Tanked

Aquarium Coop 1# Crushed Coral is available in Vancouver for $6.99 CA at April's Aquarium, as is Easy Green, $12. CA, and Equilibrium. I have no idea how much shipping is. Your plants will benefit from a liquid fert. in the water column. Those are the two products I use. I have never used Equilibrium. It might help, but it does not have the nitrogen. You could use Flourish Nitrogen, but you still need all of the nutrients. Your zero nitrates is just an indicator of a bigger issue. FN isn't going to do that by itself. Your PH is already 7+, baking soda raises PH. Baking soda is not Calcium Carbonate. Calcium in plant food will effect your GH Algae is not really a problem as long as it is not denying light to the plants. It does compete with the plants for food. As the plants recover the algae should diminish. I know it is frustrating. Sometimes even the easy plants won't grow in some aquariums. At this point I would strive to keep things simple and avoid setting up a chem. lab. Every change you make will take weeks to see results. If you make multiple changes, you won't know which change worked.

On Tuesday my local paper ran a story on where I could see the eclipse next Monday. This time I'm going to be ready!

Craig's List or similar

Every network had a live NASA feed, so I watched on the television! It was just like watching a fireworks show on television! Down here in the corner of the state celestial events are usually blotted out by clouds so I did not plan ahead. Not to worry! Todays morning paper ran a whole section about the eclipse and where I could see it next Monday. It was fun watching the neighbor's security lights and automatic headlights on the cars come on.

The pictures are fine. What costs $40. plus shipping? If you are on a tight budget, a clean limestone rock will (very slowly)raise Ph and calcium, as will crushed coral, egg shells, oyster shells, cuttlebone for your birdcage... 1 lb. Crushed coral or a pack of (3) Wonder Shells from the Co-op are $5. plus shipping. You don't need much. There are chemical options, but I won't go there. Your plants are starving. You can remove all of the damaged leaves. They will not recover. I usually leave one or two to act as an indicators. Some of your plants have melted back, but may still be alive at the base removing them will be a judgement call. Initially, I would consider adding some root tabs. My theory being that they will deliver the ferts to the damaged plants quicker. After that, a liquid complete fertilizer should be good enough. I like the planted crevices in the rocks. Do you know what kind of rock that is? If we are talking about a ten gallon tank, then regular maintenance is important. The smaller the tank, the faster things can go wrong. I am guessing that the algae is consuming the nutrients faster than the plants. In addition to the gravel cleaning, you can use a toothbrush and syphon on the planted rocks, or you could spot treat with 3% Hydrogen Peroxide from the market. If you don't have one already, put your lights on a timer for 7-8 hours. Remember that recovery takes weeks, not days!

Problem #1 is zero nitrates. You want a minimum of 20 ppm. 20-50 is considered safe. The pictures are always a good idea. They enable us to see what you are seeing. What size aquarium are we talking about? What kind of lighting if any? Do any of the plants have pinholes in the leaves? For clarity: Are you giving a single Flourish dose twice a week, or a double dose twice a week? I don't use Flourish and would suggest Easy Green or another all-in-one product. Depending on which plants you have, root tabs might be in order. @Seattle_Aquarist might be able to lend some assistance here.

Feeding the fish was actually my reason to try. Not knowing they were voracious plant eaters, I adopted Silver Dollars. I had to separate the fish from the plants with an egg crate fence. The small fish can come and go, but the SDs can't. The theory was that invasive duckweed would pass through the fence and supplement the food supply. The HOB is likely part of the problem. The small colony I now have is growing behind the fence, behind a Hornwort island, inside a floating ring. There is no water movement on that side of the tank. The best part for now is: the ring floats with the help of two wine corks. The DW is growing above the waterline on top of the corks. There is some growth beyond the ring.

Not really enough information to work with here. Post your water parameters and a photos if you can. It could be melt, and it could be due to a lack of nutrients. Do you add fertilizer? Is the rhizome on the Anubia firm? Do you have fish, and are they healthy?

FWIW I checked my 29 several times yesterday after the lights came on. The Embers are the smallest fish in the tank so I have to look for them. Each time I checked, At least three of the Embers were in the thick of it swimming with the SAEs, Bloodfins, Serpae, and Cherry Barbs. Mollies or any active midlevel swimmers, are probably a good choice for a dither fish.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMtLdE5Zq-8 I've killed at least 14 of the 'top 5 easy plants', so I can definitely relate.

At this point, you could place a new cartridge in the proper slot and leave the old cartridge in the filter box for a few days- week. The blue screen has bacteria on it, and your sponge filter is working for you, so you are good. Your HOB's biggest function is mechanical filtration, referred to as polishing the water. Rings and such are for bacteria. You can add them to provide more surface area for the bacteria, but they don't do much for removing fine particulates. Filter sponges will do both. Filter Floss/Poly fil from the craft store will help polish the water. I'm not sure about the "micro bubbles", post a picture if you can.

Nerites are explorers. Yours might be looking for food or just wandering. Mine have been in, on, and under the HOB, but otherwise haven't ventured above the rim. They can and will spend days above the waterline. I know very little about snails, so I have wondered : Do aquatic snails loose some of their ability to stick to a surface when they leave the damp, humid, aquarium environment?

I have a group of six. Their activity varies with the time of day. One or two of them will swim with the big fish occasionally or at feeding time, but they mostly stay close to cover.

A slotted spoon was actually my first thought, until I got distracted and started wondering how to do larger areas. Maybe you can design a shell rake. I would also investigate a 'spider', or kitchen skimmer used for skimming debris from soups and adding and removing food from fryers. The shells I'm dealing with are about the size of the tip of your pen.

I have to run with the Aquatics Specialist on this one. She erred on the side of caution. First, the title may be nothing more than a word on the name tag. Her skill/experience level may or may not be on par with yours. She also has to deal with customers whose experience levels range from zero-decades every day. Was your aquarium ready for 12 pygmy cories? Probably, but what if you were wrong?

I agree with all of the suggestions above. It is not the tank size, but most likely something about the room lighting or placement of the aquarium in the new location that has them spooked. Light, shadows, and room traffic are just some of the possibilities. Explanation: When my Barb tank was moved into a corner to make room for another tank on the same wall, the TFBs began to spend a lot more time on the narrow side of the tank that was now near the blank wall. They will line up as a group and stare at their reflections in the glass. Six fish become twelve fish at night. This behavior began only at night, and only after the tank was moved. I haven't seen this behavior in the daylight. Will they come up to feed? Activity in all of my tanks changes according to time of day and whether or not I am in the room. If there are times of the day when the room is not in use for long periods, I would carefully peek around the corner, (or use a fishcam as I do) to see if their behavior has changed.

My 75 has a UGF that covers about 90% of the tank, with 2 risers and powerheads. The powerheads provide water movement and aeration throughout. The tank also has a Marineland Emperor 400 HOB. Either filter is adequate by itself. It is a ridiculous amount of filtration, but the HOB was a gift, so I was required to use it.

I've been meaning to ask this question for a long time. I have hundreds of bladder snail shells in my gravel substrate. They aren't noticeable until I gravel vac, and then it looks a little like snow tumbling in the tube. The syphon isn't strong enough to pull them out of the tank. I'm guessing that my water is so hard that it takes the shells forever for them to dissolve. For my problem, I'm considering a much shorter tube, If your shells are larger, what about a cat litter scoop?

If you run with the pea gravel idea, shop around and take a water bottle or shop on a rainy day. Different stores source their gravel from different vendors, resulting in different colors. There will almost always be a damaged bag, and a little water will tell you what it will look like in the aquarium. There may also be a healthy discount on a damaged bag. You might also look into horticultural sand. This will be a coarse sand, but smaller than gravel.

It was! Much like your photo, It was the only time that I did not have to line up nose to butt in a long line or do circles in a ring somewhere.

You have a lot of algae, and it does look like it is on the roots along with the debris. Because of this, it is reasonable that the algae and Duckweed are competing for nutrients. The browning could also be sunburn. It may be just an illusion, but the algae on either end of the aquarium looks healthier. Surface tension is holding the bubbles in the duckweed because that water is not moving on the surface. It could also be from a contaminant, your water conditioner, ammonia, etc. I don't think your water is as stagnant as you think it is. Some of the sideways Duckweed could be trapped in the surface film or actually moved by the water. Your side mounted filter is moving water down and across the tank until it circles around. I don't know if the DW inside the ring is left over from when you installed the ring, or it got blown over or under the ring. Either way it looks good, and I'm a big fan of the side mounted filters. Take all of this with a grain of salt, because it is coming from someone who struggles to grow Duckweed. My best efforts so far are inside a protective ring, behind a floating mass of Hornwort.🦆

I use a Little Giant PES 130-PW. 130 GPH for pumping water back into the aquariums <$40. With the DIY pvc hook and no check valve, it will syphon water out. It is a little slow, but that gives me time to do maintenance, fill buckets ,etc. It won't disturb the gravel substrate in tanks 29-75gl.

Ditto is very photogenic. I had the opportunity to ride on a New Mexico ranch as a teen; I'd love to repeat the experience.

At 4:24 he adds "a little bit of baking powder" to the batter.🤣

My favorite is whichever plant is alive this time next year. I have had mixed results with all of them, but I think Hornwort has proved to be the most interesting. Over time, it has: grown fast enough to be given away and used as fish food. tumbled endlessly in the flow from the HOB formed impressive long root systems formed dense floating island homes for the bladder snails, which in turn became fish food. Suffered a 100% die off