Lauren A

@Colu Hi, would you two recommend I take out his floater plants. Or the huge Java fern in there. Just to free up some space or will it be better to keep them in for the oxygen. Thanks again

Ok. I wish I knew what was going on with him. His face looks a little pink. I hope the bubbler and crush coral help.

@Keegi just installed an air bubbler diffuser right next to him. And I turned his filter up. I put a 1/3 tsp of crushed coral in the filter. I’m not sure if I should do a water change and put half tap water in to raise the Kh. @ColuSince my tap water has a Kh value, should I do a water change and add the tap water. He was in it for months before so I’m thinking that might be the best move. Will a sudden increase in Kh be harmful?

@ColuCould the crush coral with the wonder shell be too much? I notice the wonder shell hasn’t really dissolved much. Also, how much crush coral and can I drop it right into his tank. My filter doesn’t have a lot of space in it with the matrix in it and I don’t know if I can safely remove those without messing up the cycling process. Sorry for all the questions. Thank you for your help. Also, I put the air stone/diffuser in @Coluif it’s only a small amount of crush coral I can fit it in

Thank you @Colu. I have an air stone I’m going to add now. i appreciate your help so much.

Hi, I moved my betta fish to a new tank 3 days ago. I have to tear down his last tank (planted) because of a sever BGA problem. The tank is cycling, possibly cycled. I started adding a pinch of fish food and stability a week ago to the tank until I moved him over a few days ago. I’m still using Stability and Prime. I had to convert his last tank to Poland spring water because our towns water has become toxic so I’m not sure if this is an issue. I slowly converted his last tank to Poland Spring about a month ago so this is not entirely new but the Kh being non-existent really worries me. He is in a planted 10 gallon. Also with Poland Spring water. Since yesterday he has been acting very lethargic. Today he is breathing a lot at the top of the tank. He’s laying on his plant, barely moving and not responding to me in his usual way. I couldn’t tell if he was bloated so yesterday I gave him some frozen daphnia. He ate this morning. I did not give him lunch or dinner because he does appear to be slightly bloated. I will attach a pic. My parameters are: Ammonia 0, Nitrates 5ppm, Chlorine none, Gh 30, Kh 0 and Nitrites 0, Ph 7.2. Besides lower nitrates from his last tank, everything else is the same. I have Equilibrium and Alkaline and Acid buffer by Seachem. They gave me the dosages I would need to do on a chat yesterday to raise the Kh. Before doing this trio, I spoke to the woman at my lfs that I trust and she recommended I first try half of the ph small wonder shell. I added the half of a shell last night and a little more today and the Gh went up a tad. I don’t know what to do. I’m worried about his breathing and lethargy. Do you think he could be bloated? Velvet? The Kh problem. Although our towns water is undrinkable for humans and pets I don’t know if replacing with tap water would benefit him for the mineral content. Thank you in advance. Any help is appreciated. I’m so worried.

@xXInkedPhoenixXAww that’s so sweet! Thank you for sharing her training journal. That’s such a good idea. I’m going to check it out. It’s so cute how bettas have such fun and funny personalities! Do you have her housed with any other lil critters? If so, how is that going? My betta Buddy is SO aggressive but I was able to introduce a couple of horned nerites to his tank a few days ago and he’s been a good boy. I had trouble with him and a mystery snail a few months back (he bit her antennas off - possibly an eye) so I’ve been holding my breath for a couple days but so far so good! I know females are usually more docile. i hope you’re having a nice day! Lauren

@Phantom240Hi, thank you so much. I have some crushed coral on hand so I will look into this. I really appreciate your help!

Hi Roy, thank you so much for your help! This is great information. Do you happen to know a brand of calcium you can recommend? I have Easy Iron I will add to the dosing regimen, Thank you again, I appreciate all of your help! Hope you’re having a good day. Lauren

@JakeHHi! Thank you for reading my post. It’s interesting you’re having this issue too. I did some searches myself and came up with the same info and would love to figure this one out. The smaller leaf actually grew before the one curling so it definitely has some stunted growth too.

@xXInkedPhoenixXOh my goodness, Spark sounds so precious and fun! And those eyes are absolutely gorgeous, and her coloring is amazing. She’s a beautiful gal and lucky to have you. I have to look up Repashy - I haven’t heard of it. I usually also do frozen daphnia a couple times a week to keep my boys from getting constipated. You already know all this I’m sure since you’ve owned bettas. How cute that she spits the repashy out though. 😂 I will keep my eyes out for your posts. I’m curious if her coloring changes as she grows. Anyway, congrats on your new baby gal!! Hope you have a nice night!

I have seen them at Petsmart for a couple of years. They really are cute, I have a huge soft spot and love for bettas!! Do you keep bettas or is this your first. I second the eye issues could become problematic. I would start to train her now on how to take food pellets off your finger, to come when you call her or have a sound like a whistle when you’re ready to feed her. I know it sounds crazy but I’ve kept bettas for years and most are very trainable and obviously love to eat. if you get her into a feeding routine now, if she does develop any vision issues, you’ll both be ahead of the game. Let’s hope she doesn’t though but IMO, it’s really fun to train bettas because with repetition, they will catch on, especially when it’s related to food. As a side note, they love variety if you can add some frozen food to his diet too if you haven’t already. They love variety, sorry if this is old news to you. I’ve just heard about the potential eye issues with the glo-fish and dragon scale bettas. She is super pretty!!

Hi, I’m growing some plants in a somewhat “amateur” emersed set up from extra stem trimmings, plantlets, etc. They are all doing real well and this crypt was doing so great. I am pretty proud I got it to grow as it was close to D.O.A from an online order. Anyway, the new leaves that are growing have some yellow spots and one leaf is starting to curl. I plan to move it to a new aquarium I am building but am concerned with this and was wondering if anyone has an tips on what I should do, if anything. I realize it’s sort of growing out of tub so I’m not sure if it’s an issue with either nutrient deficiencies or space for it to grow. I mist them regularly with conditioned water and every other day mist them with an Easy Green diluted mix. I also have a couple of Easy Root Tabs in the tub under the root feeders. Also use Flourite as substrate with lights running on a 12 hour schedule on and off. 2 hours at night with the blue light. Also, they are always covered with Sarah wrap to hold in humidity. any help would be appreciated and thank you in advance. lauren

Your tank is going to look even more beautiful with all of your fish! I think you’d be fine for a large water change and would absolutely recommend one before adding any fish. You’re probably way ahead of me on this though too! hope you have a great day!!! Sorry for all the confusion.

Ok cool! Your ph is golden at that number IMO. I’m sorry I missed that. You’re way ahead of me with everything you mentioned so definitely keep doing what you’re doing.

@Scc1798Hi, please ignore my comment on Ph. 8 is definitely high on the alkaline side. My head is off today. In this case, I wouldn’t add coral. To lower, I would add driftwood or Indian almond leaves. There’s also a way to do this quickly with reverse osmosis water, but I’m not familiar with this. sorry I was so wrong on that. Here’s a good article on adjusting ph. https://www.aqueon.com/articles/aquarium-ph heres another on kh and gh https://www.aquariumcoop.com/blogs/aquarium/ph-gh-kh id read AC’s article first

@Scc1798Hi, please ignore my comment on Ph. 8 is definitely high on the alkaline side. My head is off today. In this case, I wouldn’t add coral. To lower, I would add driftwood or Indian almond leaves. There’s also a way to do this quickly with reverse osmosis water, but I’m not familiar with this. sorry I was so wrong on that. Here’s a good article on adjusting ph. https://www.aqueon.com/articles/aquarium-ph

Hi! What are you aiming for with your ph. To me your ph sounds good at 8. I guess it depends what type of fish you plan but for the plants you are using, it seems acceptable. I personally would not opt to use coral right away unless you want to raise the Ph and that’s really dependent on the fish you add as some prefer acidic water vs. alkaline. Right now your sitting right in a neutral spot. I’m not really familiar with a lead filter inline. I always thought they were for saltwater setups but I’m probably wrong. I don’t have well water so maybe this is why so I can’t comment on this. Are you using Prime as a softener? Any other additives? During cycling, i would increase water changes at 10-15% every few days but I know others might disagree. This should not cause any major changes to ammonia or nitrites. If it does cause a slight shift, it should not slow down your cycling process. BUT, I truly believe your cycle is complete with the algae growth! If you agree, I’d go ahead and do a 40-50% water change and cleaning. You could try cleaning up some of that algae too. Have you been testing with API’s master kit? Once you are reading 0 ammonia and 0 nitrites, you’re good. You have the beneficial bacteria doing it’s job. Nitrates should be around 5-15ppm, ideally. I apologize for sort of being all over the place here with cycled or not. Moving forward, definitely add Prime or another softener to your water. One drop or .1ml of Prime per gallon. I’d also add some bio balls or something similar to capture beneficial bacteria to your to your HOB I use Seachem Matrix and have had great success and you don’t need to bag them unless you want, use a mesh bag. They sell them real cheap on Amazon. Aim to keep direct sunlight off your tank and look into the nutrients you are adding. Your substrate is rich in nutrients and I’m concerned this will only promote more algae growth. It can get messy. I just added some nerites to a tank I’m having algae issues with and wow, they do a great job cleaning things up. There are a lot of algae eaters out there though so think about it. The pond snails will clean up some too, for now. Sorry for the long winded message. If you want to send me exact readings from the master kit if you have it, I can look them over to see what I think. thanks for reading and good luck!!!

@NanoNanoHi! Thank you so much. This helps me out a ton. I will go with this combination. I’m so glad I asked you. I will put the Sera shrimp pellets and equilibrium on my list to buy today. Do you usually blanch the veggies first? Thanks again!

One more thing, I do agree that because you have algae growth, your cycling process may be complete, so skip my advice with stability, although it never hurts to add more beneficial bacteria post large water changes. Sorry about the mis-information there!

Your tank looks beautiful! Do you have any sunlight hitting your tank? If so, you may consider blocking off the sunlight and reducing your lighting schedule a couple of hours more while you get the algae situation a little under control and your tank continues cycling. Watch out for those pond snail eggs too! I’ve had some “hitchhiker” pond snails show up and they lay a LOT of eggs. Just a warning because they can be a pain to get off of the glass, decorations and plants and keep up with. I opted for nerites since they only reproduce in brackish water. The assassin snail is a great idea too. It also sounds like you might be adding too many nutrients with the easy green and root tabs, and this will also contribute to your algae issue. I know that stratum and eco complete are already rich with nutrients so personally, I would reduce this quite a bit. I can’t comment on ammonia dosing. I do know that cycling a tank takes a long time. Months. If you’re getting antsy, you could use Seachem Stability to speed things up and cycle this way instead? Just a thought. Hope something in here helps! Your tank looks really awesome!!! Good luck!

@NanoNanoHi! I’ve just added my horned nerite snails to my betta’s tank after their month long quarantine. They have plenty of algae to munch on right now and have been fed well on algae over the past month but now I’m curious on calcium supplementation. Id been adding liquid calcium by API at the recommended dose to their small quarantine tank when doing water changes but now that they are in their permanent home with my betta, is this ok to continue doing without any harmful or rapid fluctuations to the ph levels. Buddy’s been housed in there for about 7 months at a ph around 6.8-7.2 and I don’t want to stress him or my plants out but obviously want to keep the snails healthy and happy. If you have any suggestions on what you think would work best, I’d love to hear them. thanks in advance for your help and reading this! lauren

@AnnajakHi, I hope I’m not bugging you but I just wanted to check in to see how he is doing? What is his name, I always forget to ask. I hope all is well.

@AnnajakAnd you’re so right about the salt too. It has so many healing properties.

@AnnajakHi! Oh my goodness, no worries. I’ve been crazy busy myself so I totally understand. I’m so happy to hear he’s improving every day. The IAL tea is so great for him especially to prevent infection plus it’s so calming for bettas. I see a huge improvement with the tumors. They’ve really shrunk down a lot since the first photo you posted. I really feel confident he’s going to continue to progress. You obviously are taking excellent care of him! Well, I’m thinking of you both and keeping my fingers crossed that he continues to improve. I know how stressful it is to care for a sick pet. You’re doing an amazing job.