Gor! Perhaps I wasn't clear enough, or worded something improperly which threw you folks in the wrong direction. So let me begin again.
I change 15% of the water every other day, and on each third change (day 6) I replace 50% of the water. The tank itself smells of moist earth, and not only am I willing to swim in it I have drank from tanks to prove their condition. My bad for not mentioning the fact that the photos cover the rear of the tank against the black paint applied to the backside, hence the darker appearance, but I did mention the spots were bubbles - mostly oxygen that late in the day but with carbon dioxide mixed by the mist setup.
The carbon dioxide in DIY bottles is split into three containers, and on each water change the oldest single bottle is refreshed so as to keep the supply at a fairly constant level. That way I always have a fresh bottle, and recent bottle and a 5-day old bottle all reacting at once through the same water filter bottle and into the single line which feeds the tank. This avoids the usual up-and-down supply of a single bottle at whatever size as it ages.
The fauna population isn't burdensome in this tank, and TDSs never rise above the 450-600 range on a conductivity meter even with the minor supplementation. The change water starts out at 120 from the tap, and after the 50% change and the slightly larger supplementation that comes with it registers just about right at 400 in the tank. None of the fish have died, and their rations are a single Tetra Tab daily, and I find no cause for concern in assuming a nitrogen spike considering the frequency of water changes and the flora-to-fauna ratio.
The plants are still in the grow-out stage. The hairgrass was planted at the beginning, the
arcuata added after a week, and the rest of the plants a week later. The tank is seven weeks old, and the plants haven't filled in enough for their first pruning yet. The little bit of work I have performed on the substrate comes in the form of splitting four API root tabs into quarters and pushing them down to the Flourite layer once a month, immediately before the 50% water change.
As to the lack of sanitation/quarantine, that's a fauly assumption based on a lack of info from me. Were you to see the condition of the LFS's plant tank here, your guess might be more along the lines of me actually using a bleach dip before their addition. By now, all of the leaves affected by the dip have been either melted (crypts) or removed (sword/
pinnatifida) with the exception of the aromatica which I was lucky enough to pluck from the LFS's tank just as it was beginning to revert from emersed growth to immersed, and a couple of its emergent growth leaves are still present. The
senegalensis apparently didn't mind the dip, much to my surprise.
I've dealt with brush algae on older growth in previous tanks before, but actually haven't seen this type before in any of my tanks. It does not smell, is easily pulled from the plants, is not slimy, motile, or has even spread to other plants in the tank. It's consistency, as I mentioned before, seems like little "dust bunnies" of hair that is neither tough nor too soft, and it appears to be one of the "red" algaes that we perceive as dark gray/black, like brush algae. I was hoping someone might recognize the stuff and make recommendations as to its handling, but apparently the information I provided wasn't sufficient for some reason.
Another bad move on my part is not telling you the
pinnatifida sits right next to a heavy growth of the
arcuata, and I'm thinking perhaps this is restricting the flow a bit too much in that corner. It's not suffering from BGA due to the circulation - yet. But I keep a close eye on the growth and color of the
arcuata because I honestly expected to have cleared out some of it by now. The tank in the family room, an 80-gallon, isn't quite ready yet (new move after the Tornadoes that hit this area in late April), but when it is the
senegalensis and the
aromatica will come out (I had to snatch them while the opportunity existed). The idea is to stretch the arcuata area out a bit behind the sword and have the pinnatifida overshadowing that from behind, with the sword on one side as a bright green contrast to the
arcuata and
pinnatifida while the other end of the tank grows out the crypts, with the hairgrass as ground cover.
The light is concentrated over the left end of the tank, decreasing in intensity across to the crypts. Hopefully this will keep the crypts growing slowly and not overrun the tank or require constant trimming out of the runners.
Hopefully, this and the following shot of the tank itself may give you a better feel for the tank. The touch of algae on the back wall is a combo of green spot and dust algae, and the growth on the back wall is two weeks old. I alternate wiping the back glass with the left-side end pane on a weekly basis with the 50% changes to keep something around for the two otos, so what little you see on the left end is but a week old at this point. But even this algae only grows on the glass immediately around the light and doesn't touch the other end with less light. There is no BGA in those spots, and it usually takes the first week for the GSA to reach noticeable size, and as you can see on the back wall by the end of the second week it's only about the size of a grammar school pencil lead (the thick pencils they make for little hands to learn writing skills). The otos usually handle the softer dust algae and biofilm that grown in the meantime.
And for the sake of brevity, let's assume I have a little experience in handling tanks and not start with very basic troubleshooting. Although I'm new to the list, a decade ago I was known as Nestor10 to the APD and Apistogramma Mailing List, and under my real name of David Youngker I am one of the "founding fathers" of what started out as the AGA International Aquascaping Contest and Showcase...
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But then...