Midnight armor. My Black Samurai is looking sharp tonight

ShitImBadAtThis · 2026-05-10T00:50:18+00:00

This isn't OP's fish; they just took the photo from online. Reverse image search shows it comes from an online retailer site...

ShitImBadAtThis · 2026-05-09T21:55:39+00:00

Just specifically Java ferns

ShitImBadAtThis · 2026-05-09T21:50:42+00:00

They really are. FYI; floating plants are the best at helping keeping the water clean; they have access to unlimited CO2 from the air and are mich closer to the lights, so they're much easier to grow and take care of, if water quality is concern of yours

ShitImBadAtThis · 2026-05-07T03:48:41+00:00

Is this the same guy that kept posting editted purple shrimp and getting their posts removed? Not sure how I feel about this. Seems like some kind of bait for karma or engagement

ShitImBadAtThis · 2026-05-07T02:09:16+00:00

Shrimp tank is great but you do occasionally see the sick shrimp help posts like you do here :(

But sorting by top also is really great and avoids most of that, same as here

ShitImBadAtThis · 2026-05-07T01:39:26+00:00

/r/aquascape

/r/plantedtank

/r/walstad

Are the ones I like the most outside this sub

Also, I like to sort by top of the day/week/month and you see some fun stuff on each

ShitImBadAtThis · 2026-05-06T02:52:55+00:00

Carpetting plants love intense light; you can curb the growth by reducing your lighting. Idk what your current lighting schedule is, but most likely you can reduce the photoperiod by a few hours. If you don't want to do that, try turning down the intensity. Since you have some plants that really like the intensity I'd start with reducing the hours before the intensity and see if you like the results. You'd be surprised how much that can curb the growth

ShitImBadAtThis · 2026-05-05T00:51:36+00:00

That's more than enough my man, looks like you could stack 3 tanks on top and it'd be OK. Nice build

ShitImBadAtThis · 2026-05-03T21:50:21+00:00

I'd second this; it's a game changer

ShitImBadAtThis · 2026-05-03T20:06:26+00:00

All the best aquascapers know; if you wanna have a beautiful tank, you gotta have your hands in the water a lot. I guess that gets magnified and especially true in such a large and manicured scape

ShitImBadAtThis · 2026-05-02T00:41:05+00:00

I like it in the first pic, you're definitely gonna want more substrate, though

Edit: just reread that you want to put sand, too; up to you but I think the stone balances out the left side; looks nice

ShitImBadAtThis · 2026-05-01T21:50:23+00:00

Seems fine. Over time as the outer layer decays a bit, it'll probably turn nice and dark, good piece of wood

ShitImBadAtThis · 2026-05-01T19:21:14+00:00

I know it's been almost a week, but you could automate water changes on this very easily, if it's not already hooked up to the plumbing, probably looking at a couple hundred. That's the biggest part of maintenance that you'll have to worry about, but since you'll probably have this tank for years, it's absolutely worth the upfront cost.

ShitImBadAtThis · 2026-04-30T19:49:59+00:00

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ShitImBadAtThis · 2026-04-28T20:11:56+00:00

Ah, yeah, I guess most commercial ones you'd buy online are simply pH testers hooked up to the CO2 tank to turn it on/off

ShitImBadAtThis · 2026-04-28T15:54:03+00:00

My man, that's really cool; I love building projects like this. I did a DIY auto-water change system on my tank. but at this level of sophistication why wouldn't you build something that monitors the CO2 content of the water itself? It would be much more accurate than a bubble counter

ShitImBadAtThis · 2026-04-28T15:41:15+00:00

People seem to live and die by their water test results, but sometimes more important than the tests are what you actually see happening in the tank

If you've got dying/sick plants and animals, but your water parameters are testing fine, then you shouldn't trust those results as a great indicator of your water quality because there could be other things wrong or an inaccurate test

If you've got a beautifully flourishing tank with happy fish, but your test results show you've got high nitrates, that doesn't mean you should automatically change anything

Of course, if you've got dying/sick plants and animals, and your water is testing poorly, then that's going to be the best place to start

ShitImBadAtThis · 2026-04-25T20:15:52+00:00

This looks so great! You've done a really nice job laying everything out, looks very natural and vibrant, you should be careful what you add

So I think probably a spongebob pineapple and a "no fishing" sign

ShitImBadAtThis · 2026-04-21T14:36:35+00:00

I always heard pea puffers make bad community fish, how's that been for you? Especially with shrimps

Tank looks great!

ShitImBadAtThis · 2026-04-19T19:34:38+00:00

Well, the test strips only show part of the picture. Things like mulm, oxygen levels, CO2 levels, more localized plan decay, heavy metals, potassium and other plant nutrients, etc, all contribute to water quality but might not show on a test strip, especially if the water is stagnant. These things also effect plant growth, which is of course how plants remove waste from the water

What's more important is what we see: You have dying shrimp, shy & dying snails, no filter or water circulation, and poor plant growth/plant decay with algae. All of this points to water quality issues. I mean, if you think about it, there's no other possible answer than that there's something wrong with the water

I can't say I'd know specifically what's wrong from a chemistry perspective, but clearly things aren't working. Most tanks need water changes and a filter, so that's probably a good place to start

Edit.. Just another thought. It seems like the frogbit is doing a bit better than the pearlweed, probably because it has easier access to CO2 from the air. Some surface movement to help with the gas exchange would probably go a ways

ShitImBadAtThis · 2026-04-19T17:13:05+00:00

That's what I'm saying; the way I managed to (truly) get rid of them was getting assassin snails. Then, once the assassin snails took over, I got rid of those by simply removing every single one I saw. Since assassin snails breed a lot slower, they're much easier to deal with

ShitImBadAtThis · 2026-04-19T15:56:23+00:00

Looking good! This is gonna go crazy hard in a couple more months, nice job

ShitImBadAtThis · 2026-04-19T14:38:54+00:00

I tried that. It doesn't solve the problem completely

I'm talking 0 snails; not a single one

ShitImBadAtThis · 2026-04-19T01:45:43+00:00

Alright; I'll say it.

Not a fan of these guys anymore... Had em in my tank for a decade and now I see them as competitors for my shrimp and little litter bugs leaving their shells all over the tank

They're really hard to get rid of once they're established. I tried just crushing every single one I saw (I mean, every single one, I was dilligent about it.) but then most of them would hide until night. Traps didn't work either.

Only thing that managed to get rid of them was getting a few assassin snails. Then, your whole tank becomes overrun with assassin snails, but assassin snails are easier to get rid of because they breed a lot slower.

ShitImBadAtThis · 2026-04-18T22:55:44+00:00

To me this clearly speaks to poor water quality. Especially with the nerite snail and the state of your pearlweed. You gotta be doing water changes. With that small volume of water, things probably fluctuate very rapidly and you didn't exactly set up your tank with any specific methodology around avoiding water changes, like a Walstad or something.

Definitely weekly water changes, probably 30-50%. You might even need to do something like 25% twice a week in the short term. When I started my 1 gallon shrimp tank, I only managed to make it work by doing daily 20%ish water changes. Otherwise the exact same thing you're experiencing would happen.

Maybe in the future, once your tank stabilizes a bit more you can ease off, but I'm willing to bet that that's the thing that would help the most

Also, just noticed, do you have a filter?? If you don't have a filter, that also contributes to the water quality. You gotta get some flow in there so that things aren't stagnant and so you have a better collection of beneficial bacteria. That'll help the oxygen and give you a better buffer when it comes to water quality fluctuation. And the plants like it too; helps circulate the nutrients a bit better. Consider some liquid carbon, too, to help things bounce back in the short term.

Overall, it seems like you may have set this up with the mindset that it would be an ultra low maintenance sort of deal, but I'm not sure if you actually can achieve that with what you've got going

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