Jenja

The forestwood description has me wondering if you're using wood that's still fresh (aka potentially full of sap) rather than driftwood (which has been aged and is dry, free of sap).

@Seattle_Aquarist Your explanations are always just fantastic, you've definitely furthered my (admittedly questionable) understanding. You've given me the lightbulb moment of "oh, so that's why my java fern survives but refuses to grow into the massive bush of wonderfulness that most of the internet shows it could/should be".

Oh dang, this on top of recent illness for you? That sucks so hard! Any chance you have a minion...ahem, family member, I meant to say, able to help with the necessary WCs?

Ah, makes sense. 👍 Sounds like it's just a matter of controlling the nitrite to 1ppm or less like @modified lung suggested, and time at this point. Don't envy you the extra WCs, here's hoping it settles back into a cycle soon!

Beautiful fish! Glad you didn't raise the temperature, it would have been detrimental to your plants as well as your fish (I've never even seen 90 advised for fighting ich...I'd probably be asking how old is your co-worker's oldest fish, bet it is well below anticipated lifespans if they give advice like that).

Do you have any filter media from the tanks you moved your inhabitants to that you can put in that tank? I'd trust the bacteria from that to re-establish the cycle more than I'd trust the bottled stuff.

Are you regularly doing WCs? If you aren't regularly taking out water, just topping up evaporation then every time you do that you are adding in kH (depending on how high your tap's kH is you might have raised it significantly). As you know kH buffers the water, so as that increases so would the pH. I'd measure kH, tap* and tank and see if they match or if your tank is higher.

Rotala wallichii wouldn't work for me, that's about the only reddish plant I've ever attempt/wanted. My nymphaea rubra is doing pretty good in my 33g, it has a light green with occasional pinkish blush to it. Personally I constantly sing praises for crypts - I've had green wendtii in a fishless, kind forgotten 5.5g thrive, spreading under and around the piece of driftwood. Found the bronze wendtii tissue culture go from tiny little plantlets to massive plants that had to be removed from my 8g in record time for my low tech setup. Parva, again tissue culture, go from two small clumps that 6 months later (when I removed the wendtii bronze actually) had multiplied to the point where I have a respectable carpet. Balansae I'm currently setting myself up for trouble - two 2g tanks each with a few months old TC plant in the corner...still small, still happy but it's not going to work long term, they get big I've read. So yeah, crypt lover 😁 Equilibrium is by Seachem. It is a gH booster that has calcium and magnesium in the right ratio (along with some potassium, making it a very plant friendly choice). It's a powder. I did the math and all that to target degrees when I first started using it. Now I don't recall the number I chose, I simply add the dry measurement per gallon added that I decided on - a little different for a few tanks actually. The 33g is 1/2 Tbsp per 2g. My 8g, 5.5g, and 6g has been 3 1/64 tsp per 1g, and my 2g I've gone with 1/64 tsp per gallon. And yes, I'm aware the different amount per tanks is playing a role in why not all plants thrive in all tanks - the key is plants are doing well and fish are doing well with the dosages I've chosen because I've stuck to it. A water softener system has resin beads in it that captures the calcium/magnesium and even iron (if I remember correctly). After a certain number of gallons go through the beads they become full, to flush them, making them capable of capturing those molecules again, a salt water brine flushes them which exchanges the calcium/magnesium/iron molecules for sodium. So yes, there is a minute amount of salt in the resultant water - though certainly not an extreme amount (there's a faint salty taste but it's not raising the water's salinity by any noticeable amount....Take this with a grain of salt, I've never bought a refractometer to check it but googling tells salt restricted diet people to avoid softened water....So yeah, my understanding is sketchy at best).

Definitely get a liquid gH/kH test kit - if you need to alter your water you need the most accuracy as you can get and strips are good for general range testing but not so much for exact degrees. I'm on a water softener too, salt based, and I don't bypass (too complicated for me, old home and I'm not very handy). For years I struggled simply because I didn't know/was never told that the softener was zeroing out my gH. Once I started using Equilibrium I finally had better success with plants and guppies (endler hybrids actually, the guppies I would try and fail with for years before the Equilibrium). Even with addressing my gH, Vals just don't work for me. Didn't matter which tank I attempted they just don't survive in my water. This is not abnormal, some plants just don't work for me - to complicate things further some plants will work in one tank but fail in another. So it's been a trial and error process finding what works for me. Crypt wendtii have been my best plant overall, it survives and sometimes thrives in some of my tanks. Buce and java ferns both do okay for me. Guppy grass was one that almost didn't work but once it grew a bit it (and hair algae, always with the hair algae, I've come to accept this as a given lol) have my 33g a jungle that I need to prune asap. PSO did a boom then bust in one tank - I pruned too heavily when it was in the boom phase, and was forced to change lighting shortly after that so now it is almost gone. So yeah, expect to try a variety of plants, you will eventually hit some winners for your water. Whether you decide to go the bypass route, or if you rather stay with what is straight from the tap and adjust the gH, just be consistent in what you do - constantly chasing parameters to make a specific plant thrive likely will cause more problems in the end.

I've got mine, along with lucky bamboo and a spider plant, in a marina slim filter with some lava rock - no visible roots and a little extra water movement. If I ever repeat I'd probably go with something bigger, likely an air driven hang on breeder box, as I suspect at some point in the future I'll see the roots cascading from the filter into the tank as it really is a slim amount of space.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but when trimming an anubias you have to take the entire leaf and stem (unlike stem plants where the stem will have offshoots wherever you cut it , all the leaves of the anubias grow from the rhizome and not the stem of the leaf).

Patience and lock onto 1 at a time - if you flit through trying to catch whoever swims by you're going to have less success than if you pick one, watch how it moves, let your brain see the pattern that forms and move your net(s) accordingly. One trick I've heard of is to let the net in the tank for a period of time before you attempt catching - if they are particularly net skittish then time with the net hanging out all non-threatening theoretically will stop them seeing it as a threat.

Your fish might've also been doing population control before you spread them to other tanks. I was pleasantly dumbfounded when I watched one of my young female endlers chow down on a bladder snail clutch.

My bet is they are spawning (hence no plump bellied girls) and eating the eggs. However, it's far more probable that they are still juvenile fish, so they might not be - a month seems like a lot but it's not really when you think about it. With egg scatterers like the danios I wouldn't think a hard bottom tank would be ideal, unless you have a spawning mop or copious amounts of moss for them to spawn in and provide protection for the eggs.

Could be he's just not an exhibitionist - might be courting when the human eyes aren't around 👀 If you're going to switch males I'd probably try letting both males in with her, perhaps the competition might spark some action from your chaste male.

About a month ago I got the pothos and a couple baby spider plants from my sister. The pothos had one new leaf started when I got it and this week I noticed two new ones started (one on the side where I cut the vine she gave me so that was extra exciting). I'm pretty sure the spider plants have grown a bunch of leaves since I got them - stupid me never thought to snap a photo when I added them. The lucky bamboo I got back in early March, it was at the 4 when I added it - decent growth there I think 😁 When I got the bamboo I initially had them in my aquaclear but that was a pain to move every time I wanted to rinse my sponges - plus I worried the roots would eventually get in the pump. A marina slim and some lava rock gave me a permanent planting solution that I hope to never need to worry about roots again (even if it was a baseless worry, lol).

Glad you found some species that are working for you! I'll add in my own (cause it never hurts to share, especially on plants in higher temps - it's a difficult subject to find a good long list on). Crypt wendtii grows like a weed in my tanks that run around 83.5-85F (room temp is consistently at 80 so my tanks run warmer than they probably should). Same almost weed like growth for crypt parva. Pogostemon stellatus octopus, guppy grass and java fern all survive and grow (the first two slower than they would at 78 if seems). Buce varieties (green, crocodile, and a red I think) happily grow in my one tank as well. Two hitchhiker plants I got off the guppy grass have kinda survived, but definitely not thrived, and that was fissdens fontanus (it will eventually turn black and though it doesn't dissolve and my bladder snails don't eat it so I think it's still alive? Lol. It has managed to attach itself to the wood I recently noticed), and subwassertang (went from the size of a dime to about a -very sad looking- toonie size in a year). As for the failure list? It's a long one with so many stem plants on it. Currently trying limnophilia sessiliflora and rotala h'ra in two 2 gallon tanks. One has both melting and dying off and the other has some tentative growth on both species - they share the same light so it's a prime reminder that every tank is unique even with identical water, light and filtration 😄

I finally replaced the almost one year old pcl light on my flora with a new nicrew led light....then spent a half hour feeling foolish that I only did this now, not a week ago when it came...apparently I'm as dim as the old light 😆

Gorgeous stand! That pointy bottom is gonna smart a fair bit when your knee inevitably hits it...I wonder, would it be a completely dumb idea to orient them horizontally rather than vertically?

Hopefully it was just the stress of being removed that stopped her eating. Here's hoping she goes on to live the best life she can. Thanks for the update, I was wondering.

Could definitely just be the temp increase and subsequent oxygen drop, and super glue is known to be safe even in water, so I'm wondering if there's some kind of contaminant on the polycarbonate. Did you rinse or wipe it down before adding it? Perhaps you unknowingly got something on it when you were cutting it to size.

I found out that the marsilea crenata was a dream to plant in my flourite sand. It was the gratiola viscidula that made me question my sanity (and realize I should've had a bit more sand...a chronic underestimation of substrate is becoming my trademark, lol). Still a lot to be done but at least plants are in water so there's that. One being my spiderwood, on the right, it looks vaguely obscene to my eye for some reason, so might need to address that before I start liking it 😄

Love my bladder snails. Now the mini ramshorns that infiltrated my 5g? Vile, disgusting, little moving turds. Thankfully my bladders are finally out competing them.

I tend to watch all. Rarely am around for the livestreams so I tend to watch them afterwards - really miss having the listing of topics covered in the stream in the description, it let me access the info that really interested me and skip what didn't.

How long have you had her? If it's been a long time and you haven't recently added new fish, then I probably be think along the lines of old age and maybe egg bound....then again I don't think she'd be that symmetrical - in my cherry barbs the females who refuse the advances of my males are big but their abdomens are tall, not round like your girl. I'd probably see if she'll eat a pea for you, natural laxative that might help rule out constipation causing her bloated look. No matter what it turns out to be I wish you the best of luck with her.