JettsPapa

You're probably correct about the color change coming from diet, though I'm surprised it changed that quickly. It's a saltwater fish, but when black drum reach a certain size their diet changes from shrimp and small fish to mostly crabs, and their color goes from grayish black to gold.

Water sprite rooted at the bottom right, begging the vals. I'm pretty sure that's water wisteria floating in the top right corner of the picture.

I took this picture yesterday evening about three hours after I had put the leaf in the tank. I knew shrimp liked cottonwood leaves, but I didn't realize they liked them this much. It's hard to tell from the photo, but it's still floating just barely under the surface. I've recently learned that fallen cottonwood leaves will break down quickly, and release a surprising amount of tannins. I like keeping the yellow shrimp tank dark since it really makes their color pop. It almost looks like they're glowing.

Guppy grass would probably work too. It may stop growing and now look good when it gets cold, but I believe it will come back when the weather gets warmer.

It doesn't take much to put an inch deep in a 10 gallon tank. I have cows, so I get mine from the barn where they spend a fair amount of time. It of course has some dirt mixed with it. I don't use fresh. I'd be careful with chicken manure. It's "hotter" than cow manure and may burn the plants. Maybe mix it with a good quality potting soil?

Here's another good Chris Knight song (I like songs that tell stories).

They add enough that I don't have any mechanical filtration or water movement in the 5.5 gallon tank on my desk at work. The only thing that consumes electricity is the light. The water is crystal clear, and I removed around 70 shrimp from it a few days ago, and there are probably that many left. It doesn't have any fish in it right now, but it's had guppies and endlers in it in the past.

I agree with the other replies that there are many commonly available aquarium plants that don't require expensive lights. I have the inexpensive Aquaneat LED lights on most of my tanks. You mentioned algae problems with live plants. I'm not clear on whether you meant algae would be more of a problem with live plants or less, but it's definitely less. Live plants consume nutrients that would otherwise go to algae.

I would start all my tanks with a layer of at least 1" of dry cow manure topped with 2" of sand. The first one I set up that way was a standard 20 gallon, and plants are doing amazing in it. I have since broken down and re-done three 10-gallon tanks this way, and am planning on doing it with the fourth fairly soon. Eventually I'll probably do the 20 long. I haven't gotten brave enough to do it with the 40 breeder or the 65, and probably won't unless other circumstances warrant breaking them down anyway.

That's because it's water wisteria, not water sprite.

. . . especially if there are fish in the tank. I frequently see shrimp so small that I have to look closely to make sure they really are shrimp in my shirmp-only tanks. In tanks with fish I don't see them until they're at least half grown.

I suspect you're right. In the past when I tested my water with the liquid test kit it always showed up as 8.2, so I'm going with that. I haven't used that one in quite a while, and now just use the strips to see if I need to add fertilizer (with my plant load even heavily stocked tanks frequently test at zero nitrates, and rarely over 20 ppm).

I have multiple tanks with guppies, and your pH and KH look very similar to mine, but I don't know what's going on with your GH since that color doesn't look like any of the options on the chart. As far as I know zero nitrates is only a potential problem if you have plants.

I mentioned Brian Burns above. Here's one of my favorites of his.

I do not.

You asked how many. The answer is "a lot." I took somewhere around 70 out of the 5.5 gallon no filter tank on my desk at work yesterday. Looking at the activity this morning I can't really see a difference. This tank started out with all blue shrimp. I keep colors separate in my tanks at home, but this tank has black substrate, and the blue shrimp were difficult to see, so I added a handful of red ones. They turned brown pretty quick. I have since added a few yellow shrimp. I suspect subsequent generations will still be brown.

This song just popped up on Pandora. Over the last 40+ years I've owned the Eagles Greatest Hits Album 1971-1975 in 8-track, cassette, LP, and CD. I think I still have the LP and CD somewhere.

I wouldn't try a single, or just a pair. You could probably get by with three if you have a single male and two females, but larger groups are better (I have eleven of them in a 40 gallon breeder tank).

Maybe I should have clarified. Mine is corkscrew val. I doubt the different varieties are affected differently by Excel, but I could be wrong.

You may be right. Serpae tetras seem to have a worse reputation for that than most tetras, but I have a group of them in a tank with eleven pearl gouramis and have never noticed them interacting at all. I suspect that reputation has come from people putting them in too small groups. I've never had less than eight together. I wanted tiger barbs until I saw a group of mature ones in a display tank at a store. To me those didn't look as attractive as when they're juveniles, but it's very likely other people wouldn't feel the same way.

I have a 65 gallon low tech (no CO2 or fancy expensive lights) tank, so it's approximately the same height as your tank. Anubias and vals, as mentioned above, do well in it. Mexican oak leaf also does well and gets tall. Same for water wisteria. I struggled with bacopa. The bottom leaves always die and fall off, probably due to light intensity. I've removed it all and moved it to shallower tank. There are many varieties of crypt out there. While I haven't tried all of them, the ones I have tried have done well in the 65. Most of them don't get very tall (with crypt spiralis being a notable exception), so you'd want to plant them more toward the front. Water sprite did well floating, as did pearl weed and hornwort. Those are the only floaters I've tried in it, but I feel confident guppy grass and other common floaters would do well also.

While following this and other forums I believe I've seen reports like that about every commonly kept aquarium fish except otos, and maybe corys.

It may set it back a little, but it doesn't kill mine.

I treat the whole tank. The only time I've removed a plant and treated it separately was when I was trying to kill hair algae in a clump of java moss (it didn't work).

Snails, shrimp, and a wide variety of fish and plants are doing just fine in my 8.2 pH hard water. Unless you're targeting something that absolutely won't tolerate the high pH, like caridina shrimp, I wouldn't mess with it. If that is the case, I'd start with RO water and re-mineralize to the parameters that species needs instead of trying to alter your faucet water.