Brandy

I feel your pain, though I have less light. I would suggest that you lower your light and bring it up more slowly. Basically, if you have lower light you have less nutrient use. As the plants grow they can use more light and nutrients and sort of adapt up--and growth should explode to crazy levels. Like in the garden, weeds are faster to adapt, and they will scale up use and production faster than the plants you are trying to encourage if you till the whole yard and hit it with miracle grow right after planting. So lower light, dose until you get to 10-20ppm nitrate, hold it there, once the algae slows down you can try nudging both up a little.

I will one day have Sarasa and Wakin goldfish. I don't know how, but it will happen--in an appropriate sized space.

This is something you can only find with experience, as your particular conditions (light and availble nutrients, types of plants, etc) will be unique. Direct application to the worst areas with a syringe OUT of the water (draining the tank to below the affected plants) is what worked the best for me. I would caution you to never exceed the dose of excel on the bottle--it can use up the oxygen in the water and will stress your fish if you do. I would look at excel as a stopgap solution while you sort out a way to balance the tank. Lower your light by slow increments and possibly increase the fertilizer. There is no way to permanently eradicate the algae while an imbalance exists.

I also do not want to touch the politics referenced here. For my own personal reasons, I avoid facebook. I miss out on certian content that way--contests, some sailing group anouncements, etc. I have a few personal friends who still use these groups and they often update me personally on any important local things I have missed. But as a hosting platform Youtube is unbeatable, and I would not think there is a technically feasible substitute available. While I sympathize with the dilemma, I think this is part of the choice we have to make when deciding to use "free" platforms to access and host content. I wish you well in your decision.

True, my puffers do not always eat the whole snail, the shrimp eat the rest.

It is normal. Snails or similar will eat that off for you, or you can lift it from the tank and just rinse it off. It eventually will go away on it's own.

They are good guys in my opinion.

These are also known as pond or bladder snails. they do multiply rapidly and loaches, cichlids, and puffers think they are delicious. That size is mostly full grown. If you get too many, there are many fish that will either eat the snails (see above) or eat the eggs (adult livebearers mostly, like guppies).

I feel like they don't lend themselves as well to variation, but in my case I think that might be a win? I would like to have one thing that bred true in my mutt guppy grow out tanks. Considering whether that makes sense. (No. No, it does not!) If i had room for 2x the size of guppy tanks... like picturing a couple of 40 breeders, one with each strain of platies, selling all the ofspring in batches, and having female guppies in one and males in the other...Everybody would get tons of food... Maybe next year, when I move to a larger place, lol.

anubias, java fern, and java moss can get overwhelmed by algae in high light, but if you have layers they make a great understory. Like a big dwarf waterlily or under a piece of driftwood.

Monte carlo is the flat out EASIEST EVER. you have to be a little patient, but it will get there.

hmm. You could do stem plants of a number of types. Like Ludwegia, rotala, etc. Swords. Vallisnaria. hydrocotyle. Telanthera. Hairgrass... I think you have a lot of options.

I think you can probably instant cycle the new tank if you have a cycled sponge filter or can do a media interchange like you are suggesting. I would just keep both tanks running and move a fish or two over every few days. I think filtration is largely a matter of preference. I don't use HOB, so I am not a good source for info on those.

seems win/win! If the shrimp aren't getting enough food though, you can put the pellets somewhere the oto can't reach. As tiny as he is, that may be a challenge!

Duckweed is practically free for the asking. You need to find someone local who has it and they will generally happily give you a handful. Check sites like craigslist and offerup, whatever your local version is.

I hate to admit this, but I am still waiting for those fabled nitrates everyone keeps talking about. I have overstocked bare bottom growouts with just water lettuce, duckweed, and hornwort and a small corner sponge filter, and I still have to fertilize. Now, they are ugly and messy (no pretty scape), but they don't get high nitrates...ever. Unless I get crazy with the fertilizer, I can't even find nitrates. I have noticed that the 3 cichlids are MESSY eaters, and that probably is a factor, most of my fish are not.

how much light in the room? Tank lights are cheap on amazon, but if you have NONE, and don't want them, I would say "bright indirect light" from a window like you might grow a house plant in will probably grow duckweed nicely. The trick with duckweed is to throw away some every week or two. It is removing fish waste from your tank that way, but nicer than scooping up poop.

I have tried dirt capped with sand and found it really lovely stuff to plant in. It makes a mess if you have to move plants often, but it is pretty good for stable set ups. I have also tried a bit of plain sand with some gravel on the bottom in the back of the tank. My goal here is to keep a shallow sand bed CLEAR of plants, while allowing them to grow in the deeper areas with gravel. I have found that also works. In that case I put the root tabs where the gravel is and the plants will hopefully stay there. However, I have found that if you do this you want the sand and gravel to EXACTLY match in color. I have tried a white sand "beach" in front of dark substrate and both end up mixed. It is shocking how well even a few snails and shirmp will move stuff around over time. The one thing about sand is that it can end up with fish waste collected on top, and that can be unsightly. for that reason I am about to add some cories to my larger tank, in my smaller tanks shrimp do a really good job of stirring the surface and breaking that down.

I thought I might actually do some strains of these...I really like the scarlet red ones, and the red or red/gold wag tails. Since my guppies are all shades of blue mostly, I thought they might make a good counterpoint, but I keep telling myself to cool my jets, I don't have that much room!

Mine was a madagascar lace fern. I got one and put it in a tiny 5g portait tank, where it is obvoiusly too crowded, but still gorgeous. I call it godzilla. Now I would like to sucessfully get scarlet temple mini to be that shocking shade of purple under the leaves...

After a web search to compare photos, I am gonna guess livingstoni, based on the marking on the tail and dorsal. You will have to keep us posted!

I remember that video too, bala sharks specifically. Was about to search for it, but @FishyThoughts was faster. One option might be to have some of those fish together while they are small with the plan to rehome some when they get larger. This is VERY dependent on your ability to actually DO that. I have a tank with a tiny trio of blue acaras. They will be crowded when fully grown, but right now they are about as long as a female adult guppy, a few of which they are sharing space with. I want a pair, so I picked 3 hoping for at least one male and one female. I am enjoying them now, but I KNOW they will sell well when they are larger, so even if I ended up with 3 males, I could easily sell two, or even take them back to the LFS where I got them. If you think in those terms, who will want your cast off fish? Is there a market? Or would a couple of 12" fish not have anywhere to go?

Algae is neither good or bad. It is weeds. If you like it, keep it. If you don't, fight it. Even the notorious black beard algae can be beautiful on a piece of hardscape, provide cover for fry, and help to purify your water. Blanket weed, which I personally hate, makes happy shrimp habitat.

I would do this just as you say. I have decided to retroactively treat ALL my tanks recently after becoming suspicious (the educated, seeing symptoms kind, not the paranoid, eeww worms! kind). I would have spent less treating on the way in. Internally, my tank isolation is abysmal, due to sharing equipment around, so everybody is getting dosed.

This is a highly arbitrary time, that takes the average of the amount of time for parasite life cycles. We have no idea what parasite we are fighting most of the time, and so we repeat every 2 weeks. My first shrimp had a parasite called scutariella. It was easy to identify, and easy to see respond, and it has an odd life cycle tied to the shrimp molt cycle. I did weekly single treatments for a month and beat it. In this case I KNEW what I had to deal with. When we don't know, we have to guess and then we take the average lifespan. Just like the first time you try a recipe it is probably better to follow the directions first before you start guessing and improvising.