nabokovfan87

That substrate always looks so unique when you get a macro shot or something up close. We've talked about it before and I think the only * or caveat is that what we discussed. It really is difficult for some due to it being a recycled media. Black Diamond is the brand and you can find those details on the website. This isn't something designed for aquarium use and I am just going to say we all should use common sense. If it feels sharp after cleaning and all that then you might run into some issues. If you run a magnet and it's full of metal, maybe you got a bad batch. I do love the look of dark, black substrate, and it's a bit difficult to really find something in the sand size. Yours are doing well, corydoras look great, and I can say there are plenty of people running this substrate and having zero issues at all with it.

That one says mold resistant, so it wouldn't be the right one.

Maybe this?

This is what it normally looks like. Just a photo from online. You want the roots to be in the soil so they can feed as well as secure the plant itself. I tried to look up the ingredients and I saw someone post that they worked well for the swords they had. It looks to be bits of clay which may or may not have all the nutrients you need. I'm not sure. If you can get them, if that continues to be an issue, I would try the seachem or tropica root tabs. But yeah, keep an eye on the plant after you add root tabs (you can tab the entire tank where you have stems and stuff) and then just monitor. I would lean towards the specialized version by tropica. Both should work fine, but they have slightly different things. For your setup the specialized one has things for fast growing plants (stems and so on). The hobby one I can't find the % of what is in there unfortunately.

Do you have some way to verify the amount of liquid being put into the tank per each dose? Something that measures mL so you can verify the amount you're putting in is what you think it to be. (i.e. 2 pumps) One thing that a lot of hobbyists do is add potassium for specific potassium heavy plant feeders. That being said I can't say anything you're doing is seemingly not enough. You're dosing 3x a week. The best place to start might simply be with tracking your nitrate levels over a week or two with daily testing in the afternoon. This will give you an idea of how much the plants are using and adjust from there. Just to give you an idea, here is another all-in-one fertilizer and it has slightly different things added. It's all about what the plant needs and sometimes it can be hard to tell. All we can really do is test levels and verify that certain nutrients are "enough".

Yeah. If you want to visually see it there is likely good videos on "propagating stem plants" on YouTube. 🙂 There are some tips and tricks with where you should cut them, but it's ultimately just a skill you practice with. Then you take the trimmings and plant those in the substrate, yes. Ah, very interesting. It might be just due to the GH levels. Some plants want less GH than we realize. Fingers crossed it perks up! It shouldn't have the roots exposed per say, but just planted. I can take a photo of mine if it helps at all in terms of how deep to plant them. The main thing there will be what is your substrate and root tabs as the food for that plant.... In addition to the liquid ferts and adding anything like potassium. Yeah pretty much. You definitely don't need to dose every day. Sometimes it can be difficult if you miss one day and don't have the consistency. If you do, that's great. The main thing is just to verify that amount that you're using. Maybe it needs to be higher per day. Which liquid fert and root tabs are you using?

There are some fish that may eat them, but traps constantly will be your best bet then. Unfortunately they are very resilient and difficult to get rid of when you have snails in there as well.

Remove as much as you can manually, scrape the glass, and then do a big siphon with the substrate. Scrape all of the glass. 80-90% water change to remove as much of it as you can. Then clean out the filters as much as possible.

Glass = green diatom brown diatoms lower rim, cyano / blue-green algae filter + sponge + left glass, you have chladophora or some sort of green hair algae.

Even if you don't have chlorine or chloramine, the dechlorinators do other things as well. Some help with heavy metals and other things that aren't good with your water. It's entirely your call on what you want to use, but I think it's something where I would still use it for my own tanks, especially for something like shrimp and snail tanks. That being said if we dive into individual issues, there are a few things we need to keep in mind. First of which is always going to be water changes, how much and how often, as well as your fertilizer regime, substrate, and CO2 setup. Considering that the plant in question is a very low demand plant, I think we can rule out a lot of issues and move it down to specifically nutritional. If a broad leaved plant gets too much light, then that ends up with algae on the leaves and that isn't what you're seeing. Pinholes and wilting leaves usually ends up with it being either old growth (emersed, not submersed growth), missing a nutrient that is required, or not getting nutrients in the right way. This photo says a lot to me. The plants should be growing long right up to the light and be doing ok. I see algae on about 60-80% of the leaves and it's definitely not helping them to thrive. The usual method here is to fix the issue as well as manual removal. Manual removal for val usually leads to a pretty good trim and then letting the plant regrow. I can't say where is best to cut, but again it all ties back to that nutrient issue and the plant not really having what it needs. As a general rule for ferts and for root tabs, each one has it's own recipe. This usually leads to adding a secondary bottle of something. For some, it's iron, for others it is potassium. I would suggest adding root tabs to the tank as a lot of these plants in question are root feeders and will want a lot of nutrients from the roots. Secondary to that, let's add in potassium to the dosing regime for pinholes. In terms of your fertilizer you are using, check what potassium levels compared to other nutrients. You might need to be dosing more often than you currently are. Based on what your substrate is, the root tabs you're using, and keeping up with plant maintenance, then that would indicate maybe there is a need for a different substrate or for a different tab to be used. Hopefully the above makes sense and there is some adjustments you can make that improve things! Verify that the fertilizer is shaken up as well as the amount that is being dispensed. Here's a thread on that topic. In my own tank I have been trying to do everything right, but seemingly underdosing a little bit.

There's some blue-green algae (cyanobacteria) as well as brown diatom algae, green spot algae, as well as what looks a little bit like the moss ball stuff. That last one, I'll find the name, but it's very hard to tell. It's the one I see in the tidal skimmer and it's the one I'm not quite sure about. Cladophora algae is the name.

Looks like a spinal injury. I'm very sorry.

You can do it almost daily. I would treat it for ~2 weeks. Water change of 30-50% every few days to be able to re-dose in the meds. BUT, because it's shrimp, I think you're at the mercy of how often you can change water. At most I would dose every 7 days, still for that minimum of 2 weeks. Might actually just be a bacterial infection. 😞 Following all of what you're doing now for the vorticella, you can try maracyn and then give that 2 weeks. Once that gives you your results, give the shrimp a break, and then try kanaplex. I have not used kanaplex on my shrimp, but flip aquatics does have directions for bacterial treatments using maracyn for this issue.

Look at that pinnatifida! Yeah, it's all just about placement from what I can see. The wood is front/center right under the light and that's just going to be a norm until you have the plants about doubled in size. I would honestly cut the stems and propagate them out. Leave everything the same, don't adjust anything. Just try to expand the plant load out. Specifically that tall one in the back, the hygro, the PSO, and the lower green one by the heater. Hm.. The fern you want to have off to the side, which you do. In terms of lighting, I would think to cut it down by 15% or so. It's a seemingly very tall tank and you just want to keep an eye out for plants low to the ground getting enough light.

There are some diseases where you "treat the tank" as much as the fish itself. I believe columnaris falls into that category. I will let @Chick-In-Of-TheSea @Colu and @Odd Duck chime in on that one though as they will have experience with the disease moreso than myself. From my experience I believe columnaris spreads pretty quickly from one fish to the next. If the fish is sick, showing weakness, absolutely pull it to QT because you don't want other fish to eat or peck at it. White + Fuzzy is usually fungal. It could be a secondary infection. If you can try to get a video for us or photos. For the sake of clarity. what treatments are in the tank right now, if any?

Do you plan to sell anything? Plants bags maybe?

Very cool of you to do this! Nice work @Shadowc Cc @Chick-In-Of-TheSea maybe your friend?

I don't think you need to. The raised scales looks like slime coat to me and should resolve itself over time. If it doesn't then it can be a bacterial issue and you would just use meds to treat that. Yeah. That's unfortunate. Reducing stress is going to be critical to recovery here. I would move the fish to a tank by itself, use a breeder box, or move the frogs out. If you see more permanent damage, then you'd want to take more photos and potentially use a different treatment course. With regards to the swim behavior, if you can please try to get a video. Having some sort of floating cover, hardscape, or plants may help as well to ease the fish from being stressed out.

Hello @Teacups and welcome to the forums. Very excited to see a new hobbyist and this is a great place to get some help! I do apologize that you're running into some issues and let's dive in to see what could be going on. One of the most common reasons for a cloudy tank is just one that isn't fully developed. As you've shown you do have nitrates in the tank and it does appear it was cycled. Ammonia -->Nitrite-->Nitrate happened and all of the necessary bacteria involved should be in the tank. Worst case scenario, maybe you have nitrate in the tap water and potentially that's what you were seeing in the testing. If you can, please follow up with test results on your tap water. Great to hear. Whenever you add meds or salt to a tank the water changed viscosity. It gets more dense. This just means it isn't as easy for the fish to oxygenate themselves and the best step to help with that is to increase aeration using an air stone. It's awesome the fish responded well to this and it should help with future treatments, reducing stress during those treatments. The main question I would ask is about your filtration setup. How is it setup and how strong is the bacteria in that filter. There's a few things I've noticed in my own experience keeping fish. Ultimately, you want strong, resilient bacteria for your biological side. If you do lose bacteria, which is very normal, new bacteria replaces it. Stronger bacterial colonies means the tank handles that stress better and the new bacteria can grow quicker. This could be as simple as oxygenation, surface texture in the media that you're using in the tank, or just having the right order of your filtration to keep the media clean. ....so, with the explanation of why out of the way, that's likely what happened. Meds were added and the viscosity changed, which led to oxygenation changes, and that led to issues where you see bacteria in the water column (cloudy water). If you don't see things improve over time with the added air stone in there, then let's revisit filtration and see if there's anything missing or a way to improve the strength and survivability of the bacteria.

One very brilliant aquascaper, Filipe Oliveira gave some advice about planting and he said that they need space at the roots to be able to get circulation. When you hear about carpets dying, that is most often one of the major issues. The roots are so densely packed that they can't properly function and that leads to issues which leads to the carpet dying. It's something you'll see in the glass where the bottom of a carpet looks dead because it just isn't maintained and trimmed properly.

I had it in the same tank with and without CO2. I also had it on sand. It's a pretty forgiving and easy plant and I miss it! I would love to try again and see how it goes now that I have a bit better substrate. To your question though, yes... you can grow / carpet it with and without CO2. Root tabs are your friend and the main difference there is just time.

I'm sorry this is such a resistant disease it seems. I would dose the tank itself. 1 TBSP per 5G of water is the dose I used. It will very likely take more than a few days for you to see any improvement (if you do). Try to siphon the substrate and keep things clean. Also take time to make sure filtration is clean as well. If all else fails, next step is a product called no planaria. I understand the frustration when getting advice and it turns into, "ok now try this." I don't want things to seem that way and the best I can do is offer advice based on the easiest / most often recommended methods followed by how risky those treatments are. A salt dip may not be enough for the sake of this specific disease. It might take days given the state of the infestation. I don't know if you need to pull molts, but that is something to consider as well. When you dosed the Hydrogen peroxide, did you follow the method that is mentioned in the Mark's Shrimp Tanks video? Equipment off and all of that? I hope we can resolve the situation and get these guys healthy. I'll spend time tomorrow doing a deep dive into the research side of things for vorticella.

Yes. It's not the fun response, but I'm guessing it's all the same thing. I would try to get a full scientific name if you can. https://www.seriouslyfish.com/species/sundadanio-axelrodi/ It exists in several colour forms depending on locality; fish from the south and east of Sarawak state in Malaysian Borneo are green/blue in colour while those found in the west are red/orange, for example. It would be useful if these variants were labelled with the collection details by hobbyists and scientists alike in order to preserve bloodlines and maintain greater accuracy although normally they are just labelled with the distinguishing colour eg. ‘red’, ‘green’ or ‘blue’. From another site: My guess is that the scientific name is used, they all have the same name, and those color clarifiers are likely not used. Same thing with Neon green tetra, sometimes they look blue. I can so easily see that being labelled as "blue green tetra" by someone trying to be more clear. It's a bit of a mess, but I believe that's all the same thing. That being said.... Fight the urge and just wait. Use that store credit!

It's bananas to me. I have brands I can tell you NEVER fail and this is after years of use while others are weeks if that of useful. I loathe the eheim ones on the jager heater and it's a bit like using a piece of inverted plastic that just seemingly repels suction. Material choice is one big reason (longevity) but so is the shape. The ziss bubble bio ones. I have to use pry bars to get them off of glass, nothing removes that without taking bodyparts/fingernails. My favorite ones come from fluval. Zoomed also sells magnetic ones, might be the go-to for you.

welcome to the forums! If you look up your own city water company they should have a yearly audit with water testing and it does explain some thing via comments. I am sure sometimes those responses are very much a copy+paste job, but it is some insight as to what you're looking at. GH = Calcium + Magnesium.... if I had to guess it would be about 2-3 degrees, but it's very difficult to say without testing using the kit. KH = "hardness" which looks like you're at about 3 degrees. TDS = very low, this corresponds with what you're seeing.