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It's certainly doable as long as you can do a gravity drain system. The only downside is you will need to drill your tank. You can set up a drip system to constantly stream water into your tank and then have the water continually gravity drain wherever it needs to go. You can get by without...

Yeah, thats a common issue. I am thinking it has to do with collection methods.

The otto cats should be in a group as well. And your tank is gonna look empty with all the bottom dwellers. If it were me, I would rehome the otto cat and get a group of 6 harlequin rasbora as well as filling out your group of loaches.

Youre welcome! Happy to help

Likely, it was a bacterial bloom instead of a fungal bloom. The changing out of your filter media likely precipitated an ammonia increase in the tank causing some quick growing bacteria to grow in the tank making the water cloudy. Did you test the water at all during this time? Why did you...

What did you use as an ammonia source?

The only issue with sand and filters comes when you have extremely high flow rates which you should only have on specialized tanks such as a reef or river tank. Other than that theres no issues. Just be sure to clean the sand throughly. Play sand is a nice option, but there are aquarium...

You will likely have more luck with a single female rather than a pair. But I dont see why you cant try. Bettas can work well in community tanks.

Sand is definitely cleaner than gravel. With sand the detritus will collect on top where it can be sucked up by filter or easily vacuumed out of the tank. With gravel you have to dig through it to clean any detritus.

Don't worry about the bacteria bloom. It's just a think you're gonna drive yourself crazy trying to fix without fixing the original problem. To keep the water safe, feed very sparingly and do a 50% water change every time the ammonia reads 0.5ppm or higher. Doing this, the bacteria bloom will...

How did you cycle the tank? The PH is fine, as long as it doesn't fluctuate wildly then you won't have any issues. The only issue with your stocking plan is that the betta will possibly eat the shrimp. So don't spend a ton of money on them just in case.

Have you thought about trying sand? There's plenty of good options to add to your tank which looks great and is simple to clean.

Thats an assumption. Youre deliberately underfeeding your fish to prevent excessive ammonia build up. Also, ammonia doesnt wait 2 weeks to appear in the tank. Ammonia concentrations start to rise within a day of putting food in the tank. Filters were specifically created to serve a need to...

My question is "Why?" What actual benefit to the tank would this pose from making it a relatively unstable tank?

Reasonably accurate, yes. But not accurate enough to draw conclusions like these from.

Those arent nearly accurate enough if you're basing statements like this off of them. You need to invest in something like the red sea nitrate test kit.

What nitrate test kit are you using?

It has, unfortunately I am still waiting on the custom overflow. I made some measurements incorrectly which screwed things up a bit and slowed everything down. They are awesome with customer service and will post a full review of everything later. A few other things going on: 1: I got my...

Second thought, the sand and dirt will eventually settle out exposing the rock.

Not a bad idea, it will have some buffering action in the water. My big concern is creating dead zones for pockets of gas. Typically not an issue in a tank, but there will be a lot of buildup with that much buried surface area.

So due to a move to a smaller locale my fresh water tank made the move over to my moms house. Little did I know there was a water softener hooked up. The rhino pleco died today so I went over to test the water. 0ppm ammonia, nitrate, 10ish ppm nitrate. pH was over 8.6 on the api test kit...

Try taking a couple ph readings throughout the day. It might be having large swings which would stress the fish out

I would personally take this fish out and put it into quarantine ro treat with medicated fish food feeding frequently to build up weight. Then do the medicated food in the big tank as well.

It's pretty common to have ammonia levels that high in tap water nowadays. Water companies are using chloramine instead of chlorine because the chloramines dont break down as quickly as chlorine but they do cause the positive reading for ammonia. You can double check if there are chloramines in...

How big of a tank is this? What water tests are you using? How exactly are you performing the nitrate test? I find a nitrate level of 0 - 5 with goldfish to be suspicious.