Brandy

Re: light dimming, I think I am a dork and was thinking of the amount of dimming I got relative to NO LID--which obviously would be brighter. Anyway, it bugs my old eyes, but not the plants, and the fish prefer it.

I don't see maracyn damage my cycle on established tanks either, but a full 5 day course on a brand new tank might mean you need to watch for an ammonia spike. However if you have had losses from one year old fish, I would be suspicous of a parasite load rather than a bacterial infection. Parasites can be silently present for a long time, and then with age or stress of any kind suddenly manifest.

😲I don't think either the strips or the master kit would work with that many tannins--well, it works, but reading it would be difficult. I could probably figure out how, using serial dilutions with a known value, you could make a tannin color corrected chart, but you would have to do it again with each test, because you would have different amounts of tannins each time. I never thought of this!

+1 for rabbit snail?

One time I set up a tank and added rocks and new plants, new substrate...3 days later I realized there was a guppy fry in there. I didn't do it. I think it was a case of spontaneous generation.

Like @TheDukeAnumber1 says, they can survive a little bit, but likely would have to get back in the water eventually. I have pulled them out in a handful of plants before and then found them an hour later. they were still damp the whole time, so they made it, but they weren't very happy with me.

You can. But really, even leeches are a snack--they just gross me out sometimes.

Probably just a hitchiker snack.

ah. hard to tell from the pic, could be some kin d of larva, but maybe leech? I would probably leave it out, just in case.

They could be anything mosquito larvae, detritus worms, planaria, leeches. We can't tell you without a pic. However they are likely all delicious for the angelfish. 😎

That is fair, but as far as I know this is not an option for him, he will dry out, or starve.

No. He will not make it. It is the shrimp equivalent of deciding to jump out a 5th story window of a burning building.

I used to think it was weird that people would say "I think I have 6 of those fish". Then I put khuli loaches in a very heavily planted tank. I don't see them all at the same time for weeks. But that made sense. Today I couldn't find the 3rd Electric Blue Acara. I can tell them apart. I knew who was missing. There are very few hiding places since the driftwood is still floating on the surface in that tank. I fed--still no fish. I moved the floating driftwood--no fish. I checked behind the sponge filters and under the heaters. Behind all the plants. 5 minutes later, there were 3 electric blue acaras cleaning up the remnants of the food. HOW? Do you have any mystery dissapearing fish?

Additional help: you are doing a "fish in cycle" in case you want to search more info. Stability is bacteria that takes time to grow. It may speed your cycle process but it doesn't help your fish right now. Prime is a dechlorinator--on a well you don't regularly need it. BUT. Prime will also bind up the ammonia in a way that makes it less harmful to your fish while the bacteria get established. It will still show on your test kit, so you will add the prime daily until the test kit reads 0 for ammonia and nitrite. I have had very good luck with this method and tend to use this method when I don't have a used filter handy to jumpstart a tank and have an emergency fish situation--like they all had to move to a bucket suddenly.

You can glue the slate to each other to secure it. I have a piece hiding the horizontal air lift intake in my guppy auto-sorter tank, and it makes great walls for holding back substrate like a little retaining wall. You can also use it as a base to attach driftwood to.

I have them also. They do well and I have added packing tape to the open ends because I found otherwise I would get fish food and pest snails in between the twin walls. They did seem to dim the lighting more relative to glass, but not enough to be a problem. EDIT: I realized after I wrote this that they dimmed the tank relative to NO LID. I was surprised that it made as big of a difference as it did, visually, but my plants are fine. Read on for actual statistics proving that this doesn't dim light more than glass.

I have been wishing I had room for platies lately, I like the sunset variatus and the scarlet red ones. I have recently discovered that I have room for a few more bettas, so I have been very pickily and casually hunting for a nice blue marble. haha. Next year, when I have more room, I plan to start breeding some german blue rams and electric blue acaras, inspired by @Fish Folk. I also really want to breed corys. I told myself I would nevver have a "fish room" but my resolve is starting to weaken. So many adoroble baby fish...

Oh! one other thing, you can either add a background (I reccomend black for this tank--you can paint it with cheap acrylic craft paint, or use vinyl) or hide all the cords by taping them along the corners and rim. That tidies things up really quickly.

I think you have healthy looking new plants, I see amazon and ozelot swords, hygrophila corymbosa maybe, and lymnophilla sessifolia maybe. They appear to be placed appropriately for their size. The crypt will love root tabs in its top level, as it won't get enough out of the gravel. Also, it doesn't need bright light, so if you get algae, maybe move that level down a little. Your rocks are many different colors, and all very high contrast. In a small tank that can look a little busy at first. If you really love them all, that will calm down as they age, grow algae, and plants grow in around them. If you are still concerned, I would try picking a more unified theme, with rocks in just one or two color families--all shades of brown and red, or all shades of black and gray. However, the black substrate can be really fun with high contrast rocks popping out of it too, my teen would LOVE the black and red combo. As @Squeegee79 says, it is really up to you!

I would say yes, a waste of money. I would also say that it is toxic stuff and should be used with caution. Seriously. I have used it, it can be rough on fish if you dose the full amount, and it is not good for you either--keep away from children, keep off skin. Think of it like "fish safe" round-up herbicide. Don't be too cavalier, this stuff is potentially very bad for you and your tank. It is good at killing certain types of algae, but it is a stop gap while you sort out your tank at best. When I used it, there was a lot of pearling for the first few hours after it was used, but I did not notice any dramtic growth improvement.

I am a big fan of one or two under sized heaters rather than big ones, and I place them horizontally at the gravel level, so that even in a big water change they are always submerged. I buy cheap ones off amazon but then use a digital (cheap) thermometer to keep an eye on the temp, especially as seasons change. My house is realtively warm in the summer, and cooler in winter, and the cheap heaters need a little tinkering to get them set just right. But as @Frank said, if one fails you still have some heat. If one get's stuck "on" you still can't cook your fish. I currently have 2 50w heaters in my 40g, and I like that best but I think I could have done 25w heaters because my house isn't so cold and the particular fish are not so fragile. I have one, more expensive heater (slightly, it is "vivosun" also off amazon) that is oversized at 200w in a 29g. It features a digital controller that is reliable and really easy to set and it is made of titanium instead of glass. I like the controller a lot. If I were doing it again I would choose 2 50w of that brand though. EDIT--or just one, again, I don't think I needed as much power as I have.

I think the problem is most of us don't do dry start and don't know. I do garden. I do start seeds and so on, and when you get mold it means a lack of ventilation. If you have mold in a few isolated areas you can try upping the ventilation and then manually removing the moldy bits. you may have more luck trying to search for mold solutions in terrarium building. What plants are you working with, and how long have they been in, how big are they? Can you post a photo? Personally, I considered a dry start method at the very beginning, but now I do not think I would ever do that--I have learned too much to think it would be a very good idea in most cases, and I am struggling to think of a situation where it makes sense. Once the plants have been started dry, they will have to convert when you flood and mostly I feel you will lose the ground you gained by starting dry to begin with.

This looks to me like filimentous diatom algae which is a normal part of the ugly duckling stage in many tanks. It will subside on its own, and many kinds of fish will happily eat it.

I even buy them used. No issues. The only tank failure I ever had was my parents tank in the 80s, I have no memory of the brand though, and I think the stand was at fault, not the seals, as the whole bottom panel cracked due to flexing. I think I am more worried about the glass being cracked or scratched when I buy them.

I think they are java fern. I did a google image search and found a larger version, and a youtube video of the whole tank. I am linking it, but as it appears to be all in cyrillic script, it isn't much help for me. It might be regular java fern or "trident"? A local seattle store has some in its display tanks that is super narrow like that. Lots of kinds of anubias, the whole layout looks like it is all epiphytes, with some fissidens moss thrown in too.