zestygrappy

Water in my area is really soft and yet my endlers and other livebearers breed like crazy. Raise GH by using either Equilibrium or by adding baking soda, Epsom salt and rock salt. You could as well add some corals or something similar. I'm pretty sure your fish will do just fine 🙂

You could place a floating container in your tank and put wigglers there. Or just get a plastic hatchery. In any case you will need an air stone and would be good to use methylene blue to prevent fungus. I like to add small piece of driftwood and a bit of java moss once they all hatched. Then just leave them there for couple of weeks until they're big enough to be moved into a grow out tank. If you provide enough hiding spots gouramis shouldn't harm baby plecos. Regarding feeding; newly hatched fry will use yolk sac as source of food for first couple days. After that you should feed them something like Hikari First Bites or something similar. Then start feeding them baby brine shrimp and eventually move to veggies and wafers.

I think group or 15-20 neocaridina shrimp could be a way to go. I have been keeping shrimp for few years now and in my experience they do love a well established and heavy planted tanks. While you may not see many shrimps, they just feel safe hiding in java moss, hornwort and they would also appreciate floating plants like salvina. Leave some space on the bottom of the tank and place feeding dish there. Give it some time and once your shrimp gets comfortable you will see plenty of life there 🙂

I have cardinal and ember tetras in a community tank and they used to stay hidden around plants. Since I've put some water spangles in, they became way more active. So I guess adding more plants should do the trick, if floating plants don't bother you water spangles would be a good choice as they don't grow roots all the way down to bottom of the tank. You would have to scoop them out from time to time as they do form new shoots real quick.

Otto's are super cute, great algae eaters. I prefer to keep them in groups of at least 6-8. And they won't eat any fry. I've never kept otto's in hard water though. Check this out : https://forum.aquariumcoop.com/topic/12435-otocinclus-and-hard-water-and-high-ph/

They definitely will. If you're worried BBS won't make it to the bottom use pipette or syringe and just drop a little squirt over substrate.