BaRanchik

If the melting continues and leaves look like they are disintegrating even in a few weeks, you might need more nitrates. What's your current nitrate level?

If your tank is algae free then most likely that you don't have any excess of elements in there. If you had it you'd see different algae types (depending on which element is overdosed), but your tank looks clear to me. The only thing I'd make sure is that you don't have a calcium deficiency, as I believe everything else is pretty much covered with Easy Green. You can tell there is a calcium deficiency if new leaves grow in weird shapes.

I love your tank! Cool take on a tree, and very relaxing to look at.

Aquatic plants will do better in colder water rather than warm (74-76F is ideal as far as I know). BUT, I don't own any cichlids nor I have experience with them yet, so maybe lower temps are bad for the fish and you shouldn't change it. Hopefully someone more experienced with cichlids can comment about temps. It does look like there is some algae on those leaves, so possibly like I mentioned earlier the plant is struggling getting light. This comes back to my inexperience with cichlids, as usually what you'd do is add more of the cleaning crew to take care of the algae - but I don't know what's compatible with cichlids. It also reminds me of a manganese deficiency. I've had something similar with my swords in my goldfish tank. What I did was up the dose for micro nutrients and leaves stopped dying.

Welcome to the forum ! 🙂 Regarding the aquascaping part of the post, there's a similar post I saw recently that might give you more information: As far as fertilization goes, I don't have a definite answer but I wouldn't use more ferts since your nitrates are already getting pretty high (it seems close to 100ppm to my eye). Also, you might need to do more water changes if a 40% every other week won't keep your nitrates under 40ppm (which is also getting pretty high). I can't really tell if the brown spots on your plants are diatoms or leaves dying because the picture is a bit blurry. Can you take a closer picture of the brown spots? If those are diatoms, I'd say it's probably that the covered leaves are not getting enough light and they start dying. Your pH seems pretty low. Are you using a water softener by any chance? How long is this tank running for? And also, what is the water's temperature?

https://www.aquariumcoop.com/collections/the-easy-range/products/easy-green-all-in-one-fertilizer

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

You could test that without painting the back. What I'm using as my background is a corrugated plastic sheet. It's super cheap, you can cut it to the perfect size, and use tape to attach to the back of the tank. If you don't like the color, or if you want to test something like you are suggesting it would make the task as easy as it gets. Edit: I should mention you can get those in every color you want pretty much.

She's a wild mahachai betta, so short finned. Anyway, you said your water level is close to the top, so I'd definitely pass. Better a live betta than a dead one who knew tricks, haha.

The water level is about an inch lower than the top of the glass, and it's 95% covered with an acrylic lid, so I'd be very surprised if she somehow managed to jump out of the tank. If your water level is close to the top I'd definitely skip it, but as far as I can tell bettas can't jump higher than and inch plus whatever is needed for them to actually get above the top (I think I saw a video about that some time ago, maybe they have more information about that).

Sometimes when I feed flakes I make my betta exercise and jump for it (about 0.5 inch) out of the water to get it. She became really good at it quickly, so I'm sure yours can too, AND you could hold a hoop for her to jump through! 😁

You could check pictures of tanks participating at aquascaping contests, and maybe find a theme or inspiration (there is a video with Josh Sim scaping a tank and giving lots of advice, so that's something you should definitely check). I know it's definitely hard to recreate since experts are scaping them, but it's a very good source to check what this hobby can offer. From everything I learned by now, I think the most important part is to use substrate to get height - it gives the tank a much more realistic look. I wasn't sure if it was allowed to mention other YT channels here, but since you guys have already mentioned MD I think it's safe to mention Green Aqua as well. They have some incredible projects you can look at and get inspired by.

I think you are right with seed shrimp. Thanks! I like them, they are good at eating the diatom algae, so I'm not planning to get rid of them. Good to know what lives in my aquarium though, haha!

What is the temperature in your tank? How old are the tank and plants? What are you dosing exactly and how much? Also, did you change anything since they were growing?

These guys have lately spread across my tank, cleaning the algae for me, doing an even better job than my otocinclus. What are they? I want to thank them personally. Edit: Their size is around 1mm if this helps.

What are the temperature, lighting period, dosing schedule, stocking and age of the tank?

I'd say get any stem plant you like, plant it in the left corner, and trim it so it follows the line of the wood, going from top left to the middle right. Then I'd get some dwarf sagittaria and continue this line a bit. Those won't require too much light, nor CO2. You could use root tabs to make sure they grow properly. If you don't want to maintain the tank too often due to having fast growing plants like stems, you can keep low levels of nitrogen (10 and under) and it will slow down the whole plant growth process. Shouldn't bee too hard with your stocking.

Good idea, if she gets addicted too, no one will stop you! 😆

I got some random algae based food to feed to my oto (right now it's only having algae, and occasionally cucumber and spinach). He didn't even get to taste it before my shrimp and betta completely devoured all of it, which led to overfeeding the betta. I'm now looking for a replacement for this food, hoping there's a product available for international shipping with 100% veggie contents. I found something I can get locally called 'JBL Spirulina' but unfortunately it contains about 12% fish ingredients, and I'm afraid that's still too much of it so my betta will see it as food as well. I'm wondering if anyone can suggest a product based on experience? Is it safe to just get spirulina supplement tablets you can find in iHerb and feed it to my fish?

Looking good! May I ask why you want to lower your GH? From my experience so far it changes nothing, but maybe I am missing something. I also have hard water, right from the tap, about as hard as the water currently in your tank.

I assume this is a new plant you got, so it might be melting just like any other plant. The java moss in one of my tanks took more than a month to start growing, after turning mostly brown, since I got it in an immersed form. The submerged java moss I got for a different tank immediately started growing. Give it time, I bet it will come back quickly.

It's crazy to see how much the appearance of a fish can change under different lighting conditions. I am yet to get the perfect picture with the best color, but here is an example!

You were right, she healed within two days without any medication, so I suppose it actually was due to stress. The weird thing is that I changed nothing before, and I changed nothing since.

Thanks for your input. I don't overfeed, poop seems normal (pellet-like), and the water seems to be fine going by parameters but I'll do a 25% water change anyway. So would you recommend I just do the water change and wait for a few days? I hope postponing another course of treatment won't kill that fish, that's why I'm so worried about this.

I literally just finished the first round of treatment with ParaCleanse, because that dish was hitting against surfaces when I just got her. This morning I wake up and it looks like she got the disease, and now I'm both confused and wondering what I should do. Do I still wait 2 weeks before I treat with ParaCleanse again, or do I treat again immediately? Water parameters: pH: 7-7.2 Ammonia, Nitrite: 0 Nitrate 10 Temp: 25C (78F) The last few days she was eating less pellets than I usually give her, but she is still eating the same amount of flakes I feed her without losing interest. I don't have a hospital tank, so I'd much rather treat with things that won't destroy my plants and shrimps. What should I do?