Sarina

I forgot to answer the part about the shrimp and snails, whoops 😅 Some amanos and ramshorns might be a good idea to clean up the algae and further establish the tank. You could reduce lighting, but if you're going to put a cleanup crew in, you actually probably want to be making a little algae so they have a reliable food source. Diatoms usually stop happening when the plants are fully established.

AR is one of the most dramatic aquatic plants, I swear. If your tank is new, then just be patient. It will usually work itself out. It'll just whine and cry about it the whole time lol. My AR looked absolutely awful for nearly two months before it finally started looking decent. Also, AR does tend to just drop leaves every now and again. I constantly have to pick little pink leaves out of my pond, where I have about 40 stems.

I once had a German blue ram that beat the absolute crap out of a kribensis cichlid because of a territory dispute. Sometimes they're just jerks. If you get more serpaes to they have a school, he may leave them alone. It could also be that the ram is looking to breed. What's your tank temperature at? Sometimes dropping the temperature can "chill out" rams.

Looks fantastic! It's impressive how bright they get when they're looking to breed.

That definitely looks like green spot algae. It’s notoriously difficult to get off of the surface of anything, including plants. If that is parva, the color is supposed to be a bright green, so it could be that your plants are just melting during conversion and the algae is feeding on the dying plant matter. Crypts usually come back, but making sure you’re feeding the roots is key to helping crypts thrive.

This might be a decent option, though it’s impossible to know what kinds of stone they’re using in these generic mixes. There is always a possibility that plain landscaping gravel will include stone that could alter pH. The size, however, would be more of a consistent 1/4”-1/2”. Here is another product that will most likely range in size from 1/4” to 2” in stone size, but it’s granite and will probably match the color pallet and texture you’re looking for at a really reasonable price. Honestly if I were you, I’d just find a local quarry/rock yard/landscaping yard or pop into your local Lowes store. You’ll likely find exactly what you need and the employees will know which type of rock is which. At a yard, they’ll probably charge you by the pound, but you may be able to pick exactly what you want from the pile. At Lowes, you’ll get a big bag of rocks for super cheap, but you won’t really know what’s inside until you break it open at home. I hope that at least gives you some leads!

The above are the requirements for this forum so that we can properly help you. A vague description is not enough, unfortunately. If you could post your water parameters and at least one clear photo (please visit the intro thread of the welcome forum to find out how) I’m sure someone will have an answer for you.

I have noticed that on some threads, there are youtube videos that appear in the actual post (not a link, the actual video). Is there still a way to do this, or does it ultimately cause loading issues and is no longer a feature because of that?

I will post more photos if anything changes!

It could be a dead snail, however it’s quite large and all the snails I put in there were pretty tiny, about the size of the top of a cotton bud (q-tip). It does not smell, and I have not attempted to remove it yet because I want to see what happens to it over the next few days. I will post updates if there are any changes! (I got a new macro lens for my phone and I’m looking for every excuse to use it 😅) I really wish I had a microscope to look more closely at the structure. Do you think I should remove it and see if it returns?

The tub I cleared was 55g, but you can use any flow rate pump you want, it will just take longer if you have less gph. The brand I used was called "uniclife" and I've had good luck with them, however there are many good ones to choose from. It's worth noting that the pump I used was one I had kicking around, if given the choice I probably would have gone with an actual internal filter. Way easier than the water bottle thing I did 😅. This one is rated at 185gph max and the reviews seem pretty decent. I've had good luck with nicrew products and the spray bar it comes with should help keep your fry from getting tossed around.

@skipper always happy to help! I'm actually really lazy about washing substrate and in my last setup I went from the top image to the bottom one using the filter floss trick 😉 as you can see, my "internal filter" was literally just a water bottle strapped to a 350gph pump. It cleared in two days.

So, a few things are going on here and I’ll address them individually: 1. Cloudy water: this could be due to bacterial bloom rather than from the substrate. It could also be from suspended organics in the water column. Cloudy water can usually be cleared up with some filter floss, I actually recommend just getting a small internal filter to stuff with floss and letting it run for a few days. Everything that isn’t bacterial will hopefully be caught in the filter floss. Rinse the floss as often as necessary to keep water flowing through the pump, you can keep using the same wad of floss for a long time. I use this stuff because it’s cheap and I can get it at the local craft store, but if you go this route make sure it doesn’t have fire retardant on it (it will say so if it does). You can also get floss specifically made for aquarium use, if the idea of using pillow stuffing isn’t appealing. 2. Aragonite sand isn’t inherently harmful, however it will always buffer your pH up to between 8.0 and 8.4. If you’re keeping livebearers, this is actually fantastic and will ultimately be good for fish health. Aragonite, however, is not great for planted tanks and if you ever wanted to keep plants, it will be difficult in such a high pH environment. You will also continue to have issues with algae just due to the phosphates in the water. A lot of people who keep African cichlids use aragonite sand to mimic the natural hard water they come from. If you want to plant your tank, or you want your pH to stay below 8.0, I would highly recommend cutting your losses and either capping the aragonite with something inert (like pool filter sand) or removing it and starting over. Capping the sand will only slow down the minerals from leeching into the water, though. It will still affect your pH, especially if the substrate is disturbed. 3. Diatoms are perfectly normal in a new aquarium, and you’ll see it off and on for the first six months that the tank is set up. You can mitigate it by reducing lighting, like you already have, but it’s also just a pretty normal stage in the biological cycle of aquaria. Algae and mulm means life, and life is always a good thing when it comes to closed ecosystems. The only time you need to worry about these things is if they get completely out of control and tips the scales to severely unbalanced. I hope this helps you out, if you have any more questions please let me know!

This is my brand new 11.3g AIO cube, set up for a little over two days now. This is the first evidence I've seen of any sort of biofilm or bacteria and I'm curious if someone more knowledgeable than me could tell me more about what I'm looking at. There are a few snails in here for establishing purposes, and I've been feeding them small bits of repashy omnivore. I squeezed a cycled sponge in the tank and the plants were from an established system, so it should be at least seeded.

I don't know if others will find this useful, but I reviewed the most popular record keeping apps on my blog a while back. I use my phone for pretty much everything these days, so finding the best record keeping app was pretty important to me. Hope it helps someone else out!

I think maybe the best way to give you advice on this subject is to give you a variety of resources. This is a big topic, and there’s a lot to learn! Most of the learning you will do is probably going to be on the fly, as you experience things. There is no replacement for experience, especially with aquaria. Here is a playlist from the co-op about planted aquarium basics. Here is a playlist from @Bentley Pascoe about substrate, probably more than you need to know, but it’s fantastic information and can help you make an educated decision about what to put in your aquarium. Here is one more relevant video from the co-op that I think is important. Planted tanks are a fantastic learning experience and it provides me with so many hours of enjoyment, I wish you so much success on this journey! I know the amount of information can be a bit overwhelming, but don’t let that intimidate you. The forum is here to help, and there are tons of free resources that the creators of the community work hard to provide for us. Happy planting!

Your link simply goes to your channel, not a specific video... can you provide the link to the specific video, please? It sounds like a good portion of the fry have been born with swim bladder deformities. These deformed fry are sometimes called “belly sliders” because they cannot get up off the floor of the aquarium. The cause could be genetic, it also could be environmental as they developed in the early stages. Unfortunately swim bladder issues this early in the life stage will always be chronic and is usually fatal. It can also accompany other deformities that will shorten the life of the fish. Since its your first batch, just cull the fry that aren’t totally healthy and swimming properly. If this kind of thing continues to happen with this specific pair, it might be worth looking at new genetics to prevent more batches of sickly fry. Sorry you’re dealing with this, it’s never fun to have a large portion of a hatch come out wonky.

Definitely not an oto, it looks like a Chinese algae eater to me. Unfortunately as adults they can be pretty aggressive and may go after your other fish. Keep a close eye. For future reference, otocinclus are a very light silver and CAEs tend to be a tan or brown color, even as juveniles.

Looks like my tap water down here in North Texas. Gh is always off the chart, but kh is always 40-80.

This forum IS part of people's research. They're asking the community and relying on us for our experience and expertise. If you cannot give complete information within the forum, at least point people in the right direction with a link. The internet is vast and the information can be overwhelming, the least you can do is provide a reliable source if you don't want to explain it yourself. Keep in mind, this forum is also a source of information for people googling things, too, and if the advice they see is simply "use this product" they may take that at face value and make a devastating mistake due to lack of information. We have to be responsible with our advice here. That's why this forum is so heavily moderated. It's not that difficult to include reliable links to back up your statements, that's all I'm saying.

Congrats! That's so exciting!

But that's not very helpful, especially on a forum like this where people are specifically asking for detailed information on solving a problem. In the future, you should consider at least providing a link with more information so that it helps guide people in their further research. Especially when it concerns potentially harmful chemicals like gluteraldehyde.

When you give advice about liquid carbon, make sure you include that liquid carbon can be dangerous for plants and livestock because it’s not actually liquid carbon, it’s an algacide, which can harm epiphyte, primitive, and floating plants, as well as livestock if not dosed correctly. There’s more information on it here and here.

Black beard algae can be caused by a lot of things, but I’ve found the usual cause is most likely a lack of dissolved CO2 and flow, and an excess of nutrients and light. If you drop your lighting level down and do smaller, more frequent water changes to slowly bring down nutrient levels, you should see the BBA start to disappear. You could also consider adding a DIY CO2 system with yeast and sugar to boost the CO2 levels. Here is an instructional link if you’re interested in going that route. You could also go the extreme route and do 5 days of blackout (three isn’t enough for BBA, trust me, I know) but that generally means not being able to look at your tank for like a week and that’s no fun at all. The last option is to just leave it alone. If it’s not spreading and it’s not too unsightly, BBA isn’t necessarily harmful. I used to have quite a bit on my old 29g blackwater display and I quite enjoyed the way it looked. BBA thrives in environments which fluctuate, so it may be as simple as just leaving things be to sort themselves out. I hope that helps, let me know if you need more details 😊

Usually java moss mats come as little plastic mesh pieces with the moss sandwiched inside them, so you could literally just toss the mat on top of the sand as is and leave it. It'll expand out over time, but you can also trim it when it gets long and make your own to get the carpeted look a little faster. I'll link you to a diy version. Ideally, the moss would be on a bare bottom tank, but I don't see why it would hurt to just lay it on top of the sand.