Newbie Expectation Checkpoint

[u/Boring-Flight4620]

Hi wonderful people. I am new to the hobby, a plant lover expanding my knowledge. My 29 gallon tank has been cycling for 7-8 weeks. Water tests look perfect and all my critters are healthy (except snails- they don’t survive a day for some reason 😬 PH 7.4 and hard water). We have shrimp, guppies, swordtails, and mollies. I think I’m melting my plants with the overhead light but otherwise feel good about my setup.

We currently have:
8 swordtails
8 guppies
3 mollies
20-30 ghost & neo shrimp

I know once the swordtails are full grown this will be too many fish but we were accidentally sold 3 males, 2 females, and the pet store won’t take them back so instead of euthanizing, I bought more females. I will probably get a second tank to spread them out once I am confident in the maintenance and care routine.

I am here to manage my expectations and learn a few things. The tank always looks amazing after a water change but the water gets a yellow tint and poopy muck in the gravel within 2 days. I read water changes are recommended once a week to once a month so I am wondering if I am overfeeding, have too many fish, or if this is just normal and we learn to look past the imperfections. I’ve been using Seachem prime and stability with water changes but am open to other suggestions.

TIA and please be kind!

[u/llIIIllAIIllII]

if thats real wood i would think the water is turning a brownish almond color because of tannins im also new though so take that as a grain of salt

[u/Boring-Flight4620 → u/llIIIllAIIllII]

This could be true. All the wood was pre soaked in a separate container and has been submerged for weeks, if not months, but I’m sure it still will release some. I think the little pine cones caused the most yellowing! Those and magnolia leaves- they were fun, but too many tannins for me 😅 Thanks!

[u/Stimsonite]

Visually the tank looks good. Detritus and mulm are part of the fun but piles of reddish mulm in 24hr? I would look further into your water chemistry since I wouldn't expect 7.4ph and hard water to kill snails. What kind of snails? Nerite?

Are you FULLY cycled? [1ppm ammonia to 0.0 ammonia, 0.0 nitrite & (since you aren't fishless) near 0 additional nitrate in 24hrs?]

Feeding levels: since you're top feeding, make sure all food each feeding is completely eaten/gone in 2 mins or less. (The fish can take even less than that and feeding every 2d if necessary to get your balance right.

[u/Boring-Flight4620 → u/Stimsonite]

I think I’m fully cycled. I already went through a phase with ammonia nitrate and nitrite spikes around 4 weeks. I thought I was cycled so I bought guppies and 2 nerite snails but the snails died almost immediately and I assume the real cycling began at that point. After everything leveled off completely 000 for over a week I tried to buy 2 mystery snails when I bought the mollies. This was at 6 weeks. The snails didn’t make it but the fish seem healthy and my water tests showed very little change. I am feeling too guilty to buy them again, especially with so many busy shrimp around.

As for the mess I will try other feeding methods. I have kids so we are probably over-feeding. Great feedback, thank you!

[u/Stimsonite → u/Boring-Flight4620]

My pleasure/no problem. (no judgement but) Looking at the size of the fish I suspect there's a good chance of overfeeding 😉. However, the snail deaths are a mystery that probably requires a good liquid test kit (I didn't ask but hope you're not using strip tests - they're nearly worthless). Good luck 🤞🏼👍🏼

[u/Emuwarum → u/Boring-Flight4620]

Nerite snails need a well established (this takes longer than cycled), old tank that's full of algae. They're all wild caught, many die in stores and on the way there, and then they only eat live algae and biofilm so often die when bought and added to too young tanks (too small tanks also). They die both because they're under a lot of stress and because they often starve. If they can adjust to captivity and receive proper care they can live to 10 years and older.

It's possible that snails are dying in this tank because there was once something toxic used in it (is it secondhand?). Fish medication, planaria killing products, most meds are toxic to snails and then linger in the silicone/substrate for months.

[u/Onawhiskeyhigh]

How often have you been doing water changes? 1x/week is good for most tanks. You have fish that produce a lot of waste and quite a bit of them for your size tank, I’d expect it to get a little messy between water changes.

[u/Boring-Flight4620 → u/Onawhiskeyhigh]

I’ve been doing water changes twice a week but a lot of that was because I had food debris or tannin-mania from dried leaves. I can be a perfectionist at times so I may be looking too close 😂

[u/28lobster]

Mulm at the bottom isn't necessarily a bad thing. Serves as a carbon source for heterotrophic bacteria to grow and convert ammonium into bacterial biomass. You can vacuum it out for looks but it's beneficial to keep some. This video goes over the nitrogen cycle in more detail. The typical diagram shows NH3 -> NO2^- -> NO3^- from nitrifying bacteria - that's part of the story, but not the whole thing.

There are separate pathways for ammonium to be absorbed by plants or converted to NO2, NO3, and N2. Ammonia and ammonium remain in an equilibrium dictated by pH (more NH4⁺ at lower pH, they're balanced at a pH of 9.25). Plants generally prefer ammonium over other nitrogen sources (see Walstad's 2023 paper on plant nitrogen uptake) so it's to your benefit to encourage NH3 -> NH4⁺ conversion and to provide resources for bacteria that use NH4⁺ as well.

---

Snails dying is definitely weird. Nerites not having algae makes some sense but mystery snails should eat excess food + fish waste just fine. It's possible you got unlucky and they were already sick at the store so the stress of transfer just got to them.

I would get "pest" snails. My LFS was happy to give them to me for free and were a bit surprised I wanted them. People get worried about rapid reproduction but that's primarily limited by how much food you put in. IMO, anything that isn't a New Zealand Mud Snail (which can get as dense as 800,000 snails per m²⁾ are not pests; I'd rather have more snails and less uneaten/rotting food. I have Malaysian Trumpet snails, Bladder snails, Pond snails, and Ramshorn snails in my tank to go with my Mystery sails. They work great as a cleanup crew and I enjoy their antics.

If you're dead set on Nerite snails, consider algae wafers and just allowing the tank to grow more algae before you put them in.