therealTruthSeeker

My water gh is 437. I have three cherry shrimp in there that have been just fine. You may not need to worry about it.

I too would let it grow and see what happens first. If a leaf starts to melt you can cut it. If not then you have a healthy leaf you can enjoy right away.

Has anyone had otocinclus in very hard water and high ph. My water is 20dgh, 10dkh, 8.0ph. I've always wanted them but stayed away because they are wild caught and from soft water. I was just curious if anyone had pulled it off successfully?

Ive never been disappointed by the co-op. Great stuff. Easy green is super safe for everything. I dose easy green with nerite snails and cherry shrimp, I even dose seachem trace on top of that for the cobalt which also has copper and I have never had a problem.

Cutting off the leaves on a new plant is good advice but sometimes you are wasting good leaves. When I ordered my crypt lutea from the co-op I just planted them. I only had 3 leaves melt. I would've Wasted all that good growth had I cut them. Now I will always wait a while before taking drastic measures. I guess if your tank stocking is so heavy that you can't absorb The little bit of ammonia the melt will produce then cutting them back is the better option. I suspect though that most tanks can handle the ammonia load just fine.

If you don't mind the look you could leave them and give them some time. Crypt roots will pull nutrients from the melting Leaves and stems to help fuel new growth.

I pray for snails to come in on my plants. Those little guys are very helpful. But I like ecosystems not show tanks. If you want to treat plants though I know irene (girl talks fish) talks about an alum dip in a couple videos.

I can see in your pic that in the center of the stem there is damage to the stem. It was probably done in shipping. all the growth above that damage is melting. I had this same problem I had a few stems with minor damage that began to melt. Like patrick said, If you catch them early you can cut them off above the damage on the stem and float that segment and wait for it to grow roots then re plant.

If the roots are well established they should send out new growth. If you don't want that new growth from that particular Plant then removal of that root would be advised.

I had this a few months after setting up my first planted tank and my light was too intense. heard @Cory mention once erythromycin could work. I removed what algae I could and treated the tank with only one dose per tank volume of erythromycin set in the tank for 7 days (remove charcoal if any) then a water change. cyano bacteria gone, did not destroy my cycle either. bacteria and fish were fine. That is what worked for me.

Pisces, midnight pearl. Small natural river gravel from new Zealand, very easy to plant in. here is a pic of it in my aquarium. found a small bag at a big box store. got a 22 lb bag on amazon. pisces has other colors also. .

The co2 is great advice, but I personally would try other things. I am very against co2 because a planted tank can be easily balanced without co2. And just adding co2 isn't magic, where you start adding it and it solves all your problems. You sould know that starting to add co2 will 9 times out Of 10 require you to adjust everything Else to rebalance your tank. Then if you decide it's too much work later and stop using it, you must re adjust everything again. Just throwing some things out to consider before you make the co2 jump. Consider your personal schedule also and if your life becomes more hectic do you want to continue co2. Co2 is not a big deal to some but, for some it's a deal breaker for their personal schedules.

If you think your plants are not using nitrates it could be a cobalt deficiency. I seen an old video with @Cory talking about seachem Trace as it contains cobalt. He said that cobalt is a precursor to nitrate uptake in plants. Unknown if this will help but wanted to throw it out there. Also, adding trace will not add nitrates if you want to try it.

I'm wondering if anyone Has had luck with a low tech planted tank with 20dgh / 10dkh and ph 7.8? Just put in some crypt lutea, water sprite, java moss and pogostemon octopus, moneywort and wondering if they are doomed to fail with that water?

My water is 360ppm gh. 7.8 ph. I too have had this concern and currently Stock cherry shrimp, guppies, and danios. But may try some otocinclus in the future. I would caution anyone who wants to modify their water though. It brings a lot of extra room for making a mistake. Fish need a STABLE ph and gh more than they need the PERFECT ph and gh. When you start chasing water parameters you are mixing waters, adding products based on testing. If you ever get into a hurry doing a water change or have a quick emergency water change and forget something (which is very easy to do and WILL happen to anyone that has kept fish a while) you run the risk of a wild swing in water parameters And that can kill fish fast. It's always better to keep things simple and avoid a lot of extra complexity that can and will lead to mistakes. Because we all make mistakes.

I have my light set to run 6 hours on a newly planted tank. Starts at 2:30pm-8:30pm. Is it detrimental to plants to run my light for an hour in the morning at 7am to view fish? I'm not really Wanting to program a siesta schedule because I work nights and I want to feed my fish when waking up at 7pm then second feed/viewing morning at 7am and with only 6 hrs it is going to put some pretty long siesta periods in there. When my plants get established More and I increase my photo period it will be easier to fit a shorter siesta in there.

I too have a stingray 2 and ran into the same problem . I seen that irene of girl talks fish said in here comments in a video about the stingray 2 that she had to swap back to the stingray 1 to reduce algae. So I added electric tape to cover enough of my LEDs to make it equivalent to a stingray 1 and that has helped me so far.

While this all sounds good, mainly because I am not a chemist. I have no way to confirm what you say is indeed fact. My problem is that seachem is a major corporation that would likely not place that on a bottle without scientific evidence to back it up. They would be worried in this day and age to be sued for false advertising. so I can guarantee you they do have a scientist on their team that would argue with you and I would love to see that debate and see who had the real science on their side. If I were as confident as you with your science I would indeed sue them for false advertising. As it seems you believe you should have a slam dunk case? My second problem is that api also has a product called ammolock. It is just for ammonia. seems like seachem and api are pretty darn confident that you are wrong too me. My main problem is on her original post I suggested dosing her tank with prime. That in no way would've had any negative impact on her fish or her pocket book since it's loke a penny a dose. So why come out so strong attacking it???

Definitely cut lights back. Or add co2 Some have to go to 6hrs without co2. I was running a finnex stingray 2 on my tank with my first bout with algae. It was putting out way too much light for my low tech setup. I had to cut back to 7hrs AND tape over some LEDs to make it basically a original finnex stingray. Try cutting back the timer first if that fails maybe try to reduce intensity also.

Prime does bind ammonia into a safer form for 24 hrs. Ive saved fish this way. So has ben ochart and kg tropicals. It says so on the bottle of prime also. Don't need to over dose it. Just treat tank volume every 24 to 48 hrs. It isn't perfect but it will save your fish if you have quick ammonia spike at midnight when you aren't watching it.

They could still be alive. To be safe if it were me I would Test a lot looking for ammonia. Run some ammonia blocking water conditioner like seachem prime just in case you have some quick ammonia spikes and maybe to be safe add a bacteria starter like fritz zyme 7. But a lot of bacteria is on aquarium surfaces and substrate so I think you are pretty safe. Hope all turns out well.

I was watching a replay of yesterday's livestream and heard cory talking about reducing the blue light in the fluval lights to reduce algae growth .I'm currently running a low tech, lightly planted 29 gallon with a finnex stingray 2 light that I've covered some white LEDs on to reduce intensity as I had that light on a previous identical setup that it provided too much light for on a 6hr photo period and am wondering if I should cover some of the blue LEDs also in that light to help with algae?