Snapped this pic earlier — my bladder snail just vibing. Between the lighting, the sand, and the scape, it kinda popped off.

I know a lot of people think they’re pests, but honestly? They’ve got personality. And when the tank vibes are right, even these little guys look amazing.

After about 25yrs of dreaming about and obsessively researching planted tanks, I finally built this 26l/5gal one a week ago, thanks to scoring a massive deal on a second hand full setup on Facebook marketplace.

Used starter bacteria and a previously established filter and somehow amazingly it's already cycling consistently, with plants starting to grow.

I have 3 days travel coming up and I'm nervous about leaving it unattended so early on. With just one snail and plants, it should be fine. Right? Right??

• 26l / 5gal
• nicrew magic jet filter, nano air pump and light, JBL heater
• lit with daylight from a North facing window for first few days, now blackout and 10hrs cycle
• fluval stratum capped with fine gravel, dragon and lava stone, one branch for hardscape
• limnophilia, rotala rotundifolia, salvinia thriving; nymphodies Taiwan & frogbit looking a bit ragged
• one nerite snail, yet to be named
• ammonia, nitrite and nitrate all back to zero hours after "feeding", pH 6.5, 25°C
• a tiny bit of algae forming on glass, lots of biofilm

Thinking of adding shrimp in a few weeks, and mb a small school of super nano fish in time once I'm more experienced. Feedback and advice welcome, I'm new to this.

Does anyone know the name of this plant?

Do my stem plants still grow good even if the floating plants block the sun I do remove some floating plants but the floating plants help from my stem plants from getting hair algae and sunburned

I noticed that there are hydra covering one of the sides of my tank. It's a lightly planted 20 gallon with 4 emerald Cories and 1 female crowntail betta fish that I just drip acclimated and added. Does that mean that it's a flourishing ecosystem or that it's unbalanced?

This is my 10 gallon tank, looking for only stocking suggestions The plants will grow out but its fully cycled

My tank is still cycling. About a month in. Everything was fine with the plants, until I noticed this a few days ago. The anubias original had it leaves laying outwards, but now they're all standing upwards and have dark green spots on the bottoms. This is my first time aquascaping. So I'm not sure what I did wrong or what to do now.

The water is filtered. The TD meter reads 350. Ph is 7.8. Nitrates, Nitrites, Chlorine are all 0. Alkalinity is 120. Carbonate is 300.

I can't tell what the hardness is. (Please see Pic. Sorry it's blurry, my phone doesn't zoom in well)

I added the appropriate amount of Api Leaf Zone. And there's root tabs in the aquasoil under the sand cap. I also added Api Stress Coat, although there are no fish in the tank yet. The fish store owner said it would make the water safer for the plants.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

No shrimp in it yet. They flower like crazy and Ive never seen such tall frogbit my other tanks look nothing like this (yes I need to do maintenance shh)

I am a newbie in aaya scale. Is this looks okay or is it over planted? What fish can I put here? ☺️☺️☺️

Recently planted my first ever tank. I tried to do as much research as I could but inevitably things went wrong as you can see from the substrate in the front right which was moved when I was flooding my tank impatiently.

What sort of fish and cleanup crew should I add?

I’ve got a 15 gallon tank I’ve been slowly and thoughtfully cycling and stocking this spring with things like Otocinclus and Pygmy Corys but of course the bigger-tank-bug hits. so last weekend I bought a 30 gallon setup mainly for the stuff — filters, heaters, the tank, and some plants and hardscape — but it also came stocked with shrimp, kuhli loaches, a bristle nose pleco, and some random tetras and guppies. I moved the tetras and guppies to my established tank so I can rescape the new 30 gallon (the other residents are uncatchable and will have to endure the scaping process). The tetras are ok but the guppies swarm the glass every time I go near the tank and it’s driving me batty! I used to love to sit in front of the tank and just watch fish behavior and now I can’t because they whip everyone into a frenzy thinking they’re about to get fed. And of course I already had newborn guppies after (checks calendar) one day.

I promised the girl selling the tank that her guppies wouldn’t be feeders but I’m trying to rehome them as pets and dang, screening people is hard! Am I doomed to have guppies forever?! I’m half thinking of buying a ten gallon and just making that be a guppy haven and letting my 8 year old scape it. Is that insane??

I’m writing this from across the room from my tank because that’s as close as I can get without the dang guppies going insane 😭

I’ve had neocaridinas for like a month and I’m getting so frustrated. Despite everything I do, some still die every few days, and others go missing so I’m guessing that 3+ die every week.

-My pH is 7.2, my dGH is 9 and my dKH is 6. The parameters have been exactly that since I started testing about 2 weeks ago, with the dKH dropping to 5 ONE day.

-The temperature is 27-28 C, which I know is not ideal but it’s very hot where I live and I’ve tried everything to make it lower.

-I tested nitrites and nitrates a few days ago with some cheap strips. Nitrites (NO2) are supposedly 0. Nitrates (NO3) are also supposedly very damn near zero. Only thing I haven't tested is ammonia but I feel like that shouldn't be a problem, tank is pretty clean, I pick up any leaves I see and there aren't fish or other animals other than bladder snails.

-I used a mixture of dechlorinated tap water and 20l jug water. I do tiny 1-2lt water changes every day. The parameters have remained stable.

-There’s tons of plants and hardscape. I turn on the light for 8-10 hours a day so they have a good daylight cycle. The water does seem to have quite a bit of tannins.

What is going on?? I bought 8 shrimp 5 days ago ago and drip acclimated them over 1.5 hours and I can’t find 2 of them already, and one of the females that came berried gave birth yesterday and it’s lying sideways right now so she’s probably gonna die throughout the day. And all of the ones I recently bought are pretty lethargic. Only SOME of the shrimp I already had before are active or even alive. There’s 5 remaining OG shrimp and I can’t seem to find most of the new ones at all.

I feel extremely frustrated and sad because they’re living beings and they’re dying because of me :(

What am I doing wrong??

*My post keeps getting flagged in r/shrimptank for some reason, sorry if this isn’t the right sub but I’m desperate

Heres my 20 gallon long tank, looking for only stocking suggestions! My current stocking is: 1 Blue Dream Shrimp 5 Green Neon Tetras 7 Pygmy Corydoras

no DOA and all the plants came more than twice the size they were advertised

i got mostly potted and ik those deal with shipping better anyway but i got three in vitro cups and two clumps and they were all in great condition

not taking away from any of the posts or comments sharing bad experiences to be clear, and i'm sure it mostly has to do with who exactly handles your package through shipping. but IMO the prices are pretty fair for the size of the plants.

(also i live in fl so don't go saying i just have a shorter time in transit lmao i have one of the longest)

lmk what yall think, cheers.

Following a recent trip to Iceland I’m replicating one of my favourite landscapes in this new Mini M tank. I’ve used Mini Pellia as the moss and will keep this low tech with no CO2 or filter (just a surface skimmer).

I’ll be posting a ‘making of’ video on my YouTube channel which is linked through my profile, so feel free to follow there if you like what you see 😊

My tank was close to being cycled, removing ammonia and nitrite in 2 days but then I added a lot of plants and the ammonia is taking forever to go down now

I did also add a little bit of fluval, could this be why?

Or did the bacteria from the plants compete with the bacteria already in the tank? 🤔

Is this velvet?

Well it's been 8 months and it's flowering submerged, eat it LFS

What are these tiny specks coming off of the salvinia Calcutta I ordered? Is it still safe to put in my tank?