betta upstairs

Ruby's tank was in the basement for over two months, all scattered plants and ignored. I did the water changes regularly, fed the plants and fish, peeked in there once in a while to make sure he was still alive. He swam around the tank looking curious about stuff like usual. The buces did really well. Other plants kind of languished, anubias started to get black spots of algae, windelov fern had some dieoff.

Spriodela polyrhiza floaters were thriving, but all the other plants floating became a jumble and grew in contorted ways- the stems turning on themselves, the echinodorus sprouting roots between the leaves. Ruby seemed to like the plant mass at surface.

Then last week I took the bulk of a morning and moved him upstairs, put the ten gallon tank on my now-empty stand where the 20H used to sit. Rinsed the old substrate four or five times, then replanted everything. Lots of the stems are all bent oddly, especially the rotalas but I hope they grow straight again soon. Will update with new photos soon as I can.

I thought the tank was doing well, I only saw a bit of ammonia on testing for the first few days, but then it went into a full cycle. Ammonia zeroed out quickly, but there's been high nitrites for a week now, it just can't seem to finish cycling. Probably doesn't help that I'm doing wc every morning- two or three gal- to save the fish from toxicity, and he's not eating well, so there's not a lot of nutrient input to make the waste to feed the bacteria. Sigh. Ruby now spends a lot of time lying on the tank floor, under plants or hidden in the skull cave. It distresses me to see that.

Unfortunately, I seem to have lost my bumblebee horned nerite snails. I took a photo of this one a week ago when the tank was still downstairs, it looked fine. I often saw one or the other crawling around so didn't worry about them. But now after the tank move, I've only found one empty nerite shell in here. I don't know what happened to them all- too much shock with change in water parameters? were they old and just succumbed to the small ammonia spike the day after the tank move? Did I accidentally bury one that was clinging to the underside of a hardscape piece? I don't know.

At the LFS next town over yesterday, I bought three new little horned nerites- one yellow and black like all the others I've had. Two are more golden brown with black stripes, and one has a neat stippling pattern that makes it look as if it has scales: