aye-aye-travis

Thank you for your responses, both of you! The picture from @Guppysnail does show all the characteristics. Thank you. I will try to get rid of them. It is amazing they can survive complete submerged. 😀

Hello, I hope it is okay to ask this in the General. I search my title many times and not found anything like this. Can someone ID this for me? I found a few of such creatures in my 10 gallon shrimp tank and not sure if they are harmful or not. I have not noticed any lost of shrimplets yet. My water parameters are 0/0.25 ammonia, 0 nitrite, 0 nitrate. I have this since late April of this year. I have tons of blabber snail from plants that I bought. Maybe a hitchhiker? Thank you ahead of time

Thank you so much for your thoughts, Koi. Thank you for the reassuring words! Your suggestions are great! I just need to monitor my water change if ammonia creeps up again. And adding root tap and dosing easy green more seems to be the way to go to prevent my plants from melting. As a beginner, I tend to want to buy things to "fix' the issue. However, you are right, my tank is relatively new. It is quite a mental shift to have to throw away good floating plants. But the insight that I read is that balance means all plants and life stocks are thriving. And I definitely don't have that for my slower growing plants. I will wait on co2 injection. It is tempting to "fix" things. But things could get worse. Thank you so much for your ideas!

Hello, first time poster. Sorry if my query has been answered in different ways. Either way, it would be nice to get some feedback from you kind folks. I'm so appreciative of all the knowledge in this forum. My 20 gallon tank has been running since late April 2021, so about 2+ months. My last tanks suffered a tragic death from BAD black beard algae (BBBA). It was also located outside in the patio with a goldfish and a hillstream loach. Unfortunately, both passed after a water change. Sorry for being long-winded. As a result, I am highly afraid of having an algae problem. As I heard, having lots of plants would help my tank “cycled”. Here is the list current in my tank: Slow growing: Amazon Sword Red Rubin, Java Fern, Annubias golden Fast growing: Water lettuce, red root floater, Salvinia Natans, water sprite, red tiger lotus, Vallisneria Maintaining/not dead: Ludwigia Repens, Cryptocoryne Walkeri, dwarf hair grass, Christmas moss Deceased/melt: Bacopa Caroliniana, Water Wisteria I have high pH in my tap water above 8. Last test for GH = 8 and KH =9. I also put Seachem Equilibrium in the water bucket before any water change and added a small wonder shell recently to try to raise the KH. My tank has a medium size sponge filter and a OASE Biomaster Thermo 350 filter. My light is a Finnex Stingray Aquarium LED light for 7 hours a day on a timer. My stockings are 10 ember tetra, 3 Otocinclus, cherry and amano shrimps, nerite snails and one Japanese trapdoor snail. For some reason, I can’t seem to have a stable water condition (0.25 ppm ammonia occasionally) and there has been death to 2 Otocinculus, 1 trapdoor snail and 1 cherry shrimp. Every time it is devastating. My local fish store suggested using ROI water, but it seems like a big investment and inconvenience as I live in an apartment. As the title mentioned, my slow growing plants are not doing so well. I have lost the majority of my Amazon swords from melting and yellowing. My Java fern has spots and some leaves are turning transparent. Similar nutrient deficiency issue with the Annubias. After having 5 ppm nitrate since May, I have not registered any nitrate. However, my fast growing plants seem to be doing fine. I put one cap of Seachem Flourish Advance every night and started double dosing (4 pumps) easy green fertilizer three times a week since last week. However, there is no detectable change yet. I have considered installing CO2 injection. But I worried about algae. Basically, I have some surface green spot algae, but I think my snails took care of them. I am almost at a point where I prefer to cover the area under the floating plants with rocks since my Amazon sword kept melting. And I removed most of the floating plants recently in hope to provide more light. I am really looking forward to getting more fish, but if my tank is not stable, the additional bio-load might cause algae and/or fish death. Does anyone have any suggestions of medium growing plants that I can try? Should I get better light? CO2 injection? Any suggestion to keep my slower growing plants healthy and having more stable water condition would be great! Thank you.