can understand color temperature is how we perceive the light but I always see tons of websites that the kelvin rating will affect growth. You know I think the Fluval 3.0 is super cool but I feel like with all the choices I'll either have option paralysis or I'll throw my tank off balance every 2 weeks playing with the settings. Now the Kessil... thats a classy light I'm super jealous

Now that I think about it I agree, I may have overgeneralized a little. I was assuming if one was to spend the time to build LEDs they wouldn't go low lighting(my idea of low lighting are T12s). But I still think extending photoperiod on medium level lights can help with achieving a "high light" look i.e. bringing out reds/carpeting But maybe this is all from me misunderstanding why kind of light level I have. I personally don't know what is considered low light, medium light and high light so most times I'll measure by light duration.