Hi,
I got a few plants and it’s my first time building an aquarium. I have 2 shrmips, 2 Otocinclus , 6 neon tetras, two guppies and one betta. All my fish are quite peaceful and do not chase or hurt any other fish but the plants are degrading since day one. I had cycled the tank for 2 weeks and then put live stock. I put half a cap of algae control(carbon dioxide ) and half a cap of nitrogen potassium phosphate every week during the night while also doing a 30% water change every 10 days. I have a good lighting in the tank and keep it on for 5-6 hours a day. I would love to know if you guys had any tips for my aquarium, it feels like it’s dying! 🙁
Posted by CommercialHead3261
3 Comments
Please provide more info.
What are the nitrite, nitrate, phosphate, PH, and hardness levels?
At what temperature do you keep the tank?
What kind of substrate did you use?
Also, the combination of a Betta with community type fish is a bad idea. It’s very likely that it’ll end badly.
You only cycled the tank for 2 weeks so it’s not completed a cycle that takes 4-6 weeks at least, pls look up in fish cycling so you don’t poison your fish by accident. You need to be testing water get an API liquid test kit
Your tank is still new and plants need to melt back and “regrow” to their aquatic form if they were grown out of water. The aqua soil and proper LED lighting should suffice by itself assuming you are using an actual lamp for plants. Give it time (literally a month or 2) and it should start growing. Remove either the school of tetra or the betta from the tank to give it proper time to cycle. I personally would surrender the Tetra and keep the Betta since they are more “tanky” and can survive adverse conditions better. Start slow because the bacteria need time to grow and just the right amount of ammonia to feed on. DO NOT do a water change unless you see an ammonia spike and do not add any more chemicals. This could take a month or two and once your nitrate and nitrite levels are gone you can proceed as normal with the 10-20% water changes. Cycling is a much longer process when you are growing plants in a aquarium because the plants need to thrive first before adding more live stock.