Rube_Goldfish

Ha, I'm the exact opposite! One of the things I like about aquatic plants is that it takes the overwatering/underwatering factor entirely out of it, and that's the thing I always struggle with with terrestrial plants. They've had behind-the-scenes at the old Washington warehouse before explicitly showing snails in the plant storage tanks, I think intentionally. They've since moved the warehouse to Kentucky, but I doubt they'd have changed the snail policy. In any case, a) the plant health and quality I've gotten from ACO has been great; and b) if it ever wasn't, their customer service is second to none.

How did this end up going?

Caveat: I'm speaking as a hobbyist and not a microbiologist, but I think bacterial colonies like this are more resilient than we sometimes give them credit for. They're wet, there's a food source, and there's dissolved oxygen in the water. It's not flowing over them as rapidly as normal, but I'd have to think that, worst case scenario, you'd get a small amount of die back, but most of them would be fine. Remember that people also talk about how much nitrifying bacteria can be found on every surface -- glass, substrate, hardscape, plants -- and those bacteria are in basically the same circumstances as the ones on your filter media are now. If you want to be cautious, it's probably not a bad idea to cut back either the amount or frequency of feeding (or both) and increase your frequency of water testing, but if the tank has been running a while, I'd bet you'll be fine.

That stinks. Good luck figuring it out, though!

Thank you! I love watching all your young puffers hunting and growing up!

Corydoras sterbai fry that hatched about six days ago, at 1x zoom and 10x zoom on my phone camera: I'll see if I can turn the video I have into a gif the way @mountaintoppufferkeeper does. I think I got it! Here's a quick gif of the then-three day old* cory fry hiding from me under a magnolia leaf: *I think; I pulled eggs for three straight days into that breeder box, so I'm kind of guessing.

Yes, you could do the whole tank with reverse respiration, but yes, it would wipe out your beneficial bacteria, too, and you'd be restarting your cycle/tank seasoning. And anyway if you really wanted to start over, you could pull everything out and use reverse respiration and/or sunlight/drying out, then wipe the now-empy tank down with vinegar or hydrogen peroxide, which would be quicker and cheaper. To be clear, I think that would be overkill (no pun intended), but you could do it.

Reverse respiration is a method of using ordinary seltzer water to kill basically anythig eccept for vascular plants: https://reverserespiration.com/ (A lot of us here are something like evangelists for it.) If you want to quarantine your plants (or sterilize hardscape, equipment, substrate, or whatever else you've got), reverse respiration is hard to beat.

The only thing I can think is to increase the amount of leaves that go in at a time, I guess? So that the snails have some but also the shrimp and otos get some, too. On the other hand, that may just lead to a bump in snail population... But yes, while I'm using magnolia leaves instead of mulberry, I've found the snails seem to jump on them a lot quicker and more thoroughly than the shrimp and otos (I've never actually seen my otos eating off of the leaves).

That sounds like a good plan and a good hedge. With a little luck, both tanks will end up overrun and you'll be trading floating plants with your LFS or fishkeeping friends. Edited to add: I've found, by the way, that red root floater in tanks with low nitrates and good lighting turn red, and if the nitrates and light are both high, the leaves stay green but I get flowers (which you can see in the photo I posted above). So you might get different results in your two tanks.

@Lennie, do you have any insights into honey gourami male-female aggression? My pair were both male, and evenly matched, so they kind of came to a live-and-let-live understanding after a while, so I'm afraid I have no first-hand experience.

Yeah, it's not unheard of. Here's a quick snap of the surface of Mrs. Goldfish's tank: You can see that some of the leaves in the center there that are sort of pushed under. I'm not sure I'd call it normal, because it does seem to kill the leaf over time, but it happens often enough, and seems to be related to clumping. Which brings us to: Yes, can pull them apart. They seem to come apart with pretty minimal force, and I'll break up and rearrange clumps as necessary, and I'll also break them up when removing some from the tanks. As for what you'd need to know, I'd say just be gentle until you get a feel for it. And if any of the leaves/clumps seem like they're not going to recover, you're probably right, so just toss them and let new leaves regrow. Which brings us to: Yes, once they get going, red root floaters will grow quite quickly and will take over the whole surface area of the water if allowed to (or it will die entirely; I've never had any result in the middle!). So from time to time you'll need to thin them out to allow light penetration. As to how much and how often, that will depend on, among other things, the growth and health of the submerged plants below. In the early stages, soaking up excess nutrients and shading out some of the light might actually be helpful, especially if your other plants are converting from emersed growth. So you'll have to just observe and adjust. And lastly, floaters don't seem to need much more than light and water. Fertilizer makes them grow faster, of course, and surface turbulence and wet leaf tops harms them, but otherwise they're pretty simple.

I do something similar; I portion out some to a small jar for the refrigerator and put the rest of the can in the freezer. But I also know @Dean’s Fishroom goes through brine shrimp so much faster than I do! Actually, thinking about it, I think I'm going through a can about every four months or so, albeit inconsistently. So if I bought two cans, the second would have to last eight months. Sealed up and in the freezer, it looks like that will be no problem at all.

Gouramis can be a great choice, and they are also anabantoids, like bettas. In a 20 gallon, a trio of honey gourami or maybe a shoal of five sparkling gourami could work very nicely. I think pearl gourami would probably be too big, but I've never kept them. Dwarf gourami have some of that beautiful betta coloration, but are sometimes vulnerable to iridovirus, and can also have aggression issues. I can personally vouch for honey gourami, but you can see if any of those species catch your or your husband's eye.

I will need to order more brine shrimp eggs soon. I keep a small amount (a half-dozen tablespoons or so) in my refrigerator and keep the rest of the tin in my freezer. I'd like to order two tins this time just to make my shipping costs more efficient, but I don't know how long brine shrimp eggs can be stored in the freezer before the hatch starts to be affected; there's no cost savings if my yield goes down. So how long do you think an unopened can would be okay in the freezer?

So I guess you wouldn't swim in London's Sky Pool, either? https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/sky-pool-embassy-gardens-london/index.html

Ah, thanks, I didn't know that. That's why I hedged my answer!

That's what I'm thinking, too. My experience with mystery snails is limited to intentionally introduced adults, so maybe it's easier than I think for a baby mystery to sneak in, but pond/bladder egg(s) just seem a lot more likely to me.

Would a mystery snail be able to hitchhike unnoticed, though? Bladder and pond snail eggs are very small; mystery snail egg clutches would be hard to miss, but I suppose a single baby snail would be able to do it?

I knew I'd seen a video @Cory did explaining all this with M&Ms: It's sometimes called "old tank syndrome".

Aquariums often acidify over time, but that general hardness will only go down if calcium and/or magnesium are taken up by plants and animals out of the water column, and even then only if those plants and animals are then removed from the tank (plant trimmings, for example). Then you'd be exporting those nutrients. But otherwise, and unless you're doing fairly large, regular water changes, top-offs will cause hardening over time, since those minerals will remain behind when the water evaporates. Water of 143 ppm goes in, some evaporates, and the water gets slightly harder. Then you add more 143 ppm water, and over time that number creeps up. You can prevent that with nutrient export from plant trimmings, for example, by regular water changes, or by doing top offs only with distilled or reverse osmosis water.

You could also just gas it off over time, with more surface agitation gassing it off quicker, but dechlorinator is the safer and quicker route.

Bladder snails can reproduce asexually, so yeah, you'll likely get more. They do eat algae and excess food, though, so I like mine as long as I keep them to a reasonable population. The good news is that the population is easy for you to regulate: if you feed "too much" their numbers go up; cut back and they're numbers will shrink. In a way, they're a good quick visual indicator of "am I feeding too much?"

I used the polycarbonate greenhouse panels mentioned above. I was able to cut them to size and add cutouts for wires and filters and whatnot using just a box cutter (though it did use up a whole blade). Plus they're designed for greenhouses, so they insulate against heat loss quite well.

It's a form of phosphate, right? I'm trying to learn all this biochemistry myself.