RockMongler

I don't know if those are water taps. I do know the co-op does sell these for air, though: https://www.aquariumcoop.com/collections/air-pumps/products/individual-metal-air-valves-5-pack

It's almost certainly that you have already had hydra around in your tank, but the BBS are the perfect food for hydra to proliferate very successfully. I know my tank has hydra, but 99% of the time I don't see them. I only see them if I end up feeding too much and my tank gets out of balance. BBS are the perfect sized food for hydra, and you just gave them a great big pile of food.

There most certainly is Nitrogen gas (N2) from the atmosphere in your tank, but it's fairly inert, and not something your plants or fish make use of. You specifically need nitrogen compounds (ammonia, nitrite and nitrate) for them to be readily available to your plants/beneficial bacteria. It's like the same way you could grind up a chunk of iron to powder, and mix it into your food, but most of that iron is going to just come out the other end rather than ending up in your bloodstream and tissues. For things to be bioavailable to most organisms, it has to be in a specific compound/form the organism 'knows' how to properly process.

I have gotten several Nicrew lights for smaller tanks. I have 2 of the 18 inch ones (one classic, one skyLED for my 10 gallon), and 1 of the 30 inch classic, with the nicrew single timer pro for my 20 long. The 18 inch classic has been going just fine for a year, and the 30 inch has been running for like 6 months. No complaints, and I actually have to run the 30 inch at 50% because at 100% I got silly amounts of algae growth.

Everyone in my tank loves soilent green, though the white clouds I have aren't great at going for it on the bottom (they tend to gobble small bits I stir into the water column sometimes) . But, snails, shrimp and hillstream loaches are good at finding and eating it.

Depending on your air pump and the sponge filter you have, it's built in controls might not be enough. You might need to get a an actual controllable valve (something like this: https://www.aquariumcoop.com/products/ziss-premium-air-valve?). Also, if you have one of the never-clog airstones the co-op sells, taking and pulling out the disks might not be the answer, you might want to compress the disks you have more. The more tightly you screw down the airstone, the more fine the bubbles are, which could help with your issue.

In my experience (Not with reticulated hillstream loaches, but other hillstream loach species), they can be a bit pushy, but not necessarily in a way that leads to physical harm to other residents of the tank. It mostly looks like they kind of ignore the others and bump them out of the way when they want to travel from point A to point B. I know my 4 beaufortia hillstream loaches (in a 20 long) sometimes harass shrimp and snails that are in 'their' territory (and that mostly ends up being knocking snails off rocks, and bumping into shrimp to chase them off), but they don't pay much attention to my otocinclus. I have a pseudogastromyzon hillstream loach that was an absolute mega-asshole-bully to all the other creatures who hang around at the bottom of the tank. He would aggressively chase off everyone into hidey holes so the bottom of my tank looked fairly lifeless, despite the fairly large number of other loaches, snails, and shrimp in the tank. He has his own tank now.

You can feed them, but you need to keep in mind, that will introduce extra ammonia and nitrites into your system. As long as you keep an eye on it, and are judicious with water changes, you should be OK feeding them. On the other side, fish can be fine for days without constant feeding, and it can help keep the tank more clean, and introduce less ammonia and other waste into the water. It comes down to what you are willing to do and deal with from day to day. I know last time I had to put a fish in a hospital/quarantine tank (I had a loach with a fairly large wound on top of their head, so I wanted to keep a close eye on them), I put salt in the water, and didn't feed them for ~5 days, before reintroducing them to the main tank. I was more worried about the nitrogenous waste in the tank, than I was about the fish not having food. They have since recovered completely.

What you could do, rather than immediately going to meds, is keep an eye on them for a few weeks with no meds, and see if you notice any problems! You could also instead treat with aquarium salt immediately, because that is cheap and effective. Treating with meds shouldn't be too much of a problem, but part of the reason you keep a quarantine tank is to keep an eye on them and then treat them if necessary. I know the co-op treads all of their fish coming in, but they don't really have the ability to watch something for a month to see if anything is wrong before medicating.

I wouldn't bother to get rid of them, honestly. IMO, they are a valuable part of my miniature aquatic biome. They eat excess algae, and keep my plants clean. They don't eat healthy plants. And when they do eat other gunk at the bottom of my tank, they make it more bioavailable as fertilizer for my plants. I also think they are entertaining to watch. If you get huge booms in population of snails, it probably means that you are putting in too much food. Bladder snails will boom in population when there is a lot of food around, and die back when there is less food available.

I have a single pseudogastromyzon cheni loach in a second 10 gallon tank by himself (and some bladder snails) because he didn't get along well with others. I think they can be perfectly fine by themselves, but I find their social behavior interesting. The hillstream loaches will play dominance games with each other, basically, scooting around and trying to get on top of each other. I've seen it referred to as "topping". The big problem I ran into with the p. cheni loach was he recognized the others as possible rivals, but the other loaches saw him as a weirdo they didn't want anything to do with. And he ended up chasing off everyone else when he got within line of sight of them (which meant they were pushed out of the open water part of my tank and into the deep hidey holes). Now, I see the others on a very regular basis, and they occasionally do some non-violent topping to establish the pecking order for who gets to have the preferred lairs for relaxing, but are seemingly perfectly happy with seeing each other exist in the tank. So, yes, I think you can easily keep a hillstream loach by themselves, but in groups, they do definitely have interesting social behavior to watch. disclaimer: I don't keep Sewallia loaches, so they might end up being very different from my experiences.

I have a single otocinclus with 4 beaufortia kweichowensis hillstream loaches in a 20 wide. I use lots of repashy soilent green to supplement their general grazing diet. I don't have too much algae, besides some small amounts of string algae growing off my spreader bar, and some dark green algae on some of my plant leaves (in particular, some flavor of hygrophila). The oto goes for the algae on the leaves sometimes (and seems to really dig hanging around on the leaves some days), but no one seems to go for the long string algae on the spreader bar, so I just trim it back occasionally. I also notice my loaches go for fragments of xtreme micropellet and other meatier foods when it reaches the cobbles they like to hang around on.

An easier DIY filter would probably be a box filter. You could take a tupperware container and add holes where necessary, and fill the inside with sponges, filter floss, etc. Add a bit of tubing for a lift tube in the top, punch a bunch of holes in the side/bottom for intakes, and presto magic, you have a DIY filter. I think a standard sponge filter relies too much on specifically shaped bits to work effectively, and the box filter design allows you to more easily control the path of the water through it. I know growing up, we kind of built our own box filter for a pond instead of going with a purchased one because it is easy to get it to be doing its thing right. Otherwise, if I were married to the sponge filter design, I might just go for intake sponge off amazon -> pvc pipe from hardware store -> seal bottom of tube with cap or silicone -> cut long vertical holes with dremel or something to match size of sponge, leaving length above to act as a lift tube. But, that's just hypothetical, and I'm sure I'd run into issues I'd have to work out.

yeah, looks like a bladder snail. They are good to keep around IMO. They can help with algae, and do a good job repurposing fish poop and excess food into more readily available forms for plants to work with. And for the most part, they will only boom to huge populations if there is too much excess food (or fish poop). They are a good biologic buffer system in your tank to help keep things more stable. I have a nice happy population that started out as a single individual that came with my first online order of aquarium plants.

Looking at reviews of this brand, yeah, that's not inert substrate. I see lots of reviews saying it shoots up folks' pH. It definitely looks like it's crushed limestone or something. It's probably a fine substrate, but it is good to remember it is going to definitely increase your TDS and pH higher than it would otherwise be.

Sadly, as far as I know, most of these kinds of products are designed to just be thrown out if something really goes wrong with them. I imagine a vast majority of users either ignore the filter getting dirty, or if something else goes awry, they just chunk it in the trash and buy a new one. With that in mind, why would they even bother trying to design stuff to be user repairable? You might have to get up into linear piston air pumps before you get properly serviceable equipment these days.

I do unheated, but it was something I specifically planned for with my stocking choices. And it's one of the reasons I don't have a betta. I have white cloud mountain minnows, hillstream loaches, and red cherry shrimp. All of these are species that are well known for doing great in cooler water. I'm glad I did, because I was able to get through sub zero temps outdoor temps, and no electricity for over 2 days, with no casualties in my tank (I think my tanks bottomed out around ~50F, with my apartments air temp bottoming out around 40F). I've heard enough about bettas and lower temps that I'd rather not risk it myself without some form of heating.

It's a good feeling, right? I really am a lot happier after I upgraded a 10 gallon to a 20 wide. A ton of space to do more neat/fun stuff!

I've never personally messed with eco-complete, but all those organics could possibly shoot your pH up, but I would normally expect that would drop your pH. But, again, not something I have personally messed with. Your basalt shouldn't have any effect on pH. Basalt is going to be inert because its almost 100% water insoluble silicates. I was mostly asking about the white material you have above your eco-complete, because that looks more likely to be non-inert. If that is crushed coral (or, more scientifically, it's made out of calcite or aragonite, and might have been sold as limestone sand), that could push your pH higher.

Looks like your pH is maybe dropping slightly since your last check in. The ammonia is looking good. You should consider yourself cycled when the nitrite stays that nice blue instead of turning purple. Do you know if your high pH is a consequence of your tap water, or something in your tank? What is a glass of tap water set out for a day (or even right out of your tap) measure as far as pH goes? If you are using crushed coral as a substrate, that could be leading to your higher pH (and hardness).

Yeah.... I look back at my younger self and the 10 gallon tank I had growing up in the 90s, and my family's 55 gallon saltwater tank, and kind of cringe on how much I didn't know, and how different I would do it now. I feel very bad for the goldfish and bettas in the world, because so many of them end up in a situation that is a very short death sentence, despite what the humans involved may want. What is a bummer is even with the internet, finding good advice in this hobby is really hard. The world is full of people who say "Keeping goldfish in a 10 gallon is A-OK". On the flip side, you also get the folks who say "Keeping a comet goldfish in anything smaller than a 125 is animal abuse". The companies who produce products like 1 gallon tanks with goldfish and angels on the product packaging certainly aren't helping either. We as aquarists need to do the best by our livestock as we can. It will never live up to the fish living in the wild in a huge lake or river. But, we can do a lot to give them a safe, comfortable life where we can observe and enjoy their looks and behaviors. Fish keeping is very much not an "If X then Y" kind of hobby. There are an absurd number of variables we have to take into account with our wetpets, and that often leads to a lot of frustration. Everyone's tap water from community to community is different, and that can cause various issues. I know with my (fairly hard) water, java fern grows kind of meh, but java moss grows gangbusters. I have a friend the next town over with significantly softer water having the same issues. All in all, its complex, and the right answer is hard to arrive at. Bleh.

It's a shame. Most people don't look too much into these fish, and many places that sell fish don't have an economic interest in informing their customers about these fish. They get bought because they look cool, and some untrained (or straight up lying) sales person who cares more about making the sale than anything else, tells them what they want to hear. There are quite a few species I think are unethical to sell to most people, because of just how huge they get. common plecos, red tail cats, pacus, and to some extent, even stuff like goldfish and oscars. But, the powers that be are interested in selling products (including live animals) without much caring for the consequences down the road. We are preaching to the choir here, as we all care enough to spend time on a forum dedicated to fish keeping, but most people don't care enough, and end up in unpleasant situations because of all of this.

What tool are you using to measure your water parameters? Remember, when cycling, your goal is to put in ammonia/ammonium (NH3/NH4+), and have the bacteria living in the tank convert it to nitrite (NO2-) to nitrate (NO3-). If you can put in nitrogenous waste (a good way is putting in food, and allowing it to rot), and that waste gets eventually converted to nitrate, leaving you with no ammonia or nitrite, that means you are cycled!

As @gardenman says, that stuff is probably great for you to collect and use in your tank! It just might not have as much BB as we need in a fish tank, because nature gets significantly higher turnover of water in a stream environment compared to what our tanks get (see, the volume of your tank, vs the volume of a stream, and the amount of water flowing those systems). The biggest worry is possibly bringing home parasites or diseases. Only thing I'd worry about is making sure its legal to collect where you are looking! If you are on USFS land (US forest service), you can 100% collect rocks. Plant matter can be a different animal, and I am not as familiar with the specific rules there.

Yeah, you can definitely get your filter going! As long as you keep the filter media wet, the BB you get established now should be fine. Same for any other stuff. As long as you keep it moist, anything established now should be good.