Chandra

Thank you so much @Ryan W. I compared both iPhone and camera finally. I debated alot and luckily bought a fuji xt-200 which I like transitioning from iPhone photos. Your advice was very well given.

Sera Micron and crushed vibra bites.

Cur down the lights for few days and you should be seeing some reduction in algae.

Guppy tank is beautiful too in a fluval flex.

You should definitely checkout the list from Aquarium co-op here. Here's another video recently low-tech plants that are good for you.

With your tank size, those fish are okay. Don't chase pH too much. Add crushed coral to your substrate to maintain pH drops. I really don't recommend pH and kH adjusters from API. Instead if you have really really soft water, you can use seachem equilibrium to harden water based on the species you have. Wonder shells are great too but they are costly I feel.

It depends but I would highly recommend. I didn't know about the quarantine process, burned my hands! Let me share my experience as a beginner about this. I always trusted my local store when I had my first few tanks based on their advice when I asked about cycling. When I pretended as if I didn't know about cycling, they told me the whole story correctly instead of vague answers like Petco that you can get fish on the same day. They do the quarantine process by monitoring fish but not treating them. So, if I saw a fish died in that tank, there are high chances to affect fishes in that tank. I bought some guppies and killies from the local store and didn't have any problem with so far. Same thing happened with Corydoras. Some sellers have fish that lived for a few months in their tanks. If you can trust the seller, you can get the fishes without quarantine I think. However, there have been instances where they get diseased due to stress during transportation. I recently got otocinclus from my local fish store and added them to my tank directly without any quarantine. However, out of 4, only two survived. I believe because most of them are wild-caught, making them carriers of worms and diseases from the wild. After a week, I noticed one of my healthy killifish I had camallanus worms and died. My killie fish was healthy before that. Luckily, I had Levamisole from Greg Sage handy and treated my whole tanks. So far, all fish survived. Here's what I do now after some lessons, every-time I add a medical dosage of salt and bring new fish, I monitor for the first two weeks, feed them well with frozen food or live food. Salt is good for osmoregulation and also helps treat few diseases. If I see any signs of illness like white poop, fish are not eating, white spots... etc., I hit them with meds accordingly. That's where the med trio was helpful. I was able to get my fish healthy without knowing what disease they had before after treating with meds. I agree that treating the right disease is best instead of a shotgun approach, but there are very few diseases I can still identify after I got six tanks with about 80 fish. Let me give you another approach I have been trying. I recently got rummy nose tetra (Couldn't resist seeing Cory's videos) from the Petco and hit them a med trio. Some of them had red gills that got cured, and few of them died. I was able to see capillary worms when I inspected a dead fish on a cheap microscope.Dosed with levamisole and the fish now are looking good and haven't had any deaths. So I was able to identify the disease and treat correctly but not always. In summary, I would say for a beginner, it will take time to identify diseases and treat, but the success rate seems to be okay with the shotgun approach, too with the med trio. Irrespective of whether you treat or not, I would highly recommend monitoring them in a separate tank for 2-4 weeks before you go with adding them to the display tank. It is always handy to have meds too.

Beautiful

No it won't. I had plenty of pink plants that needed easy iron dosing apart from easy green but go depending on the signs. if you see the pink plants not pink, I would dose easy iron. In general, I dose only one dosage of easy iron to keep my iron levels.

I would say put them in a quarantine time for a week and see if you see any signs of disease like not eating, stringy white poop, white spots on body or fungus, pop eye. I would really invest in med trio to help fish be safe. If you really want to save, then try Aquarium Salt. (Read about dosage here: https://www.aquariumcoop.com/blogs/aquarium/aquarium-salt-for-sick-fish) API General Cure work is same as Mardel Maracyn in the med trio. Do quarantine for atleast 4 weeks and that way you know if the fish is healthy.

I wanted to try a canister filter for 20g inside my room. I got an eheim 2211 deal and got to try. Any suggestions on setting up the canister filter media? People using canister filters, How do you handle power failures?

Do you recommend this setip for eheim 2211 too?

I went by advice @Cory's advice and had gravel in one of my tanks. My corys had no problems ever and they have been fed bood worms and they do great.

So cool.

I use Alum like @Irene and Select Aquatics recommends. "To remove organisms, snails and snail eggs, soak the plants in water dosed with 3 tablespoons of alum per gallon of water for 2-3 hours. Alum is not best for killing Algea." I found it to kill snails and keep nasty things out when giving plants to others. Just don't do it for long with too sensitive plants. I killed few floating plants letting them stay for long.

I really love Fluval 3.0 for its excellence at what it does.

I usually don't go by one inch fish per gallon rule. I have stocked 14 in a 10 gallon too. As long as its not way too crowded, they have spaces to swim and zones to have territories. Most of fish should be okay. Be sure to check the parameters though as heavy bio load can cause ammonia to spike up and never forget to keep up with regular water changes as per nitrates. As long as your filtration is good, you will be okay.

Aquariums keep surprising me. When I have setup my first planted tank, after the tank cycled I found a mysterious species moving across my aquarium. I panicked but I found it was a damselfly nymph. Its usually a pest that comes from plants. It could prey on fish so got rid of it. When I was setting my second tank, I ordered plants from another vendor for carpeting plants in mat size. To my surprise when I opened the peat, I found egg like balls and I was shocked again. The seller couldn't tell me what they were and why they were there. People told me they are eggs and what not but it turned out to be fertilizer. So funny!

Where do you buy a good starter culture

How do you keep up with so many tests and kits, @Irene?

Do you put bulk filter media at the top or bottom?

I'm going to try to my new otos in quarantine. Thanks for the tip.

Do you just dump into the tank?

I like that but I was hesitant because of the inactive ingredients.

I have few mystery snails in my tanks. How do you guys keep up with Calcium? I read on few sites that offer snello kits and calcium carbonate powders but I was looking for more of measurable dosages if any one is doing.