Irene

How beautiful! I believe that crypt tropica is kept in Murphy's tank, which you can see here: https://www.aquariumcoop.com/pages/murphy-camera They don't look as pink as yours, but maybe your lighting is a lot stronger?

Fun! I'm currently keeping (from left to right) water sprite, Bacopa caroliniana, crypt spiralis, Pogostemon stellatus "Octopus", and Aponogeton crispus in the background of my low tech 20-gallon tank. The bacopa is the tallest so far and I've already trimmed it a couple of times. The pogostemon and water sprite were added more recently, so we'll see if they catch up. I basically just went shopping on the Background Plants section of the Aquarium Co-Op website and bought everything that looked cool. 😂

Dwarf sag worked well for me, since my high light made it stay short. I'm about to try carpeting using pearl weed, which would give you a very jungle-y look if you let it grow taller without trimming it. Here's the short video that convinced me to give it a shot:

I had the same problem with my stem plants melting off at the base. I was dosing Easy Green up to 20 ppm nitrate, regularly adding new root tabs, and using a Fluval 3.0 light. My problem ended up being a lack in minerals (most likely calcium). I got the API GH/KH test kit and found out I have high pH at 8.0 but very soft water at 3 dGH, which is below the recommended 4-8 dGH amount for healthy plant growth (as researched from various online articles). Once I started using Wonder Shells and then Seachem Equilibrium to boost my GH levels, my stem plants started successfully growing. I did not see any of the classic signs of calcium or magnesium deficiency in my plant leaves, just the melting stems/leaves and lack of any new growth. Not sure if soft water is your issue, but my best guess is that the melting is caused by some kind of nutrient or mineral deficiency. P.S. Just in case lighting is the issue, here are my current Fluval 3.0 light settings (for a 20-gallon high tank that is 16" tall). I have 1 hour ramp up, 6 hours on, and 1 hour ramp down. When it is on for 6 hours, it's at 30% intensity for all colors (except for 5% blue light). I finally have the algae under control, and my stem plants, java fern, aquarium lily, and crypts are all doing well under the decreased light intensity. No CO2 injection, and no floating plants that block the light.

Hydrogen peroxide wasn't as effective for me (e.g., treating the whole tank, spot treating plants in and out of water, etc), but liquid carbon did wonders. I first tried dosing the whole tank with liquid carbon (and increasing that concentration over time), but got minimal results. Once I spot treated a few leaves with liquid carbon, I saw the algae change colors and the algae eaters would pick off the dying algae. I gradually treated a few leaves every week and saved my whole tank from being taken over by BBA and a short hair algae. Also, I dialed down my Fluval 3.0 light a lot, which stopped the algae from growing back. Best of luck to you!

I believe @Tazawa Tanks just did a video about how he keeps nerite snails with his African cichlids to clean off the algae on his rocks. Check it out:

Hmm, I've never kept them with those species, but apistos tend to hang out at the bottom as well, so that would leave the top half of your aquarium pretty empty. From what I've seen online, apistos are plenty feisty enough to be in the same tank with the energetic dwarf chain loaches. Not sure about their compatibility with pea puffers, but my fear is that the dwarf chain loaches would outcompete the puffers for food. They are pretty fast eaters, whereas my pea puffer liked to carefully investigate her food. Maybe @Robert has some more insight into these potential pairings.

Dwarf chain loaches are the bomb! I love their activity level. They're very lively and mostly stick to the bottom third of the tank, so you could find a more colorful but equally energetic fish for the middle/top of the tank, like pseudomugil rainbowfish, endlers, guppies, dwarf/teacup platies, etc. Dwarf chain loaches: Dwarf red platy (stays around 1 inch long):

Oh no, I'm sorry about your betta fish! The only betta that I owned that got dropsy within 24 hours of buying him and passed away the very next day, so I don't have much experience with successfully treating it. Most people see it as a fatal disease, but I wouldn't give up without a fight, especially he looks fine from top down. I know your hospital tank has salt and meds in it. Not sure what your salt concentration is, but here's the recipe I recommend for treatment if you're interested: https://www.aquariumcoop.com/blogs/aquarium/aquarium-salt-for-sick-fish

I'm like @Matthew - I got truly serious about fish keeping after my first major disaster where almost all my fish died of columnaris. I was already doing a decent amount of research online, but I didn't realize as a beginner that people on the Internet have varying opinions and sometimes you have to dig really deep, verify across multiple sources, and personally test things to make sure something is true. After rage-quitting the hobby for 9 months, I came back with a renewed determination to learn everything I could to give my fish the happiest, healthiest lives possible. 🙂 My first 20G tank before columnaris hit it:

@MickS77 Unfortunately it's so old that it looks like it's no longer sold, but I just picked a highly rated one on Amazon.com. Just make sure the clip is long enough to reach the camera lens on your phone. Also, I found that with my newer and bigger phones, sometimes my phone case is too bulky so I have to take off the case so that the macro lens will lay flatter on the camera lens. 🙂

She's sooo cute! I would love to keep that species someday, especially since you can put them in a community setting.

Closeup of one of my albino corydoras, taken with a Samsung Galaxy S7 and a little clip-on macro lens.

@FishObsessed Welcome to the forum! Here's an article on water chemistry that I wrote for Aquarium Co-Op, and at the end, there's a section on how to safely and gradually raise your pH, GH, and KH: https://www.aquariumcoop.com/blogs/aquarium/ph-gh-kh In general, I believe Cory says that crushed coral tends to raise KH, whereas Wonder Shell and Seachem Equilibrium is better for raising GH or water hardness. Hope that helps!

Beautiful gouramis! Were the pair getting along before, and now the male is chasing the female? Are there any eggs in the bubble nest? When I bred my honey gouramis, they stayed close together during the courtship, but once the female was done laying eggs, the male started chasing the female away from his bubble nest to protect them. At that point, I removed the female and then let the male guard the eggs. Once the fry were free swimming, then I removed the male as well and just raised the babies by themselves. Here's a video of what I did; hope it helps!

Sand or round gravel like that should be totally fine, in my experience. Actually, Cory went on a fish collecting trip to Peru and showed that the natural substrate where some corydoras are found is often quite sharp (jump to minute 22:45). Hope that helps!

I believe there are companies that sell blackwater extracts that don't tint the water, but I have no idea how effective they are. Might be worth testing. 🤔

Oh man, I'm sorry to hear that! My endlers had wasting disease, and it was rough. Levamisole ultimately saved half of the population though. 👍

Yes, generally plants will not do well with salt (depending on how high the concentration is). You can either pull the plants out or you can pull the fish out and treat them in a separate hospital tank. Good luck to ya!

Welcome! That's so cool that your kids have their own tanks. Post some pictures when you get a chance. 🙂

Awww, you're welcome! Glad we can help out. 🙂

@Chandra @Daniel Haha, so when I was trying to figure out my nutrient deficiency problems, I did buy several extra test kits to narrow down which nutrient I might have too little or too much of. However, now that I'm no longer chasing individual nutrients and am just using Easy Green, yes I mainly just check nitrates to make sure it's at 20 ppm. Once a month, I also check GH and dose Seachem Equilibirum to keep my calcium and other minerals high enough.

@genuine_red Oh wow, your tanks look beautiful! Yeah, lack of minerals probably isn't your issue. I had already tested many other plant nutrients first, and nothing else seemed out of whack. After looking at different online articles, here is a list of recommended nutrient levels I wrote down to try to troubleshoot what my plants were lacking: CO2 content: 20-30 ppm Nitrate (NO3): 10-25 ppm OR 10-20 ppm Potassium (K): 5-10 ppm OR 10-20 ppm Phosphate (PO4): 0.1-1 ppm (dose to 0.5 and let it drop to 0) OR 0.5-2.0 ppm Magnesium (Mg): >10 ppm OR 2-5 ppm Calcium (Ca): 10-30 ppm (calcium-magnesium-potassium ratio = 2:1:0.5) Iron (Fe): 0.05-0.1 ppm OR 0.1-0.5 ppm General Hardness (GH): 4-8 degrees Carbonate Hardness (KH): 4-8 degrees I tried tweaking the individual nutrients I thought my plants needed more of, but I ended up making a bigger mess of things. Eventually, I went back to using Easy Green since it's already calibrated to the right concentration of nutrients for most tanks. The one thing it doesn't list in the ingredients is calcium though, which is what I was missing. 🙂 Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I did first try dosing the liquid carbon on the whole tank for several weeks. It was gradually killing some algae because I could see lots of particulate floating in the water and making it cloudy, but it didn't seem to make much of a dent for some reason. Eventually, I gave up and just started spot treating, and it worked much better/faster for me. Best of luck to ya!

@genuine_red Sorry to hear about your plants! For me, BBA was caused by a combination of lights being too strong and mineral deficiencies that caused my plants to stop growing (I have very soft water). Here's what I did: Removed dying plants that were too far gone Decreased my Fluval 3.0 light down to 30% intensity (for a 16″ tall, 20-gallon high tank with no CO2 injection) Started dosing Seachem Equilibrium once a month to raise my mineral content to 4-8 dGH Spot treated the algae on submerged plants using liquid carbon in a pipette (since hydrogen peroxide didn't work for me) I spot treated only 1-2 leaves at first as a test and then waited a week to see if the plant would survive. When it did, I spot treated about 7-10 leaves each week, and gradually my plants started becoming algae-free again and are actually growing lots of new leaves. It was a very frustrating but ultimately rewarding experience. Best of luck in figuring out what's causing your BBA! Before: After:

Ooo, thanks for the pictures!