Erin Maxted

My water parameters? I have hard water and low pH, around 6.5 usually when dechlorinated. 29 gal tank. All of my usual components are within normal limits, no detectable ammonia, nitrites, and acceptable nitrates (about 20ppm usually). Not sure of the ppm dosing, and don't want to do all the math - I dose 3mL of Easy Green twice a week, and have 6-7 root tabs in there for the crypts, dwarf sag, and dwarf lily. Tank has a king betta, 4 albino cory cats, a clown pleco, 2 nerite snails, and pest ramshorn snails (Between me and food availability, that population seem to be stable).They don't eat the healthy plant growth and are a good clean up crew.

For future reference for you: ParacCeanse just has metronidazole (antibiotic/antiparasitic) and praziquantel (anti-cestode), both medications which only work on animal cells because blah blah science *Insert science-y mechanism of action here*, so it's not harmful to plants in the doses we generally use. Though, I have professor who is very fond of saying "All generalizations are false, including this one". Hope that puts your mind at ease in the future!

I hope someone can give me some insight on this: I have a well established 29 gal community tank where every plant EXCEPT the jungle val is just... eh, sort of doing ok (Dwarf tiger lily, java fern, dwarf sag, crypts, anubias, ALL of them). They all grow new growth appropriately but develop brown spots and/or holes in the foliage soon after. I learned it was probably potassium and/or phosphorous deficiency, and have been trying to correct for almost 2 months with both water column and substrate fertilizer, and no change in those plants EXCEPT the jungle val, which has just exploded even more; I have to cut it every week and pull out new plants to keep it from overtaking everything. It's now my running theory that the jungle val is just way better at acquiring nutrients and is basically acting like an invasive species. Has anyone else ran into this? Anything else I should try? Should I just replace the jungle val with another background plant that's less hardy? Thanks in advance!