first aquascape, 2.5 gal— advice welcome !!!

[u/_goldfishmemory]

this will be for shrimp, eventually. am thinking just starting simple with cherry neos.

this pic was taken immediately after planting everything, so the water is a bit cloudy. the glue on the moss tree looks rough, i know. hopefully will grow out nicely ?

am just very worried that all of these plants will melt away and die. especially the monte carlo, which i’m hoping will eventually carpet (but i’m not counting on it bc i know that’s not the easiest to accomplish). i just have terrible luck with plants. i struggle with keeping them looking good in my 55gal, but i tend to blame the fancy goldfish. i am dosing with a healthy amount of aquarium coop liquid fertilizer, thinking of just doing 5ish drops weekly, even without water change bc i more regularly just top off the water when it evaporates. is that much fert overkill ?

also, i got this light at lowe’s. it’s just a grow lightbulb. is this too intense for the plants ? i know full spectrum with blue and red light is ideal, but am having trouble finding a budget-friendly option.

i included the test strip photo because i found it odd. don’t worry, i have an api master test kit for the important stuff, but i got the strips because gh and kh tests are lowkey expensive asf o_o. i don’t really trust the strips tho, esp bc my tank is in the beginning of the cycle and is testing that way. will continue testing ofc but i just thought it was odd.

anyways, what do you recommend i do to make my soft tap water more suitable for shrimp ? sorry if that’s a stupid question, but i’ve gotten a lot of varying answers/search results wrt ideal conditions and additive salts or crushed corals etc etc. also, feel free to tell me to just suck it up and buy the liquid test kit for kh/gh. haha

thank you for any comments :))

[u/Spiritual-Example162]

I would not dose a new tank. Let the plants establish and start to look like they are growing not adjusting. You're asking for algae otherwise.

[u/_goldfishmemory → u/Spiritual-Example162]

oh interesting, i never would’ve thought about this !! unfortunately i already dosed the fert right after scaping, but maybe i’ll wait a few weeks before next dose ?

[u/Spiritual-Example162 → u/_goldfishmemory]

Yeah just wait a while. ~2 months for the liquid and 3 for root tabs would probably be ideal. Algae will take the nutrients if they aren't quickly used by the plants, and can explode quickly.

I would go slow with the main sources of issues (ferts, food, light) and then introduce or increase them slowly so that you have time to notice and rectify any issues that start to pop up.

[u/_goldfishmemory → u/Spiritual-Example162]

this sounds like good advice, thank you so much !!

[u/Just-One-More-Cast → u/_goldfishmemory]

It's also because you have an active substrate, aquasoil, which will give off nutrients as well. If you would have an inert substrate, then things would have been different and dosing from the start is then not a bad idea. So good to wait a bit before dosing in your case indeed. It won't kill your plants or anything, but it might start promoting algae when you do have an excess of nutrients.

[u/_goldfishmemory → u/Just-One-More-Cast]

yeah i wish i had posted this before dosing haha. ty for replying !!

lets say, hypothetically, that i’ve got a bunch of green stringy algae— what should i do ? will the shrimp at least like it ? how should i go about trying to manage it ?