test.tin

I find cardinals tend to have better personalities/ interesting behaviors compared to neons. My vote for cardinals

Thank you for the great suggestion. I was planning to add anubias once the fungus clears off the wood, but didn't think about having it be higher to poke out of the surface.

Hello everyone! Recently decided to come back to freshwater after taking a 2ish year hiatus to try out saltwater. As much as I enjoyed corals and saltwater fishes, I definitely missed having a planted tank. Decided to pick up a 7 gallon, 11x11x11 tank to start my journey. The hardscape is pretty simple, found a nice piece of wood and I broke it in half to get the shape I wanted. One of my favorite aquatic plant is this hydrocotyle verticillata that I had turned into a desk plant. I made sure to have the substrate and roots submerged the entire time, just in case I ever wanted to do a planted tank again. I gave the hydrocotyle a big trim and placed all the roots and cycled substrate on the bottom, covered with new substrate to hopefully speed up the cycling process. As you can see, a little hydrocotyle poked out already. Pretty excited since it's only been a week with water filled in. I'm still on the planning phase for what other plants I want. The round rocks are just there to hold the wood down, will remove them eventually. For stocking, I'm pretty excited to be able to put crystal red shrimps in the future. I've always wanted/loved them but have never gotten them due to having hard tap water. But thanks to trying out saltwater, I invested in a nice RODI system. Pretty excited to see how this tank differs due to using RO water compared to all my other previous tanks with hard tap water.

From my experience with neons, they tend to be pretty calm and non aggressive towards smaller creatures. Personally since they are already in a qt tank, I would just leave them in there to fatten/grow them up some more before adding them to your other tank.

When I use easy carbon, I like to fill a squirt bottle with all water. Ill pump one or two pumps of easy carbon into the squirt bottle. Then do a pretty large water change, so that the algae areas are exposed. Then I take the squirt bottle and spray where the algae is. Don't need to go crazy with the spray, as long as the areas you want is wet from the spray. Let it sit for a few mins. Then fill back up with water. Ill redo this every time I do a water change. Easy carbon degrades over time, so put new water and new easy carbon in the squirt bottle. But this is only a bandage to help handle the aglae, make sure you figure out the main problem for the algae. Maybe lower the light intensity, etc.

I think breeding might be difficult in that tank especially if you want to keep it low maintenance. I actually have the same all in one tank by UNS, when I test filled mine, the total volume I got was 5 gallons. I personally would just put 1 honey gourami and maybe a bunch of cherry shrimps. You can still breed but the bio load won't be too high.

Thank you so much!

If they just started to develop the white tip, then it's a sign they aren't getting enough calcium. Putting in cuttlebone is a good start. You can try feeding them blanched veggies that have calcium or specific food with calcium.

Hi everyone, I was browsing through offer up and ran across this post with a terrarium light that would look awesome for what I plan to set up. But I need help to identify to buy it. Thank you in advance!

That is weird that it doesn't even let you turn it on manually. I guess the downfall of my other timer is the same for this one too

Hey everyone, just wanted to ask members of the forum that has the kasa wifi timer. Lets say I set the kasa to turn on at 7am. If my internet is not on until 9am, does the kasa still follow through with the programing and turn on at 7am? I ask this because the last wifi timer I had will not follow the programing if there is no wifi, even though the program is set in the app and presumably stored on the timer.

Hello there! If you're getting yellowing and spots on leaves then its a sign you already needed fertilizers. Anubias are slow growers, so if they are showing signs now, it means its been needing additional nutrients for a while. Most likely your jungle val is using all the nutrients since it is a fast grower, not leaving much behind for the anubias Since your tank is understock, I would recommend you get a all in one fertilizer, like easy green. The good thing about easy green is that it provides your plant with all the nutrients, macro and micro nutrients. Once using easy green, you want your nitrate to sit around 20-50ppm. The reason is because in easy green, nitrate is used as an indicator since its easier to test than the other nutrients. So if you're sitting around 20-50ppm of nitrates, it means the other nutrients are gonna be in good range for your plants.

Def a good site to read and reread. You'll never know unless you try, you should def do a build journal. Im curious to see the result of a set up like that.

If you're planning to go very rich substrate next time, maybe try the ADA approach (lean dosing). On my next rescape, I am also planning to use a very nutrient rich substrate and will be trying lean dosing. Switching to a fertilizer that has no nitrate, I'm thinking about trying APT zero from dennis wong (2hr Aquarist).

That's super interesting to know, really wished that was printed on the bottle or said more. Very interesting thread you have created here Adam! Definitely gonna help me fine tune my dosing now that its not just a ball park guess.

Congrats on the new tank! Addition to the other recommended plants, I would look into getting some cryptocorynes. Easy, low light demanding plants, put a root tab under it and you're good. Also have different varieties that comes in different sizes and colors.

I'm super jealous of your bush..... your moss bush. Looks incredibly healthy and lush

Your tank looks amazing! My tip for the s repens is that you most likely need more light. I can tell from your picture that it is growing taller instead of spreading sideways and the bottom leaves arent doing as well as the top portion. That is a classic sign of not enough light. That is also why your ar mini has grown so tall. I wouldn't go and increase light like crazy. Your tank looks balance right now, so I would take it slow. If your light let's you adjust intensity, then I would do it little by little. For example, I have the fluval 3.0 nano, I would increase it about 10% intensity. Wait one week, if then pump it again and wait another week. Do that until you start to see algae creep up, then go back down a little bit to where the plants are growing well and minimum algae. Also, you can trim the tops off the s repens and replant then. Trimming can help stimulate them to spread sideways, and replanting the tops and help get a fuller carpet

An easy way to know if you have enough fertilizer is to test for nitrates. If you're hovering around 10-20ppm nitrates, while using easy green, then your plants are getting enough. I would just get the tetra test strip and use that to test. You don't need it to be 100% accurate, just a close enough of where you're nitrate is at. If you're not getting algae, and plants are growing, I wouldn't stress too much about making any adjustments. Sounds like you got the balance down pretty well. Covering your front glass during light off is really good, I would definitely keep that up.

When you say naturally, do you mean to not use fertilizers? If so, using fish poop will work to grow your plants. Using fertilizers in my opinion is just easier and assures that they are getting other macro and micro nutrients. I believe the nitrates are too high. Plants can only use up so much nitrates/nutrients, any excess nitrates/nutrients will go into fueling the algae. That's why the general rule is to be about 10-20ppm. Enough nutrients for the plants, not too much that will lead to a bunch of algae. Gravel vacuuming can help with lowering the nitrates. I would try upping the percentage for water change. Maybe try doing 50% water changes every week. Another thing you can try is to have more plants in your tank. You don't need to buy more plants, just cut and replant the one that you already have. I see that you have some water wisteria in your tank. You can leave it floating and that should help pretty well. For the water wisteria that are planted into the substrate, i would just trim those at half their current height, and then replant those trimmings. Continue to do that for awhile, and you'll have fuller/denser plant mass that can help with the excess nutrients. Also, try putting in some snails to help eat some of that up. I personally like nerites cus they can't reproduce in freshwater and they are good at eating algae.

It's kind of hard to go into details since this topic is such a broad topic. There's multiple ways of injecting co2 into a tank, and each one has its pros/cons. There's plenty of good YouTube videos on the subject that can walk you through the different methods and ways to execute them. I feel like that would be a lot better since they can go more in depth into this topic than a forum post could. Ill link some that I watched when I was doing my research The water box has a great series that go through different methods and how to set them up. This is Part 1 Aquarium COOP FishForThought video on diy co2

What I was trying to say is that, your tank sitting at 40-80ppm of nitrates is too high, especially if you're not dosing fertilizer, that means you have a lot of excess nutrients from fish waste or uneaten food. What you want to do is lower the amount of nitrates you have first, more water changes/less food. Once it is at a lower level, THEN you should add fertilizer to bring the nitrates back to 10-20ppm. Having 10-20ppm from fertilizer means your plants are supplied with a variety of different nutrients that fish food/waste won't give them.

I would keep your light levels the same. Since the current light level you have are growing the plants well (as far as i can tell from the picture). Well keep that the same for now since i think that isn't the problem. The biggest red flag for me is the nitrate. 40 to 80 ppm nitrates is very high, especially if you're not dosing fertilizers. That means 2 things. You're overfeeding (like you said), the amount of water your change isn't enough/frequent enough to get rid of the excess nitrates. Ideally you want an average of 10-20ppm of nitrates FROM the fertilizer. Having 10-20ppm of nitrates from your fertilizer also means that your plants are also supplied with the other macro and micro nutrients that they need, since fertilizers come with them. What is the temperature of your tank? Higher temperature can cause algae to pop up easier. How much are you changing for water change? how often?

Im kinda confused on your setup. You said your tank gets 35 mins of light a day from the sun. Does that mean you don't have a light over your tank? If so, then the first step i recommend is to get a light over your tank. The plants you got are considered low light, and don't require much light, but they do need a prolonged period of light for them to go through their photosynthesis and grow.

As everyone else pointed out, the fish load will increase as they start to breed. However, you can also increase your plant load to help take up the increased fish waste/load. I see that you have some really healthy looking stem plants in your tank, I recommend that you trim them at half their current height/maybe even more and replant those trimmings into the tank. After a while, you'll have fuller and lush areas with stem plants that can help with the excessive nutrients.