nabokovfan87

It's basically formed in mud (or comes filled with mud. So maybe the clay on the surface just hydrated and changed coloration a bit.

It looks to be some solid progress @Crow. Keep on doing all the little things and I am sure it'll be a really special tank. I love the way you did the gravel on the sand around the wood.

I believe that's just part of the stone itself. @TeeJay has one with a similar color as well. I think I have 1-2 with that darker shade. It also might be a different type of stone. It looks like a layer of material when the stone was cracked down to size and that's the layer that split. Similar to how Seiryu has the marbling of calcium, this one likely has something similar going on. It kind of reminds me of maple leaf stone or some sedimentary stone.

😂 There's a few! Caves on the shelf. Ziss in the back, Pumps (I think), and the obligatory sponge filters.

Plant selection was a very critical one for this for me. Some worked fine, others definitely did not. It was tied to water parameters I had at the time, I'm assuming, as well as just the setup I had. When I first started getting into higher quality planted tanks using things that were from ACO and learning a bit more, it almost seemed like dumb luck when you get the mix right without really understanding what's going on. Hopefully you're able to balance this one long term. It looks great. Both of the project tanks do!

I'm definitely not trying to overthink it. Some people, very rare, have reported issues with it happening. I've seen it once. It's not something where I will say it's anyone's (or any product's) fault, but just a word of caution to try to add things diluted if you can or pour it to where it will disperse well. If you see a random death and that's something that was added in the timeframe... it's worth mentioning, so I did.

Prime time has a video on filter bacteria and he talks about a study and the dieoff rates of bacteria. Basically, if it stays wet, you should be ok. I would just use something like bacteria in a bottle. I prefer seachem stability, but there's a lot of options out there.

when you're adding the Easy Green, try to add it to a container or jar or something and dilute it into the tank away from any fish. Some sensitive fish can have it hit the gills as they are trying to swim up and expect feeding or something and it can cause some stress/issues/deaths. I think I saw someone on the FB group had an issue with half-beaks that they lost this way. That being said, temp could play a role and the shock in water from the tap going into the tank might be an issue here. Normally things are going to be ok with a slight temp change, but if you're talking a good shift in one direction it can be stressful. Stress leading to issues and whatever is going on leading to an issue. Hopefully that helps. My condolences and I'm sorry for your struggles and losses. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0144860914000041 Check out figure 3 Here's another interesting read as well: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8944636/

It is incorrect. It adds nutrients to the soil when they decompose. If you're concerned, you can pull off leaves and plant the stems. However, the main thing is to make sure you're planting it deep enough. This is something I struggled with a lot at first when getting my tank up and running with the fine plants, shallow roots, and corydoras.

I see the stand, wonderful. I am totally captivated and distracted by that chunk of rock on the co-op towel.

Really cool pattern. It might also look cool as a 4 piece panel. Add another cross bar to the bottom section and then you have the line in the middle with "color" with the mesh pattern on the 2 or 4 "panels" of the door. Whatever you decide, it's going to be pretty special. Great work. I can imagine CA calling you up to want to use the work in their promo stuff when you have it completed.

It's a stem, so you would just plant it like S.Repens or any other foreground stem. Trim it when it gets too tall. I would recommend looking at Tropica's video for the plant in question. They show how to care/plant the stems.

My tap is ~40-50 KH, 100-120 GH. My PH is ~6.8-7. There are charts out there that give you PH vs KH ratios used to determine CO2 levels in your tank. It's not a hard and fast rule, but.... When you're talking wild caught corydoras the max can be around 7.4 or 7.6 for other species. Your best resource is going to be textbooks, studies on the species in question, or a source like planet catfish. Yes, asking the seller is a great idea. Yes the point about bacteria and things at different PH levels is a very valuable one, but also keep in mind what the fish tend to want. Normally you're talking 7.5ish or below for PH, meaning KH of ~80-100 or below (based on my experience with adjusting KH up in my water). That being said, everyone's water is different. I'm going to suggest running something like fine active substrate in that tank (fine controsoil is good and comes in extra fine) or you can use standard size substrate with a feeding dish. That being mentioned, wood, botanicals, peat balls, and using RODI water is a good way to lower your minerals over time. I cannot say if it is required, but from what I have seen with my fish, when they had PH issues they had rapid breathing issues and turned reddish (not their normal bronzey-orange color). This was something I experienced with my pandas when the PH shifted due to KH shifting too high on me for several weeks. They may have been able to adapt long term, but it was definitely stressful for them.

I had a 404 error. Not sure if that's the same one. It was just a broken link.

May or may not be related to what's going on, but this is worth a listen. His head looks to have that darkening on it indicated from the video as a common issue.

Raising it gradually would be fine. Look into a product like crushed coral in the substrate if you have white substrate or try to check into seachem alkalinity buffer as an additive. There is also KH+GH shrimp buffers available that keep things at a good ratio. Depending what the KH/GH are currently that's something you can check into. You can add a dose once a week, gradually raise it over time. Yes.

It has an English translation as well, great resource.

Pearlweed can be contained to short lengths too. Will grow longer.

It happens with a lot of moss. Basically that's just where the plant didn't get light or what it needed and that ended up dying back a little bit. Chopping it does tend to propagate the moss much quicker, so something like chopping it into small bits and gluing it could be used here. Jurijs has a good video on this. Another method would essentially be to wrap the moss around a rock. You can keep it where you have it, but maybe when you do a WC if it's not secured then you'll have it floating around. The final awesome way to use moss is a moss ledge or a background wall of moss. Love this plant! Just make sure the rhizome isn't buried. Only the roots need to be. You can also push the light a little forward if you see algae start to grow on the leaves on this plant or anything in the back that might be less demanding. I would tend to do one or two bigger water changes so that you drop the levels down. Say ~20ppm and then that's your baseline. Once you get near 50 you can have some issues with fish health over time. I'd have to pull the studies from aquaculture on the topic, but those are out there as well. You would test your GH and KH levels. Does not impact easy green in any way.

Welcome. It is and it isn't! Green aqua has some really helpful videos for planted tank basics and they give you pretty good detail. One of the ones I would recommend is the "water parameters" video. Basically, in addition to things like ferts, light, co2, gh, and kh play a role in the health of a planted tank. Think of GH/KH as your "mineral ferts". I am sure you'll have more questions, please feel free to ask!

Looks good then! Probably is just cycled, doing well, and has very low bioload.

basically similar product. One is plaster of paris with some stuff mixed in and the other is just powder form of a few items. I prefer equilibrium because it's cheap(ish) and it's easy to use.

Basically it goes across the top of the tank, down the sidewall, then it goes across the length of the tank substrate... towards the inlet flow to remove the waste. The only real issue / question is whether or not the the intake siphon is strong enough to remove the waste. some of them aren't designed very well.

I've had mine on up to 1 tbsp of salt per 2 gallons. Briefly on 1 tbsp of salt per 1 gallon

Can you elaborate on what the filter looks like right now? Please feel free to share a photo or video of the filter running on the tank. Maybe it will indicate something. Did you ever use anything like stability or fritz zhyme 7? Basically you might just have very low bioload. No ammonia, no nitrite is good. Every test, liquid or strip has a chance of being invalid, contaminated, or perfect.