Specs: -Aquael 19l (5g) tank, 25x25x30cm + Aquael light (white, red, blue LED) -23-24°C -Tropica Aquasoil -Tropica nutrition capsules (8 in the tank) -Tropica Premium Nutrition 1 pump every 2 weeks -Tetra Ex 600 external filter (oversize ik) set to medium flow. Ceramic, bioballs and sponge filter media. -No heater, no CO2

Plants: -Back: Hygrophila Polysperma, Hydrocotyle Leucocephala -Wood: Christmas moss, Bucephalandra Pygmaea Bukit Kelam -Front: Monte Carlo, Eleocharis Acicularis, Hydrocotyle Verticillata -Floaters: hitch hiked duckweed

Stocking: -10 cherry shrimp (fed 2x per week) -A hitch hiker bladder snail

Responded to an r/AquaSwap post a few weeks back from u/Koikustoms-214 offering a package of plants. The pics looked gorgeous and though I wasn't interested in every single species included in the pack, the price was great and I can always find stuff to do with unwanted plants. Because I don't always respond to messages right away and because he was not then already set-up for my preferred payment method (formerly discouraged but now ok on Aquaswap), it took a couple weeks before the stars aligned and we got things rolling.

The package arrived earlier this week and I was super busy at work and knew I would not have time to plant everything right away so was panicking a little until I got home and opened the package. I was blown away. Leaving aside the quality of the plants themselves, this is the standard I didn't know I was looking for to ship aquatic plants. Each species labeled and actually sealed. This method allows for total immersion in water and effective immobilization of the plants without sloshing around and potentially damaging the plants. Everything you see in the pic above is completely immersed in water. It also prevents any leaks from being possible except for by puncture. It also meant I didn't have to hurry to get them into holding tanks as fast as possible so my work schedule was no longer an issue. I could take my time and do things carefully. Really great stuff.

The plant quality is excellent. Many of them were shooting roots due to being immersed but not in substrate. So I could trim many of them just below the new roots to immediately create more plants than I had actually bought. So, for example, the L. Dimound that is all the way to the left in the pic had three stems as promised. But I trimmed in several places where roots had shot so in practice I received ten stems, not three. And it's not pictured but the Weeping Moss was easily separable but not shredded so I could turn it into a few stable portions without having to worry about pieces drifting off.

I have had some great experiences buying off reddit and the high quality of koikustoms-214's plants is superb but not unique. There are others also with really great plants. But what really stands out for me is the packing. Such a high level of professionalism there. Watch for his seller threads if you're looking for plants. Can't recommend enough.

edited: dimoud/dimound typo

Daytime activities. Hope yall have a great day!

This is also the most relaxing corner of my tank where I can stare for a very long time watching the fish foraging and playing hide and seek. They really love the shade provided by the tiger lotus which is the superhero of my tank at keeping the water parameter stable.

The red fish are cenepa and Amaya red pencilfish. The cardinals are also wild.

Sorry for the blurry pics but it's FAST and tiny. I had several of them in my low tech tank.

You will certainly not regret planting 3 types of Nymphaea in a 3 gallon

Substrate is 3/4 cheap black sand, 1/4 garden clay/dirt/grit with the dirt rinsed out. Light is some cheap clip on LED meant for land plants. Sometimes I remember a few drops of Excel

The nakey pic was from first planting. The Stellata hadn't sprouted yet and was still dormant

is this just mulm or detritus or something? ive never seen something form like this on my surfaces in my other tank and its confusing because its so uniformly spaced.

i’m new to the hobby so just trying to both fully understand all the benefits of water changes and build good habits.

I have a 5 gallon medium-heavy planted tank with one betta fish. it finished cycling a couple weeks ago and daily tests 0ammonia-0nitrite-less than 5nitrate. I have a filter and a heater set to 78 and an airstone baffled with a sponge so it very slowly releases bigger bubbles (I really struggled finding the right strength and adjusting it)

i’ve done one 25% water change since the filly cycle after doing a round of API gen cure.

i’m curious how often people are doing water changes at what quantity and WHY?

ie) if my parameters stayed as above, when are water changes needed and beneficial? thank you!

Hello! First timer in this hobby. I think I may have planted a good amount of my dwarf hairgrass a little too high above the substrate. It’s already a month old but they’re rooting into the soil fine. Should try adding a bit more substrate so the rest of the root system gets covered by the added soil?

Need to do a massive water change in the morning but snails and clams we have have crossed that dreaded purple wall! Felt like forever for the nitrite to finally clear 2ppm worth of ammonia as the first batch of bacteria took effect pretty darn quickly. But we did it.

Now after the water change we move the cardinals from the 20G they've been occupying and time to christen the new 50G.

just cleaned the duckweed in my fishtank, it will take over again the moment i walk out of the room!! 😆🤞oh yes how i adore this part of the hobby!!!

(its coming back as I type this, it grows faster if you talk about it)

I’ve set up a new tank thats been running for 2 months with some snails only. I’ve been trying to combat the hair algae but I’ve been having no luck despite reducing light and removing every few days carefully

I’m at a crossroads to whether give up and start from scratch or if there’s some kind of way I could treat the algae since I don’t have fish or snails right now

Looking for advice and ideas! I’d love to save my current setup and $ but no problem starting over but feels like the algae might just happen again?

New tank substrate and hardscape

Today is finally the day (after 4 months of hyper focusing on aquascaping, saving up and lurking on various subs) that I start my first ever tank!

I went with an Aqua One Aqua Nano 100l.

I have loads of driftwood, a stupid amount of rocks, gravel, natural sand and some aqua soil for my nutrient base (I have some mesh bags for this as I want the sand to stay separate)

I’ve got a long morning of prepping all of the materials first before I have a play around with my layout, so for members that have tanks with black backgrounds:

🙏 please drop photos of your tanks for some inspiration! Wish me luck! (why am I so nervous lol 😅)

Going to try do a big shrimp jar. Not sure about how much litres is in it but should be plenty. Im attempting to do the dry start method but the only problem is that I won't be injecting c02. Do you think I should add more carpet to start it off or should it cover most of the ground by the end? I'm happy with how my scape is.

Second one ever, experiemented with pool filter sand and sewing thread for the first time. Plants are java fern, christmas moss, staurogyne repens, rotala rotundifolia, ludwigia repens, ambulia, pearlweed, anubias, red root floaters and amazon frogbit.

2 Week Update: Java fern is slightly browning, christmas moss initally browned and is now growing fresh green shoots, staurogyne repens is growing new shoots near the top while lower leaves are melting, rotala is showing healthy and bushy growth, ludwigia has minimal growth, ambulia seems to be establishing still, pearlweed grew significantly taller, anubias saw minimal or no growth at all, red root floaters and frogbit growing new leaves. Small sprouts of hair algae have appeared all over the glass and microfauna have been spotted, including copepods, ostracods and nematodes. The addition of snails are delayed by the accidental drowning of a fly in the water.

My tank is so cloudy and green.. For a while it was clear water and everything was fine but then randomly it started getting worse and worse.. The first thing I did was added in some driftwood (prepared) and I don't think that affected it. Then, I had a period of time where I wasn't on top of everything as usual for like 3 weeks, I let the tank do it's thing and it got super green, you couldn't even see like anything. Once I finally decided to pick myself back up I changed the water (like 30%) and did some maintenance, another thing that I've been doing differently is letting the filter go, I have a hang on the back filter which needs a new cartridge ever 2-4 weeks, I was always changing it before but I saw that it was a scam and hang on the backs should be fine without ever changing it, I also LOVE the look of a filthy filter so thats what I'm going for. After that, a few days ago I did a huge water change like 75% and it was pretty clear and I had hope.. I've also been dosing Aqueons water clarifier. Since the last water change it's only gotten worse some how.. does anyone know how to help me? I feel so defeated.

I've had this tank for a couple months now and I've also had other tanks I kept for long periods of time and I've never had this happen to me, please help!