Big update,
The tanks has taken some big steps. I added and then removed some ludwig. The leafs were falling off and with the addition of a very small powerhead, to ward off green dust algae.
For a while I was having hard time with the green dust/glass algae and surface film. I read that poor circulation could cause this, so I added the powerhead for more flow. I also upped my ferts by 2 times. KNO3 went from 0.4 g to 1 g, KHPO4 from 0.05g to 0.1g, and K2SO4 from 0.4 to 1 g.
During the algae battle I was also playing with the scape. I added a laying drift wood piece, removed the flat rock and tilted the big rock up.
After dosing on this schedule for a week, and the gda clearing up, I thought i deserved to get some fauna in the tank. My friend LeMoine,who posted above, gave me some cherry shrimp, and I picked up 3 Dalmatian Molly, tagging along is an unknown fry.
Everything was looking great. The shrimp were happy eating left over algae and the molly where exploring the tank and chasing each other. I was so pleased I wanted to get another shrimp breed. So after about a week of happy cherry and molly, I picked up 4 Amano from my regular aquarium store, along with a mat of HC. I added the shrimp and planted the HC. During the planting the substrate started to get stirred up and the water got a little cloudy.
This is where things turn ugly, I wake up the next morning to find one dead Amano and three dead Cherry. By the next day every single shrimp was dead. Thankfully the moly still look happy. I am starting to think that my filter isn't working correctly or just weak. Since putting the filter on the desk to use the glass pipes, the filter wasn't putting out enough water. The out flow was just a trickel and my water test show very high ammonia, nitrate and nitrite. Plus it was hard to prime and the filter, and would not prime itself. So I picked up an Ehiem 2213!!!! This thing is a beast! I love it. But my water tests are still off the charts. I don't think it is CO2 related, because my drop checker is reading green.
What do you think of the new scape? What happened to my shrimp!? Thought on Ehiem or Finnex canister filters? Was I dosing to much, was it disturbing the substrate or something else that is causing my water test to show deep red and purple?