Woowala

Quarantine is less of a hassle than dealing with sick fish or invasive pests or algae. You don't need to medicate if they look fine, just keep them separate from all your other stuff. Maybe you'll decide to medicate anyway after a couple weeks, just to be safer, but some period of isolation and observation is a must imo. The more tanks you already have, the more of an absolute necessity it is.

Just don't try them at the same time. Never mix bleach with anything really, but definitely not h2o2. You probably know that, but just sayin.

Easiest way would be to get some water before it goes through the softener like MWilk said and mix it with the softened water in whatever ratio gets you the right gh. Or you could get a gh booster mix and add it to the softened water.

Yeah definitely important to use bleach without any scent or thickeners added. I use Clorox disinfecting bleach.

I usually just use bleach to disinfect things. Might be kinda hard on any rubber gaskets in the python, I don't use one so not sure if there are any. 1/3 cup per gallon of water. Let it sit for an hour, rinse it well, then transfer to a bucket with dechlor or let it dry completely. Stick an airline hose in one end and seal it up a bit with plastic wrap or something.

Yes, gh is general hardness, basically a measure of the calcium and magnesium in the water. The water softener removes cal and mag and replaces them with sodium and I think potassium (might explain why your plants are doing so well). So that could definitely be it. Any white marks on the snails' shells? That would be an indicator of low gh, but a test would be better. Get a test, the liquid dropper kind. One of the easiest and cheapest tests, so that's nice. But I would blame the inconsistent diy co2 if they all died off quickly, like overnight.

Gh level would be helpful. These were neocaridina right? I'm guessing you gassed them with co2, but low gh could explain it too.

Coralline algae. I would leave it and be happy. But if you wanted to get rid of it, lowering your gh would probably starve it of the calcium and magnesium it needs (maybe, haha).

Throw a mop in there. You never know, they might still be spawning. Easy enough to find out anyway.

That's essentially what I was doing, and it worked, but low percentages. This is actually less effort so if I got the same hatch rate this way I'd be happy, but hopefully it can improve. I've got enough fry now that it's no big deal either way, but when I get some P. mellis it'd be nice to know what I'm doing. 😄

I was planning on putting them in water on Friday, but jumped the gun a bit and did it tonight. I dunked all 4 sets of eggs I had, collected on 8/28, 8/29, 8/30, and 9/1. So 9, 8, 7, and 5 days incubation respectively. I noted the number of viable eggs in each, so we'll see when/how many hatch out, but it'll probably be anywhere from a day to never lol. The infertile eggs did fungus up a bit, but it didn't seem to spread to the good eggs. The 8/28 collection I just put on a paper towel. All others I cut an empty tea bag (the kind you fill up with loose tea) into ~3x3 inch squares and put that on top of the paper towel. There's a rougher side to the tea bag which made transferring the eggs from my fingers to the tea bag easier, and it lifted off the paper towel easily with all the eggs when I transferred them to water. So I'll likely do that or something like it going forward.

Yeah if it's easier to do that, I don't see the downside.

They're gorgeous

Probably need it nice and cold with tons of oxygen. Too bad, they're really cool.

I love those sculpins. Ever tried keeping them in a tank?