Green Thumb Aquariums

How does one "see how they go" when there are no symptoms? Is the idea to do a full dose after seeing no harm from the half dose?

If your intention is to follow Cory's advice, use the full med trio dose even for scaleless fish. Recently covered in a livestream starting at 25:23:

I haven't had this particular plant flower, but I have had a similar stalk-style flower. I found that the flower itself needs to be out of the water. In one test when I left the end of the stalk in the water, the stalk kept growing longer and longer with no actual flower appearing. After the stalk was 5+ feet long, I supported the end of it out of the water and then the outer covering at the end dried up, split, and the flower emerged. Another time, as soon as the stalk was long enough to support the end out of the water, I took it out and again the flower emerged despite the stalk being very short this time. I've got a third stalk growing that I'm just about to support out of the water. I suspect in nature the plant sends the stalk straight up until it emerges from the water and then it flowers. Perhaps the plant and/or stalk have more support in their natural environments. Or maybe there's enough other plant matter at the surface that the flower can rest on. It makes sense to me that the pollen would need to stay dry if it's to pollinate anything.

There's no guarantee that any particular fish will like or not like any particular food. However, sometimes you can "train" your fish to like a particular food by feeding it exclusively over multiple days. You're otherwise kind of stuck with trying out different foods which is why I always buy the smallest package available first.

I had Hemianthus callitrichoides 'Cuba' tied to a moss ledge that I then stuck to the glass close to the surface. It grew out horizontally and down.

I have had several angelfish and despite what others say I have seen first hand that they are capable of eating neon tetras and rummynoses. In my case, I had a large group of neons that was whittled down and then stabilized perhaps because the remaining neons were the fastest/smartest. Curiously, the neons eventually started to nibble on the fin streamers of the adult angelfish. While individual fish temperament will vary and I'm sure some setups are successful, I wasn't happy with the angelfish + neon tetra combo that many people recommend and I eventually moved on from it.

Bleach and hydrogen peroxide work in a similar manner, but store bought bleach is stronger than store bought hydrogen peroxide. So I wouldn't expect H2O2 to be any more effective than bleach.

Frogbit does the best for me when there's enough splashing to get the leaves of floating plants wet.

One thing no one ever mentions is that the LEDs don't go to the end the strip. On my 36" model the LEDs end 3" before the edges including the space allocated to the feet. So my 36" light is actually a 30" light when speaking about the coverage of the LEDs.

My reddest red root floaters are those that aren't under the best light with the best nutrients. My guess is that it's insufficient nitrogen that brings out the red. However, my healthiest-looking red root floaters are those under the best lights with plenty of nutrients.

Spot treating is effective for the spots you treat. That might sound like a silly thing to say, but if you've got BBA all of the place then spot-treating every spot will be difficult. There are whole-tank treatments, but they carry with them more risk to your livestock. One well-known approach is called the "one-two punch". A Google search will direct you to write-ups about it. I've personally used 2x to 2.5x the initial dose of Seachem Excel (note I said initial dose and not daily dose). My procedure (based on a forum thread I found) is to do a water change and then dose 2x or 2.5x the initial dose in increments over 30 minutes or so. While dosing I use an extra powerhead to disperse the Excel throughout the tank. Once done, sit back and wait a week with no additional water changes for that week. This won't address the underlying problem, but you'll have a BBA-free tank for a while.

The advice from Seachem is to not use even their own carbon when fertilizing. Of course, they then follow-up with a suggestion to use Purigen instead 🙂

Try inserting the plant slightly to the side of where you actually want it. Then pull the tweezers towards where you actually want the plant and out of the substrate at the same time. The plant will move with tweezers a bit, but the sideways action prevents there being a hole that the plant floats out of. With step plants, don't trim the lowest leaves too cleanly. If you leave a bit of the leaf attached it can hook into the eco-complete once the stem is pushed in.

I've had good luck with AlgaeFix, but specifically for some long, soft, string-like algae I had. No side-effects to other plants or fish in a heavily planted tank, but it did take out some amanos. I've used it multiple times with the same results. Somehow along the way I fixed the underlying problem so no more algae of that type. I also tried it against BBA and staghorn algae, but it didn't do anything.

I've been told that baby daphnia moina are a good alternative to BBS i.e. good for raising fry. I've yet to try moina myself, but I'm looking for them. I find that daphnia magna are good for a variety of juvenile to adult-sized fish including pseudomugils, rams, and angel fish.

That's a fair point. I was thinking more about whether you could somehow reach a toxic level (or start with too much) because you've used a form that compacts much more tightly than the "normal" salt. But I suppose also if you've gone from 1, 2, to 3 tablespoons then things aren't going well anyway.

Do we not need to concern ourselves with the grain size of the salt? I'm asking because the article uses tablespoons instead of a measure that is independent of grain size like grams.