Ragnarok12

I've also been battling hair algae in my tank and I found that lowering lighting intensity helped a lot for me. Also, what does your tank cleaning regimen look like? You can do a lot of damage to the diatoms with a gravel vac and water changes. It would definitely give your otos a chance to catch up as well. I have a 12 gallon long and I have 4 otos, so I would second Inked's suggestion to maybe get 6 otos total. Otherwise, increase your water changes to try and get things under control would be my suggestion.

Hi everyone! I'm new to the forum and excited to be here. I just won a giveaway and received a ton of Bucephalandra which I have decided to use as the showpiece in my Fluval Spec V (5 gallon). Does anyone have advice for other plants that I can use to complete my scape? I'm running a low tech tank with the stock light (for now) and am using fine sand for substrate with root tabs. I intend to purchase red root floaters to provide shade, so this will ultimately be a low light tank. I'm currently thinking that the eventual occupants of the tank will be a betta and a Dwarf Mexican Crayfish, but that is TBD. I've been considering maybe doing some crpyt wendtii along the sides and some crypt parva throughout the middle of the tank, but I'm not sure how successful that will be with my sand substrate. I was also thinking microsword?? I want the buce to remain the star of the tank, but I also want to increase my plant load to fight algae and clean the water. I'm currently only running the light for 6 hours a day as the tank establishes and have popped in some EZ green to get things going. Any other general advice people have for a tank this young?