I started this tank 9 months ago. Back then as a beginner I did a lot of mistakes and slowly started changing things and is much better now.
Issues right now:
1. My plants seem to have stopped growing and my hygrophyla that I kept trimming and replanting now starts having some curled leaves
2. I can't keep floating plants alive
3. I vaccum the gravel every week and every week there are tons of gas pockets that smell.
I got very cheap gravel back then cause I had no clue what I was doing which I think is causing some issues.
I remineralize RO water.
I got 100+ cherry shrimp in there, 6 nerite snails and a Betta. The tank is 18gals. The Betta is eating pellets, I feed him 1 pellet at a time so I don't pollute the water. The shrimp and snails eat 1 algae wafer every 2-3 days and bacterae once a week, so I don't think I overfeed. Where is all this gas from the gravel coming from then if I clean every week?
I use seachem flourish for the plants twice a week. I have 2 12inch hygrophyla stems and 2 that are around 3 inches. They were growing like crazy so I kept trimming and replanting. Tiger lotus, java moss, java fern and Anubias nana bonsai , a big redmoor root and dragonstones, and red root floaters at the moment.
Seems like the plants are hungry. Maybe macro deficiency?
I was thinking of removing all this cheap gravel and replace with seachem fluorite and sand on top. Would that help my plants and this nasty gas pocket issue? Any other suggestions that are not too complicated, since I am in the hobby for only 9months?
Issues right now:
1. My plants seem to have stopped growing and my hygrophyla that I kept trimming and replanting now starts having some curled leaves
2. I can't keep floating plants alive
3. I vaccum the gravel every week and every week there are tons of gas pockets that smell.
I got very cheap gravel back then cause I had no clue what I was doing which I think is causing some issues.
I remineralize RO water.
I got 100+ cherry shrimp in there, 6 nerite snails and a Betta. The tank is 18gals. The Betta is eating pellets, I feed him 1 pellet at a time so I don't pollute the water. The shrimp and snails eat 1 algae wafer every 2-3 days and bacterae once a week, so I don't think I overfeed. Where is all this gas from the gravel coming from then if I clean every week?
I use seachem flourish for the plants twice a week. I have 2 12inch hygrophyla stems and 2 that are around 3 inches. They were growing like crazy so I kept trimming and replanting. Tiger lotus, java moss, java fern and Anubias nana bonsai , a big redmoor root and dragonstones, and red root floaters at the moment.
Seems like the plants are hungry. Maybe macro deficiency?
I was thinking of removing all this cheap gravel and replace with seachem fluorite and sand on top. Would that help my plants and this nasty gas pocket issue? Any other suggestions that are not too complicated, since I am in the hobby for only 9months?